Identity Unit High School Style

I asked my students the typical high school  English  teacher journal question: "Who are you? What do you want me to know about you to help me  teach you better?" This is what I wrote and read to them to help them get started:

Gotta love “Identity Units” and teachers who ask their students “Who are you?” without ever answering that question themselves. Now, I’m doing it too--- with a twist. I’m answering this question or attempting to do it with you. “O wad some Power the giftie gie us  / To see oursels as ithers see us! ” (To A Louse, Robert Burns). Every since I read that poem in eleventh grade, I have been fascinated by the idea that how we see ourselves is not necessarily how others see ourselves at all. So, I can only say who I see myself as being.

I understand that some of my teen students have trouble with that concept. That’s why I’m doing this exercise with you. Who am I?

I’m the patient teacher with a snarky sense of humor. I’m the scholar with a blue asskicker for a soul. I’m the injured pro trying to make a comeback in his rookie season on the senior tour. I’m the indulgent puppy daddy who runs his pups until they’re dog tired. I’m the grown son to elderly parents, switching roles and looking out for them after 49 years of them doing the same for me.

I’m sincere. I’m a spazz. I’m captain awkward. I have talents, some hidden, some apparent. I have weaknesses. Some hidden. Some apparent. I’m an uncle to 13. I’m a great uncle to 6 with one more on the way.

I’m the sum of my experiences and I’m growing every day. I can match bible quoting quips with my holy roller friends and play I doubt it with agnostics. I can belt gospel, twang country, spit hip-hop and wail with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. I can make a diamond jealous because I’ve got so many facets.

I’m the outsider looking in full of inside jokes of my own. I’m a walking contradiction of every label I fulfill and I have fun confusing those who want to give me one label. One identity. One ethnicity. One race. One home. One philosophy. One strategy to take on life by.

I am many things to many people (Mr. Logan, Uncle Joel, Coach, son, brother, spouse)  but I am always, unapologetically, “Me.”

New Year, New Building, Still Caught in the Middle

It's been a while and there have been quite a few changes since the last post. I made a career change. I'm in the same profession and the same district but I'm in a different building. After 22 years of teaching middle school, I made the move to high school.

High school is completely different. The building is more than twice the size of  middle school. There are twice the number of students, faculty and staff. Every day is like a pop quiz because there are four years of former students in school with me every day. They all want to know - "Do you remember me?"

I remember all my students. Do I remember all their names?--- not even close. Do I remember their faces, our history together-- you bet. Fortunately, they remember that I have a horrible name memory.

It's been a good move. One I perhaps, should have made sooner, but I'm so glad that I did.

To my seventh period student who asked me if I would read screen shots of her novel-in-progress off her phone during today's test: you inspired me. To SE Hinton, whose story of how her husband caused her to write the novel I taught first quarter, two pages at a time: you reminded me that writers write and others just talk about it. To Juaquin Zihuatenejo, your poem, "Final Exam for My Father" inspired me to put a demon from childhood to rest.

This is not a normal blog entry, but it is still about teaching and it still tells you why I'm Mr. Logan.

To My Second Grade Teacher Whose Name I Won't Remember

Did you know that I can remember the names of every street address,

and every telephone number,

names of every teacher I had from Kindergarten through twelfth grade,

but I can’t remember your name?

I am writing to you because you have spent too much time

eating away at my psyche

filling up stories of my childhood

I don’t remember your name

but I remember you

I remember how you made me feel

I remember that you

Used double-wide masking tape to shut my mouth

and I ate it

Put a refrigerator box around my desk

to isolate me

so you wouldn’t have to look at

the black boy

they made you teach that year

and I decorated it like a cubicle

complete with post-it note messages

“Daddy loves you!”

“Mommy thinks you’re the best!”

