Looking at the referring URLs for e-verities visitors in the last week, I came upon a link to http://www.ratemyteachers.com/ . I was reminded of something from my junior high years.
A little over forty years ago, I remember hearing about and seeing an occasional glimpse of something called a "slam book." I remember a spiral-bound notebook decorated outside with glued cutouts and crayon drawings. On the inside, there was one name on each otherwise blank page. The book was passed around and comments were written about the students named on each page. There may also have been some kind of legend identifying the students making comments.
I don't believe I ever read a slam book or even held one in my hands. This was for two reasons. First, junior high principals judged the books to be mean and hurtful in spirit, and therefore confiscated every one they found. Second, the students making and passing them around seemed to me to be part of the "in-group.” Whatever that phrase meant in reality, it had a clear meaning to me. The in-group was not any group that associated with me. In fact, I was so far from being part of any in-group that I was untroubled by the distance. I don't remember ever wanting to read from or write in a slam book. The books and the opinions in them didn't concern me, and I was unconcerned about what the in-group opinions of me were. I reserved my agonies of insecurity for closer relationships.
It now occurs to me the principals may have judged wrongly. The motivation for making slam books was probably more insecurity than meanness. In social groups substituting pretense for openness it seems there might be an aching desire to know what others really think. In fact, in such social groups there might also be an aching desire on the part of in-group members to say what they really think of others.
I suppose students who feel they cannot honestly express negative feelings or opinions about their teachers without fear of unfair reprisal have a real emotional need for the anonymous slam book outlet of RateMyTeacher. In fact, Michael Hussey, developer of the site says one of the reasons he created it was because as a student he had “nowhere to go for constructive criticism without fear of grade retribution." The fear Hussey shares with his anonymous high school raters is possibly the most significant teacher criticism offered, because any teacher reprisal for such expressions would be unprofessional, unethical, and in my opinion immoral.
A cheap-shot rebuttal to this articulated retribution fear would be to say Hussey and the students expect to receive what they know they would dish out. I would rather rebut their criticism by encouraging them to be authentic and open about their feelings and opinions. I would further encourage students to avoid giving anonymous criticism. Anonymity is frequently a prima facie reason for ignoring criticism, and by definition ignored criticism cannot be constructive. Finally, I encourage any criticism, even if anonymous, by posting a link to this cyber slam book below.
The verities here are honesty and transparency, what some have called authenticity. Living authentically brings the eternal part of your being into the here and now. To hide behind pretense (for example, by hurling anonymous criticisms from behind a barricade of false propriety), elevates the ephemeral beyond its true value and crowds real value from your life.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Lovely Rita, hurricane, where would I be without you?
Monday I go to school to teach the SAT prep class at 7:00 A. M. thinking they will settle down and get to work so I can finish uploading my grades to the mainframe. They don’t. Once again many are tardy and two of the regular tardies have to talk their way through the days test section. I’m pretty proud of myself because I’m running ahead of schedule and won’t be going up there at 4:30 A.M. Tuesday to finish exporting grades at the last minute. Suddenly I’m getting “Disk Full” messages from the server in central administration, so I can’t finish my grades. At first, the message is that the grades will not save anywhere, but I manage to force a save to my computer hard drive. I finish recording assignments and do all the necessary steps except for the exporting. Though on days when a third of the class arrives late, I can spend most of the period just delivering the days assignment instructions individually to the tardy students, helping them determine the sections they need to make up. With so many trailing in, making sure my attendance is accurate, takes no small part of the period. After class there are always several of the SAT tardies doing makeup work and asking questions about missing sections.
A1 begins, but less than thirty minutes into class there is a fire alarm. I send all the students to the parking lot and take up my duty station at the door. Through our haphazard emergency communication system of Principals yelling down the hallway, I discover this was an actual alarm set off by one of the sensors in a utility room. The students are outside for ten or twenty minutes before we get an all clear message shouted to us. The students come in jazzed. I struggle for their focus for the remainder of the period, send them on their way and watch my A2 class come in just as jazzed.
Less than thirty minutes into class the fire alarm rings again and we evacuate again. This time the shouted message down the hall is that we have a bomb threat and we will have to keep the students outside until the building is searched. We move the Choir, Dance, and Tech Theatre kids under the shade trees knowing they will be outside a while. After forty-five minutes or so, we get the all clear, but as soon as we are in the classroom, we are told to stay in lockdown. From somewhere I get the message they are bringing in bomb sniffing dogs to check the building. We stay in A2 until about 12:30, nearly an hour longer than usual. They extend third period a bit to get all the students through lunch. We end the day with an abbreviated A4 period.
I get very little exporting completed the morning of such a crazy day even after technology fixes the “disk full” problem, but I turn off the classroom lights during my A3 planning period, retire to my office, and finish exporting grades. After school, I go home and begin watching the Rita storm track. On my way into my neighborhood, I notice HL&P trucks working on our power lines and find every clock inside my house flashing.
I have a Center stages board meeting at 7:00 P.M. that drags on until after 9:00. I go home and am caught up watching the weather reports. Going to bed about 2:00 A.M., I re-set my flashing alarm clock, but wake up at 7:08. I’ve missed the beginning of my SAT prep class! I don’t get to school until 7:45, the end of the class. The students have taken a walk, but I have Three Theatre I students hoping to make up declined performances at the last minute. I open the grade program to upload grade changes for the students, but the computer says, “file full” again. About five minutes before grades are due, the problem is apparently fixed once again and I export the class containing the students who made up their performances that morning. At 8:00, the fire alarm goes off again, but the principal gets on the P.A. and tells us it is a faulty sensor. Turns out the alarms had been going off periodically since about 6:30 A.M.
