Backwards things, beginning of the year, and books

We were in Athol a couple of days ago and then when we were at the airport (I mean, “airport”), I thought for a moment that I’d left my toothbrush in the hotel. At first I thought, ‘Oh well, no big deal, I’ll just buy one when we get there.’ But then I realized, unlike most places I’ve flown to, in The Village “just buying one” is not very likely. Okay so, it turned out I had my toothbrush but I was thinking about this and I realized, if I’d forgotten my wallet or keys at the hotel, something that would have made me completely panic in any other situation, it really wouldn’t have mattered. I don’t think I’ve touched my wallet more than 3 or 4 times since we got here, and keys – well, B is either here or at school, so if I lost my set it wouldn’t matter that much. But a toothbrush – now that would be tricky.

School starts on Tuesday. We’ve spent the past 3 days in our classrooms, getting ready. In a lot of ways it’s just the same as anywhere else: figuring out where to put the desks, making the charts and signs and labels, planning the first couple of days. But there’s a lot that’s new for me this year, too.

First of all, this year my job is partly a Special Ed position. B and I spent a long while today sitting with our computers, figuring out our schedules. B is the full-time Special Ed teacher at the school so his job is a combination of pulling kids out of their regular classes for one-to-one or small group instruction, pushing in to support a kid in his regular ed class, working with the General Ed teachers to plan appropriate curriculum for SpEd kids, and doing all the paperwork (there’s a lot). My job is a 50/50 split – in the mornings I’ll teach reading, writing and math. Then after lunch I’m also going to be doing Special Ed. I won’t have all the same duties as B since I’m not a certified SpEd teacher, but I will be doing push-in or pull-out service for a number of kids. And even in the morning, there are a number of things that make my General Ed assignment a bit different. For one thing, I’ll have a different group of kids for Language Arts and Math. My LA group will only have seven students, more like a targeted small group than what I usually think of as a class. My math group will be a little bigger: eleven students. It’s funny, during three years in private school I always assumed that my eventual return to public would mean greatly increased class sizes – apparently not.

The other thing that makes it different is that our school district works with a phase system rather than a grade model. Now the kids all do officially belong to one or another grade because that’s how the state requires it. But for all purposes, at school it’s their phase, not their grade that counts. Generally the expectation in elementary school is to get through two phases a year. So this all makes sense on paper, in fact in theory I like it better than a grade system, which assumes that all ten-year old children are at the same place academically and puts them all in fifth grade. With a phase system, the kids are where they are until they move up. Now, here are the tricky parts. One, some kids take forever to move up, so then you have 15 and 16 year olds who are basically in the equivalent to 8^th or 9^th grade – you can imagine that someone in that situation isn’t very likely to stick around till he’s 21 or so to finish high school. Second, you end up having multiple phases in one class – for example, in my morning language arts class I have kids in phases 5-8. So that’s complicated in two ways (follow me here, make an outline if this is getting difficult). First, the phases can be very different, so you have to teach a bunch of different things at the same time. Or, on the other hand, some phases have a lot in common but you have to be careful that you’re really differentiating – so if you’re teaching, say, the skill of pre-reading, that’s going to look different to a kid in phase 6 than it would to a kid in phase 8. And, the third reason that the phase system in general is not quite as neat as it looks on paper is that, at least in our district, it relies on lots and LOTS of testing. Each phase in each subject requires at least half a dozen assessments to complete.

So these are the kinds of things I’m thinking about as I get ready for the first day.

In other matters, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who contributed to my book list. I promised I would post it here and I’ve been lazy about doing it because I’ve wanted to look up authors – lots of people just sent in titles. But I finally got that done, so here’s the list. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt

Lowboy: A Novel by John Wray

So.B.It by Sarah Weeks

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado

The invention of Everything Else by Samatha Hunt

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Not me by Michael Lavigne

A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow

Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Earth Abides by George R Stewart

The Evolution Book by Sara Stein

Caveman’s Valentine and Jury Duty by George Dawes Green

If Not Now, When? By Primo Levi

Rosa Lee by Leon Dash

A Prayer for the City by Buzz Bassinger

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Up Country by Nelson DeMille

Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammett

The Help by Katherine Stockett

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Before You Know Kindness and The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

Also my friend Holly recommended a web show called "Anyone But Me" and tells me you can see it at

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