This is a weekly exchange of music between Jose and me. You can read Jose's response to my track (and find out why he chose this one) here

First Response

This week, Jose has taken a trip back to my adolescence, with "The Drugs Don't Work", by the Verve. I have to admit, I missed this song the first time around, though I definitely didn't miss "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (I don't think it would have been possible to miss Bittersweet Symphony as a fan of rock music in the nineties). However I definitely read a piece in a British music magazine declaring "The Drugs Don't Work" to be an anthem for its particular, rather brief era. 

Anyway, enough about that. On to the song itself:

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The first thing I noticed was the strings - real strings, not like the Rolling Stones sample that cost The Verve their royalties on "Bitter Sweet Symphony."

Interestingly, my own memories of the Verve made it a lot harder to listen to THIS song "fresh" than it was to listen to Mac Demarco. For example, that article I said I wasn't going to talk about anymore, and don't really member, (almost) definitely said that the Verve's lead singer said the song was about his father's illness, not (as one might naturally assume) about substance abuse. Remembering that, and remembering my own father being in the hospital, meant that the line "The drugs don't work/they just make it work" hit me like a punch in the gut. But then, as the song went on, I started thinking "y'know, this really does sound like it's probably about substance abuse after all." So my relationship to the song was complicated. 

Enough subtext - on to the music:

The basic chord pattern of the song, though not groundbreaking, is extremely effective (it's a tiny little emotional journey - it reminds me of Leonard Cohen's description of "the minor turn and the major lift" in "Hallelujah").

Then there's the two extremely country-sounding guitars which are, in the best possible way, "noodling" in the background. A warm, reverby sound from one, the other one sounding like it's it's being played in an empty concert hall, a long way from the mic. I'm showing my limited guitar knowledge here, but is there pedal steel going on there?

Now, everything sounds like the Beatles if you listen hard enough, but the "Oooh, la la la la  - la  - la - la la la" backup vocals definitely reminded me of those great falsetto "ooh la la las" on "You Won't See Me."

My last, rather odd musical reference point is the final stab by the strings that ends the song reminds me profoundly of "VIllage Ghetto Land" by Stevie Wonder. And Jose, you should listen to that, so I'm choosing it as my next track exchange.

Why I chose my song

This is the first in a series in which my mentee, Jose, and I exchange tracks that are worth hearing, and write up our immediate responses upon hearing them. You can read Jose's first post here.

Jose's first entry is "Robson Girl", by Mac Demarco.

First response:

This song is definitely somebody's summer jam, meaning this is the first time since I moved to San Diego that it feels kind of unseasonable, but it provides its own warmth. 

It starts out with a jangly guitar riff that feels to me like driving to the beach. I was immediately reminded of "Steady as She Goes" by the Raconteurs. Most of the track stays mellow, but the guitar is shimmery enough, and Demarco's voice rough enough, that it avoids the soporific levels of mellowness that you get from, say, Jack Johnson or Jason Mraz. 

Then, after meandering through the chords for a couple minutes, Demarco takes it to the bridge, with what sounds to me like a heavily distorted slide guitar. Without this break, the main riff would get pretty old, but with it, it's a shimmery, summery treat. 

I don't know anything about Mac Demarco, but the whole thing has a very British feel - I'd go so far as to say a very "britpop" feel - as if Blur had stayed cheerful when they went lo-fi -which is no bad thing

Further research:

Well I'll be, he's Canadian! Wikipedia wasn't especially forthcoming about him, except to say that he's been critically acclaimed, toured with the Japandroids (who I've been meaning to listen to for a while) and has been on Conan. I'll have to listen to more of his stuff!

An inspection of the lyrics on Genius didn't give me any insight into what a "Robson girl" is, but it did make it obvious that the song has hardly any lyrics.

Why I chose MY track this week.

