what happened to me on Jan. 22, 2007

I start class with 22 students. Of those 22, over half of them have been in class between 1 and 8 days. Students have been coming and going from the beginning of the year but not like this. In two weeks, I have a class double in size and my current list is at 22, and sure to go up. Students at Community Academy, so every student has been expelled or removed in some way from Boston schools. There is one week left in the term, and after the term ends, my class list will change radically and I will begin afresh with an MCAS prep class designed for 9th graders and some 10th graders. For this one week, I had originally intended for the students to present their PowerPoint presentations and bring their notebooks up to date so they could receive a grade for them at the end of the semester. However, with the immense volume that just came into my class over the week, half of the students did not have any familiarity with PowerPoint and the other half had been doing these presentations for almost five months. As the class begins I decide to put a movie on the screen for the 13 new students while I go individually to each older student and look at their PowerPoint, evaluate them, give them feedback, and assign them a grade for their work. After I was done with looking at the PowerPoints, I had an article and questions to answer for the class that I would hand out for the remainder of the class, and turn off the movie.

Enter my principal, Lindsa. She walks into the middle of my noticeably loud class (a direct function of the size of the class). She begins speaking very loudly, in the center of the class (I was close to my desk toward the side) surrounded by students who were having trouble finding a place to sit. She is not speaking to me at all privately, just yelling with all of the students sitting in as an audience.

“Mr. Dalal (few of the kids know who that is, they call me Kunal), what is your agenda?!”

“It is right behind you on the board.”

“What are they supposed to learn, Mr. Dalal?!”

“The older students have PowerPoint presentations about alternative energy that they have been working on, and I am going to individually go to each of them and assess them”

“Where does is it say that on the agenda, Mr. Dalal?” (she is still YELLING)

The agenda on the board reads:

Alternative Energy Projects

1. Alternative Energy Introduction
2. Alternative Energy PowerPoints
a. Students will present their PowerPoints

“It says it right there Ms. Mac,” as I point to the board.

“Well, what is the objective for these students?” (again, still yelling in front of all the students)

“They are going to discuss and defend their specific form of alternative energy, the form that they have been researching for a week”

“Where, Mr. Dalal, does it mention anything about energy??”

The objective on the board reads

Objective
SWBAT defend and discuss their particular form of alternative energy as they present their research findings in a PowerPoint presentation.

“What is THIS??” Lindsa yelled pointing at “SWBAT”

“Student will be able to, Ms. Mac”

She reads the objective and realizes that it is actually relevant. How does a principal not know the acronym SWBAT?

“Ok, this is what we’re going to do, you’re going to turn off this movie, and the students are going to present the projects to the entire class, and I am going to sit here and watch every one of them.”

The students complain for a minute, some say things like (and I quote as best I can, but it’s not perfect), “But Miss, our projects aren’t that good, and we need Kunal to look at them individually so we can make corrections.”

“No, you’re going to present them and I’m sitting right here and watching your work.”

Ok, so I guess I’m no longer teaching my class. So I get my jump drive out and put the students’ presentations on it and transfer them to the computer on my desk. Incidentally, I was forced to remove a student who was working on her own presentation on my computer so I could make way for Lindsa’s decision to run my class without any consultation whatsoever.

So my first group begins their presentation. It contains some good information, and the students present it well. The presentation uses animation, external websites, and diagrams to help the audience understand the content. As the student finishes, Lindsa starts back up.

“Mr. Dalal,” (she is again yelling in front of all of the students), “ you know that if these students were to present this great information in the way that they did to Harvard professors, they would be laughed at. How do you ensure that they can present their material in a way that is professional and appropriate?”

“Ms. Mac, the students are not graded in the instance on their presentations skills, they are graded on their content and research.”

“Well, you need to find a way to grade them on their presentation skills as well next time”

“Yes Ms. Mac, of course.”

So we move on to the next presentation. It is, hands down, one of the poorest efforts I have seen in my class. The students said that they were not done, but they had ample time to complete their project. Regardless, they begin their presentation with an introductory slide that is titled “Alternative Energy.” Their title was supposed to be the name of their specific form of alternative energy. Regardless, they pressed on. They had focused on Wind power, which was a good topic. So they introduced it with some information on wind turbines, and their ability to produce electricity. Their “Positives of Wind Energy” made some good points about wind as a renewable source of energy, its low startup costs, and its relatively low maintenance costs. Great information. Then the project completely fell apart. Their “Cons” page talked about how wind can blow out surf and cause problems for surfers. Wind can also take down buildings and cause things like tsunamis. Tsunamis. I interject during their slide and ask about information that they are missing about the actual downsides of wind POWER. However, Lindsa interrupts and says,

“This is all GREAT information, keep going.”

I am officially no longer the teacher. I’m just a petulant mosquito in the corner.

As they conclude their slide show with slides about windstorms and the destructive power of wind, I watch in quiet anger, as I can no longer say anything to my students about my own assignment.

After they are finished, Lindsa asks a question that I’m sure to her seemed relevant, but was actually asinine.

“I have a question for the presenters about their topic. Why is it that when I stand outside when it’s cold and it’s windy, I feel so much colder?”

The presenting students try to work out an answer, but it’s complete nonsense. Something about the water in the air that can make you feel cold. I cut them off and explain the real reason for wind chill.

“Oh yes, wind chill factor, that’s what I was thinking of”

As the next student was about to begin his presentation, my projector overheated and shut itself off. I could not revive it and so he was unable to put his presentation on the board. So Lindsa begins to lecture the students about making it in the real world and working on their attitude, the same trite language that the students have learned to tune out since they were six years old. As the projector revs back up in about 10 minutes, I ask my student to come back to the computer to give his presentation.

“Don’t worry about,” says Lindsa, “I’ll come back tomorrow and see it, there’s no use in doing it now, class is almost over.” There is a full 15 minutes left in class. I tell Lindsa that, but she decides that she’ll still see it tomorrow (she, incidentally, did not even come into the class the next day). She yells again,

“Do these students even have notebooks in this class?!”

“Yes Ms. Mac, they are right behind you in the file folders that are labeled Biology A, Physics C, and Physics B.”

She can’t seem to see them (they are directly behind her) and the students point at them, “They are right there Miss…”

“Ok, you all need to get your notebooks out,” she says.

“What do we need our notebooks for Miss,” the students ask Lindsa.

I tell Lindsa, “They don’t need their notebooks today Ms. Mac, they were doing presentations today.”

So for the next 15 minutes, as Lindsa leaves my class, she tells me that I am to have the students work on their make-up assignments for the 2nd quarter while she goes back to the office to get to her own work.

I now have 15 minutes of my class back, my authority irreparably undermined, my class period in complete shambles, and my students sitting in their desks scratching their heads as they try to figure out what he hell just happened for the last hour. The next day when students come back to the class, one student says to me,

“If she ever comes in here like that again, you better tell her that this is your class, not hers, and she needs to get out or sit quietly and not disturb the class.”

I wish I could my friend.