Celebrity at CEPS

For my third and final practicum at TC, I wrote a rather terse note at the bottom of my assignment sheet, pointing out that I have taught and will continue to teach secondary students and was not dying to have another 6- or 9-year-old client this semester. CEPS (Center for Educational and Psychological Services), our on-campus reading and psych. clinic, matches students with clients solely based on their listed availability, not on their interests, which seems rather ridiculous to me. Despite my aversion to conflict, I was prepared to kick up a fuss if I got another elementary school kid; I'm paying more tuition than I care to think about, and I felt it would be nice to be prepared in at least some capacity for life after TC.

Happily, it will not be necessary for me to kick anything. When we got our client assignments last week, I saw that my client, whom I'll call Miguel (for confidentiality purposes I'm not supposed to give his real name, especially in an online posting) had left elementary school far, far behind. He's 25, in fact. There are a handful of adults who come to CEPS for reading services, so this isn't unusual at all.

I was a bit nervous to meet him, and grew infinitely more so when Dr. Masullo told my friend Kea and me that we have "the book people." Again, for confidentiality purposes I won't list the title of the book or its author here, but suffice it to say that last year a prominent journalist who covers education in New York wrote a book about kids who fall through the cracks when it comes to literacy in the NYC public schools. The stars of her book were Miguel and his sister, Jasmin, who is Kea's client. The journalist got wind of the situation when Miguel's high school counselor, noticing that he had essentially no literacy skills in 10th grade, pointed out to him that, legally, the school system was supposed to be providing him with appropriate services. The case went to court and Miguel and his sister, both in their 20's now, were each awarded over a thousand hours of top-of-the-line private tutoring to make up for all of the years of education they missed.

How do you get to be halfway through high school without being able to read at all? Miguel and his family moved to New York from the Dominican Republic when Miguel was 7. He was placed in a standard classroom where English was the one and only language spoken and received no additional instruction designed for an English language learner (ELL in edSpeak). Now he says he is more comfortable speaking English than Spanish, but I'm sure it was a long road. Through the years, I assume his teachers wrote off his poor performance as an issue with English rather than with language and literacy itself. Had they asked him, he would have told them that for as long as he can remember he's been behind the other kids, even when he was in school in the Dominican Republic. He can't tell left from right, has difficulty remembering things unless he's heard them many times, took a long time to learn the names of colors - in short, this was not a normally developing child. These disabilities are often heritable, and he says that, in his judgement, everyone in his family needs special help with reading, although he and his sister Jasmin (two of four children) are the only ones to have received it. In sixth grade, he was given a formal evaluation and placed in special education classes beginning in high school. While I think this was probably the right move, he still did not receive specialized literacy services and eventually dropped out. Interestingly, he's not even sure how many years of high school he "completed" - he guesses two or three - that sort of thing being kind of arbitrary when your classes don't mean anything and you're not actually earning real credits.

Post-court case, he attended a private tutoring clinic for 2 1/2 years until the settlement money ran out, and now he's at CEPS, where, with fee adjustments based on his status (he's unemployed - how can you work when you can't read?), he'll pay $5 twice a week for 90-minute sessions with me.

I was, as I said, nervous to meet him. I had no idea what to expect. Over the phone he sounded dull and slow, and I worried about how we would get along. One walks a very fine line in adult education, having to teach very, very basic skills usually taught to very young children to a person who is not a child. I wondered how I was going to explain things slowly enough for him to understand them without talking down to him. And what materials was I going to bring in that were simple enough for him to read but that didn't feel babyish?

I need not have worried. Miguel and I spent 90 minutes on an interview and the first part of a battery of reading assessment tests and I can't tell you how pleasantly surprised I was, nor how much I'm looking forward to the semester. While Kea said that her client expressed almost no outside interests, Miguel wants to study business and maybe open his own business. He is interested in robotics and films (his favorites are _To Kill a Mockingbird_ and _The Graduate_ and he told me all about Harper Lee; rather amazing for someone who really can't read), and said that his dream is to write a screenplay. He loves music. In short, I've got a lot to work with here.