My contribution to Track Exchange this week was "Drive", by REM. I felt obliged to start with something from the nineties, since that's when I went to high school. I never became a huge REM fan, but there most atmospheric songs are some of my favorite songs ever, and it doesn't get any more atmospheric than "Drive". Also, the song's posture towards music (and life in general) could not be more nineties. I mean, it's got Michael Stype deadpanning "Hey, kids, Rock n' Roll, nobody tells you where to go" with about as much inflection as Daria (look her up, Jose), but the song builds to totally sincere, lighters-in-the-air emotional climax (it's got STRINGS, for goodness' sake). And if nineties rock is about ANYTHING, it's about pretending not to care, while actually caring SO MUCH it hurts. The video matches this perfectly, with Stype staring dead-eyed into the camera and singing while crowd-surfing. 

You can read Jose's response to my track here.

My next track: "Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale" by Love

On Monday, September 8th, the Tribes Project's final performance took place, in the Commons of High Tech High Chula Vista.

For our finale, students joined the stage saying "I belong to the tribe of ______". At the end, after I hit the cajón three times, the whole group said "We belong to the tribe of the new generation" (a phrase suggested by a student, and generally agreed on by the group - I think I was the only one who associates it with Pepsi). 

I like the dynamic of everyone streaming onstage, but one thing we never got right was the pace - a few people would trickle onstage, then EVERYBODY else came on at once, all talking. Getting a slow build (the "drizzle to rainstorm" effect) would have taken more rehearsal. And the final shouted phrase punctuated the show effectively, but I don't think anyone understood what they were saying. Maybe if we'd used a phrase that we'd introduced at the start of the show, and continued to return to at different times, the phrase would have been recognizable enough for the audience to understand it. Here are photos from the finale:

Today was a first: I taught the entire day, and hardly ever spoke. This came at the end of a week of illness, and I'd been afraid it was coming for a while. I made a tag for myself that said "I've Lost My Voice" and hung it on a lanyard. Then I made a second tag that said "This Is Not A Metaphor" and put it in my pocket. 

It was a beautiful day. I started both classes with fifteen minutes of silent reading (I heard kids walk into the classroom and shout "Yes!" unironically. Giving kids time in class to silently read books of their own choosing is the one gift I would like to bestow on every new teacher. A room full of people engrossed in books feels like a sacred space. It's beautiful. It's also really easy to scan around and note who seems to be picking a new book at random every day, and who is making no progress through their book of choice, and schedule some time to give that kid the support they need. 

My first slide explained that I couldn't talk, and asked the kids for their help, and they were awesome. I got their attention by clapping twice and snapping twice in rhythm, which kids started picking up on and following, then I pointed to kids to read the next slides. I realized how often I add little asides when I'm explaining something and how unnecessary these are. There's nothing like communicating solely through pre-prepared slides and a mini-whiteboard to make you think about your words! Then we watched a spoken word piece about being an introvert (by Kevin Yang - it's very good). Then I had everyone come into the circle. I silently lifted my arms and inhaled, and dropped them slowly while exhaling, for five breaths (I'd done this yesterday, so kids knew what to do). Then rolled out my neck, and then put up a slide that said explained we were playing "Secret Leader". I quickly chose a detective and a leader, and we played. 

At this point, in the first group I put up a slide explaining they should rehearse until we did a run through, and they dispersed immediately (reasonably). 

For the second group, I explained in advance (on my whiteboard) that there were a few slides, and I would signal when we were done. 

Here are some photos (from today and yesterday) of what we've been doing (all taken by a phenomenal student photographer):

These two guys took the poems they wrote about each other based on dialogical interviews in week 1, and combined them into a single spoken-word piece. They've made this their rehearsal spot. 

 This is one of our two web designers. They're in different pods, and I've never seen them speak to each other, but they're collaborating on a site where visitors can see all our poems and self-portraits, searching either by the author of the poem, or the person the poem is about. It's still a work in progress at the time of writing, but you can see it here.

This group has written a piece enumerating the "rules" of being a girl at ages 5, 11, and right now. Lying on the floor is part of the choreography.

This is a rehearsal for a tightly-structured piece about the "tribes" of Mexico and the USA - a theme they chose. I love this photo for two reasons: first of all, they strategically write their script on whiteboards so when they perform, they seem to have them memorized - as if they've had cue cards. This is really smart, but I'm making sure they are memorizing their lines since they won't have whiteboards in the performance space! Also, I love how this picture captures one of the many odd things about high school - where else would part of a theatre company come back to rehearsals after lunch in sports uniforms?

