Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

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another dream

July 10th, 2010

I remember reading somewhere that a man out in the midwest bought an entire abandoned elementary school and converted it to a dojang. it’s brilliant, really. the idea was to create a sort of college, where you sleep and eat where you train. a school is designed to accommodate all of these — you would just need to put in some beds and rig up some showers.

I want to open up a school. not just for Tae Kwon Do but for the arts and sciences too. literature, calculus, biology, physics, computer science … the whole thing. like they used to do with knights, samurai, and hwarang. whatever I couldn’t competently teach myself, I would get someone I trusted.

charter school, anyone?

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memorable moment from this weekend

July 6th, 2010

Eugenia and I found a spot along the Charles to watch the fireworks. it was actually a piece of a dock that I used to sit on back in college. a storm had destroyed most of it and only the walkway was left.

it was covered in filth so I ran and got a stack of newspapers. after laying down what we needed, we made boats with the leftover and set them afloat. later, some people in a real boat dock next to us and the girl asks what we were doing. Eugenia, trying to be congenial, invites her to make a boat. we take out 3 sheets of paper and I start giving her the instructions (for something I only learned how to do 10 minutes earlier).

halfway through, she says to me, “you’re really good at teaching. can you be my professor? although, you’re kinda hot.” I give a slight knowing smile, more to myself than to anyone. in the split second of silence, Eugenia interrupts with: “Jon’s really good at teaching because he is a teacher. he’s going to be a college professor in September.” she then proceeds to tell my whole life story.

auxiliary win of the day: when we were finished, the girl exclaimed: “I’m so happy! I feel like a kid again! I’m 22 years old and I made a boat! is it sad that I’m 22 and so excited about making a boat?!” when you can do that, make someone feel that way, you know the lesson was successful.

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my job

June 10th, 2010

I came into work today. I had an extra 10 or so minutes before students would show up. I sit down and continue reading my novel (In the Hand of Dante, Nick Tosches; pretty good in certain chapters). I always make it a point to sit in an empty classroom and read. students walk in on me and I think that sends a good subliminal message and sets a good example.

my student comes in. he says, “I’m not going to the prom tonight.” I give him a puzzled look and he repeats, “you may have heard there’s a prom tonight. well, I’m not going.” I ask why, fully expecting him to say he was too shy to ask anyone out and fully expecting to commiserate. “I have to attend a funeral. some time last week, my cousin was going to a party and this guys pulled up and they had machine guns.” these are the first sentences I have heard all day.

this is also the first time I’ve seen him since he took the SATs on Saturday. we talk about that a little; he felt ok about his essay, using 1.5 examples when I told him to use 3. he felt great about the verbal because a lot of the words we crammed the day before were on the test. I ask if he wants to talk about anything else, implying if he wanted to talk about his cousin (I’m not a guidance councilor, I’m not equipped to have these discussions). he says no and we do regents prep work.

instead of the usual setting, I have him stand in front of the chalkboard alongside me. kind of like in Tae Kwon Do, when we practice side by side instead of face to face. he still gets a lot of it wrong; thinks he can do everything in his head; doesn’t write equations down; misplaces a term here and there. he doesn’t think computationally like I do, which is appalling because math is his best subject and he wants to be a computer programmer.

it’s a little ridiculous what we’re doing, in wake of what has happened. why does it matter that the area of a triangle is 1/2 base times height instead of just base times height when someone who shares his mother’s maiden name got shot last week? but I am not a social worker; don’t ever want to be. even though they do good work, it’s so very depressing. also, his only key out of that neighborhood is college, even if it’s only for 4 years (or, in his case, 2). that’s 4 years he won’t get shot at.

we’ll see.

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notes that will someday (soon) become a poem (or poems)

June 3rd, 2010

I come into work and am greeted by a student I haven’t seen in 3 weeks. I’ve been meaning to talk to his guidance counselor but even she has been out every time I try to find her. He finally tells me he’s been taking after school classes to earn art credit for graduation and that’s why he’s been missing my class that he’s been taking for gym credit. We’re putting on an end of year show in 2 weeks; pretty standard procedure for arts enrichment programs and resident teaching artists. These shows have insured or doomed my rehirings for the next year. This student was half my show.