It’s another crazy day. Students are jazzed again. Rita is in the middle of the Gulf, turning into a category five monster that looks like it is pointed straight at Freeport. I fumble through, actually getting the day's lesson done with the Theatre Arts I classes, and am pleased to hear the district announce school will be turned out for the rest of the week. I hang around school for over an hour backing up my school files to a CD and go home with the intention of grabbing a few things and going to Houston.
At home, my malaise sets in. I decide to leave Wednesday morning. Most of the night I watch weather reports that seem to say Freeport is the Rita bull’s eye. I’m awakened Wednesday by the sound of neighbors boarding up their houses. I get up and begin to putter and dither. If I had not promised Veronica, Roger, and Suzanne I would go to Houston; I might have schlepped around and procrastinated myself into staying in Lake Jackson. I’m headed toward another brown funk—a dorky day. I can’t remember the way Suzanne referred to that when I mentioned it, something like, “not a good mind set.”
I stay with Roger, Suzanne, Christopher, and Laura for the rest of the week, watching constant news updates hour by hour. What first looks like a category five storm aimed for Freeport eventually resolves itself into a category three storm going in at Sabine Pass on the Texas/Louisiana border.
This afternoon I came back home. The house is untouched by the storm that earlier in the week seemed destined to cover it in a twenty-foot storm surge. The B.I.S.D. storm holiday has been extended to Wednesday. By the time it is all over we will have missed a week of school--days we will have to make up later in the year.
A1 begins, but less than thirty minutes into class there is a fire alarm. I send all the students to the parking lot and take up my duty station at the door. Through our haphazard emergency communication system of Principals yelling down the hallway, I discover this was an actual alarm set off by one of the sensors in a utility room. The students are outside for ten or twenty minutes before we get an all clear message shouted to us. The students come in jazzed. I struggle for their focus for the remainder of the period, send them on their way and watch my A2 class come in just as jazzed.
Less than thirty minutes into class the fire alarm rings again and we evacuate again. This time the shouted message down the hall is that we have a bomb threat and we will have to keep the students outside until the building is searched. We move the Choir, Dance, and Tech Theatre kids under the shade trees knowing they will be outside a while. After forty-five minutes or so, we get the all clear, but as soon as we are in the classroom, we are told to stay in lockdown. From somewhere I get the message they are bringing in bomb sniffing dogs to check the building. We stay in A2 until about 12:30, nearly an hour longer than usual. They extend third period a bit to get all the students through lunch. We end the day with an abbreviated A4 period.
I get very little exporting completed the morning of such a crazy day even after technology fixes the “disk full” problem, but I turn off the classroom lights during my A3 planning period, retire to my office, and finish exporting grades. After school, I go home and begin watching the Rita storm track. On my way into my neighborhood, I notice HL&P trucks working on our power lines and find every clock inside my house flashing.
I have a Center stages board meeting at 7:00 P.M. that drags on until after 9:00. I go home and am caught up watching the weather reports. Going to bed about 2:00 A.M., I re-set my flashing alarm clock, but wake up at 7:08. I’ve missed the beginning of my SAT prep class! I don’t get to school until 7:45, the end of the class. The students have taken a walk, but I have Three Theatre I students hoping to make up declined performances at the last minute. I open the grade program to upload grade changes for the students, but the computer says, “file full” again. About five minutes before grades are due, the problem is apparently fixed once again and I export the class containing the students who made up their performances that morning. At 8:00, the fire alarm goes off again, but the principal gets on the P.A. and tells us it is a faulty sensor. Turns out the alarms had been going off periodically since about 6:30 A.M.
It’s another crazy day. Students are jazzed again. Rita is in the middle of the Gulf, turning into a category five monster that looks like it is pointed straight at Freeport. I fumble through, actually getting the day's lesson done with the Theatre Arts I classes, and am pleased to hear the district announce school will be turned out for the rest of the week. I hang around school for over an hour backing up my school files to a CD and go home with the intention of grabbing a few things and going to Houston.
At home, my malaise sets in. I decide to leave Wednesday morning. Most of the night I watch weather reports that seem to say Freeport is the Rita bull’s eye. I’m awakened Wednesday by the sound of neighbors boarding up their houses. I get up and begin to putter and dither. If I had not promised Veronica, Roger, and Suzanne I would go to Houston; I might have schlepped around and procrastinated myself into staying in Lake Jackson. I’m headed toward another brown funk—a dorky day. I can’t remember the way Suzanne referred to that when I mentioned it, something like, “not a good mind set.”
I stay with Roger, Suzanne, Christopher, and Laura for the rest of the week, watching constant news updates hour by hour. What first looks like a category five storm aimed for Freeport eventually resolves itself into a category three storm going in at Sabine Pass on the Texas/Louisiana border.
This afternoon I came back home. The house is untouched by the storm that earlier in the week seemed destined to cover it in a twenty-foot storm surge. The B.I.S.D. storm holiday has been extended to Wednesday. By the time it is all over we will have missed a week of school--days we will have to make up later in the year.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Career Milestone
Her name was Paula.
She was in my Advanced Theatre class over nineteen years ago. She walked into my classroom at Open House this evening with her two high school age children.
She said a lot of nice things--my class was her favorite, I was the only teacher she even remembered, etc. etc. She is trying to persuade at least one of her kids to take Theatre.
The children of my former students are attending Brazoswood.
I'm certifiably an old guy.
She was in my Advanced Theatre class over nineteen years ago. She walked into my classroom at Open House this evening with her two high school age children.
She said a lot of nice things--my class was her favorite, I was the only teacher she even remembered, etc. etc. She is trying to persuade at least one of her kids to take Theatre.
The children of my former students are attending Brazoswood.
I'm certifiably an old guy.
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