I made a calendar with birth dates and holidays

and all the kids complained that it was not fair

they wanted one too

I remember that I bit my bullies in second grade

I remember you never helped me

I remember you lied to my parents

told them I bit you

I remember that is the only time I got a licking I didn’t think I deserved

I remember I was only 7

I remember that was my first licking with a belt

You have spent too much time

in my mind

in my stories

I am writing you to expel your shadow from me

I remember when you broke the law

I didn’t know it was a law

I remember being punished

and getting a new group

because I had too much to say

I was too well liked

I lived in the good neighborhood next to your best friend

I remember that you never acknowledged

me waving and calling out to you

my teacher

from my front yard as you got out of your car in the driveway next door

I remembered you never mentioned to me that your friends

and my friends

lived next door to me

I remember your unsmiling face

glaring through cat-eye glasses

the way you puffed your red bangs out of your glasses

just before you told me to shut up

I remember you had no answer when I told you my work was done

I remember you stammered for me to start the next activity

I remember in fourth grade we moved to Radisson

The student-teacher who tested me in Kindergarten

was the reading specialist at the new school

She called my house and yelled at my mom

I had been moved out of my accelerated reading group

in second grade

into “regular track”

even though I was reading at a seventh grade level in kindergarten

I remember that it was you who moved me

My parents did not know

I did not know you broke the law

I remember the fear of Mom and Dad finding out

you disciplined me

it was my fault

I had too much to say

I remember

I owe you a lawsuit

But you have been in my head

for too many years

So I’m exorcising you

demon

I want you to know

your deception was discovered

my education was recovered

my future was restored

Resume bullets that still fill me with pride:

• Kenyon College 1989
• University of Pennsylvania 1994
• Teacher As Scholars Award Recipient 2002
• WGAL Teacher of the Year Nominee 2010

I did that

You didn’t stop me

Students may not remember your name

the lessons you taught

but they will remember how you made them feel

I remembered it’s time to put you into words

and exorcise your demon

in this exercise

and I don’t even remember your name

Joel W. Logan

November 3, 2015

September 11, 2001

My siblings are “baby boomers.” They remember the assassination of JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcom X. They remember the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s because they lived through it. 9-11 was one of my first big historical moments that I lived through that I will never forget. It also had it’s biggest impact on my life because it was so personal.

I vaguely remember the Kent State Massacre-- I remember seeing clips on the Today Show before catching my school bus in the morning. I remember the Challenger Explosion, I was a freshman in college, my professor broke down in tears to tell us what had happened while we had our heads buried in our studies, unaware of the rest of the world. I remember The Columbine Massacre and the subsequent “copy-cat” slaughters. That event wounded me so badly that I was compelled to write a story that later was published in a “zine.” 9-11 was different though, this was personal. It hit me where I lived and where I worked.

I remember being happy that day. My kids were awesome, so far. I had fewer students and it was a sunny day--- only thing is, I really did need shades and, typical of me, I lost them, somewhere.So I drove into work, truly looking forward to a great day in class with students I met less than a week earlier. There I was driving my 95 Ford Contour down Route One, squinting, smiling, looking forward to another great day with great kids and an awesome staff, like most everyone else that day, unaware of the horror awaiting me in just a few hours.

But, in the meantime, I bumbled into the building, greeting kids and peers with my trademark sing-song “Hey There” to folks whose caffeine had not yet kicked in and students who begrudgingly responded with “hey,” still mourning the end of summer. 

I definitely have a teacher persona, a schtick. It is not unusual to catch me being a goof in class: singing, dancing, mimicking, miming, cajoling and amusing. This was who I always was during  the first month of school and most days afterwards. It’s not an act. I like what I do and who I do it with. Why wouldn’t I be in a good mood and eager to share it? 

I had third period planning that year. Coincidentally, I have it this year as well. Back then, folks were impressed with my technological acumen and my teammate, Catherine e stopped by as soon as my students cleared my room. She was mildly concerned, a student had just returned from the orthodontist with a crazy story about a plane hitting the World Trade Center in Manhattan. She told me that the boy appeared to be a jokester, although she had only known him fewer than five days;  she wanted to verify. That was easy enough to do. I sat down at my desk and went to the internet to  open a newsfeed website. The internet was down. That was not unusual, the internet failed often back in those days. We both dismissed the tale, satisfied it was just a vie for attention and went on with the busy time of opening school.