Kea says Yasmin can do almost nothing in terms of reading and writing. Miguel didn't exactly blow me away with his performance, but I won't be starting completely from scratch. Best of all, he's very self-aware. He told me without embarrassment that he reads too slowly and that he has difficulty putting words into sentences. (Interestingly, aside from a few sound-vowel association errors, he's a decent speller, but he says he couldn't write me a letter or an email.) When I asked him whether he thought his private tutoring services had been effective, he said simply, "Now I can read." Not much, though. He could write most, but not all, of the alphabet, and had a lot of trouble separating the sounds that make up words (saying "m-op" instead of "m-o-p"). But he did not get discouraged and seemed very eager to learn. He made several jokes and asked me lots of questions about my background and about the Center. And when I asked him what his strengths are, he said, "I don't give up."

I'm really, really excited to work with this guy. My only qualm is that, with a disability as severe as his, I know I'm not going to make much headway with him, and I really want to. I'd love to be able to help him to the point where he can write that screenplay, but realistically he's not going to get even close to the point where he can during our time together, and he may never get there. But any progress we can make will improve the quality of his life. I know he'd like to work, and improved reading will help him with that goal. And when I asked him about coping strategies he uses to get around his reading difficulties, he said that he simply doesn't go out much; in a city like New York, you can't go many places if you can't read street and subway signs. What a sad life! I can't imagine having to stay in all the time because I was worried I might never make it home again if I left the house. (His sister once got on the wrong train and was lost in the city for more than six hours, getting on any bus or train that looked familiar and traveling farther and farther from her target.) So I will remain both optimistic and realistic with Miguel, perhaps with more emphasis on the former.

Wedding March - A Photo Essay

On Sunday, Julia and I attended the 7th Annual Wedding March, an event to promote marriage equality in New York State. After assembling in Foley Park and listening to many (many, many, many speeches - it is an election year, after all) delivered by politicians, activists, drag queens, families, and Miss New York, we joined a few thousand people in walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. We brandished signs and American flags. Anyone who paid a $20 donation (i.e. anyone not in grad. school at Columbia) got a t-shirt and a colored umbrella. The umbrella carriers were arranged so that when they opened their umbrellas to walk through the streets and across the bridge, they formed a rainbow. Many people honked their horns at us as they drove by, waving at us through their car windows. We were photographed by tourists, locals, and camera crews from "The Real Housewives of New York" TV show who had decided to lead the march for some reason (even though none of them is married to a woman). Every speaker said that s/he hoped this would be the last March they'd have to organize. It will be interesting to see what happens during the next few months.

Doughie

After some Internet research, I mixed together 3/8 c of whole wheat flour (likely to contain more of the micro-organisms I was after than white) and 1/2 c of water and crossed my fingers. I read that I might expect to see bubbles after 12 hours, and was dismayed that almost nothing had happened when I checked.

Baby Doughie.

After 24 hours, however, there were signs of life! Doughie got its first feeding then, as I had read that I wasn't supposed to start adding fresh flour until things had gotten moving. Doughie gets 3/8 c flour and 1/2 c water at each feeding.

Check out that bubble near the right edge of the bowl!

More progress.

At this point, I started toss half of poor Doughie at each feeding. If I didn't, Doughie would soon fill the whole bowl!

Looks kind of bubbly...

...but check out everything that's happening below the surface!

Now, Doughie is on a diet of unbleached white flour; I read that I don't want to introduce too much new bacteria after the starter is well-established. Because the new flour has less substance, Doughie is much more watery and paler in color now than when these pictures were taken. It has also started to produce "hooch," a brown liquid which looks like beer (because, I guess, that's exactly what it is) that pools up in a layer on top of Doughie. If Doughie looked dry, I'd mix it back in, but because it's still a bit less solid that I think it ought to be, I siphon it off.

After an auspicious beginning, lately I'm not sure how things are going. Doughie smells exactly the way it is supposed to, a pleasant sort of sour, beery smell, but it doesn't look terribly bubbly. This is a problem, as it's supposed to contain enough natural yeast to make bread rise. I suppose the flavor is what I'm really after and I could add some yeast packets to a batch of dough in a pinch when I'm ready to actually bake something. We'll see. I'm going to give a few more days to see if I can get the micro-organism count back up. I've read that feeding it too much if it's not bubbling "reliably" can dilute the bacteria count, so instead of feedings every 12 hours I'm waiting 24 instead.

Some Work of Noble Note

I'm sure Tennyson did not have my belly dancing class in mind when he penned those words. Ulysses speaks of his desire to leave the comfort and safety of his home to return to the adventure of discovery. Here in the twenty-first century, many people view the start of a new year as a time to make resolutions which they hope will allow them to discover better selves. For me, the idea of living a better life is wedded to trying new things. As a teacher, I'm lucky to have two opportunities to begin my year afresh: January 1st, and the beginning of each school year. Sort of unconsciously I have found myself beginning this school year with several new endeavors, all of which have potential to turn out disastrously and all of which I'm enjoying immensely.

