breaking it down

Tonight marked the first time I have been outright unimpressed with any of my corps. A ’92 corps member, still at his original placement school, gave our evening presentation, a historical, political, and cultural overview of Los Angeles. It was lively and real and completely biased, but biased in favor of our communities and our kids, in a way that the program isn’t really allowed to be, and it was passionate, in a way that the program tries to capture with its collections of inspirational anecdotes, but it just never quite can.

For ninety minutes this man does not pause for breath. He tells us where to go hiking and cycling and when to go to Joshua tree, how there’s a free Ozomatli show tomorrow night, and about the marine layer and Thai Elvis and how the roads get slick after the first rain, and why it’s important to keep extra underoos in your earthquake kit. But more importantly, he tells us about what services can legally be denied to illegal immigrants. He gives a brief bio of the new Hispanic mayor-elect, and describes the power and policies of the chief of police, and explains where the sheriff’s department has jurisdiction and what the respective relationships are with INS. For those who’ve been asleep the last few decades, he reminds us that “there’s nothing better than a good cop and nothing worse than a bad cop,” and that no matter what kind you run into here, LAPD is not like other urban police forces: it is designed and run as a paramilitary organization. He gives us a rundown of the major representatives, community figures, organizations and propositions affecting our neighborhoods. He tells us about institutionalized racism, and the reality of the “race riots” that have been in the news these last few months. Through all of this, these girls are talking behind me, and though I am straining to hear over them, I keep catching snippets, like “This guy is way too into LA. He’s like obsessed.” And, “This is kinda boring. I’m never going to remember all these names anyway.”

It’s not just the incredible rudeness to the speaker, or the lack of consideration for those who might want to listen, that bothers me. We had a long, hard day of sessions with The District that left many of us none too happy, and I’m willing to excuse some bad behavior, especially considering that none of us has been a completely perfect corps member. The problem, for me, is the disregard for the really valuable information this man was imparting about our larger community. Some people seem to think that their job exists only inside the classroom, but that isn’t how life is for these kids or their families, and that’s not how it will be for the best teachers, the kind of teachers we all want to be. Almost everything that speaker said had overwhelming implications, and their boredom struck me as willful blindness. As I am sitting in my room writing this, I am crying. I don’t know if it’s frustration or exhaustion or the feeling that no matter what I do, how many students I touch, it will never be enough. This is so much. It’s so big, so much bigger than anything I thought I would ever do.

This man, tonight, shared his reality with us, and it is a reality that many other ex-corps members – all brilliant and effective but short-term teachers – have tried to tell us doesn’t exist. He has been here for thirteen years, he says, and he feels truly blessed to have attended thirteen high school graduations. In those years, though, he has attended nineteen funerals. He tells us that he came in with a lot of ideals, and that hopefully he has retained a lot of them. But his great wish is that he will stay at his original placement school until the end of his teaching career, and that at that time, he will have attended more graduations than funerals.

detox

It’s been really helpful for me to have a detox routine every night, whether it’s been a great day or a rough one. It goes like this: come back to the dorm, lose the heels, and change back into jeans and a hoodie, stat. Eat a piece of candy or an apple or some other treat I’ve squirreled away, to wipe from my mind the memory of the dining hall. Brush my teeth to prevent repetition of this step and depletion of treat stock. Sit back, power up the lappy, and dump into a Word document everything that’s been accumulating throughout the day, no matter how little or much time it takes. I need to feel completely self-contained and isolated during this process, so I put on my headphones (the absolute best call I made while packing) and play some great music, just loud enough to stop my suitemates’ voices from entering and my mind from wandering. I have been abusing the self-titled Headphones and Sleater-Kinney’s excellent The Woods to the extent that I fear they will become tied to this time and place, and every time I hear the opening static and distortion, I will come back to this dorm room – that my eyes will adjust for its harsh yellow light and my nose will fill with its smells, in the same way that Sublime is inextricably linked to driving around in my high school boyfriend’s Bronco and The Postal Service means sitting on my futon in the barracks, furiously mistranslating Latin poetry. I’ve started creating a special “detox playlist” that I may burn to a CD or two, so that I can always have it with me.

so that's what those lights are for

I was walking back to the dorms tonight with one of the other girls, when she looked up and asked, “What is that?” I followed her gaze up to the streetlights and searched for a minute, but I couldn’t spot anything unusual through the swirling mist. It took me a minute to realize that this is the first misty night we’ve had, and that she was talking about the fog itself. We had a brief chat about its causes, subtypes, and implications – Where does it come from, and when? When does it go away? Is it always low like this? Does it have any connection to rain? Does it always make it this cold? Can it be driven in? Are fog lights the little funny ones I’ve never used?