School opening week is hectic: papers to retrieve, catalogue, copies to make, forms to fill out, phone calls to return, syllabi to revise. Hectic. So I was buzzing along the main hallway to the faculty room to check off my mental “to do” list when I noticed something odd. Our TV studio had a window for half of its exterior wall and passersby could easily see what was happening in there. Sometimes kids were filming the morning news. Other times kids were sitting with their teacher to edit their work. That day, I saw an odd sight. The room was jammed with teachers and they all stood transfixed by the cable tv.

It looked like they were watching Independence Day because the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were on fire. True to form, I blurted without thinking: “Must be nice to have time to watch Independence Day on cable during your prep period. Don’t you guys have work to do?”

One of my friends looked me dead in the eye and explained to me somberly, in exactly the same tone the commandant used when he told me my grandfather died, “It’s not a movie, Joel. It’s the news.”

“No way!” I didn’t say it, but it screamed in my head, and that’s when I noticed the faces of my colleagues. They were not only silently transfixed. Some people’s eyes were watered, other faces were tear-stained, that universal pantomime for horror instinctively posed itself upon others: a balled fist in front of the mouth with a contorted grimace about to bite the thumb. Hands were  in front of other’s faces who tried to suppress their gasps. I became part of the menagerie of a horrified televised viewing audience. I don’t know what I looked like. I know I just stared and time seemed to stand still. The Today Show host’s commentary stopped sounding like English to me. I only sensed the billowing smoke from the towers smouldering on the screen. 

I had seen more than my share of horror movies, but I think that was the first time I had actually been horrified by what I was watching, and then it happened. The first tower collapsed in front of us. The screams were not on the screen but in the room. Screams of horror and disbelief as we realized hundreds, perhaps thousands of office workers died right then. The surreality of it struck me, it looked like a high rise demolition video. Papers, dust, smoke exploded from the sinking tower as it collapsed upon itself. There were people inside, many people. Many people died.  

As people found their words to describe their horror, disbelief, conjecture… to speak again and break the awkward silence that the scene enforced upon us. That was when the second tower fell. I couldn’t take it. This was sensory overload. I had work to do. That was my response. I could not process what I saw so I went into robot mode, made a polite exit, and headed further down the hall to the faculty room to make my copies.

I walked past the studio and tried to ignore that there were colleagues of mine in there crying, tearing, swearing, befuddled and bewildered-- trying to make sense of the senseless violent scene unfolding. I turned into the 8th grade concourse, walked past the lockers and was halfway through the common area when I heard my assistant principal call my name. She was also in robot mode but I saw her pain in her eyes as she told  me:

“The superintendent called me and told me to tell the staff that they are not to mention the events on the news to the students. Many of our students may just have been orphaned. Some parents are coming to get their children, but those who remain do not need to be upset by news they can do nothing about. Cell towers are overloaded and the internet has failed from too many people trying to access it. You understand?” She needed me to understand. Her insistence was oppressively earnest.

“Yes.” I answered feeling like someone shoved salt down my gullet or sawdust. The words came out like a puff of dust. She spun on a dime and was off to the next teacher. Robot mode, just like me. No judgement.

But robot mode would not work for “Mr. Logan.” The students were already accustomed to my high energy dancing, singing, cajoling, oppressively upbeat demeanor. How could I be that guy knowing that some would go home to be confronted with tragedy?

“When you’ve run out of your own answers, lean on Jesus.” I don’t know whether someone told me that, I read it on a t-shirt, or spotted it on a bumper sticker, but with 15 minutes left of my prep period, I sat at my desk, opened a letter and wrote to my best friends on this planet: Mom and Dad. I asked for them to pray for me because I had to put on a brave and happy face to shield my students from the dread I was already experiencing. They got my message and replied back to me. I made it through--- fueled by the vapors of ardent prayers from my family.