Endeavor #1: Climbing

I fell in love with rock climbing in Tennessee where, at Vanderbilt, I joined an outdoor club and climbed on a real rock for the first time; previously I'd climbed only artificial rock walls. Alas, while life in New York provides lots of opportunities to do all kinds of things, rock climbing is not among them. (Rumor has it that one can go bouldering in Central Park, but I've heard it's anticlimactic and dirty.) Driving upstate to climb requires a car, equipment, and a solid knowledge of knots, none of which I have ready access to. But my friend Seint, who took up gym climbing in college to impress a guy she had a crush on, invited me recently to a climbing gym in midtown and I think we're going to make a habit of going. After our first day there yesterday, my arms and shoulders are aching, but we had an absolutely fantastic time. It's certainly not the same as scaling a sheer limestone face in the Smokies, but the gym is big enough and provides enough challenges that I think I can sharpen my skills pretty well until my next chance to do the real thing. I'll write about the experience in more detail and include pictures in an upcoming post.

Endeavor #2: Belly Dancing

This, I predict, will be my most spectacular failure. I saw a poster advertising lessons and invited my friend Julia along. (Julia loves spectacles and I figured the sight of my attempting to belly dance would be right up her alley.) The class takes place each Friday night on main campus and consists of a whole lot of giggly undergraduate girls and us (also giggly). Three girls from the Columbia belly dancing team - yes, we have one - tag team on instruction. The room, blessedly, has no mirrors, so I am not able to see how badly I'm doing. I love it, which I believe is largely due to the lack of mirrors. The music is exotic and the teachers manage to bring a sense of sisterhood to the whole thing that you can imagine women sharing in far-off countries centuries ago. We've learned to do the shrill undulating scream that middle eastern women do to show approval, and we encourage each other with it when classmates perform. I sense that I lack some key body parts necessary to produce the "juicy shimmy" that our teachers describe, but I do the best I can. It's surprisingly fatiguing, and is a great way to cap off my week.

Endeavor #3: Homemade Sourdough

Most of my conversations in graduate school revolve around abstract philosophy, politics, travel, alcohol, and food. Recently, because scholarly and academic topics seemed too exhausting and no one has any money with which to travel or buy beer, I found myself chatting to a friend about San Francisco's sourdough bread. (He is from Spain and had never encountered sourdough before spending a year there. He is currently in withdrawal.) I found myself saying that I had always wanted to try making it from scratch, then realized that it was true. I've baked many a loaf of bread in my day, but sourdough requires a starter, and so I hopped online for instructions and mixed up my own batch. At the time of this writing, Doughie is two hours old. By tomorrow morning it may already be time for its first feeding! I'm quite interested to see how this turns out. Stay tuned for pictures and news of Doughie and, with luck, an account of my first successful baking.

Back at last

It's been a very long time since my last posting - yikes! Apologies. Between my youngest brother visiting New York for a week, my middle brother suddenly deciding to get married just about on the spot, a trip to California, the end of summer (and therefore wrapping up with summer clients/beginning with fall ones) and the start of school I've been running around like mad. I think I'm mostly on top of things now though - knock on wood.

This semester, I'm taking my final four classes at Teachers College:

1) Pedagogical Approaches in the C0ntent Areas for Teachers of K-12 ESL

Luckily, we do not have to memorize the title of this course for the midterm, or I'd fail then and there. Funny story about this class: Courtney and some of her friends from the Harvard School of Ed. told me before I started at TC last year to watch out for this guy named Michael Kieffer who they'd worked under and was apparently the best thing since sliced bread. He'd just moved over to TC, but wasn't in my department so I thanked them for their advice and immediately forgot about it. Just under a year later, I was assisting at a literacy conference at TC when, perusing the program, I saw Michael Kieffer listed as a speaker. I have a fair memory for names, but not to the extent that I'll remember someone whom I've heard a single reference to about 11 months previous. But somehow I thought I remembered him, and when his bio said he'd worked at Harvard, I was convinced. I approached him during a break and said that some of my friends from Harvard had spoken highly of him. He looks to be in his early 30's and was extremely friendly. He was flattered that Courtney and Julie had passed his name on to me, and suggested I take his class in the fall. It's in the TESOL (Teachers of English as a Second Language) program and so I politely said that I'd look into it, but I didn't think it would happen; our courseload in the Reading Specialist program is pretty prescribed. However, his is the class my advisor recommended to fulfill one of my requirements when the original class I was supposed to take wasn't offered this fall. So it's all worked out and I couldn't be happier - Professor Kieffer is fantastic.

