A Five Thousand Dollar Consolation Prize.

Denied. Well almost. I applied for the position of school director (SD) at the TFA summer institute. The job normally goes to third years with previous institute experience, but since I walk with a swagger I figured I’d shoot from the half court line and make the goal. Wrong. The shot missed and was tipped in by someone else; I was placed on a waitlist for the position. The odds of me getting the job are slim. The applicant pool is highly qualified and filled with individuals who want the post, so the likelihood of someone reneging their commitment are virtually nonexistent.

Thus I applied for a Corps Member Advisor (CMA) position. This role is a tiny step forward on the hierarchical ladder of closing the achievement gap. The CMA has the charge of teaching the incoming college students how to teach and is the typical institute position of second years. I submitted my application, received a confirmation, and then never received an offer or rejection for an interview. My swagger was stopped dead in its tracks. I figured I was a sure win for this role and here I was now praying my application had not simply been discarded.

I followed up with institute staff. Out of character, they did not send a prompt response. Uh-oh. My current plans hinge on summer work. This evening I spoke with the head of institute. She apologized for not having contacted me earlier and offered me a CMA position based on the strength of my candidacy for the SD role. Score! No interview, no worries, and employed for the summer. She told me the chances of an SD job becoming available are unlikely, but I will remain on the waitlist. So here I have it, my $5,000 consolation prize. Not bad.

We are learning.

Structural organization was reinvented in my classroom this semester. Timing was my nemesis and thwarting my attempts at fitting in multiple activities during my 100-minute block. I switched the new instruction portion of the day to the final 50 minutes and now use the first 50 minutes of class for all sorts of cool stuff. We have community meetings on Mondays, extended review problems on Tuesdays and Thursdays called the GOT BRAINS, and Wednesdays and Fridays are dedicated for other activities. These other activities are slowly but strategically becoming focused upon building fact skills and playing math games that require no collected work. Currently I can remediate during the Got Brains and will soon be remediating on Wednesdays and Fridays as well. The classroom is becoming a complex beast of academic productivity.

This week marked the first true committed foray into remediation. I have mentioned a lack of remediation due to class averages residing above targets thus minimizing the urgency to correct skill deficits. Spoken like a man coming from the business world, I was meeting my numbers. Clearly, meeting numbers is not the goal of education but to provide a sound educational opportunity for all students. Unfortunately the absence of remediation has been stifling our Big Goal.

Since student investment is directly correlated to motivation, hard work, and ultimately success, passion for the Big Goal is a necessity. This week during the Got Brains I worked in small groups with three sets of four students. I retested eight students of which 5 passed. Not bad for the first run. Of the five passing students four received bronze medals, the first marker for Big Goal attainment. The kids were pumped; they put their stamps on the tracking sheet, gave each other high fives, and smiled as they walked on to their next class. We clapped and cheered out for our fellow classmates. Congratulations to these hardworking students.

Beyond an increase in positive classroom dynamics my principal actually gave me a decent review from an observation and provided positive encouraging commentary on my use of manipulatives. I could not believe it. We have also received approval for art club, which is sweet. Our introductory meeting should be in two weeks. We are scheduled to make sculpture.

They are so cute...and deadly.

My girlfriend is petite. She has two not so petite dogs that are bred to destroy. She is the happy owner of two Pit bulls, one brown the other blue. The blue dog, Midnight, was fought as a pup and rescued. He is scarred from the rough and tumble days of dog fighting, but now has a loving home. The dog is also very docile with a fabulous personality, however he has a problem with other male dogs. When J… comes to my house she brings the dogs. My house resides on a property with I don’t know, I think 7 or 8 dogs now.

She lets her dogs out. We bring them toward the house. One of the black dogs on the property comes over and starts barking, fur standing on end, and teeth bared. He is about the same size but maybe a few pounds lighter than Midnight, oh and he is lacking the massive jaw of destruction that Pit bulls have. Midnight, disliking other male dogs and having been fought as a child, jumped up and latched his jaws upon the black dog's head with no intent of letting go. J…, with out hesitation reaches right in and grabs the dogs trying to separate them and is screaming “MIDNIGHT LET GO! MIDNIGHT LET GO!” She tells me in the midst of the chaos that I am going to need something to hit Midnight with as hard as possible and repeatedly. I grabbed the rake and whacked the dog a few times, the rake broke and the dog let go. I am thankful J... didn’t lose a hand among the snarling, bared teeth and clamped jaws .

The black dog scampered off with a few added holes in its head. Midight walks into my house pretty heated, a boxer style cut above his right eye, and tracking blood through the kitchen from a wounded paw. It’s a good thing he let go. He would have destroyed that other dog, no question about it. I wonder what the Mings would have said. I wonder if they will notice the wounds. Good fun here at the farm.