These two are figuring out which photos are missing, as they create a slideshow of self-portraits, with live musical accompaniment. They tested this today. The group is split regarding the music. Yann Tiersen's "Comptine D'un Autre Éte" turned out to make the slideshow look a bit like, in one student's words, "a memorial". The other option we tried was Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'", but the pianist only knows the first four chords, so while he did a lot with those four chords, it did feel a little too repetitive. We'll be leaving that decision until the day of the performance.

Here are students composing a song for the performance - if the song isn't ready, the back-up option (for reasons I don't fully grasp) is Cake's "The Distance". 

Group building a popsicle-stick house the outer layer of which will be popsicle sticks used for the popsicle stick poems we wrote using the prompts "Home looks like/Home smells like/Home sounds like/Home feels like/Home tastes like" (credit to Zoe Randall for realizing the only sensible thing to do was build a house). I'm a little concerned that they built all the walls without using glue (I haven't asked, but I'm confident the reason for that is that "it's cool"), but it's quite a feat of engineering. 

These guys are rehearsing "the unspoken rules of the bathroom". Did you know that if all urinals but one are occupied, it's known as "checkmate"? 

This is notable because it demonstrates an ongoing issue - a strong preference for planning and arguing, rather than getting work on its feet. It's really scary to get up and try something, but if you do it, it normally takes 30 seconds to determine whether it's worth pursuing! Where as you can argue it for HOURS.

Finally, these four photos come from devising our opening. The text comes directly from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (liberally modified by us - sorry Alexie). I begin by welcoming everyone, and then I say that I’m going to read the portion of the text that inspired the project. I begin “I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe.” But then, before I can continue, a student stands on her chair to say the next line: “But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants.” Then, different students stand up on their chairs around the space, saying the next lines in the sequence. I start the final line - “And that’s when I realized…” and the entire team finishes in unison: “that I was going to be OK”. 

If I were doing this again,I wouldn’t have taken volunteers to read on the spot, with 56 kids all in the same (big, noisy) room. And this may have been a big contributing factor in my current voicelessness. But when we did the scene, it was electrifying.

Can you tell I’m excited for the performance on Monday?

My colleague Chikle (art teacher Enrique Lugo, if you want to be formal), is collecting teachers' "Lil' Bits of Magic" on his digital portfolio. It's awesome, and you can find it here.

Games we played:

Wave of Clapping - started by doing "the wave", and then changed it to clapping. People volunteered to start it. Worked well, sense of achievement

Name and gesture - following Tim B's lead, I'm having six people do their name and a gesture, with the whole group repeating it, then having one other person do all six names and gestures.

Holding up arm and being quiet - an attention-getter rather than a game, but I've started occasionally timing it and telling the group how quickly we got quiet. 

I had students walk across the circle while I counted down from 10 - this is a good way to quickly shuffle a group, I discovered. 

Thoughts and questions

On the value, or lack thereof, of critique structures

This is an ongoing personal issue for me - I find that I design structures that I believe will lead to more valuable critique, and then don't feel like I have the wherewithal to enforce those structures once everyone starts working. Suddenly everyone is doing their own thing, and whatever I put up on the board and read out is (as far as I can tell) being ignored.

For the record, I provided sentence structures in order to help kids to give specific and valuable critique to each other. Here's what they were: 

“I love how you make __ sound when you say __”

“Why do you make __ sound when you say __?”

“Could you try doing __ when you say __?”

My sense is that nobody was using these - it would have been interesting to do an exit card in which I asked about whether students used them, and (if so) whether they were helpful or (if not) why not. 

Now, partly this is the condition of working with the full team, as we were doing today - with 56 kids in groups of four, all at different points in their rehearsals and all with incrementally different levels of investment in the work at hand, even if everyone's trying to do a great job and being strategic about what they do, not everyone needs the same thing in order to improve their work. Now, one issue here is that when a group has the freedom to decide what they need most (which, in my experience, is something students really value - and something I personally have always really valued), they have the freedom to make a bad choice about what they need most. By this I don't mean that they can choose to slack off, which is a different issue, but that they may eschew a strategy that would be beneficial for them in favor of one that is less beneficial. There is an opportunity for learning to take place here (evaluating the results of the strategy they chose against other possible strategies, and deciding to make a different choice in the future) but in my experience, within an hour of working on a project in a group, there are too many variables and moments of small choices to be able to parse out where things went wrong, or, even more complicated, where things went less optimally than they could have. 