As to the class itself, it's all about using text and writing to improve literacy skills of ESL kids. I have no desire to teach ESL, but I can count on having lots of students who are bilingual in my mainstream classes-I had a lot at McGavock-and the things I'm learning will be, I'm sure, quite useful. Not only that, but the strategies we're going to learn can be used for any kids with shaky backgrounds in English literacy, and that certainly applies to lots of native speakers I've worked with. So I'm enjoying it already and looking forward to learning more. Half of the class is TESOL students and the other half is Reading Specialist students, although they're all in their first semester and I am, it seems, the only veteran. They seem like a pretty cool group of girls (per usual, all of my classes are all-female), and I'm looking forward to this class a lot. It's on Monday evenings.

2) Practicum III-Literacy Assessment and Intervention

This is the class that accompanies the third and final practicum I'll have to do at TC. Practicum is usually my least favorite part of my semesters: it takes forever to plan, implement, and write up lessons and I can't help but think about the hundreds of dollars I would be earning each week if I were doing this at a real clinic instead of at TC. This semester, instead of meeting with clients twice for 90 minutes each, we're meeting them three times for 45-minute sessions. In addition, the write-ups are MUCH shorter and we are forbidden from using all of the ridiculous, overly formal language that was a must in previous practica. (bless you, Dr. Masullo!) I haven't gotten my client assignment yet. I will have either a group of three young children or else an older adolescent or adult. I am, obviously, pulling for the latter, having had two young children in the past. It was interesting to get a feel for what early literacy entails, but I would rather walk on hot coals than teach elementary school and would really like to have the experience of working with a client similar to the ones I plan to spend the rest of my career teaching.

Classes themselves prove to be enjoyable. Dr. Masullo has chosen light, pertinent readings for us to do, and her teaching style is simultaneously laid back and informative. This class is on Tuesday nights.

3) Diagnosis of Reading and Writing Disabilities

Immediately after Prac. III, I go to my third class. The professor is a school psychologist-they're the ones that usually administer assessments-and she talks about a mile a minute, though I like her anyway, so far. In this class we're learning about lots of different assessments that can be given to test students' reading and writing abilities. There are TONS of them out there, all suited for different purposes and populations. There's a pretty heavy statistical base to the class, which I don't mind much even though it's math because it's obviously very relevant. Our professor says that even though we'll leave with a good understanding of the basics, we still won't be qualified to administer these tests until we've had lots of practice. This seems a little strange to me. How hard could it be to follow a manual, record the responses, and figure out the score? But of course there's more to it than that, and the real difficulty comes in interpreting the score. So I'll take her word for it and try to learn as much as I can about the tests I'll likely be using a lot in the future. (Some are intended for very young children, so I won't have to memorize everything about every assessment.)

4) Cognition and Learning

I was driving myself crazy waiting for TC to schedule a meeting time for this class over the summer; each time I checked back, "TBA" was written on the schedule. Finally, after much searching through endless webpages, I learned that the class is online. At first I was disappointed, but I quickly realized that this allows me a huge amount of flexibility in terms of my schedule (practicum and tutoring are much less constrained this way). I don't know that I'm learning quite as much as I might if I were going to lectures, but this is an elective and while I'm interested in it, it's not the most critical class I'll ever take. Having said that, however, let me hasten to add that so far I find it fascinating. We work from a textbook, online readings, and online projects, and contribute weekly to discussion posts. Our most recent readings have been about memory. The book makes a lot of references to neurology, which is great because it ties in with the neuro. class I took last year. I like this a bit better though, because instead of focusing entirely on the brain (where there are so many unknowns that you want to tear your hair out), this focuses more on behavior, which, happily, is observable; then it uses neurology to give possible/probably explanations for it. Sweet. I'm enjoying it quite a lot.

It's hard to believe that this is the final semester of classes I'll take before I graduate! Although part of me is a little wistful, mostly I'm looking forward to being done so I can get out of New York and begin my next adventure.