After the emotional drain of the last two days, this was actually a really great conversation to have – to be able to share something that I know really, really well (big ups to the Salinas 4pm fog), and even just to realize that the things I take for granted as mundane and everyday are brand new to someone else. Right now so much feels brand new for all of us, and I think the most incredible part of this experience is having people to go through all of these new discoveries with.

credentialing

After yesterday’s nonplacement fair, we had our first official social. People were either upset or celebrating, and it was $2 well drinks and margaritas after 8:30, and two bars and a whole cadre of new friends later, I was at home sleeping it off. I woke up this morning resenting my alarm clock. I felt fine physically, apart from a bit of drymouth, but I was completely exhausted, weakened down to the marrow, like instead of sleeping, I’d spent the last eight hours slowly climbing a steep incline. I remember that I dreamt about vomiting, and about wandering around the ruins of an old movie theater, filled with birds’ nests and broken glass. I skipped breakfast to snuggle back into bed for another half-hour.

Today was Credentialing Day. Though we have four credentialing options through my program, two of them with the possibility of masters degrees, I signed on certain that I was going to stay with our partner school, to the extent that I did not even plan to attend other information sessions. There were tangible benefits, chief among them being a curriculum tailored to the corps, and an MA in education after two years. Yesterday I went to the partner session, and things got a little weird.

For one thing, the partner session was mandatory, while all the others were optional, and indeed scheduled for a single one-hour block, so that we could only attend one other info session before making our choice. While we slept on the partner information, the other sessions were all this morning, and we were expected to make a more or less final decision tonight by nine pm. For another thing, the session itself put me off. It felt slick and forced and oriented towards getting my money, and getting it now. I left feeling harassed, for the first time like I was receiving a real party line that had no tangible benefits for me. Often I feel that sessions we attend to “invest us in the mission” have the faint but unmistakable aroma of propaganda, but we are aware of its necessity, and no one really minds. This felt like a strained attempt to force us into a program simply because high enrollment means a stable partnership, which is desirable for my program, and lots of money, which is desirable for the administration here. More than once, they sprung unpleasant changes on us, such as a two-track Monday/Saturday schedule, chosen by lottery, and then attempted to spin them as gift to us, sacrifice to them. I felt manipulated.

This morning I attended a jam-packed session with the UCLA-affiliated Teach LA/Center X. It was a completely different experience. The women spoke at great length about the program’s philosophy of social justice, the integration of pedagogy and practice, their high expectations of us, and the equally high expectations we could have for them. The program is more intensive, requiring both two days a week of coursework and an additional year of commitment, and they were up-front about that. There is an interview, an application, and a chance that we will not, after earning our credentials, be accepted to the master’s program. It is going to cost me $18,000 and I am going to be held to the very highest standards, not simply in terms of grades but in terms of community and of teaching. These things were made very clear.

I thought about my decision for a long time. I wrote out everything I was thinking, made lists, called Aaron, and I even ended up talking to Mike about it after all. In the end, though, only one program felt interested in my as a teacher, and only one choice felt right.

So, I take the gamble. I attend the group interview this Friday, and then I do what needs to be done in terms of loans and letters and paperwork. This is a huge commitment – not only in the sense that it’s a huge amount of money. I will be officially committed to a minimum of three years in The District’s classrooms – and to an almost unimaginable level of engagement with its students. This should, at some level, terrify me. But I think that tonight, I will sleep like a baby.

LMU = financial vampires.

I drew this during the LMU session. Embittered, I then went around table to table and stole all the mini Milky Way Darks and pineapple hard candies for my stash.

A note from institute

Just a quick post to let you know how things are going.

