Shelby Women's United

I attended a meeting of the Shelby Woman’s United last night. I was one of a handful guests in attendance with a proposal to deliver. I was talking about Shelby Fest and making a request that the SWU help to pre-sell dinners for the festival. The ladies have already been helpful in securing funds and dealing with logistics. They are very excited about the event and it conveniently coincides with removing the burden from them of planning a fall event, not that they wouldn’t have done it. They are awesome and wonderfully motivated to help out.

Guest #2 was a woman from NY pushing a book of non-religious moral codes to try and stimulate the community into treating everyone better. Some sort of pay it forward style idea that supposedly was administered in Watts, California, a ghetto of L.A., and resulted in a decreased crime rate.

The last guest was Reverend Pitts. A healthy sized individual with a mesmerizing deep drawl. He led the prayer at the beginning of the meeting and I was instantly entranced by the rhythm of his words. I imagine he easily commands the attention of his congregation unlike some of the other Reverends I have encountered that make me want to drill a hole in my head. Reverend Pitts is helping us try to secure a tent for the band to play under.

As I sat there in the meeting room of the Shelby Library surrounded by these ladies, the police chief, Reverend Pitts, and the Mayor, I could not begin to fathom how I got into this situation. About a year and a half ago I was sitting at my desk in NYC computing and analyzing changes in capital and now I am sitting here in Shelby (where the heck is Shelby?) at a meeting of the Shelby Woman’s United trying to put together a town festival. C’mon now! Somebody please come over here and smack me. I think I am locked in some sort of labyrinthine dream world.

Keep it Coming

Busy, busy, busy. Those words define my life. I attribute an abnormal amount of my stress to my difficulties in lesson planning. For instance, writing plans on a nightly basis does not benefit my sanity; it also detracts from peripheral improvements to my classroom as well as extra-curriculars, namely SHELYB FEST ’06. Please buy a t-shirt. Your contribution will go a long way to the success of this event and a phenomenal thanks to those of you who have already picked up an iconic piece of Delta paraphernalia.

Today we secured some funding to implement carnival style booths at Shelby Fest. We are actively encouraging other TFA-ers to assemble a festival activity to be built and implemented by their students. It encourages problem solving, motivation, and student investment and will make the festival well…more of a festival. The funding came from another enterprising Delta teacher who has been aggregating funds to support student centered community events. Through the Delta Action Coalition we are able to offer $25 to teachers who are willing to participate. Use the unbridled creativity of your students…how about sack races, face painting, bracelet making, water balloon toss…the imagination is limitless.

To place a Selby Fest t-shirt order scroll down to the following post.

Shelby Fest '06

When: Saturday, October 21st, 2006.
Where: Outside the public library.
What: SHELBY FEST 2006! Live blues music, food, and lots of family fun.

The objectives: create a positive experience involving the community in student enrichment, and to raise money to send the fourth grade on two field trips. All proceeds will benefit fourth grade field trips to see 'A Chirstmas Carol' in Hattiesburg on November 17th, and a visit to Jackson, to see the state capital and the science museum.

Please help us out and buy one or two or three of these ultra cool t-shirts. What better way to experience a little piece of Dixie without leaving the comfort of your own home. The shirts are $12 plus shipping, and you can buy one right here!

Choose the size you would like to purchase and press "Add to Cart." This will take you to our PayPal site (operated by Ms. Hayes co-coordinator), where you can enter your credit card info. It is very secure, and all we see is your name and size. You DO NOT have to have a PayPal account to buy a shirt. Just click on "I don't have a PayPal Account" in your shopping cart, and you can complete your purchase without opening an account.
Orders must be placed by September 29th, 2006.

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Parent Visit

Instead of visiting a parent for let’s say J… peeing on W…, which actually happened earlier this week I received a parent visit. My Dad flew down to Dixie for the weekend and spent Friday in my class. While he was hoping for fields of snow blanketing the landscape, most of the cotton has unfortunately not flowered and the fields that have, have already been picked and the product sent to the gin. Nothing can be done about that, but we did have a fantastic time in the classroom.

Normally I am more solemn than exuberant about teaching because it is a profession of reflection. There are constantly improvements to be made. The tweaks are endless and sometimes we need a complete operational overhaul. However, Friday was magnificent. A few days before his arrival, I told the children that my Dad was coming to visit. Giddy with excitement to see Mr. Castagnola the elder, they raised their hands and commented, “We need to show him respect.” During the day my Dad worked with a few of the groups as they were rotating through centers and the children were angelic.

A good friend of mine consistently points out the positive and because of her encouragement I will comment on the positive instead of my usual discourse on the need for improvement. If everyday could look like this past Friday I would be living in paradise. The children spoke at the correct level the ENTIRE time. They remained on task. They used positive encouragement and were particularly helpful. They worked hard. They even did well on their test. Rock and Roll!

Mafia Terrorist School Teacher on the Loose in Shelby

I went to the Shelby Cash Store to buy an RC Cola and told the shop-keep that I have lost my quarters in the machine outside in the past. He came outside with me and sure enough, clink clink, ka-crash out came my pop. As this was occurring some local man was walking by and started talking about being careful not to blow anything up.

