the hour draws near

B-track comes back on Thursday. As my PD James reminded me today, we are the last Program members in the entire country to enter our classrooms and get down to business. I find this a bit ironic, as despite being a paperwork-procrastinator, I prefer to get actions over with. I feel like I've been inching into the frigid waters of teaching, rather than jumping in full-body, as I would have preferred.

That being said, I can kind of see where the inchers are coming from. I told James today, I'm about as comfortable as I can get on campus and in front of the class - any class - which is really a huge part of the early battle, and frees me up for the war.

I was on campus Friday for a meeting with the other Program girl with almost my exact position (except that she got soph English while I have seniors - ha ha!- and, her sub actually did his job - awwwdang) and the ESL coordinator, which was very productive. I was also there yesterday for a "buy-back" (optional but paid) day, which was somewhat less productive but quite informative. Our school has some huge grant from a known philanthropic organization (*coughgatesfoundationcough*) and it has recently come to the attention of the folks Up Above that we are not, so much, on track to improvement despite being handed wads of cash. So, this organization has been brought in to restructure the school in a way that will magically help our scores improve and our students become well-rounded, articulate, and college-bound. This will happen through switching to a block schedule, halving the size of our small learning communities (how? hiring more teachers? serving Soylent Green? or, as I rather suspect, waiting for another school to be built and then patting ourselves on the back for our accomplishment?), and giving every teacher, administrator, and "other qualified staff member" a caseload of 15 students to work with through their four years - creating their schedules, ensuring they are on-track, getting to know their families, and generally insinuating themselves into students' lives. This is going to be either a bloody war, or a complete nonevent, because no one will do it. We have huge culture problems at my school - the students don't want us "up in their business," and neither do many of the teachers think this is their job.

Anyway, I am waiting for them to truck in the fairy dust. Not because I don't think these things could help our school, but because I think people are going to resist the changes with all the strength in their bodies, and that the organization is getting in over its head. Homeboy making his presentation was talking about another "quite large school" they work with in Kansas City, which has 2200 students. My eyebrows went about through the roof - we have that many on B-track alone. We also have a tremendous amount of "teacher mobility" (read as: packing bags, never coming back) and statistics that make your blood run cold.

For instance:
77% discrepancy between sizes of freshman and senior classes (highly suggestive of dropout rate)
67% of students reading below 25th percentile, thus having a 50% likelihood of graduation
8% of students reading above the 65th percentile, thus having a 95% likelihood of graduation.

The Org brought these statistics to us, so it's not like they're unaware, but I did note that they seemed more severe than those of other schools they had serve. I also noted that the schools featured in their little videos had things like, oh, classroom supplies, equipment...

Anyway I am hanging out at home today writing student letters, making handouts, and planning my first week, or at least my first two days, back in the classroom. The first couple of days are rules/procedures days, and I also have to explain what it is we're going to be doing for the rest of the semester/year. I fully expect riots, as my seniors are being told that we'll have an in-class book in addition to an outside reading book, and that they will have homework, in the form of reading, every single night. These are the students who told me they did not read any books in English last year.

My ESL students are being told that they have to do half a semester's work over six weeks with a test about every two days, that their grades up until this point do not count for anything - the scripted program requires that at least 75% of grades be based on tests and assessments - and that they will need to work harder than they have ever worked in their lives in order to pass. In all likelihood they will not, which is in no way their fault, nor is it mine. My sub, in thinking that the important thing was his teaching of the first half of the class rather than assessing student learning, probably prevented students from learning the skills they need to pass the second half of the class. If they do not learn the second part of the class, they can't go on, as they would only fail the higher class. I am expecting about a 75% failure rate. I am not basing this on anything except my desire not to be floored by whatever it ends up being.

This is going to eff up my Significant Gains something fierce, but that is not the bad part. I just feel sick to my stomach when I think that a whole semester will have been wasted for these kids. ESL classes are like remedial college courses - they don't count for credit, and must be mastered before you can do well in your other classes. They've just been set back another four months. The anger is so strong that it's not even sustainable; it's like a blinding white flash every time I sit and think about it, and then I'm just exhausted.

This post feels really sort of sprawling and incoherent. I have been working on handouts for like seven hours; this is perhaps to be expected.