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“In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born-again Christian” and “Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded Serve Yourself in response to Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody”

I recently listened to most of the songs from Bob Dylan’s born again period, which includes three albums (Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love).

My favorite song is “What Can I Do For You?” I have a proclivity for secular artists because they are far more musically talented, so it was a breath of fresh air to find out about Bob Dylan’s conversion, although it was short-lived. Maybe other people, such as Kamil, can appreciate Bob Dylan’s sentiments. I included John Lenon’s song for a fair and balanced analysis (please excuse the profanity). Lastly, I included Bob Dylan’s song “I Believe You” to show that secular artists can write great worship music.  Enjoy!

Bob Dylan - Saved - What Can I Do For You?

You have given everything to me.
What can I do for You?
You have given me eyes to see.
What can I do for You?

Pulled me out of bondage and You made me renewed inside,
Filled up a hunger that had always been denied,
Opened up a door no man can shut and You opened it up so wide
And You’ve chosen me to be among the few.
What can I do for You?

You have laid down Your life for me.
What can I do for You?
You have explained every mystery.
What can I do for You?

Soon as a man is born, you know the sparks begin to fly,
He gets wise in his own eyes and he’s made to believe a lie.
Who would deliver him from the death he’s bound to die?
Well, You’ve done it all and there’s no more anyone can pretend to do.
What can I do for You?

You have given all there is to give.
What can I do for You?
You have given me life to live.
How can I live for You?

I know all about poison, I know all about fiery darts,
I don’t care how rough the road is, show me where it starts,
Whatever pleases You, tell it to my heart.
Well, I don’t deserve it but I sure did make it through.
What can I do for You?

Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming - I Believe You

John Lennon - Serve Yourself

You say you found Jesus. Christ!
He’s the only one
You say you’ve found Buddha
Sittin’ in the sun
You say you found Mohammed
Facin’ to the East
You say you found Krishna
Dancin’ in the street

Well there’s somethin’ missing in this God Almighty stew
And it’s your mother (your mother, don’t forget your mother, la)
You got to serve yourself
nobody gonna do for you
You gotta serve yourself
nobody gonna do for you
Well you may believe in devils and you may believe in laws
But if you don’t go out and serve yourself, la, ain’t no room service here

It’s still the same old story
A bloody Holy War
I fight for love and glory
Ain’t gonna study war no more
I fight for God and country
We’re gonna set you free
or put you back in the Stone Age
If you won’t be like me - y’get it?

You got to serve yourself
Ain’t nobody gonna do for you
You got to serve yourself
Ain’t nobody gonna do for you
Yeah you may believe in devils and you may believe in laws

‘But Christ, you’re gonna have to serve yourself and that’s all there is to it.
So get right back here it’s in the bloody fridge. God, when I was a kid.
Didn’t have stuff like this, TV-fuckin’ dinners and all that crap.
You fuckin’ kids (are) all the fuckin’ same! Want a fuckin’ car now…
Lucky to have a pair of shoes!’

You tell me you found Jesus. Christ!
Well that’s great and he’s the only one
You say you just found Buddha?
and he’s sittin’ on his arse in the sun?
You say you found Mohammed?
Kneeling on a bloody carpet facin’ the East?
You say you found Krishna
With a bald head dancin’ in the street? (’Well Christ, la, you’re goin out your bleedin’ girth’)

You got to serve yourself
Ain’t nobody gonna do for you (’that’s right, la, you better get that straight
in your fuckin’ head’)
You gotta serve yourself (’you know that, who else is gonna do it for you, it ain’t me, kid, I tell you that’)
Well, you may believe in Jesus, and you may believe in Marx
And you may believe in Marks and Spencer’s and you maybe believe in bloody
Woolworths
But there’s something missing in this whole bloody stew
And it’s your mother, your poor bloody mother (’she what bore you in the
back bedroom, full of piss and shit and fuckin’ midwives. God, you can’t
forget that all too quick, you know. You should have been in the bloody
war, la, and you’da known all about it.
Well, I’ll tell you something.’)