HEAT!!! Yea!

I took my car to get the heat fixed yesterday. I dropped the vehicle off and waited in the blustery cold for my ride. I left the key in the gas compartment and needed to call the mechanics at 7am to tell them what to do. I forgot to do that. It hit me that I was suppose to call at about 1:20 in the afternoon and at this point I was praying they would be able to fix my Jeep in the few remaining hours they were open.

I got a teacher to monitor my class while the students were doing independent work. I ran to the office to make a quick call and there was a line of students, 5 or 6, waiting to be paddled. While I was on the phone Ms. M... was calling in the students one at a time and delivering licks. She whoops with gusto. During my conversation with the auto place there must have been at least 12 slaps of the paddle upon the students’ backsides. I can only imagine what the folks on the other end of line were thinking about the noise. Granted they are from the area so it may not have been startling at all, but I wonder what a Northerner would have thought of the noise. I also thought it was kind of odd that I was not asked to use the phone in the other room. Either way the scene resounded with Delta hysteria.

They fixed my car. I have heat. No more shivering while driving. Life is good.

Ghosts

L… sees ghosts. I had this issue with a student last year. This time around it is a little different. L… is a capable student but makes many, many mistakes. Apparently it is because she sees her Dad all the time, her Dad who died in 2004. He hangs out in my classroom when she is around, makes funny faces, and tells her to do things, but she says she ignores him. However it does make an impact upon her schoolwork. Apparently when she stayed after school yesterday to help out, he stayed also and was making bunny ears behind my head for a while. She told him to stop but still thought it was very funny.

Unfortunately it is not all fun and games. Earlier this week or late last week L… was hanging out with her sister in their room and Dad showed up as some sort of fiery spirit and told the sisters to do bad things to their mom. L… said she ignored him, but her sister (one of my students last year) who has a tremendous attitude heeded the advice and tried to stab mom. She is now in behavior management home in Memphis.

I am glad L… remains in good spirits.

Brrrrrrr...

28 degrees is way too cold to be driving with out heat. I could feel the hair on my legs bristling among the goose bumps. We had been having a good run of warm weather since New Years. For the most part it had been in the high forties or low fifties, often rainy but bearable. My heat crapped out just before Christmas and I haven’t had the motivation to get it fixed. I shiver my way to school, get inside, and instantly turn the heat on in my room. It becomes 90 degrees in about 15 minutes and I can shed the three layers of outer clothing I wear to school each morning.

Things in the classroom are going well. Nothing stellar but we are marching in the correct direction. I have reasserted my Big Goal. All students will be medal winners by the end of the year. Behind the scenes this means that we will have mastered a substantial amount of ambitious content, but to the kids it means they will be Olympic champions. I had let the Big Goal go slack. My class averages were consistently high enough to please everybody, but there was no focused rallying point for academic achievement. It was easy to see sufficient grades and settle. I am back to pushing these kids to ever higher levels, and to do so I must continually push myself as well. To maintain student investment in the Big Goal requires me to maintain investment in lofty goals as well. I have run face first into the fact that if I want the students to achieve excellence I am going to have to work, in TFA jargon, relentlessly. So, now I am tutoring during my planning period and seriously rearranging my classroom to allow for remediation. If kids are not winning medals they are not going to believe it can happen, so I need to make it happen.

Conveniently, I do not feel overwhelmed and life is good. The little things have not begun bothering me and I have not lost sight of the big picture. It is easy to become mired in the trivialities of everyday Delta life…the poverty, the atrocious attitudes, the dilapidated houses, the racism, etc, etc. I attribute a portion of my positivity to the fact that I met a fantastic girl. Fantastic in the sort of way that invigorates life and reminds you to recognize it’s endless possibilities.

***A necessary quote***

A boy comes into my room.

“How are you Mr. Castanola (spelling butchered to emphasize punctuation).

Fine D… and you?

Good. Mr. Castanola can I get some candy?

I don’t think that is a good idea. A man of your energy does not need more sugar. Hey, D… who do you live with.

***My mama, my step daddy – who is also my cousin, my three brothers, and my sister.” ***

I’m sorry. I had to restrain my laughter. It’s not funny. They live in a small three bedroom apartment in the projects and he has to share a bed with his brother. No, forget that, it is funny in a sick and twisted sort of way. C’mon now. Don’t marry your cousins.

1 st week back

It is the first full week back at school. There are the usual highs and lows. Highs: class one is getting a lot better. Class three is terrific. Lows: class two is an absolute abomination. Don’t know what to do about it, but will keep trying hard.