In the aftermath of the day, I learned the following. My sister had a 9am meeting with top brass at the Pentagon at 9:00am but she was stuck in traffic on the beltway and was late. If she had been on time, she would have been in the section destroyed by the plane that struck the structure. My eldest brother and his wife had been in the Congo for a hospital dedication. When the US closed its borders and cancelled international flights, they were stuck there for an addition three weeks. One of my English teaching colleagues lost her son on 9-11. He was on the 88th floor of the first tower hit. He was 23 years old and had just graduated from college that spring. Two students from my district lost their grandfather, the fire chief who famously went into the towers with his men and was trapped there when the towers collapsed.

For me, and many of my generation, 9-11 is not just a date in history memorialized with tattoos, bumper stickers, t-shirts and annual memes on Facebook. It is the day I will never forget nor ever stop feeling. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Shakespeare for Eighth Graders

In 2000, I approached my supervisor, Dr. Alice Hunter, inquiring about Shakespeare for middle school. She perked up, always a bad sign. She asked me to research plays whose content was not offensive for young readers.  That’s how I discovered As You Like It. Dr. Hunter challenged me to form a drama unit around the play for my seventh graders. A daunting task but I was up for it. I worked for a supervisor who encouraged courageous risk taking and did not punish failures, she only asked us to reflect, reimagine, and try again. The educator I became and continue to evolve into has its roots in this atmosphere.

I felt up to the task because the very first unit I ever created was a Shakespeare unit. I was teaching ninth graders at West Philadelphia High School in the Community Development Charter. It was the 1993-1994 school year. Charter schools in that era did not mean what they do now. A charter school was a “school within a school” that was designed to have a unifying focus. Ours was about citizenship building for the West Philadelphia Community in the city of Philadelphia.

West Philadelphia High School, where I student taught.

West Philly High was the nickname for the structure that house my students, a formidable 1911 brick structure that was three stories tall and covered the length and breadth of a full city block. Our school was often in the news for headline grabbers like shootings, arson, fights, and crimes. I did not share this reputation with my parents, who had taken pains to build a sheltered childhood in the suburbs of New England and Central New York for the five of us Logan kids.

Sayre Middle School where it all began in 1993.

The seventh grade  kids I taught that week were not sheltered. During my practicum in October, five of us teamed together to plan a thematic unit around Halloween for seventh graders at one of West Philly’s feeder schools, Sayre Middle School. That week I had to walk around an active murder crime scene one block from the building. My students encountered it too.

“Mr. Logan, I saw a dead body today,” an obviously shaken seventh grade boy told me. My heart broke a little for him and yet I was simultaneously tinged with the irony that the day before, he was the student who explained the hip hop vernacular of “busting a cap in yo a@#” the day before.

By the time I returned to UPENN’s campus for evening grad classes, I learned that the corpse had been on the sidewalk, outlined in chalk, with not even a cover or sheet over it, since 4:30 that morning after a drug deal went wrong. My students and I encountered the scene nearly four hours later. I wondered aloud in English Pedagogy class that evening if they would leave a crime scene active like that in Baldwinsville, NY or Chesapeake, VA or East Long Meadow, MA where I had grown up.

Not only were my students exposed to things on a regular basis that I had heretofore only experienced in episodes of Law and Order or crime movies, all but three of my ninth graders (there were 35 on my roster for one class) had failed to pass the city’s literacy test. This qualified the bulk of my students for Chapter One funding. It was these kids I was electing to teach The Merchant of Venice.

My supervising teacher thought I was crazy for attempting it but she supported my ambition nonetheless. Many of my students were deacons and other youth leaders in the churches in West Philadelphia. I come from church folks: my brother is a bishop, my aunt was a pastor and my paternal grandfather founded the Zanesville Church of God in Zanesville, OH, where my first cousin is currently the pastor. 

I knew about the culture of church and black church specifically. I knew that these students were not illiterate, not even close, they couldn’t be. Youths in churches were often tapped to run entire church services on teen take over Sundays, students read the King James Version of the bible from the pulpit to hyper critical and vocal “Sister Uhm-Hums.” There was no way they would show up unprepared and tripping on words. These students bombed the literacy tests on purpose because they saw no point in them and no benefit to showing what they knew.