It’s still the same old story
A Holy bloody War, you know, with the Pope and all that stuff
I fight for love and glory
Ain’t gonna study no war, more war
I fight for God and country, the Queen and all that
We’re gonna set you free. yeah? all them “nig-nogs”? sure…
Bomb you back into the fuckin’ Stone Age
If you won’t be like me, you know, get down on your knees and pray

Well there’s somethin’ missing in this God Almighty stew
And it’s your goddamn mother you dirty little git, now
get in there and wash yer ears!

NOTE: “[This song] was right after Dylan’s song [...] “You
Gotta Serve Someone”, you know - the lord, I suppose, you know.
So then he was kind of upset about that and it was a dialogue,
you know. In that sense it’s fun, I mean you can hear it was
fun. He wasn’t seriously against it. He showed his anger in
a way but also [...] his sense of humour.” (Yoko Ono, 1998)

My second year of teaching is bittersweet. On one hand it is going much better because of I have more experience in teaching and working with my students. On the other hand I have a much more vivid understanding of my students, their potential to succeed and my shortcomings.

First, the positives.

This year I am teaching 3 periods of ninth grade Biology and 2 periods of Earth Science for tenth and eleventh graders. Teaching Biology is much better now that I went through the entire curriculum last year. I am doing creative and hands-on activities this year. I have brought in live animals, such as goldfish, hermit crabs, crickets and brine shrimp, into the classroom to engage my students into a better understanding of ecosystems. We also watched seeds germinating and are now observing plants growing. Moreover, for each unit I have my students write essays which help my students synthesize the information at the end of the unit. Furthermore, I have done oral presentations with them to teach them presentations skills and videotaped them so they could learn from watching themselves. You can find this on our class website at sciencepaths.com.

The Earth Science class has been a challenge to teach accurately the first time around since I am learning the material as I go. There are far less behavioral issues with these students than the ninth graders. It makes a huge difference. I am learning from my mentor teacher, Mr. Batista, how to bring more energy to the classroom. I am chronically sleep-derived. It is a bad cycle. When I am tired, my decision-making skills are inhibited. I lose control, so I continue to be sleep-deprived. I cannot break out. This is helping me in some ways. I think of it as “drunk energy.” Since I am less inhibited, I am more bold. The down-side is that I misspell words sometimes and say silly things. Surprisingly, my students enjoy my silliness and I have had some quite successful lessons.

Now, the negatives.

Since I am out of control, when I try to sit down to grade student’s work or write graduate schools papers, I fail. I have an enormous amount of ungraded work. Last year I threw out a bunch of student’s work that I never graded. This year, I refuse to repeat my past mistakes; however, it is not looking much better. This is a major cause of many behavioral and academic problems that I see in the classroom. The students do not see consistent feedback on their work.

Also, my eighth period (last period of the day) class is out of control. I have several students who create havoc regularly.

Now that I have one year under my belt, I can identify failing students from a mile away. I am torn between giving up on them or not. It is an immense struggle to call parents to talk to them about their children’s behavioral issues, especially when the parents do not have a working phone number. I have even gone so far with one student as to consent to having a Dean beat him up. A Dean is person in NYC schools who is in charge of discipline in the school. For other students I have been tempted to think of ways to get them to stop coming to class. Maybe if I give them detention everyday, they will stop coming to class? It is almost unthinkable that these students will reform. I was killing myself last year thinking that I could turn the class around and not give up on students. Now, I see the necessity of sacrificing a few for the good of the whole. Utililitarianism is wrong. However, if I continue allowing them to be in my class, they will ruin the education of many other students. Consistency is key and so difficult for me.

In addition to behavioral issues, there is also the fun alternative with students cutting class, coming late or being chronically absent.

Also, the Christian club I have been trying to help organize is not materializing.

Lastly, I am growing more apathetic to Pace University Education classes, especially after being accepted to medical school and being tired. Today I got an email from one of my teachers that I am in danger of failing a class. It is crazy, because I always do 100 percent of the work in 100 percent of my classes almost always 100 percent late. Most Pace teachers are forgiving for late work to almost an absurd degree (in one class I did not turn in any work the entire semester and turned in all the papers several days after the semester ended, receiving an A in the class). That is why I am awake now and it is enough procrastinating for now.