He said again, “Don’t go blowing anything up.” I have no idea what is going on. He said, “Yeah them Al-Qaeda people.” The shop keep who was on his way back inside told me that this gentlemen thinks I am Middle Eastern. Oh, ok. And he says again, “You look like one of them terrorists, you sure you ain’t blowing anything up.”

So, I told him I was Italian and said my last name.
He told me I must be in the mafia.
I told him maybe back in the old country, but here in Shelby I teach fourth grade.
He looked at me crooked eyed and told me I better be careful with the children.

After some more suspect deliberating he came around to shaking my hand and I offered him my blessings. My pop was ice cold and dripping with condensation so I wiped my hand on my pants to clear the water from my palm.

From behind me I hear, “Hey, you wiped you hand.” “What is going on?”, I thought. So, I turned back and went over to the same man who thinks I am a mafia terrorist school teacher. He told me that them white folks wipe their hand after shaking a black man’s hand. I told him that my pop was wet and showed him the can. He was alright with this explanation. Then he went on to tell me about how white folk treat black folk and some of the sly gestures that are made that you only notice if you are paying close attention.

Whoa! Haven’t had a quality Delta moment like this in while.

Punished by Rewards

This week we had a moment in class that applied the theories of a book I have been reading in an unexpected manner. The central tenet of Punished by Rewards is that extrinsic motivation no matter how potent will never cause the same levels of productive output as intrinsic motivation. Even though people may not be inherently interested in the task at hand providing an environment that encourages new ideas, allows for personal choice, and offers challenging assignments can intrinsically motivate them. I have been trying to convey to my students that we have a thirst for learning that can only be satiated by our hard work. Of course explaining this to nine year olds can be challenging, so I broke down and implemented systems of group and class points to encourage good behavior and a positive work ethic. The authors of this book would spit on these systems as diluting the potential of my students’ capacity for success.

In any case, our class requires that group members ask each other group member their question before they ask the teacher. This in turn frees me from the responsibility of repetitive questioning and grants me freedom to work with specific students more closely. Students must also be willing to answer anybody else’s question. When all group members have the same question they may then ask the teacher to help alleviate their confusion.

The other day a very stubborn student, J…, refused to help his group-mates because he was working on a different problem then everybody else. The rest of the group had their hands up so I went to check out what was happening with group five. The commentary was that J… was refusing to raise his hand to get this question answered. J…, said, “I don’t have the same question so I am not raising my hand.” He also contributed that he knew the answer to the group’s question but refused to answer because he was on a different problem. OH! Well Sir J… king of group five let us all bow to you almighty authority and be subservient to your will. No, this is unacceptable. “Group 5, you lose two points.” This was probably not the best way to handle the situation. J… went up and erased his group’s points and I went back to work. The classroom was operating at an appropriate noise level and things sounded like they were going fine until I heard a desk violently crash to the floor and saw D… and J… tumbling on the ground with fists and feet flailing desperately trying to beat each other to a pulp. WHOA! What happened here? A cool calm classroom instantaneously erupted into slugfest central.

D… who has a nasty temper apparently lost it when his group sacrificed their points because J… decided that being helpful was unnecessary. D…’s eyes began to swell, his fists clenched and I can picture him turning over to J… and just popping him in the face. This is not the intended result of a point system. Ooops.

I went over, pried the children apart put them both in a headlock, told the rest of the kids to get back to work, and dragged them down to the office. I was mildly heated because these children had totally destroyed the classroom chi and I had to write them up for fighting, an automatic 3 day suspension. Before I headed back to class we sat down and had a conversation about the problems with fighting and the resultant consequences. Without my prodding both of the students expressed that missing school is problematic because they are losing an opportunity to learn and that disrupting class causes others to suffer by interrupting the limited time we have to strengthen our brains.

While fighting is completely unacceptable I cannot help but find some comedy in this whole situation. I obviously need to rethink the role of points and extrinsic motivators to make sure they are more carefully framed to avoid this type of backlash. However, the responses from D… and J… about the detrimental effects of fighting were proof that classroom messages are taking hold. Punished by Rewards has taken on a new meaning in the context of my classroom. It had not occurred to me that the punishment delivered by a reward system was going to be the impact of a fist upon another student’s face.

Friends and Family

This weekend was phenomenal and not the slightest bit less. I have not been home to NY since last December and this whirlwind trip of friends and family was both exciting and invigorating. In a 72 hours time span I saw a handful of great friends in NYC, my best high school buds on LI and the majority of my family on both the Castagnola and Fitzgerald sides. It was great to exchange stories and see what people are up to. My little cousins are getting bigger, speaking out, and becoming increasingly rambunctious. I don’t know how the twos could be called terrible when they look as cute as they do. My friends who are all about 25 are positioning themselves to conquer their lives and beyond. It is amazing to see people using their short post-college years of experience to propel themselves forward. It was great to see you. I look forward to returning at Christmas.