I knew that if they could read King James fluently, Shakespeare would be a relief, and so I set out to prove it to Mrs. Merrill, my students, my supervisor and other colleagues/classmates who doubted my sanity in this attempt. After drama workshops, acting, studying, conversing, testing and studying, my students had an opportunity to go to Temple University and watch the play on stage live. It was a school-hour matinee and students from all over the region had taken field trips to see this production. 

My students walked out of the theater proud of themselves, heads erect, and giddy. The kids from Central High (one of the magnet schools in Philadelphia at the time) were chastised by their teachers for asking my students what was so funny. The “smart kids” didn’t "get" the play, but my kids did. Priceless.

With that “win” under my belt I knew I could do this: teach Shakespeare to middle schoolers. That self-knowledge did not solve my biggest issue however: how?

My students have heard me say it, but I did not create the saying: “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.” I went overboard with my preparation. I read the script a full year in advance of teaching the play for the first time. That was not enough, I understood what I was reading but I was trained by Kim McMullen at Kenyon College. I not only read the sidenotes and longer notes, I read two other treatises about the play, one of them by a favorite scholar: Harold Bloom. I read a book of Shakespeare’s Quotations and focused upon quotes from the play.

I wanted to arm my students with as much prior knowledge about Shakespeare’s times, conventions, writing technique, and customs as possible. I did not want to lecture. I remembered that the “Dummy” series was written on an 8^th grade reading level, so I went to Barnes and Noble, purchased a copy of  Shakespeare for Dummies, read it with pen in hand and dissected the chapters that applied to the script and created a series of discussion questions to check for understanding.

To reinforce what we read, I purchased a copy of a 1932 movie adaptation. My formula for success? Prep the kids like crazy, make them act, make them read the sidenotes, show them how to have fun and keep them accountable. There were hiccups along the way but it worked.

Fifteen years later, I am teaching two plays: Twelfth Night and As You Like It.  This is my last year teaching As You Like It since we have adopted Twelfth Night, but before the curricular shift, two students already had been commissioned to bring a scene from As You Like It to life for a performance before their academic team. Therefore students in those classes are studying that play.

Already, only two weeks into the play, students are reveling in the bard’s irreverence, bawdy humor, laughing with each other as they stumble to read and act out Shakespeare prose and poetry. I have not heard as much laughter, nor seen so many smiles all year. It is a giddiness nurtured by a sense we are getting away with something because the bawdy wit is delicious to eighth graders who, by definition, are naturally inclined to sophomoric humor.

 Shakespeare is a great way to end the year. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Living Part of That Dream

  Time is not our enemy. It ticks away regardless of how much we wish that it would slow down.It flies when we're too busy to notice its march. Time etches its footprint in our faces with character and proof of  our perennial frowning or smiling. It can be our friend though. Time will give us perspective if we let it.

I'm letting it. Yesterday was MLK Day. I reported to work as usual. The district had scheduled students to be off that day, but Mother Nature had other ideas and delivered us a snow day to make up. We teachers were scheduled for an in-service, and that has been postponed until the spring. In all the hustle and bustle of snow day make-ups, curricular restrictions, and state testing prep mania, it is all too easy to forget this day's significance. For once, I gave myself permission to bring my student's attention to the day.

I shared with my students the benefit I received from time giving me a new perspective about the legacy of Dr. King,  Race in America 2015, and the hope for the future that I believe my students represent.

First came the 2 minute history and math lesson. The first slaves were brought to our nation, destined to be slaves for their whole lives leaving a legacy of slavery for their progeny,  in 1619. President Abraham Lincoln freed all slaves in rebelling states in 1863. From 1863 to 1965, the freed slaves and their descendants were second class citizens: segregated, denied equal protection under the law, and legally disenfranchised from our nation's promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not only in the Jim Crow South but throughout the nation. Did you know that the state with the most Jim Crow laws was California? The Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, finally recognizing the full citizenship of all people born or naturalized in this country, regardless of skin color. I finished that snap shot of history with a question that many adults struggle with: Is it reasonable to expect that 347 years of a culture of prejudice, cultivated to justify the permanent enslavement of one race of humanity, can be erased in fifty years?