Most of my day today is downtime. I have a small-group meeting at noon with one of my directors, after which I'm free until dinnertime. The plan was to try to convince my friend Mike to ditch this place and go to the beach (and can I just say that it feels weird even thinking about the beach as I sit here in my business-casual attire: witness the amazing psychological power of a pair of sharply creased slacks), but I think I may have too much on my mind. For one thing, we had a placement fair yesterday, and English teachers were not being placed. Schools wanted science, math, and special ed first, so our placement is going to drag on and I feel like I now have very little control over where I eventually end up. For another thing - and this is more pressing - I have to decide on my credentialing program by 9pm tonight. The choice is not an easy one, and it's not particularly because every option has so many points in its favor, if you get my gist. I'd talk things through with Mike, but he's special ed (teacher, not student) and therefore has different credentialing and masters options than I do. Other people have more funding than I do, or more strict ideas about where they'll be in two years, so talking to them might not be so useful. Also, I really only trust Mike and a girl named Geraldine, who I don't think I'll see before 9, to know where I'm coming from.

Anyhow, I'm running late and that's a big program no-no. I've been keeping daily entries on the lappy, which hopefully I can post this weekend. Stay tuned for this an other vital decisions.

my last social for a loooong time

Guess who is going out tonight. Hint: she is wearing appropriately huge earrings.

best sign on campus

It is so horrible how hard this sign makes me laugh. The more diversity training and PC awareness talks we get, the more of a jerk I turn into. I swear it looks like he is rolling backwards.

A related point: we had some random icebreaker-type activity today where we all had the same set of questions to answer but each had a different number of words to answer with. Having all different numbers for the prompt "What makes you laugh?", three of us - myself, Mike, and another guy - all answered some combination of (old) people (tripping and) falling (down.)

finding friends

Thus far, I have found two people who I feel comfortable identifying as my friends, or who at least I hope to become friends with in the future: Mike from ASU, who is crazy smart and works with autistic children, and whose long-term girlfriend is into screenwriting (hey!), and Geraldine, a native Virginian possessing of a cynical rather than Southern or Eastern drawl and a pair of reflective, wraparound silver prescription shades.

Geraldine neither actively engages in nor avoids all the nicey small talk, and she wears sensible suits and no jewelry but completely rad shoes, and she identifies people she likes as “weird kids.” I won her over with the “Guess the contents of this here boxed lunch” game, which culminated in my identifying walnuts in a cookie and dropping it like it had burned me, shrieking “AGH! DEATH COOKIE!” She ate it, and said she particularly enjoyed the Death.

Mike is bizarre. We’ll be driving along in a car full of people, and out of nowhere, he’ll say things like, “So shouldn’t the punishment be the same for murder and attempted murder? Why should you get a break just because you’re really bad at it?” He’ll riff with me extensively, and while he appears to take diligent notes, on closer inspection they are the lyrics to “Baby Got Back.” Both Mike and Geraldine are super-mean in a way that tells me they care so much more than people who fake niceness. They also both have beer in their rooms, with Mike having rigged up the classic “trash can + liner + ice = cooler” setup.

These are important things to consider when you are choosing your friends.

worst case scenarios

At times like these, when your entire future is up in the air, there is nothing to do but convince yourself that there is only one possible outcome: the worst case scenario.

Today was CBEST day.

Worst case scenario: I do not pass, thereby losing my Los Angeles placement and being either shipped to Podunk, Missouri (population: me) or becoming an attrition statistic. Our director was talking today about how most of the attrition in LA corps happens early on, because the testing is so hard, as opposed to other states where easier testing doesn’t scare people off, and then they end up quitting later on down the road.

CBEST question: What is the best definition for the word “attrition” as it is used in the previous paragraph?
Answer: A cordial invitation to pack your bags.

Tomorrow is Placement Fair day. I will have between zero and five interviews, which may be with a single principal who has no idea what TFA is all about, or a large panel of administrators with a great amount of trust and history with the program. I have been talking to a girl with a placement at a Hollywood middle school whose interview went like this:

Principal: So. What are you qualified to teach?
Teacher: Biology.
Principal: Great. You’re hired.

And then there are the nightmare stories. The battle-hardened veteran types who ask you what you’ll do the first time you ask a kid to pay attention and he says, “Fuck you!” The principals who do not trust youth and enthusiasm. The panels who ask you why they should hire you instead of someone certified. By which they mean, someone qualified.
And what do you say to that?

