self-sabotage

The only thing worse than having your students fail because they are either a) not getting it or b) not paying attention (and they usually, if not always, get it when they are paying attention) is having to fail students who can do the work because they are cheating off each others' papers. I have not been hard enough on this, but that changes now, especially since I have talked to one of these kids about it before. I wish I could say it just makes me sad - and that's what I'm going to tell them - but in all honesty, it pisses me off. I know they're insecure and they're scared because they're all on the pass/fail border, but you'd think that would make them more inclined to do their own work, not less. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with them? Do they think I won't notice that they are all writing the exact same misspelled sentences in the free response section? It drives me crazy, because I already know that they will look me straight in the eye and tell me they absolutely did not cheat. Then they will explode in rage at the merest suggestion that I might take off any points. Boy, will they be surprised when I tear up their papers and they get a zero for the assignment.

That is my grading pen, right there. Woot.

drink first, then grade

So, the 100 was actually pretty cool, especially once my PD showed up, informed me that they had $1000 to spend on liquor, and insisted that I stop paying for drinks. Now. I told him I was so done, I would chuck my high-ball glass onto the dance floor and never look back. He mixed me a much-less-watered-down drink, My People started showing up, and things got markedly better all-around. We even had a Small World moment, discovering that Aaron went to elementary school with one of my good Program friends' roommates, who I have never really gotten to know. Also, I am getting better at walking/dancing in heels. The pathetic thing is that I don't wear anything taller than a kitten heel - maybe 3/4 of an inch at the tallest. Heels mess up your feet, though, for real. I try to wear sneakers in the classroom about 3 days a week, and flats the other 2.

This morning I slept in good and late, knowing I'd need all my strength for the Test-Grading Day I have planned. Grading days can be really depressing. They can also be really freeing, though. Today, for example, I am going to rid myself of about 10 pounds' worth of paper and the constant neck-and-shoulder-ache I get from carrying them around. The backache will be around until I quit the profession - or start sitting at my desk during the school day. Guess which of these things will happen first.

improvement / celebration

Things were better this week. My students are starting to mellow out, and the big problems are gone, leaving me with the dreaded and continual talking while I am talking problem. I met with my PD and came up with a kickass action plan, and a couple of other teachers in my SLC came over to my room with a plan all drawn up to nip it in the bud: since next week is only 3 days, they're each taking two of my biggest troublemakers, first thing in the morning, no questions asked. I'll give them a book and an agenda for the day and then they'll go sit in these well-behaved classrooms, isolated from their friends, facing the wall, and they will do their work silently. If this happens, they will be allowed to come back to my classroom after Thanksgiving. If it does not, they will continue to work in Solitary.

It sounds cruel but it will absolutely work.

This leaves me free to deal with my other, more serious problems: my English class lacks any kind of momentum or urgency, and my Advanced ESL class is still failing their reading comprehension. I'm feeling a tremendous sense of relief - these are the problems I was hired to deal with, not a bunch of post-middle schoolers who refuse to spit out their gum and put the goddamn nano away.

As I type I'm getting ready to go out on Program bid-ness. The LA 100 is a Program tradition, maybe even the Program tradition in my region. After 100 days in the classroom, we all get together and go out for a night of drinking, dancing, and cavorting at some super-trendy nightclub. I'm actually not that into it, but some of my favorite Program people, including my PD, my best Institute friend, and my best credentialing class friends will be there, and there's no cover, and I made a deal with my friend Hess that if we go, and it sucks, we leave immediately after the free champagne and seek out a dive bar. I'd kinda rather just do that to begin with, but I guess that's why I wasn't asked to organize the 100.

watchword: purposeful

So I went all Program-nuts after last week's observation made me realize that I am just sort of going through my scripted program for the sake of going through the scripted program. This is death in the classroom. If I do not have a clear purpose for being there, why should my students?