The other issue, which is much easier to remedy than the first, is that I was giving students brief instructions and sending them off to carry them out (or not) independently. One of the thing Ron Berger makes very clear in the brilliant "critique" chapter of Leaders of their own Learning is that effective critique requires a lot of heavily teacher-directed critique.

Thoughts and questions about our first performance

We performed our Mango Street vignettes today. A few thoughts:

• I want to work explicitly on volume and expression in speaking (fortunately I got some good looking books about this at the National Theatre). 
• Hearing entire groups speaking lines together was generally very effective. It makes me interested in "scoring" more readings for different combinations of voices reading specific words and lines simultaneously, so it isn't just "one voice" or "all voices"
• The sounds that students made with physical objects tended to the literal (imitating sounds from the world, rather than creating something musical based on evoking feelings) but their choices of who read which lines tended to be more musical, less informed by "boys should read lines by boys" thinking. 
• There were moments when people were laughing to cover discomfort. This is likely to happen a lot this year. I want to figure out a good way into delving into why this laughter happens, and what it tells us about what is worthwhile to explore, and how to get deeper into it?

And a few questions:

• What's the most powerful way to pick up Mango Street from here, and what do we want kids to get from reading it (or re-reading it?)
• How will kids feel like they're getting better and better at things they want to get better and better at, and how will they feel like they're being "pushed"?
• "pushed" feels like a verb that takes us into an unhelpful metaphor, in which the teacher is a driver of progress against the student's will, but I'm having trouble thinking of a better one. 
• What could we have done to increase personal investment in each vignette? To make students feel more like the words they are saying MATTER and connect to (or meaningfully contrast with) their own experience of their world?
• How can students feel like they're taking part in a project that is a big deal?

Finally, some more photos:

No promises on how long I'll be able to maintain this for...

You can see our plan for today here, and the slides we made here. It was based on my first day at Habla, which you can read about here.

This post isn't going to make a lot of sense without looking at the plan, but here it goes:

Periods 1-2

My "prep" period is first period, and my teaching partner, Yoli's  (teaches Spanish) is second period, which meant that today, we could start the day by teaching each class together, but with 29 kids in the room together rather than 56. We started with circle games. Walking across the circle while a teacher counted down from 10 was functional, but, done with kids rather than adults, was missing the element of fun. I added "rubber chicken" to raise the energy (it was all I could think of on the fly). 

I then tried "jumping at the same time with no leader". This was fascinating - the first group just couldn't do it at all. With a new group, the risk of jumping so profoundly outweighed the risk of not jumping, that very few students were willing to try it at all. I dropped it when we worked with the second group. Something to try later in the year, maybe. 

With the first group, we then did "blind walking across the circle", which was chaotic, and not especially gentle. Talking explicitly about gentleness would be a good addition next time we do this. This is difficult, awkward territory for teenagers, especially for a lot of young men. 

The second group eventually decided to assign a helper to every person walking blind. This was (as you'd expect) very successful. What was missing even then was silence, which is not  a huge priority (especially on the first day of school) but which would be nice to have. One issue I noted, which has resonance in other aspects of school, is that a pair would walk across the circle, get into their spot on the other side, congratulate each other on a job well done and start talking - while other people were still moving through the space. 

Yoli introduced "jumping and high-fiving" in pairs, slapping as many high-fives as possible while airborne (with both hands, so I guess they were high-tens). This was the most successful warm-up game we did. Really raised the energy, and made me realize all the games I was leading were a bit austere and severe. 

This left me with a few questions: the one that's really occupying me right now is this: how do I stay on the right side of the line between routines feeling ingrained, and feeling stale?

Period 3

We had the group together for the first time. We started the period with a deep listening exercise - kids got quiet for this (for the most part), listened intently, and talked about what they heard. 