I try to talk him into working hard, pushing through, and doing both the art class and mine, partly because I fear for my job but also because he’s good at and dedicated to Tae Kwon Do. He agrees and I can’t quite tell if it’s only because he doesn’t want to disappoint me. I gather my things — $300 worth of paddles and martial arts movies that some corporation started by a social worker paid for — and head out to my classroom. I spot him walk back into the assistant principal’s office, probably to talk about grades. Last I heard, he was going to Nassau College next year. Last I heard.

I enter to my room and set down. I’m only thinking about a piss because these 40 minutes only ever had 1 student and, for the last 3 weeks, has had 0, so I have time to kill. He walks by my door, the used-to-be, the hopefully-once-more student but doesn’t stop. Some tones play over the P.A. system, a threnody, and I think: fire drill; standing outside in 80 degree heat in a shadeless neighborhood with low rising buildings and low expectations of its children. Great. Instead, the assistant principal announces all staff to lock their doors. I guess that includes me, the unlicensed after school teacher who teaches credit bearing classes anyhow. I know its her because I spoke to her about other students, making sure they all received credit to graduate. She says it’s a Code Blue, repeats those 2 words and the 3 numbers of the room where its happening — one two zero.

She’s wrong. It’s not in Room One Two Zero. It’s in the hallway right outside. I can see friezes of it from my room, number One Two Five: a hunched over male, 3 adults circled half around. I’m still too young and too afraid of death to look any more. Blue, like the shirts, beads, and bandanas that half the student body wears. Blue, like a girlfriend’s veins.

(On the train this morning, I saw a mother smack her toddler. I didn’t say anything any of the 3 times she did it. The child threw her bottle down and when I handed it back to the mother, I looked closely at her face and found no warmth. Later, when all the stops were above ground and the 80 degree sun was bleeding through the windows, a group of college girls came on. They must have been because the colleges were out but the high schools, in New York City, were still in session. It was noon and I was headed to teach so surely they weren’t young and ditching class because what would I be without students? They started playing with the girl, laughing at how she negotiated the rumbling subway car, at how she smiled. Later, between my stop and my school’s front door, I thought: I want to have children of my own some day. I want to create something from scratch, to write it together helix by helix, vein by vein.)

My first guess is stabbing. In this school, someone would get stabbed. Except a Code Blue is probably just someone choking, getting blue in the face. By now, all of the security guards on the first floor have gathered outside my door. Blue shirts, black pants, a trail of wire running up their shoulders. I get flashbacks from my first class here, the first time I ever taught poetry: 8 students and I were about to head into our room when another kid decides to pick a fight with a guard. He doesn’t want to be called a kid, wants to be a man and independent and stand up to authority. So he does and they, there’s 3 guards now, push him into my room, all spit and sweat and swear words. The last guard locks the door behind them and a student says to me: glad you chose to come here?

I hear them counting outside. One two three four. Breath. One two three four. Breath. Someone says, did you call 911? and I’m sitting in an empty classroom, typing every fresh memory into my iPhone. I hear the lull of a flatline beat, the hiss of a defribulator. It doesn’t take a story teller to piece together what’s going on.
I hear instructions being dictated, how the speaker pauses after each sentence to make sure he’s understood. Then, laughter, from the blue shirts that don’t wear beads or bandanas. I like the EMT they brought in, how he lightened the mood after all was said and done. It’s a skill that took me years to develop.

The crowd outside disperses; the assistant principal announces that we can go back to our usual schedule. I sit in an empty classroom for another 15 minutes. By the time my next student comes, I’m only half done with this story. I click off my iPhone, leave it on the desk, and turn to get my binder. He asks, there was a code blue? Quickly, I look to see if I forgot to turn off my phone. Then, I wonder if he has some sort of xray vision, that he can see through my device, somehow, to the data it holds.

No. He was simply in the same building at the same time. I dismiss it, say, yeah, I heard, and go on with the rest of the day.

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In Nae 3

May 3rd, 2010

In Nae

I know bullies, how they’ll take
anything about you and weaponize it;
how they’ll make you feel like shit.

I want to feel like the teacher people
are surprised to find out doesn’t
have children. Let me have that for now.

I also know that asking you
to wear this uniform today
means more than a change of clothes.

