The Land of Cotton

Of course there is still some basketball to be played before tournament time, but I took my list of 65 and broke them down into seeds if the tournament were to start today.  Of course, there will be some flip-flopping and shifting, but what's the fun in waiting until we're sure who's in?

Seeds:

1. Memphis, North Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee
2. UCLA, Duke, Texas, UCONN
3. Stanford, Xavier, Wisconsin, Georgetown
4. Louisville, Indiana, Butler, Purdue
5. Michigan St., Washington St., Vanderbilt, Marquette
6. Arizona, Notre Dame, Kansas St. Texas A&M
7. St. Mary’s, Clemson, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh
8. Arkansas, Drake, Florida, Arizona St.
9. Maryland, Gonzaga, Mississippi St., Syracuse
10. West Virginia, BYU, Baylor, Rhode Island
11. Houston, UNLV, New Mexico, South Alabama
12. Ole Miss, Winthrop, Cornell, Davidson
13. Lamar, Western Kentucky, VCU, Boise St.
14. Oral Roberts, Austin Peay, Kent St., CSU Northridge
15. Alabama St., Robert Morris, Illinois St., Hampton
16. American, Portland St. UMBC, Rider, Belmont

March Madness is on the horizon, and in honor of this sacred tradition, I will, in addition to already taking the first Thursday and Friday of games off of school, offer my predictions for the field of 65.  I won't try to make predictions of seeds just yet, but here is my list of 65. 

Conference Champs:

1. America East – UMBC
2. ACC – North Carolina
3. A-10 - Xavier
4. Atlantic Sun - Belmont
5. Big 12 - Kansas
6. Big 10 - Wisconsin
7. Big East - Louisville
8. Big Sky – Portland State
9. Big South­ - Winthrop
10. Big West­ – CSU Northridge
11. Colonial - VCU
12. C-USA - Memphis
13. Horizon ­- Butler
14. Ivy League - Cornell
15. Metro Atlantic - Rider
16. Mid-American – Kent State
17. Mideastern - Hampton
18. Missouri Valley – Drake
19. Mountain West - BYU
20. Northeast – Robert Morris
21. Ohio Valley – Austin Peay
22. PAC-10­ - UCLA
23. Patriot - American
24. SEC - Tennessee
25. Southern  - Davidson
26. Southland - Lamar
27. SWAC­ – Alabama St.
28. Summit – Oral Roberts
29. Sunbelt – South Alabama
30. WAC – Boise State
31. West Coast­ – St. Mary’s

At Large Bids:

32. Duke
33. Clemson
34. Maryland
35. Georgetown
36. UCONN
37. Notre Dame
38. Marquette
39. Pittsburgh
40. West Virginia
41. Syracuse
42. Purdue
43. Indiana
44. Michigan State
45. Texas
46. Kansas State
47. Texas A&M
48. Baylor
49. Oklahoma
50. Houston
51. UNLV
52. New Mexico
53. Stanford
54. Washington State
55. Arizona
56. Arizona State
57. Vanderbilt
58. Florida
59. Mississippi State
60. Ole Miss
61. Arkansas
62. Rhode Island
63. Gonzaga
64. Western Kentucky
65. Illinois State

75% of my 5th period class is either on probation or has been at some point in their short life.  From assault to car theft and just about everything in between, someone in that class has done it.  How can a writing assignment or any other consequence for breaking a classroom rule carry any weight when they can scoff and laugh at the punishments affixed by the legal system for breaking the law?  It's no small wonder why some of these kids are not fazed by the consequences put in place not only by me, but by the school administrators.  

Normally, we don't have any problems, I feel like my classroom management is strong and keeps the class in line.  However, when we do have a problem, I can understand why they laugh when they have to write a paragraph or else get a "0" for the day, or why they say, "I don't care" when they are assigned to ISS or even sent home for 3 days. 

Is there a solution?

    This month's crappy parent hits home for most of my readers as we visit the Bluff City.  Memphis police have charged James Hawkins with first-degree murder in the death of his live-in girlfriend Charlene Gaither.  Police claim that after murdering Gaither, he decapitated and dismembered her body before dumping it in DeSoto County just south of the Tennessee border in Mississippi. 
    Now, you may ask, "What makes him a "Crappy Parent of the Week" recipient?  This is where the story gets real interesting.  According to police affidavits, Hawkins killed Gaither in the presence of the couple's 12 year-old daughter and then forced the girl to help dismember and dump the body. 
    How in the wide world of sports can we expect the rising generation of Americans to rise above their present conditions when on a daily basis so many of our children are exposed to this kind of grisly, grotesque violence?  How can they overcome their struggles when they are dealt this terrible hand?  It blows my mind that even somebody as obviously mentally unstable like Hawkins could put his own child in this predicament.  And to think that this child will eventually have to return to school and be expected to contribute and learn, and participate along with all the other students.  What effect will this have on her?  Can she rise above this?  What will happen to her? 