I went in on my day off and tracked out all my objectives and made calls to have people come into my classroom to support me and made a behavior log, all of which is very exciting and has already changed my approach, if not the whole mood of my classroom. I also had my head of department make phone calls home. Until now I had doubted the power of the phone call home, but Oh. Man. You should have seen them this morning, slinking in like dogs with their tails between their legs. They just sort of sat there, sullen, for the first hour of class, doing the work and occasionally shooting me a death glare. It was awesome. Then they got over it, and things were back to semi-chaos. But a little better.

Had a very serious conversation with The Firestarter today in which it was made expressly clear that if I so much as heard the flick of a lighter, his ass was OT'd down to Watts, no questions asked. Then I moved him front and center, away from his friends. We will see how that goes.

Lots of my kids are failing, which sucks. The good behavior class too, not the bad one, as the work is just a lot harder. (NOT my fault. Talk to the scripted program.) It does not help that anything below a 70% is a fail; most of these kids actually have what would traditionally be called a D. I swear, wherever we as a society set the bar, that's where they aim. Mostly, they are failing because of reading comprehension, as opposed to speaking, writing, or vocabulary. Very interesting - you would think you could pass that part of the test just by matching up the sentences on your exam with those in the book. It takes zero thought, right? But my kids lack test-taking skills. All of them, not just the ESL kids. It's really sad, just another example of how suburbanites are better prepared for success - no one's sending my students to SAT prep classes (though they are eligible for all kinds of free tutoring, which none of them are taking advantage of.) The scripted program is really good about building in practice for most other skills, but this is one area where I'm definitely going to have to supplement.

One of the Program Ten at my school quit her job on Thursday, and one of my best Program-Friends is talking about quitting. We all go through periods in which we're really despondent. At this point we've been in the classroom just long enough to get past the initial question - How do we get through to these kids? - and arrive at the real question - No, really - how the f*ck do we get through to these kids?

No word on how long you must remain in the classroom before arriving at an answer.

crashing back down

Of course you knew it could not last.

Today...yes. Today was rough. They are re-promoted to Nightmare Class. One of them stole my glasses today, though at least they were not on my face at the time. He is kind of a klepto, can't seem to help himself from stealing things like pencil sharpeners and random papers off my desk - and I really think he needs to be evaluated by the SpEd people as he also can't sit still or keep quiet or look directly at any one thing for longer than about 90 seconds. Today I also busted him spitting out his gum - which is forbidden in my class for exactly this reason - directly onto my floor. What has happened in these kids' lives for them to have so little respect for their environment? You just have to walk around the neighborhood to answer that one, I guess. There is this shopping cart full of bizarre garbage - abandoned by a homeless person, perhaps, though South Central seems not to have homeless people in the street-dwelling sense - lying turned on its side about a block from my school. It has been there for almost two weeks, trash spilling out across the sidewalk, and no one is making any moves to dispose of it. The worst is that when someone runs over a pigeon or something, it takes a couple of days before someone from the city comes down to clean it up, or someone from the neighborhood gets worried enough about disease to risk doing it themself.

Tangent. Sorry. Anyhow, tomorrow: big changes. I had this whole list of ordered consequences before the break, and then things got crazy, and I kind of forgot about them. They are not even up on my walls. As a result, the kids get warned 3,000 times per day with zero follow-through. Just warnings and talks outside, which really work on the days when my instigators are absent (witness: yesterday) and are just a lot of fun for them on the other days (witness: today.) So tomorrow, the consequences are up and we follow them, in order, no exceptions. There are only five levels before they're referred to the dean, and as I have been warning some of them (shame) in excess of five times a day, I fully expect my class size to be reduced by about 30% by the end of the period. They won't go to the dean - not unless anything else gets stolen, a-hem, regardless of whether or not it is swiftly located and returned by my other, wonderful students - as I don't want to abuse that avenue and destroy the relationship for when one takes a swing at the next and I really do need it. But I know which teachers they are scared of, and I have already warned them that they will be having guests.

Hilarious: one of my students wrote on the papered-over chalkboard that serves as my information wall. It says "PUSSY FUCK." Ummm...yes. We do need to work on those rules of grammar.