The bare feet, the deep V cut neckline
(girls wear undershirts that peek out here),
the wide mouthed magicians’ sleeves.

Yours, being brand new, unfolds
into a map of Korea; the mountains
of creases too stubborn to erase.

It’s blinding as fallen snow in morning.
(Remember? The white belt is Heaven’s belt,
where sun and rain and happiness come from.)

I’ll wear mine too, frayed and gray.
That’s how people used to get their black belts,
the sweat of trial, the dirt of error.

I dressed for each class at first,
if you remember. Then, tshirts and jeans became easy,
facing bullies, even at my age, hard.

There are skid marks here from when
I let a practice knife slip, and an inkling
of blood in the shape of half an asterisk

but nothing like the body beneath.
My shins are pebbled beaches.
My toe will never grow straight again.

You’d know these things if we had changed
together, in the small amounts of nakedness
that can’t escape our eyes. I’m sorry you don’t.

We’re the oddest pair to stand together:
the grown and growing, the prejudiced
against over and under achieving.

We begin about a stone’s skipping distance apart.
I know it’s not easy being so far away;
we’ve always practiced next to each other.

It’s not that you were a shadow, whose shape
is only ever an afterthought. You are water
and learn through the shapes of things nearby.

Push ups, burpees, and suicides.
(it’s just their name, remember that?) You know
these well; I think I even see you smile.

Your first mistake is also mine; a punch
thrown too high. I almost speak but all
my help must come before or after now.

I smile to remember myself, of when
I kicked so much my legs went numb
and questioned if I would walk again

or when I tried to put my elbow
through a brick, the shock of pain as neat
as the edge of a leaf, or when

You’re huffing now, paying the price
for my second mistake: forgetting to say stop,
underestimating your faith in my judgment.

Instead of kicks, I ask for a tenet
of Tae Kwon Do. (We’ve practiced this
for weeks, were in cahoots. Remember it?)

You say, perseverance, not courtesy or
integrity or self control or indomitable
spirit or victory or love.

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addendum

March 27th, 2010

yesterday, 1 of my problem students came to me, the student with the academic problem. he hasn’t been coming to my program at all for the last few months, even though whenever we pass by, he smiles and promises he’ll go. he stopped by my class and said he would have stopped by sooner but he got jumped on the way to school. 8 students attacked him and his friend. he also said, “oh yeah, by the way Mr. Chin, I might have broken someone’s arm. I used that thing you taught me last year.”

8 students attacking 2 students
broken arm
something I taught him last year
he smiled when he said it

I have a lot of mixed emotions to sort through regarding this.

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students

March 27th, 2010

I’ve got 2 problem students. not in the sense that they create
problems but moreso that they /are/ problems.

I took a bunch of kids on a field trip last year to a prestigious
college, both as a campus visit and to see a Tae Kwon Do tournament.
lately, this girl who we brought has been asking me questions about
the college. today, she cinched it and asked, “what kind of grades do
you need to get in? 75′s? 80′s” I took the easy way out and told her I
don’t know; that she’d have to talk with a recruiter. I pushed the
hard work off on to someone else. how was I supposed to tell her that
80′s wouldn’t cut it? that, considering the neighborhood, she was
lucky enough to go to any college, let alone a prestigious 1. or that
even if she did get in, she has no idea of the /scope/ or /magnitude/
of the tuition. we’re talking $50,000 a year. she’s a good kid though,
always has been. maybe I’ll hand her a brochure anyway …

the other kid, we have this established silence. we greet each other
but I stopped asking why he stopped coming to my program. usually, I
hound students about attendance to show them at least 1 teacher cares
and also to instill discipline, responsibility, and pride in them. I
stopped hounding this kid. I know he has trouble at home, almost got
arrested and had to go to court, was about to get transferred out, and
is failing. his primary guardian is his grandfather, no mention of mom
or dad, and he has what looks like a healed over burn scar on 1 hand.
large and unmistakable; on black people, the skin comes back a lot
lighter; he sometimes wears gloves in class. he wants to come to my
class — sometimes would ditch the entire day of school but come in to
do the activities (martial arts and photography). he’s actually on a
watch list to prevent exactly that. so instead of hounding him, we
both just say hi; probably say a little more in the silence that
follows.

like I said, problem students.