After a four week hiatus for the holiday season, we come back with our first "Crappy Parent of the Week" Award for 2008.  There were several nominees to choose from, as the holiday season really seems to bring out the whack-o child abusers, but the overall winner comes from the Sunshine State.

Winter Haven, Florida resident Marcos Gomez-Romero apparently just wanted another son, and nothing else would do.  According to police reports, Gomez-Romero is facing first-degree murder charges for the death of his four-month-old daughter, Ariana Rodriguez-Romero.  Gomez-Romero allegedly beat his daughter repeatedly over a period of months all because he wanted a boy and not a girl. 

He admitted to slapping the baby in her sleep and would get violently angry just by looking at the girl, calling her names and denying that she was his daughter.  Ariana died on Christmas Day and had suffered multiple internal and external injuries including a lacerated spleen, broken ribs, and a bruised jaw.

Ariana's mother did not call the police to report her husband's abusive behavior because he threatened to run away with the couple's 2-year-old son.  Charges have not been filed against her, but police have not ruled out that possibility just yet.

Congratulations, Marcos, for being selected this week's Crappy Parent!

This week, we travel north up to the South Side of Chicago for our "Crappy Parent of the Week," where we find 24-year-old Lakeshia Murph behind bars for the death of her 2-year-old son, Brandon.  According to the Chicago Tribune, Murph was fed up with the incessant crying of her toddler and so she beat him with a belt and with her fists until "her hands were sore." 

Brandon was taken to the hospital late on Friday, December 14th, 2007 when his father arrived home from work and found the toddler "breathing unusually" and was pronounced dead around 5 p.m. on Saturday.  An autopsy confirmed the cause of death as a result of repeated blunt-force trauma as a result of child abuse and Chicago police reportedly were given a videotaped confession from Murph.

Brandon was Murph's 8th child after having her first child at age 13.  All other children have been placed in foster care.

We here at the "Land of Cotton Blog" congratulate you, Lakeshia Murph for helping make the world a better place for our children.

With so many stories of terrible parents, its not hard to figure out why so many of our youngsters are turning out the way they are.  With that in mind, I will be highlighting great examples of terrible parenting starting this week.

Our first winner of the "Crappy Parent of the Week" Award goes out to Chytoria Graham of Eerie, Pa.  Graham was convicted of using her 4-week-old son as a weapon during an altercation between her and her boyfriend.  According to the Associated Press, Graham came home after drinking and grabbed her son, Jarron, by the legs and swung him into her boyfriend, fracturing Jarron's skull.

Graham faces a mandatory five-year prison sentence for aggravated assault, child endangerment, reckless endangerment, and simple assault. 

Congratulations, Chytoria Graham!

At least somebody gets it...

The following is an column originally printed in the March 7th edition of USA Today.

For once, blame the student
By Patrick Welsh

Last month, as I averaged the second-quarter grades for my senior English classes at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same familiar pattern leapt out at me.

Kids who had emigrated from foreign countries — such as Shewit Giovanni from Ethiopia, Farah Ali from Guyana and Edgar Awumey from Ghana — often aced every test, while many of their U.S.-born classmates from upper-class homes with highly educated parents had a string of C's and D's.

As one would expect, the middle-class American kids usually had higher SAT verbal scores than did their immigrant classmates, many of whom had only been speaking English for a few years.

What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.

Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change.

A study released in December by University of Pennsylvania researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman suggests that the reason so many U.S. students are "falling short of their intellectual potential" is not "inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes" and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers — but "their failure to exercise self-discipline."

The sad fact is that in the USA, hard work on the part of students is no longer seen as a key factor in academic success. The groundbreaking work of Harold Stevenson and a multinational team at the University of Michigan comparing attitudes of Asian and American students sounded the alarm more than a decade ago.

Asian vs. U.S. students

When asked to identify the most important factors in their performance in math, the percentage of Japanese and Taiwanese students who answered "studying hard" was twice that of American students.

American students named native intelligence, and some said the home environment. But a clear majority of U.S. students put the responsibility on their teachers. A good teacher, they said, was the determining factor in how well they did in math.