Not hilarious: this class knows my first name and they use the hell out of it. Like if I am talking to one student and take too long (over 30 seconds) transferring my attention to another, they will start hollering. "HEY! HEY JASMINE!"

The first one to do this tomorrow goes straight out of my classroom. We have had the "respect" talk too many times. They know what the rule is. But that is not the same as abiding by it.

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I think I am so frustrated because today was such a complete waste of time. First and second were spent attempting, ineffectually, to corral the kids, third and fifth we had an assembly, and sixth was kind of a wash. We are learning note-taking and my kids are either not getting it or bored out of their minds with it. Really, it could be both. The assembly was a bizzare hodgepodge of ideas: free tutoring! global warming! dress code! job-appropriate attire! crystal meth makes your heart a-splode! Then some ex-gangbangers from San Diego talked to us about the conditional love of the streets and how prison is terrifying even if you think you are hard. Unsettling take-homes from the assembly:

• Ex-G asks students how many plan to play pro ball, and enough to stock two full expansion teams - per assembly - raise their hands. Instead of "bein' real," as purported, Ex-G chastizes the other students for laughing at them, telling us that we must believe in ourselves above all else because "anything is possible." He himself just finished filming a new movie with Xzibit and The Rock.
• Principal, himself a brownish black, consistently refers to students as "black and brown people."
• Principal, in denouncing the gang lifestyle, asks, "Ladies, who do you want to marry? The guy who's running around getting shot up and probably going to prison or dead, or the guy who's going to make some good money, and provide for you and your babies?"

Ex-G does say one interesting thing, when he talks about his family on drugs and in prison and how hard life can be for a kid from the inner city, and he asks, "How many of you try to look good so others can't see the pain you're feeling inside?" No joke, 3/4 of the hands in that auditorium shot up without even a moment's hesitation. It was the only moment that felt real, not like some corporate-sponsored cautionary tale, which of course it was. I looked at all their faces then, and for just a second, they looked very old. I think it was the self-awareness, more than the pain.

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I ran into Ms. M today, the new teacher who took over my long-term sub position. She was stressed to the max and said she was starting to doubt that this school was the right place for her. I tried to encourage her, and I hope to God she doesn't quit. She is a good teacher and my kids - er, my ex-kids - have already been abandoned too many times. This stress and uncertainty, that feeling like all you do at work is punish yourself for eight straight hours, is one of those wounds that time will heal - for her, for me, for all new teachers. It's just a matter of hanging in there, and making sure you are learning while you do so. If you are paying attention, it is impossible not to learn every day.

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In other news, I am kind of (read as: desperately) wishing that friends will come down and visit me this fine Veterans Day weekend, but they are busy and this will almost assuredly not happen. So instead I may go to Homecoming, ha ha. It depends on if any other Program members or first-year teacher friends want to go with me. It could be kind of fun, and we have all these hours of "extra" stuff we have to do each month, like our jobs aren't friggin time-consuming enough. Anyway, my seniors ask me every single day if I am going, and some of them are up for royalty (gag), and my mentor says he wants to see me there too. So we will see. There are worse ways to spend a Friday night.

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In still other news, I voted today. If you live in Cali, and you did not vote, and 74 passes, I am coming for you. I will have lots of time to hunt you down and break your kneecaps once the Governator personally comes down here, fires me, and turns over control of my school to The State.

beautiful monday

Today was a good day. I am cradling it in my hands.

First/second, previously my nightmare class, has been downgraded to my headache class. Last week we did the whole "practicing coming into the room, picking up our books, and sitting down like human beings" business, and we did the "if you are not here to learn, leave right now" act with the holding-open of the door, and we played the "for every minute we waste we will stay one minute at nutrition" game, and we did the we-are-not-amused thing, and all of this kind of helped but not really. Then several of them failed their first test because they were not doing their classwork and were therefore unprepared. The "staying after" bit probably bothered them more, though.