King had a dream. Are we there yet? What is your dream: for this country, for your family, for yourself?

My students are our future and a story about  my interaction with one family gives me hope for a country I will live in if I'm lucky to become elderly. Four or five years ago (time is fleeting when you get older) I was hosting parent conferences in my room. Typically, parents appear in my door frame, tentatively-- uncertain they are at the right place at the right time. I always put them at ease by asking if they are here to see Mr. Logan for English and by asking  their child's name. So this encounter was pretty much routine--- hesitant parents at my door way. But the story took a curve ball when I introduced myself.

"You're Mr. Logan?" the father asked me incredulously.

I was not prepared for that reaction. I cocked an eyebrow at him quizzically.

"You're not what I expected at all." He continued matter-of-factly.

My stomach lurched to my throat. "Oh here it is..." I thought to myself, and the foreboding I felt when I found out that, in 2004, I became the first person of color hired to teach in this district returned to me. A flood of emotions and thoughts flooded my psyche in the space between  two heartbeats before he continued.

"I was expecting some old white dude in a beard." He explained humorously at the irony of meeting a completely different form of Mr. Logan than whom he expected.

I laughed too. In the same space between two heartbeats, half a year's worth of my teacher schtick came back--- blaming my forgetfulness on my advancing years, Shakespeare's picking on Orlando for having a young man's spotty beard... I understood in an instant what his child had told him about me.

The mom laughed too. The ice was broken. We had a great collaborative meeting about how to make their son successful in class. I felt lighter than I had in a while.

Time has given me the gift of perspective. When I shared this vignette with my students I pointed out  why they give me hope. I never hear myself described as my student's black teacher. I'm just their English teacher. I get on their nerves sometimes because I am a little nutty: turning their beloved pop tunes into instructional ditties. Creepy laughs. Demanding their attention, thinking, and energy.

That's why I'm living part of the dream. My students judge me by who I am to them. My heart. My pedagogy. My work ethic. My example is how they judge me. They judge me by the content of my character not by the quality of my permanent California tan.

I agree with my students. Fifty years isn't enough time. We're living the dream in pockets. My pocket is room 225 at South Eastern Middle School - East.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Dear Students: Stststststs.... STUDY

Question: How do we know what we don't know in school?
Answer: Review your notes from the lesson and ask yourself, "Do I get it?"

When the answer is "no," you need to come to class the next day armed with questions. The first level of studying is reviewing your notes. All things a teacher (ESPECIALLY Mr. Logan) writes on the whiteboard or chalkboard or even the computer screen, to help you understand a concept are notes. WRITE THEM DOWN... just saying... ;-)

This is a strategy to last a lifetime, not just to survive Mr. Logan's class. For the next four and a half years, you are privileged to have "teachers." After high school, the job title shifts to "instructors" and "professors"; those words mean something. Implicitly there is an expectation- you are expected to learn on your own.

So, while I'm teaching TDA's, literary analysis, grammar, and vocabulary, I'm also (we all are) charged with helping you learn how to learn on your own. In teacherspeak, we call it independent learners. The first step to achieving that is to understand that you are expected to review your lessons. When you do that at home, you are most likely to realize that everything that made sense in class while the teacher was teaching is no longer clear. Now, you can come to class armed with questions to increase your understanding.

We have many opportunities to get help from teachers this year: ask questions in class, post questions in Google classroom, have mom or dad send your teacher an email, request I/P conferencing. The biggest thing I want you to think about is this: If you don't ask questions, or even know what questions you need to ask, how can your teacher help you?

Step one: Study.
Step two: Evaluate what was unclear.
Step three: Ask for clarification.

Still don't get it? Start the process all over again. I challenge you to drive me dizzy with questions until you get it. All readers are my witness--- I'm encouraging bombardment with clarifying questions on Wednesday, December 17, 2014.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.