Worst case scenario: I get placed at a middle school in a district on the relative moon, with a an evil interview panel and a skeptical principal. You would think that the worst case scenario would be a lack of placement, but you would be wrong. A lack of placement can be remedied later on down the road. Any placement, even a bad one, must be accepted. It is corps policy, and it’s just good practice. But if your school is a bad fit, you’re in for a long couple of years.

hoarding

I’ve been squirreling food away to my room. So far I have collected two red apples (one good, one smaller and lighter red and therefore presumed Less Good, though probably I should not judge), one bottled water, and one miniature bag of kettle chips. They are my prize.

I do not know if I am going to eat these items, or just keep hoarding them. The food here...it is not so great. It’s fast food, basically. Everything has sugar in it. The hash browns are sweet. The orange juice is sweet. Scrambled eggs? Sweet. Yogurt? Chalky. Also, sweet. Pudding? Are you sure that’s pudding? Really? What kind?

I am hoping for better at CSULB, though I’m not sure that I should be.

And she's off

Last pre-induction post:

I'm finally packed. And holy god, did I pack too much stuff. The upside of this is that in order to pack for my five-week session next weekend, all I'll have to do is throw in three more pairs of pants, a couple of shirts, and my brown shoes. Also, laundry detergent, which I don't really see needing this week.

I've only had a couple of breakdowns today, which is pretty good, all things considered. It's a lot of stress not knowing what to expect, and I think I'll be better once I'm all settled and curled up in my (sigh) dorm bed tonight going over my geometry.

At least partly as a breakdown-avoidance strategy, I'm now trying to get myself excited. After all, this is the more-or-less official start of my teaching career. And this evening, I get to meet my people - all 249-or-so other Los Angeles teachers-to-be. I have a really good feeling about them, which is based on nothing. I should do fine on my test tomorrow - after all, 51.25%! And after that I'll have my placement (note convenient omission of harrowing placement-getting process), and then the real fun begins.

Hopefully I'll be able to get online this week to update on how things are going. Otherwise, expect a big mess of posts (con fotos, per my excellent new toy) next weekend.

Sunday Sunday Sunday!

Tomorrow - or today, really - is the first of several Big Days. I go into regional induction tomorrow. It's a weeklong process that involves, among other things, interviewing, district processing and fingerprinting, a crash course on the history and politics of the region, and the last of my testing - the CBEST on Monday (for which I am still woefully underprepared) and a U.S. Constitution test on Friday.

I'm a bit stressed about the CBEST, and I'm not even daring to think about the interviews yet. I'm hoping I can avoid thinking about them until after they're done - a strategy that worked well for me with the interview to get into this program in the first place.

It's off to bed now, so I can get up and have brunch with the boyfriend in the morning, then have time to study some more geometry and pack before driving out to Westchester and starting the check-in process.

It's all very exciting.

happy score reporting day!

I've taken a bit of time out over the last couple of days to try to get oriented. LA is massive and intimidating, and I'm finding it far too easy to sit tight in this apartment ignoring the fact that I live here now and I should probably, at some point, figure out what the area is all about. To that end, Aaron and I took advantage of the sunshine yesterday and drove up past Malibu to confirm that we are, in fact, near the ocean, and Jody and I drove around for an hour or so today as an experiment in (not) getting hopelessly lost. While not directly related to my goal of finishing my curriculum by Sunday morning, I think these were productive and even necessary diversions. After all, this is my community for at least the next couple of years, and the last thing I want to do is come into my classroom like a disinterested outsider. That's no way to make a connection with my students.

I was happy to get out of the house today in particular because today is Unofficial Online CSET Score Reporting Day, and 5pm Pacific was the magic hour. I was antsy and unproductive the first few hours of the day, and those hours just about killed me. Getting out allowed me to think about other things, and even to re-focus on my Diversity readings (arrrrgh) for an hour or two when we got back. I'm sure you've figured as much by my tone and a noticable lack of overwrought and/or suicidal statements, but I passed all four of my subject tests, meaning I am on-track for hiring, and also that if I do not pass the CBEST, you can judge me especially harshly.