"Kids have convinced parents that it is the teacher or the system that is the problem, not their own lack of effort," says Dave Roscher, a chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams in this Washington suburb. "In my day, parents didn't listen when kids complained about teachers. We are supposed to miraculously make kids learn even though they are not working."

As my colleague Ed Cannon puts it: "Today, the teacher is supposed to be responsible for motivating the kid. If they don't learn it is supposed to be our problem, not theirs."

And, of course, busy parents guilt-ridden over the little time they spend with their kids are big subscribers to this theory.

Maybe every generation of kids has wanted to take it easy, but until the past few decades students were not allowed to get away with it. "Nowadays, it's the kids who have the power. When they don't do the work and get lower grades, they scream and yell. Parents side with the kids who pressure teachers to lower standards," says Joel Kaplan, another chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams.

Every year, I have had parents come in to argue about the grades I have given in my AP English classes. To me, my grades are far too generous; to middle-class parents, they are often an affront to their sense of entitlement. If their kids do a modicum of work, many parents expect them to get at least a B. When I have given C's or D's to bright middle-class kids who have done poor or mediocre work, some parents have accused me of destroying their children's futures.

It is not only parents, however, who are siding with students in their attempts to get out of hard work.

Blame schools, too

"Schools play into it," says psychiatrist Lawrence Brain, who counsels affluent teenagers throughout the Washington metropolitan area. "I've been amazed to see how easy it is for kids in public schools to manipulate guidance counselors to get them out of classes they don't like. They have been sent a message that they don't have to struggle to achieve if things are not perfect."

Neither the high-stakes state exams, such as Virginia's Standards of Learning, nor the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act have succeeded in changing that message; both have turned into minimum-competency requirements aimed at the lowest in our school.

Colleges keep complaining that students are coming to them unprepared. Instead of raising admissions standards, however, they keep accepting mediocre students lest cuts have to be made in faculty and administration.

As a teacher, I don't object to the heightened standards required of educators in the No Child Left Behind law. Who among us would say we couldn't do a little better? Nonetheless, teachers have no control over student motivation and ambition, which have to come from the home — and from within each student.

Perhaps the best lesson I can pass along to my upper- and middle-class students is to merely point them in the direction of their foreign-born classmates, who can remind us all that education in America is still more a privilege than a right.

Patrick Welsh is an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

    There are a few really interesting quotes in this article that highlight what I perceive to be a glaring problem in today's schools.  Yes, I'm a teacher, and so my opinions are going to be slightly biased and can be misconstrued in a way that seems like I, too am "passing the buck."  However, my opinions come from first-hand observations and not from reading statistics in the newspaper about hot button topics such as school funding and state mandated achievement tests. 

    The first quote is ""Kids have convinced parents that it is the teacher or the system that is the problem, not their own lack of effort," says Dave Roscher, a chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams in this Washington suburb. "In my day, parents didn't listen when kids complained about teachers. We are supposed to miraculously make kids learn even though they are not working."  DING DING DING!!!  We have a winner, tell him what he's won!  Teachers are expected to be superheroes.  How can we literally have "no child left behind" if  there are children that are not willing to keep up with the rest of the students?

    Granted, the students in these examples come from upper-class backgrounds and so they do not have the economic disadvantages that some (read: all) of my students have, but the principle is the same.  If you want to succeed, it takes HARD WORK!  I don't know how many times I have heard a student say either to me or another teacher, "You can't make me do anything."  That's true.  I can't MAKE them do anything.  I can only provide incentive and motivation to work.  If they CHOOSE not to act on that motivation, I personally feel like it is no longer my problem.  Yes, I feel as if I have failed professionally in not providing enough motivation for that one student, but do I, or any other teacher, for that matter, have what it takes to properly motivate that student?  Probably not...at least not without detracting from the other 20 students in the classroom.  I may feel like I failed, but at the core of it all, is it REALLY my fault.  I say, "No."

   
    My favorite quote from this column is this: A study released in December by University of Pennsylvania researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman suggests that the reason so many U.S. students are "falling short of their intellectual potential" is not "inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes" and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers — but "their failure to exercise self-discipline."

    According to this study, its not the teacher, or the book, or class size that causes the lack of results in education.  It's the student.  Welsh later clarifies this statement when he says that the quality of exercising self-discipline needs to come from the home.  I don't claim to have a monopoly on students that lack a good, strong family life, but a good percentage of my students come from single-parent homes and struggle financially, which naturally leads into a weakened home life.  Does this mean that they do not learn values from their parent or other family members?  Maybe.  Does this translate into lower academic achievement?  Possibly.  Does this give students and parents the right or obligation to blame the schools for their child's lack of success?  Most definitely not!  A school cannot undo in 8 hours a day what is learned or done outside of school.  Someday, someone in a position of power is going to have to either make or acknowledge the realization that children must be responsible for their education.  ALL blame cannot be attributed to the schools. 