There are two more days of school left: it will be the last two days of Regents Exams (New York State Exams) Monday and Tuesday next week. The Living Environment exam, the exam I have been preparing my students for the entire year, will be on Tuesday. We’ll see how well I prepared my students on Tuesday! In New York, students need to pass five Regents exam to graduate. One of these exams must be a science exam, albeit Living Environment (Biology), Chemistry, Earth Science or Physics. The Living Environment is considered to be the easiest out of these four exams.

Now, I can reflect on my year. Watching over the video and seeing how far my students have progressed from throwing objects at me in the beginning of the year to completing the Regents exam now has been gratifying. By the end of the year, I allowed my preparation for the MCAT and medical school admissions to overshadow the quality of my teaching. Fortunately, the desire for my students to perform well on the Regents helped makeup for the decrease in my performance as a teacher. The Regents results will tell.

Here are videos of me teaching biology to my 9th graders.

Mr. Mikhail Lomize teaching biology at the Performing Arts and Technology High School (PATHS) at the Thomas Jefferson High School Campus in East New York, Brooklyn, NY.

Our co-principal, Mr. Frank Murray, was videotaping me as part of a formal observation. We were learning how the environment affects heredity.

Part 1:

Part 2 (it is fuzzy for the first few minutes only):

Due to my server company, Netrillium.com, deleting my database and other malfunctions, I rebooted the whole website. Tell me what you think. You can still access all the old posts and comments at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://interconnectedness.net.

Discover the growing movement in Russia where neo-Nazi groups are brutally attacking immigrants and spreading their hate by posting violent videos online. Over half the neo-Nazis in the world are in Russia! Much of it is supported by the Russian government. My family personally knows a person involved in this movement!

Here is a video I made before leaving to New York for NYCTF. It is about my classroom observation for my NYCTF Independent Study Guide at Ypsilanti High School. Enjoy.

It is difficult to imagine the school year is almost one third done. I feel like I am finally understanding how to teach my students. For instance, when I taught about diffusion, I would start by explaining, “Diffusion is the flow of particles from high to low concentration.” Now, I start by explaining, “What is concentration? It’s the amount of particles in a liquid.” Concentration needs its own whole day. Each single vocabulary word needs its own day and some words need several days. The best teachers expound much on a single concept.

There are about 440 vocabulary words in the Regents Living Environment (LE) curriculum. I found lists of all the LE vocab in two formats: topical and alphabetical. These lists are extremely useful. I’m thinking of having my students paste these lists (in a modified format) in the back of their notebook and use it as an index. The students would write the page numbers for the notes that use each particular word.

There are about 165 full school days after you factor in Pep Rallies, afternoon parent-teacher conferences, assemblies, field trips, low-attendance days before holidays, a dozen mandated fire drills and the October 16 PSAT. Since 1200 minutes of lab are required to take the Regents LE exam, that is about twenty-four 50-minute periods. In reality, there needs to be at least 30 days for labs, because many students will be missing some labs they need to make up.

Hence, there are about 135 days to teach 440 concepts! It is necessary to narrow the 440 concepts down to about 100 while still covering the whole LE curriculum. It is possible.

Other than instruction, classroom management has been interesting. Although I kicked students out, called homes and reprimanded students for through objects, it is difficult to stop this problem entirely. Even in excellent veteran teacher classrooms, I’ve seen objects thrown at students covertly.

A few weeks ago, my classes started to get completely out of hand and no instruction was happening. I got paper balls, spit balls and writing utensils thrown at me.

I instituted a participation half-sheet the students fill out daily. Before, I would punish and give checks on a chart only for misbehavior. Now, students earn points and I give checks only for good behavior. Positive and negative reinforcement work better than punishment, as I learned in Intro to Psychology years ago.

Although it is a lot of paper work for me to grade the participation half-sheets, my classes are far more manageable and I’m teaching again. Now, my students know my expectations clearly and reflect daily whether he/she followed the rules. Moreover, the participation sheet gets every person to speak in class and answer a summary question.