Then we tried doing the vocal improvisations (like what Dario did). I hadn't wanted to do this in the full group (we were planning to do it during periods 1 and 2 but there wasn't time), and it didn't work, for a number of reasons: 

1. There were about 27 performers, and I just couldn't get around them fast enough.
2. Most people didn't have and extensive rhythmic vocabulary (at least in this context), so everyone was generally hammering out quarter notes together.
3. Making vocal sounds is a big risk in a large group of people, so most people were going for clapping and stomping, which stops being interesting very quickly, unless you're really tight with it.

I got five volunteers who performed for the whole group, and it worked much more smoothly in a group of five. Then we split everyone into fives, and up until lunch, they worked on crafting beats together. 

I didn't call them "beats". If I had, the exercise would have probably been stronger. When one group performed their beat for me, I freestyled a short rhyme over it. Then we had another group perform for everyone (in fact, the original group of volunteers, who'd got very into developing their beat). Their beat was solid and complex, but when I heard it I realized that they were really putting themselves on the line and might ultimately regret it, so in front of everyone, I did another freestyle over their beat - which I hope lent it credibility rather than overshadowing it. 

Periods 4-6

This was after advisory and lunch. We launched Write Club - I realized my enthusiasm for the concept waned a little since last year, so I need to figure out how I feel about it. One kid rather brilliantly noted that the first rule of Write Club (which I was making them write, as I always have) was "Write what you care about", and asked "so should we write what we care about, or write this?"

I dug up the Fight Club and "Robot Club" (from Spaced) clips I showed last year, which I hadn't planned to show, when I realized that the way I was presenting Write Club didn't have any mystique, and it really needs mystique at the start. 

Then we wrote Hopes and Fears, and I introduced Human Atom in order to shuffle people up and make groups of four to share hopes and fears. There were too many people for the atom to work very well, but it was easy to identify issues with it, and I think we'll be able to fine-tune it in individual classes. 

After this, we introduced the day's big task: to arrange a chapter from The House on Mango Street to read together as a group of four - first arranged as a "clear reading", and then with sounds made by objects found around the classroom.

This was so awesome: we divided kids into groups randomly, which I imagined being a problem, but wasn't. They were attentive to the text as they read, and (after Yoli and I modeled it) seemed to understand how to divide the text for reading without any further help. 

After they'd worked on the "clear reading", Yoli and I performed our chapter again, this time with her reading and me providing sound accompaniment. Then the groups went to town on sound effects.

At a certain point, most groups decided they were "done" and people started milling about and hanging around.

I paused the full group (I'd done some "getting quiet" practice - this will be good to keep doing all week). Then I said "A lot of groups are telling me they're done. What if I told you that you're going to perform for the entire ninth grade in a few minutes?" Someone immediately shouted "WHAAAAAT?!" "You're not," I said, "but you all sounded a lot less "done" when I said that just now." 

The groups paired up with other groups and performed their pieces for each other. I encouraged everyone to focus on giving specific feedback about things they liked. This will be something to continue to develop.

It was cool to see so much attentive close-reading. I'm excited to see and hear the performances tomorrow!

Here are some photos from devising the readings:

I just got home from my first day of school, and it was a delight. "Well", a chorus of teachers will reply, "of course it was. You're in the honeymoon period. Just wait a week or so, and you'll find out what the year is REALLY going to be like." 

Ah yes, the "honeymoon period" - the few halcyon days when it seems like the sailing will be smooth all year, when students are on their best behavior, and intra-class resentments and dubious work habits have been temporarily put in check. 

Until this year, I've accepted the premise of the "honeymoon period" without examining it, but today, I've got some stuff to say:

1. Nobody should ever use the phrase "honeymoon period" when talking to a first-year teacher

Imagine this scene: It's 3:35 in the afternoon on a Monday in late August. For the first time in your life, you've spent your day teaching entire classes worth of children (or teenagers), and miraculously, everyone has made it through unscathed. The students paid attention (at least sometimes) when you spoke. The visions you'd dreamed up at home actually came to life in your classroom. And, to a greater degree than you ever thought possible, people accepted the idea that you are a figure with authority. 

You stagger into the staff room, and one of your colleagues asks "How did it go?" 

"It actually went really great!" you reply, punch-drunk and slurring your words slightly. 