Of course when I got done checking the CSET website for my scores, I discovered that they had been in my gmail inbox since 1pm. Of course.

pre-institute update

I’ve been procrastinating like a champ, but with one week until I enter my program, it finally seemed like it was time to get down to business. It doesn’t hurt that I’m cooped up in my boyfriend’s apartment (my fault for lagging on the car front) with nowhere to go and not a lot else to do. I’m spending most of my days, in blocks of several hours, reading my program’s curriculum, with intermittent math review sessions. These never last very long, as I’m easily frustrated with myself for taking so long to remember skills I should never have lost in the first place (a problem I’ll have to deal with before I’m expected to set an example for 150-odd learners.) The curriculum, though, is going really well. I’ve got a huge stack of fat, spiral-bound notebooks which, with names like “Teaching as Leadership” and “Classroom Management and Culture,” should be incredibly dry, but are actually surprisingly engaging. They’re written with a sense of infectious urgency, such that you find yourself planning your first day, your classroom rules, the objectives for a big pen-pal project with a friend teaching in another state.

Excitingly, it’s just a little over a week until I find out my teaching assignment. The first thing people want to know when I tell them I’ll be teaching in the fall is, logically enough, what I’ll be teaching. It’s frustrating enough to say “secondary English” and then have to explain that “secondary” could mean anything from seventh to twelfth grade, but the worst of the situation is that I still have no idea what to plan for. I say that I’m mentally planning my classroom procedures; what I mean is that I’m planning everything twice, once for twelve-year-olds and once for borderline adults. They’re very different groups to interact with, let alone teach, and I’ll feel a lot better when I know which to expect. I’m hoping for high school, my past work with older kids being a major part of this whole crazy teaching idea in the first place, but at the moment I’ll be relieved no matter what my assignment – just so long as I have one.

fun with test prep

To teach at a secondary (7-12) level in California public schools, you have to pass two tests: the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST), and the California Subject Examination for Teachers (CSET), which covers your specific subject area - in my case, English.

My entire preparation for the CSET consisted of reading a couple of books about literary theory and the reading-writing connection, mostly on the bus or around 3am when I needed a break from writing papers or slogging through language data. It was finals, and I had a grad speech to write, and I really didn’t have much spare time to devote to study. As a result, I’ve been a nervous wreck the entire month since I took the thing, going over and over individual questions and passages in my head, and I almost don’t want next week to come so I can check my scores online.

So, to use my program’s favorite buzzword, I’m being much more proactive about the CBEST. It’s a much easier test than the CSET by any measure, but it has a math section, and as it’s been four years since I’ve been asked to do calculations of any kind, eight since I’ve done geometry, I thought a little preparation mightn’t be a bad idea. So with two weeks to go before test day, I bought myself a Barron’s guide and started studying. Barron’s wastes no time in setting the tone with a distressingly cynical introduction:

So, you want to be a teacher. Who can blame you? After all, who could resist the high salary, the social status, and, of course, the catered lunches? With all the media attention given to our educational system, you should have a good idea as to what you are getting yourself into. All kidding aside, teaching is a noble profession.

No, but seriously! Teaching is great. I’ll be here all week; be sure to tip your waitress.
Anyway, I get down to business and fly through the reading diagnostic. In California they have us taking standardized tests practically from birth, and this one is a few notches easier than the PSAT, so you can predict the questions as you skim the passages: The writer makes his point by use of which device? As used in this selection, what does the word “inveterate” mean?
The math section is a whole other kettle of monkeys.
Sample question (with diagram):

line QVR (is perpendicular to) line SVT.
m(angle) VSR = x degrees
m(angle) VRW = ? degrees
(A) 90 - x
(B) 90 + x
(C) x - 90
(D) You really have no idea, do you.
(E) Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

So it looks like a week of review is in order.

The most valuable thing that I have learned so far comes from Chapter 1, page 1, the top four inches of which reads What You Should Know About the CBESTtm. Bullet point number 5 informs the reader that “A passing score is 51.25 percent per section.”
For a moment I’m relieved – there is no way I can fail this thing, no matter how poor my math is. If I don’t pass it, I should be run out of the education business forever, and probably kept away from anyone under 18 as a precaution, lest my condition be contagious.
And then my eyes whip back up to point number three: “There is no limit on the number of times the exam can be taken.”
Yee-haw. Pray for the future of our educational system.

what is this thing?

There’s a Latin proverb that says, “By learning, you will teach; by teaching, you will understand.” I’m hoping this is true.
Here you can follow the story, still unfolding, of my life after college, of my move from the East Bay to Los Angeles, and of my quest to become a certified (and qualified) teacher.