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promotion

February 26th, 2010

I wasn’t going to blog about this but I read (still am reading) a heated debate on Fark.com about teachers and performance and salaries and firing and … the age old stuff. I can’t really weigh in on the subject considering I’ve never been directly employed by the BoE, never had to work within the “system”. that being said, I’ve been teaching / tutoring for 8 years, in martial arts (2.5 years), computer science (4 years), and highschool math / English (2 years)

I gave a student a promotion test on Wednesday for his orange belt in Tae Kwon Do. I’ve only ever given 1 other promotion test and that was to a 3rd / 4th grader who had me for 1.5 to 2 years. this was a high school student who had me for 1.5 years already. it was a pretty intense test, up to the caliber of the promotion tests I took under Master Orlove. (perhaps my memory distorts the truth; maybe my tests weren’t that hard, maybe they were). about 50 minutes into it (I was aiming for about a 60 or 70 minute test), he says “Mr. Chin, I don’t feel so good. I feel dizzy.” I had him at a stationary fighting stance; I was pushing him physically pretty hard and decided to give him a “rest”; asking questions and testing him on his intellectual knowledge before continuing his physical testing. most students get winded like that and I thought it was a minor thing. it wasn’t. after a minute or 2, I wised up, walked over to him (I had spent the entire 60 minutes behind a desk, scribbling notes, being unattached, academic, and intimidating, like I how I had been tested), and inquired further. I told him to take a knee and when that didn’t help much, to lie down on the floor.

he pushed himself so much to meet my expectations that he put himself in physical harm. he committed. what really made my day was after a while, I asked if he wanted to continue. he had been doing phenomenally up to this point, banging out his pushups, his kicks, and his Korean language without complaint and pretty much flawlessly. I was ready to cut the test short, continue a few days later. I was proud when he said yes, he’d like to continue. I was even prouder when, after literally 3 minutes of continuing, he admitted he can’t continue. it showed that he is determined but also honest.

he propped up against a wall, I ran to grab a bottle of water for him, and spent the next 15 minutes telling him horror stories about my own promotion tests. how I was basically crippled after running the Law Tower my first time but pushed on anyhow for the 2nd day of testing; how 1 time, close to my black belt test, I felt dizzy just like him, excused myself to vomit, rinsed out my mouth, and continued the test. I gave him a flyer for my Tae Kwon Do club at Brooklyn College; he’s graduating this year (everyone in the school is, it’s being closed down) and hopefully will be going to college next year. he didn’t apply to BC but to a lot of CUNY schools.

it means a lot to me, a marker / reward of my ability to teach. his neighborhood is not a good 1. there are gangs in the school, probably worse things I don’t know about. I went on a field trip with his classmates 1 time and I learned that 1 of the students is an expecting father. he was 17, didn’t know water came free in restaurants. that’s the kind of environment my student is in and to think I inspired him so much to commit so hard to something that, in the scope of his academic education, doesn’t matter much, is … bewildering.

his grades are not the best. he’s struggling with math; he blames it on his math teacher, which I don’t think is completely a cop out, because he goes to after school math tutoring very regularly. I’m considering, in the last few months, that instead of teaching Tae Kwon Do, I would help him with his school work. I’d have to brush off my high school math, but that shouldn’t be too hard. as a graduating senior, he’s doing work I was doing my freshman year. (I know I got lucky and went to a good high school. I don’t take that for granted.)

I am a good teacher. back when I was tutoring computer science in Boston, I turned uneasy 75′s into sure 90′s. the tutoring service was free for students but I was so effective that a few students paid out of pocket to get extra time; that people were recommending me to their friends. I remember 1 girl, 1 of the first I tutored, who started out as a complete technophobe. by the end of the semester, I got her so interested in computers that she wanted to take a computer apart and poke at the internals. for fun.

more recently, last year when I was also teaching poetry at my high school, we did workshops 1 class. poetry was never really popular so my classes were always small (3 to 6 kids) but this was a particularly small day. 1 student. I spent the entire period workshopping his work, as my (outstanding) teachers taught me how to workshop. at the end of the period, he didn’t want to leave. he ditched his English class to stay while I taught him English. it wasn’t to get out of doing work, etc., but because I was giving him sincere and quality attention.