"Yeah", your colleague replies. "Isn't the honeymoon period great?"

"Honeymoon period?" You ask.

"Yeah, you know, when the kids are all trying to impress you, before they decide they don't really need to listen to you."

2. The first hour of teaching has nothing to do with any kind of "honeymoon period"

3. The "honeymoon period" isn't all about students

Here's a formulation I came up with while I was driving home today: the "honeymoon period" ends at the point when the teacher and the students are all too tired to continue to present the selves they want to be. 

This feels to me like what it's all about. We all have aspirational versions of ourselves, freed from our accumulated bad habits, and we come back to school inhabiting those versions. But after a few days, we fall into our old habits. Students who were attempting unspoken truces with long-time rivals fall back into a rhythm of mutual injury and resentment. Equally importantly, teachers who came in with a sense of benign understanding for students' least productive manifestations of anxiety find ourselves falling back into a sense of resentment of students who "would definitely get so much out of this if they'd just give it a try". 

I've never heard anyone talk about the "honeymoon period" as if it applied to teacher behaviors as well as student behaviors. If we're going to keep using that term, I think we should.

Just don't tell any teachers about it until their second year in the job. 

Saturday (Part 1, Part 2)

“The Sound of Light”

Circle games (jumping, trust walking)

Listening meditation

Group vocal improvisation

Going outside and listening

Using found objects to recreate a soundscape (in a group)

3-2-1 reflection

Reading “Light is Like Water”

Building Conversation Protocol

Back to “soundscape” groups: create a “clear reading” of an assigned passage from “Light is Like Water”

Watch/listen to model of “reading with sounds” by Kurt & Dario

In Soundscape Groups: revise our reading, add sounds.

Perform readings for the group

“The Faun on the Bus”

Excerpt from Living to Tell the Tale and brief lecture on magical realism from Marimar

In groups of 6: “I could tell you about” [maybe good to take notes on this…]

In pairs: “I want to hear about…”, “I can imagine…”

Back in the FULL group: “Can you imagine…”

Monday 

Circle game: Your name & something people can’t tell by looking at you

Human knot

Walking through the space

Roofs and shelter

Framing images

People/places/objects/memories that frame my life

Free write

Sharing “golden lines”

“How we are framed” performance

Skewers & Styrofoam Balls

Tuesday (Part 1, Part 2)

Workshop 1: Framing a photo and Editing a Story

Workshop 2: Working with 100 Years of Solitude

Reading fragments of a text in a circle

Group reads the who’ll passage out loud, together

Choose a line from the text and frame it with a sharpie

Discuss with a partner using “See Think Wonder”

Write “wondering” in a different color on the paper, and give to a curator.

Lunch

Read a passage that creates a “portrait” of a character (choose one from the cordel)

Find someone who read the same passage and do a walk-stop-talk-walk

Frame a line, write a question next to it

As a full group, make a list of techniques the author uses to make portraits of characters

Quick game: sound and gesture

Workshop 3: Creating masks based on the things and people that frame us

Wednesday:

Reflection: 

• 3 applications
• 2 questions
• 1 metaphor or analogy

Workshop 1: Taking self-portrait photographs

Workshop 2: Collaborative Mind Map

Workshop 3: Labelling our world (Like in Macondo)

Thursday: 

Opening reflection:

• What makes you say “wow”?
• What do you wonder about?

Game: trading walks

Kata takes us through the week so far, and how each day built on the last

Writing: 

• the “memory machine”
• Looking at our self-portrait and engaging all our senses
• Telling a story based on what we’ve been writing

Human atom

Human sculptures

Rehearsal

Friday:

Warm-up: passing the invisible object

The facilitators share how they designed this year’s institute

Group reflection based on photos taken during the week

Reflecting about potential applications for what we’ve done.

Final rehearsals

Performance

Closing the loop with a final reflection

I can't believe I forgot to write this game down, and I now can't remember when we played it, but it was good. 

Players line up facing each other (it's good if it's not 100% clear who your "partner" will be). 

Start at either end of the two lines. The two "end" people each choose a walk, and walk towards each other. When their paths cross, each person takes the other person's walk, and finishes walking to the other line doing their walk. Go down the lines until everyone has changed places.