    Finally, Welsh is correct in stating that education in America is a privilege, not a right.  Yes, it is free.  Yes, all are entitled to the OPPORTUNITY to EARN an education, but the actual process of education requires work.  A student may have everything else given to them with nothing expected in return either through being wealthy or extremely poor, but becoming an educated person is not something that can be handed out without work.

Burnout is going to happen to some degree.  Accept this now, and it will be a whole lot easier down the road.  Its part of the experience of being a teacher.  You'll get so sick of some of the crap that teachers deal with and you will just feel like you've got nothing left.  But its nothing new and you aren't alone.  Here are some things that I did to cure the burnouts.

 

1.)  Long weekend - Don't be afraid to take a Friday or a Monday off to give you the long weekend.  In fact, I took them both one time.  When I took a mental health day like this, I used it to totally get away from school.  You might be tempted to work on grading or catch up, but you can't.  It defeats the purpose of a "mental health day."  Sleep, go shopping, drive, whatever.  Just get away from the daily grind.

 

2.)  Re-assess - Sometimes you think the kids are driving you nuts, but really, you are just wound so tightly that you can explode over nothing.  It happens too.  When you feel like you want to die, step back and think "am I holding on too tightly, or is it really them?"  A lot of times you'll recognize that you are just looking for a reason to go off.

 

3.)  Enjoy your class weekends - Don't whine to your MTC mates about "how much my school sucks."  It does nothing but reinforce the idea in your head that you are in hell.  You are not in hell.  Someone always has it worse than you, and nobody wants to hear somebody crying all the time.  Share the funny stories, enjoy your time together. 

 

This is just a partial list, there are tons more things that you can do, but these helped me the most!

 

 

Summer school seems to be an overwhelming success for the one student in our classroom. She excels at just about everything that is given to her, and sometimes it makes us as teachers wonder how in the world she ended up in summer school. In particular, there is one lesson that I taught that seemed to be most successful. We were discussing the body systems and Ms. Mathis had just finished a great lesson on the excretory system. Our student, MM, did an excellent job and we had drawn an outline of her body on a long piece of butcher paper and were drawing all of the organ systems on it. My lesson was to focus on the circulatory system. We identified the organs and other things involved in the circulatory system and were in the process of tracing the flow of blood throughout the body. MM was having a difficult time understanding how oxygen-rich blood left the heart and oxygen-poor blood came back into the heart. I then related to her an analogy. I told her to imagine that the heart is the North Pole and Santa is the blood. When Santa leaves the North Pole, he carries lots of toys. He then travels through the whole world and distributes the toys and returns to the North Pole with no toys. Blood leaves the heart with lots of oxygen and then distributes it to the rest of the body and returns to the heart with no oxygen. MM suddenly came alive and took charge of the lesson, explaining everything else to me without any prompting. It seemed as if a huge barrier was lifted once she understood the way the heart pumped the blood and she took off. I can assume that this took place because the analogy made the function of the heart clear and gave her the confidence that was necessary to take hold of the rest of the lesson by the proverbial horns and flourish. Another possibility for her success is the fact that she is the only student in the class and it forces her to pay attention to what is going on in class. I really think that was the reason she failed...she lost interest and quit paying attention.

The lesson that was least successful was a lesson dealing with DNA. She was out of it and I was out of it and it ended in pretty much a train wreck. Being a Spanish teacher by trade, science was sort of out of my element and I hadn’t studied DNA since my freshman year of high school. The lesson tanked because I had no idea what I was saying and she was sick and wanting to go home and go to sleep. Sometimes things just happen.

I feel that my instructional procedures are pretty good. I feel like I can relate to my students very well and choose procedures that engage them and bring the material to life in a refreshing way.

Differential instruction is pretty much a non-factor when there is only one student. I don’t have to appeal to the different learning styles with only one student in the class. However, I do mix things up with her. We’ve done some hands-on activities as well as just taking notes from the overhead. If she seems confused I make up a story to tie it all together. It just seems to flow.

My lessons would improve and the students’ achievement would increase if I had a better knowledge and understanding of the material. In a Spanish class, I like to think that I’m always two or three steps ahead of the students, but in a science class, it could be a dead heat at times. Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.