even more recently, I had a student in my Pace class come up to me. she has only been taking Tae Kwon Do for a month so far. we’re really only now moving on from the basics. she told me that her schedule next semester will be overloaded and that could she still audit the class for free (I, of course, said yes). this is phenomenal considering so many things. (A) it’s more of a recreation class than anything. (B) she’s not only thinking a semester ahead, but an academic year ahead. she basically said that 7 months from now, she still wants to be taking Tae Kwon Do. (C) I haven’t taught her anything other than the basics yet. it made me smile (wide) and when she thanked me for letting her audit, I thanked her for her dedication.

twice, in my kids classes at NYU, of which I have only taught 6 or 7 classes so far, a kid has said “Tae Kwon Do is a pretty fun sport.” the first time, it took me by surprise because it was a student who had trouble focusing, who acted out. he was particularly bad 1 class but at the end, he stood there, in his uniform, and said it completely unexpectedly. him and his father stopped by my class last week; said they were taking a break, trying out new sports, but might come back next year. the second time was a different kid, both of them were about 6 years old.

I am a good teacher; I think I want to teach for a long time in the foreseeable future. I do want to work in the public schools, where good teachers are needed. preferably with high school or middle school students; I can do more with them than the K-5. I’m willing to accept the stress and poor public view. I do want to teach college level courses also but feel (or intuit) that a few years in high school or middle school will teach me quite a few things I won’t learn anywhere else. I want to teach Tae Kwon Do less (my body just can’t handle 6 to 8 hour days of teaching and training). I’d love to teach poetry; also love to teach English, though that’s scary cause I’ve never taught a class like that, where we discuss novels and such. it’s weird, but I would LOVE to teach math or computer science.

I’ve been reading the article on Fark for an hour and a half. been writing this post for an hour. there are a lot of issues tacked on to the Board of Ed, the system for hiring / tenuring teachers, unions, etc. I have my own views that I’m not going to share, partly because I don’t feel qualified and partly because my views include that all sides are right to some degree and arguing won’t change anything.

1 last thing I want to say about teaching: it’s scary. often, 10 or 15 minutes before teaching a class (especially the first class of the day), I have panic attacks. when a student fails to learn or when I teach something incorrectly or when I don’t teach something in the most efficient and effective way, I feel like it’s an act of betrayal. sometimes I dream about an easier job, like stock boy or something.

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Jitters

February 22nd, 2010

Jitters

I daydream the same
thing before each class:
I’m scanning groceries
and the prices look
familiar: $23.58,
$24.16, $39.81.
Fibonacci or
geometric sequences.
Easy life, pushing buttons.

Then the bell rings.
I take attendance, begin.
Every second is either
a betrayal when I fail
to be perfect or a moment
of naked openness
when someone smiles
real hard because they learned
something new and then blush
because of how hard
they’re smiling.

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1st Dan

April 30th, 2009

I was with my TKD demo team yesterday, doing sort of an end of year production. most of them don’t have much TKD experience, let alone performance or kyukpa (board breaking) experience. I worked with 1 guy and we did some fantastic breaks. these were the sort of techniques I remember from back in my white collar days, watching the bodans test for black belt. anyhow, things were winding down and he had torn himself away from writing a paper just to humor me and do some breaks. but after doing so many awesome breaks, adrenaline was pumping in his system and he wanted to do more, do bigger, do better. I wanted him to go home, take care of academics.

so I pulled him aside and gave him a … an anti pep talk. I challenged him to do a 3rd dan black belt level break. I was straight with him, said, I actually want you to go home. this break should scare the shit out of you. Do you still want to do it? he straightened up, gave me a solemn look, and said, yes sir. although I outrank him by a lot and although we were doing Tae Kwon Do, there was really no reason for him to treat me with that level or even that kind of respect. we were not having an official class, I was nowhere near in uniform, I am not his teacher. but just the way I conducted myself paired with the way I was treating him fostered this student-teacher relationship to organically grow.

it makes me smile to think about that. it’s not so much an ego thing — I don’t really care too much how people react to me (although I strive to gain everyone’s respect, trust, and admiration). but to whip up that kind of mind set in someone else and make them receptive to being taught … that makes me feel like I accomplished something.

it’s times like this when I’m confident I deserve my black belt.

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