Over 70 percent of my LE students are currently failing. About 85 percent of students fail the exams and about 20 percent of the students do their homework. However, these last few days, some students started performing better on the Regents LE questions, which is promising. I hear that during the approaching third marking period, students work the most, which is also promising.

Furthermore, Kevin Young, the director of NYC Student Venture, the high school ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, has come to my school twice to meet with me about starting a Bible club at P.A.T.H.S. There is one teacher, one staff member and one zealous P.A.T.H.S. student I’ve been in contact with about making this dream a reality. I’ve also been hanging out with Kamil and others, which has been amazing.

Lastly, I am returning to Ann Arbor for Thanksgiving and will see Rob Bell with Kamil in NYC Sunday, November 25th, 8pm for the gods aren’t angry tour.

I’m learning a lot about life in the inner-city. September 29th there was a 15-year-old boy, Chris Williams, that attended our church who was shot in the back and leg 9 times, because he told a few boys to stop harassing his female cousin. One of his legs was amputated and he’s in a coma. [Update: He is not in a coma anymore]

I just completed my first month of teaching my own classes. Many teachers congratulated me, because there are a significant number of teachers who quit by this time. I have no intentions of quitting. During my two month summer training, I know several people who left the program, but most teachers stayed.

During the summer, I took two education classes at Pace University and taught 8th grade summer school Earth Science in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood as an assistant teacher at I.S. 302 Rafael Cordero y Molina School (middle school). When the students came in the room, they would talk to their friends and continue talking to their friends for the duration of class. When I commanded the students to be quiet or instituted a class procedure (when I raise my hand, everyone stops talking and looks at me) to get everyone quiet, it would work for a few minutes or days, but ultimately failed. Since talking over the students was not effective, most instruction was repeated to each student individually or in small groups. This way, there would be about 10 minutes of learning time per student per 45 minute period. It was sad.

Also, on the days the lesson was not very engaging, the kids would first start talking loudly, then push one another and soon a “play fight” would break out. Girls would stab boys with pencils. Boys would pick up girls and body slam them.

This is common behavior for these kids, especially for socially-confused middle schoolers. One evening when I was waiting for a bus, I observed that one boy pushed another boy into a glass bus stop. The boy hit his head but nothing was broken, fortunately. An older woman instructed the boy to get his revenge. Revenge is a common theme with these kids. Many students say, “If someone throws a paper ball at me, I have to throw one back.”

Once I found my job at H.S. 507 The Performing Arts and Technology High School (P.A.T.H.S.) in Brooklyn to teach three classes of 9th grade Biology and one class of Health for grades 10-12, I was given a chance to do a better job than what I witnessed during the summer. I received several of the same students I taught during the summer. The first two weeks went OK. The students listened more and behaved better than during the summer, although I spent some time talking over students. On the third week, my class with the “honor” students started throwing paper balls. By the end of the week they were throwing volleyball-sized paper balls and a plastic water bottle with water at me. At that point, no instruction was happening. I started to doubt whether I made the right decision to teach in the inner-city.

After those incidents, I started contacting other teachers, administrators and parents for help with these students. Now, no students would dare throw anything in my class, because they know that they will be immediately removed and administrators and parents will be contacted. The only way the students behave well is by having many consequences for misbehavior.

By the fourth week, I had most of my students in check and I learned most of my students’ names, which helps immensely. These last fourth and fifth weeks, the students as a whole finally started to learn some biology. I can generally have all the students quiet and we can have discussions as a group. There is still much room for improvement with classroom management, but the difference is night and day. I received a lot of positive feedback from other teachers. One teacher said, “Mr. Lomize has improved more than any other first-year teacher in our school, especially for a white teacher [most of my students are Black or Latino]. He reflects and is flexible about changing his approach.” Another teacher said, “I’ve taught for thirty years in these schools and I could not control these kids any better than Mr. Lomize.”