And then, somehow - and I do not know how this happened - I found myself sitting down at eye level with two of my biggest troublemakers, laughing. They gawked at how I hold a pencil, and they showed me how to bend just the top joint of your fingers, and then they lurched at me like zombies, and we were sitting there, just laughing, and I had this epiphany. I had not laughed with this class at all. Not even once. And then I got to thinking, wow. All of the things that make me a good first-year teacher, when I am one - patience, humor, personal connections, individual check-ins and explanations - were completely missing. I was doing the authori-tah dance, and leaving them responsible for monitoring their learning - the complete inverse of my ideal classroom, in which they self-police and I make sure they're getting the material. It was a slap in the face. So things changed.

Today we were about halfway through class when Omar, one of my zombie-lurchers, raised his hand (!!!) and said, "Miss, we better today!" He was right, and he was happier, and I was happier. So the new strategy is, no irritation on my face. Not ever. We count down 5-4-3-2-1 for silence - they respond well to it, and it's the only signal that doesn't completely make me gag. When we have a problem, the problem kids come and talk to me, and each other, outside. It goes like this:

A, explain what happened. B, you just listen.
Now B, you explain what happened. A, you just listen.
Okay. What should you have been doing?
If you were both doing that, would X have happened?
What are you going to do when you walk back into my classroom?
Now tomorrow, I expect you to be my star students. Best in the class. Can you commit to that?
I look forward to it. Come on back in.

It's funny, but the part that makes the biggest difference is the "star students" bit. They really do commit to it, and they come through. It is amazing, and it's all starting to gel.

I was also observed today, with my seniors, who are the coolest, mellowest class. We did this A.MA.ZING activity called Cube Writing (Amelie, hit me up for a copy - get your kids to write developed 2-page essays in-class! No joke!) to come up with a first draft for the autobiographical sketch required in their senior portfolios. The class is small, which can feel awkward because it's necessarily more seminar-style and my students are used to being lectured at, but today it was cool. We were joking and learning about each other and my review was outstanding, which was nice. But really it was all about the feeling when it all works.

Who knows how tomorrow will go. I'm tempted, though, to just type up a handout for my seniors, then head to bed and leave this day perfect. Worry about it in the morning.

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Speaking of worrying in the morning:

Tomorrow is November 8th. To all my Cali people: Yes, it is supposed to rain tomorrow. I do not care. You get your asses out there in the rain and vote. Early and often, as they say. Influence as many people as you can. Be incredibly irritating to anyone not wearing an "I Voted" sticker. There is some mess on the ballot this time around, and we must send the message that we are tired of being jerked around by the government-industrial complex, and that we want Arnold, his cronies, and his financeers out of our schools, out of our unions, and out of our pregnant womens' wombs, minors or otherwise. With that said:

• NO on 73 through 78.
• YES on 79 and 80.
• And a resounding YES, for my LA people, on Prop Y. Pay the taxes, build the schools, and burn year-round minority sabotage to the ground.

But if you only remember one thing:

NO ON 74

NO ON 74

NO ON 74

NO ON 74

NO ON 74

who you are < who you know

I just had a kick-ass Day After my First Day Back. Day One wasn't bad, just kind of exhausting and underwhelming. Today was smooth sailing, and I'm excited to really get started over the next week or two.

The real reason I am so happy today, though, is that I got hooked up.

We are a Title 1 school, meaning that the government gives us money to "improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged." We just lost one of our teachers - my mentor-man, in fact - to a new post as the Title 1 coordinator. My department is affiliated with the Bilingual program, which gets a bunch of money from lord knows who. I am a first-year teacher, thus entitled to first-year goodies, ranging from tissues to technology, funded by The District. There is a boatload of money in my school, and I have all of these "ins" to help me gain access to it. That being said - it is IM.FUCKING.POSSIBLE. to get a laptop.

The story is that all first-years are supposed to get a laptop when they are hired, for planning/grading/online poker-playing purposes. (That last part was a joke. Only the APs' secretaries are allowed to do that, and they must use clunky desktop machines for it.) Laptops were ordered way back in mid-summer, and at some point, for reasons that no one can really articulate, the money was frozen mid-order and now requires an administrator's all-clear to free it up again. We are supposed to just wait on that, as it should be happening any time now.