Delta vulgarity.

This note was handed to Mr. Frailich in class on Friday and has been copied verbatim for your entertainment or disgust (names have been removed). It is a note intended to inform.

“To: Mr. F

Dear Mr. Frailich,
D…, P…, J… was talking about some d!ck.
And they said it tase like vinalla.”

This note was from a girl in the group. Why are the boys talking about this? Mind you the only white student is one of the three culprits.


I was in Clarksdale walking around with J…(female). The bail bondsman sells firewood for $60 a half cord. He is about the creepiest man I have ever met. Being in his presence sent chills down my spine and when he told me to follow him to the back of the shop I was concerned that I may end up head first in the wood chipper. As we walked out he said, “$60 a half cord or I’ll a trade you the wood for a piece of that sweet thang you got right there.” Uh, sorry Sir, I think I will hang on to her.

It isn't 500K but it sure is entertaining.

Teachers, like most professionals, love to talk shop. We often talk about the incompetence - a running theme, strategic implementation, and the lives of the children. Since Shelby Middle School is recognized for its leading role in disastrous decision making it is the regular butt of jokes and point of comparison for other schools. My buddy G… put it well when he said, “My school is incompetent, but at least they don’t do anything, your school is filled with ambition and motivation to make life as painful as possible for everybody.”

We have entered the third nine-week period of the school year. The administration has granted us the right to create our own pacing guides and pre-tests. They of course gave us this information yesterday, once school had already begun. I tend to think it’s a workload cop out since we are supposed to be finishing our remaining benchmarks this 9-week period anyway.

We had a faculty meeting today. The principal, in classic SMS style, told us that this nine-week period would be cut two weeks short leaving us with a seven-week nine-week period. A cumulative exam will be given which will in turn allow us to see which benchmarks still need to be covered by the end of the year. My prediction is that the benchmarks that would have been taught in the last two weeks of the period will still need to be taught. You could here the buzz of hallway talk beginning to swell before the meeting ended.

On another note, word has it that one of my buddies, age 25, made half a mil this year. I wonder what kind of talent would be attracted to my current industry if they doubled the pay or implemented a merit based bonus system? Maybe slacker talent that likes to cheat on tests.

Christmas break is over. Happy New Year everybody.

My buddy F… picked me up at the airport in Memphis and we bs’ed about vacation. We drove into a late afternoon sun and as usual I gazed thoroughly impressed by the large expanse of Delta sky. The blues melted into faded pinks and big puffy clouds slowly meandered over the scorched landscape of barren cotton fields. I had been dreading my return to the Delta. I had nightmares during break, bundled up stress in my lower back and an overwhelming sense of dread to be returning to these painfully neglected lands. However, a remarkable event occurred late New Year’s Eve early New Year’s Day that has reawakened my reason for coming to and living in the Delta.

It was shortly after midnight, we had just crossed into 2007, and we were driving back to Shelby to hang out at the farm. We stopped at Double Quick and drove through the ghetto; mind you all of Shelby is a ghetto. We passed through one of many sets of projects on the way back. We passed and saw multiple individuals hanging around late night…UNLOADING CLIPS OF BULLETS INTO THE AIR! This is not cool. I don’t care that it is New Year’s, set off some fireworks and put your weapons away. Nowhere should people be on the street with concealable weapons wantonly firing bullets into the air. Add to the image younger kids (ages 13-16) running around. A group of them headed to a section of apartments pulled off the screen and threw open the window and dove into the house. Who knows who else is in that room? Maybe there are younger siblings? How many of them…one, two three, possible six, seven, or eight. I have a student that has ten siblings and twelve people live in the two-bedroom apartment. The scene was straight out a ghetto thug movie or a comedic rip-off like Friday. Either way, as we drove home we were all re-recognizing why we are here.

You cannot learn when people are firing bullets outside your window. You cannot sleep well when people are jumping in and out of the window in the middle of the night. This is not a safe supportive comforting environment. Children should not live like this. No wonder some have difficulty focusing or have bad attitudes or don’t care about school. I had forgotten the reality of the situation for many of my students. I had become extremely jaded dealing with school politics, listening to constant complaining, and experiencing pervasive hatred and incompetence. It is about the children, this is my primary concern. Tomorrow we go back to school. There will be no guns in the classroom. There will be love. We will hold hands, sing Kumbya (sp?), and love each other. We will hug trees and eat granola. I don’t care. There will be no weapons and no hate. JESUS!!! People shooting guns, c’mon. These are children. Well, I feel a renewed sense of purpose. I am not dreading my job or being here. In fact, it’s pretty freaking cool.