The building I teach in used to be Thomas Jefferson High School, a large ~ 2000 student high school that had a 10% graduation rate and many violent crimes. Four years ago, Thomas Jefferson High School was shut down and gradually replaced by four small high schools. My high school–P.A.T.H.S.–is one of those four new high schools. The school still has metal detectors, but the attendance, violence and soon-to-be graduation rates are now much improved. Security guards are positioned in all parts of the school, the students have uniforms and rules are strictly enforced.

Lastly, I’m currently taking education classes at Pace University and will have a masters in education in two years. I enjoy my apartment, which is 20 minutes door-to-door from the school via the subway. My neighbors are mostly teachers and lawyers. I live in a predominantly African-American, Caribbean and Latino community. It’s interesting to learn about other cultures.

Originally published at Interconnectedness. Please leave any comments there.

I was assigned to teach 8^th grade summer school Earth Science with Mr. Joseph Roy. There was another fellow, Ms. Alexis Dean, in this class already. Both Alexis and Joe were really nice. The class was quite chaotic. Alexis transferred to a different class after the third (of five) week of summer school.

I tried laying down the law by posting and rehearsing five classroom rules. Also, I established a way to quiet the class by teaching the students that, “When I raise my hand, everyone needs to look up at me and stop talking.” Lastly, I made assigned seats.

These procedures and the rules only worked for a few days, because I did not have any consequences beyond a verbal warning and I was inconsistent. The students were not graded on their daily performance and most students did not need to pass Earth Science during summer school. If a student failed math or English, they automatically had to take the full summer school curriculum, but only pass the subject(s) they failed. Moreover, summer school was seen by most people as “relaxed” and talking to parents did not seem to be recommended. Finally, it was difficult to be consistent with the class since I was not teaching or preparing the lessons most days. There was an inverse correlation between how engaging a lesson was and the level of misbehavior: the less engaging a lesson, the more misbehavior. Many of the lessons I did not prepare ended early, lacked demonstrations, and were disengaging. The level of success is mostly decided before you set foot in the classroom that day.

Although I made many mistakes and sometimes the class spiraled out of control with students throwing books across the room, stabbing each other with pencils, punching or body slamming one another, constantly swearing, listening to iPods, checking their cell phones and almost never listening to the teacher addressing the whole class (most of the instruction time was spent in talking to students one-on-one or speaking to small groups of students), I received superlative evaluations for my teaching. I was observed twice and by the second time received, “Exceeds Expectations” for all three categories: (1) Instructional Design and Delivery, (2) Classroom Management and Culture, and (3) Professional Values. During the time I was observed, the students behaved better than usual. Perhaps it was because I engaged them since I prepared my own lessons for those days? Perhaps I was fortunate?

The Pace University classes were an utter waste of time. We mostly learned about Understanding by Design. It is one of many ways to format lessons. It is not important how you format lessons; instead, it is important how engaging lessons are. If we focused on making demonstrations, activities, analogies, and other active learning concepts to prepare for teaching in September, then the class would’ve been useful.

It was so bad that I wanted to transfer from Pace University to City College. I contacted the NYCTF Placement Office and Pace Alternative Certification Office, but after much talking I understood that they would not let me make that switch no matter what. They already denied several other people before me. “They had to stick to their guns,” right? They “would not want to admit” that the Pace science curriculum was “b.s.” although many people came forward with complaints, so now there’s “bureaucratic red tape” to stop people from self-determination. They could let me go to Lehman College if I found a job in the Bronx; however, I hear that Lehman is no better than Pace. City College has the science immersion program and Brooklyn College has the Earth Science immersion program, which for some reason causes their general program to be better. Hence, future non-immersion science teaching fellows will have a low quality Master’s education unless you are keen and request to be transferred to City College directly after University placements are announced. It would’ve been nice for me to know this before. At this point, I was described as a “divorced child between my University and NYCTF.” It did not have to be this way!

Update (Monday, October 8, 2007): I hear that City College does not have a very good program either. Brooklyn College is the only college I get consistently good reviews, although it depends on what professor a student has.

Originally published at Interconnectedness. Please leave any comments there.