In case you have not been keeping track, it is almost November.

Anyway, you can't get a laptop. Don't even ask. Don't make me laugh. Yeah, sure, we can put you on a list. Yeah. You'll get one just as soooon as we get them in.

Unless, of course, your department head, an alum of both TFA and the B-Eng department, is the daughter of the tech guy.

Then when you walk up to his uber-wired little hidey-hole and he says, before you can even take a breath, "No laptops. None. So whoever told you there were, is lying," you can counter with "Oh...because Tiffany told me-"

At which point he produces not only a new lappy but an LCD projector as well, plus two nifty tech bags for the toting. No one has gotten an LCD projector yet. Couple this little duo with the printer I am keeping for an off-track Riley, and I am big pimpin' to the fullest.

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.

curiouser and curiouser

To refine my theory:

Teaching: A job.
Special Ed teaching: A different job.
Subbing: Still another job.
Subbing Special Ed: A freaking nightmare.

I subbed a Special Ed math class yesterday composed of about 20 students (HUGE for SpEd), 17 of them boys, about 12 probably classified as "behavior disabilities," with no lesson plan and nothing in the room for them to do - no worksheets, no mini-activities, not even a TV. So they entertained themselves. You might think you can imagine how they did so. But you would be wrong.

Picture this:

• Students chasing each other around the room at a flat run
• Students standing/jumping on top of desks
• Students shouting obscenities and racial slurs
• Students pushing/slapping/punching each other
• Students standing waay too close to me, asking me waay-too-personal questions, and touching me on the arm and back whenever feasible
• Students "chirping" each other on their phones (curse you, Boost mobile!)
• Students stealing dry erase markers from the teacher's desk, taking out the cores, and using them to tag
• Students stealing paper clips and tacks from the teacher's desk and hurling them, along with the marker husks, across the room at each others' heads
• Students sitting in the room's two rolling chairs and pushing each other, very fast, into the walls, or, alternatively, into each other, sumo-style
• Students sneaking out of the room, then pounding violently on the doors and windows
  

All at the same time.

My favorite moment came when the most out-of-control of the bunch, with the biggest-ever glob of snot leaking out of his nose, rather than go get a tissue, started dancing "gettin' low"-style around the room singing his own version of the crazy-offensive "Whisper Song," changing the lyrics to "Wait til you see my snot, b****! Wait til you see my snot!"

To make matters worse, this was the day's long period, which is a combination second period and homeroom. On top of this, the 10th grade classes were all taking the PSAT, so we had a special extended period. Of course so one bothered to announce this, so I also had to try to quell a mutiny when the bell did not ring for an additional thirty minutes.

I kept thinking, This cannot seriously be happening. This is the kind of thing right-wing suburban cartoonists draw to show how insane and fundamentally useless teaching in the inner city is. I seriously considered walking up to the front office and telling the scheduling ladies, who tell me every day how they abuse me by sending me period-to-period where no one else wants to go, that this was it, my limit, and that if they did not find me another class, I was going home and would be back when my track came on. I could not bring myself to do it, though, and it turned out OK - the teacher's other four periods each had a maximum of five very calm students. We are masters of scheduling at my school, we are.

So today I thought things could not get weirder or more stressful, until oh, about 6:25 am, at which point I snapped awake on a no-longer-moving bus only to be unloaded on the street, where four cars' worth of police were waiting to arrest a schizophrenic-sounding young man who had been unnerving the other passengers with his shouted obsecenities (in two languages, no less) and frantic head-pounding. As the police (all eight of them) attempted to subdue and cuff him, for what crime I could not tell you, he kept shouting, "They're terrorists! They're here to kill me!"

I was so sleep-deprived and hazy, all I could think about was that people were going to rush the bus and take my good seat once we got the all-clear to get back on board.

I decided my day needed resetting and stopped on the way to school to buy myself a donut. It seemed to help.

schooly stuff

I finally lost my long-term students this week. About 50% of them (not an exaggeration) have tracked me down in the hallways or other classes to tell me how much they miss me and want me back. This says more about their fear of change than about me as a teacher, as they spent their first two weeks with me telling me how much they wanted their old sub back and how living with me was like living in a living nightmare. The new (permanent) teacher established herself as “mean” on the first day by understandably kicking a few students out of rambunctious, work-loathing, hormonal, profane, attention-craving sixth period. I miss them already. I have such a bias toward the group I call the “Clever Derailers” – I am consciously working on balancing it out. I have been day-to-day this week, I take a week off to get my shit together, and then I get my Real Kids back and must attempt to win them back over after being The Most Boring Teacher Ever when last we met.

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Weird thing about teaching in an entirely black/Hispanic school: I subbed a class this week wherein three girls had my first name. I swear my students are going to bust me one of these days, because I look up every time I hear it – it’s not something I’ve had to get used to sharing.

You might think it is weird how fiercely I protect my first name (and age, and number of years teaching,) but know this: my long-term students go home after school every day and search for me on Myspace. I think this means I need to give more homework – not that they do what they’ve been assigned already. Regardless, if they figure out my first name, the jig is most definitely up.

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I don’t know if you have discovered Google Earth yet, but if you haven’t, do it – do it now. It allows you to zoom into any location from space via nifty satellite imagery, and it is the coolest Google Toy yet. It also provides the only activity more popular with my students than looking at rare and collectible sneaker auctions: pinpointing the locations of recent drive-bys and the exact 7-11s at which this or that fool got shot. Whenever I catch them doing this, I make them look at different college campuses.

It is getting harder and harder to avoid the “ghetto mentality” post.

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I subbed cosmetology for the first time the other day. I don't know which is creepier: the severed heads, or the worksheets about hair pigmentation headed with inspirational, life-affirming quotations.














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Spot the errors!

From yesterday’s Daily Staff Bulletin:

There was many staff that came out on Saturday, October 8, 2005 to give a helping hand to the many projects that were scheduled by the Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa’s Office, that took place around the school and the neighboring community.

guess who unpacked her camera cables

So - to catch up.

The Deleted Post was for the most part about this really bizzarre week I had - it got crazy hot and muggy and the air was gritty with smoke from the Chatsworth fires, and true to the ancient teaching wisdom holding that changes in weather make students something something, my kids went completely wacko. I caught my first tagger, helped break up my first fight, busted my sixth period for dropping random items (pens, wads of paper, a bag of chips) through a hole in the floor onto the class below us, subbed a class in which the TA started a fight with a SpEd student which escalated until three representatives from the dean's office were present, and kept narrowly avoiding being run over by a group of my students, athletes all, stealing each others' shoes and tearing around campus (up three flights of stairs, back down again, outside and around the bungalows, over the fountain, etc...) at speeds unsafe for street driving in order to prevent the shoes' return.

FYI - my school is really pretty...as long as you remain outdoors.

Then we drove up to the bay to pack up the last of our worldly possessions, hit up IKEA, eat some good food, and see Aaron's family (including his grandmother, whom I had never met, and his very-pregnant sister, whose baby shower we also attended.) So of course we both got incredibly sick with this thing that my kids all have - they are worse than kindergarteners, I swear - and could not effectively taste, smell, speak, or comprehend. This is probably for the best, because driving through Oakland made me overwhelmingly homesick and I might not have gotten back in the truck had I been able to smell the fresh air or taste Gordo quesadilla instead of merely registering the familiar burn...

We've spent the last week-odd engaged in painting, stocking, and organizing the new place. I realized too late that we'd painted blue and gold - Go Bears! - but that lameness aside, I absolutely love it, and living in LA seems much more managable now that we've got a comfy place to call our own.

Notable local landmarks: Von's Hollywood! (remarkably similar to normal Von's, only with better produce and lacking anti-theft cart protection;) Eat'n High Thai Restaurant, for which, no matter how I try, I can only get one reading; and the tux rental place, which, like much of Hispanic LA, sports mural-style signage, and whose painted bride looks like a pool-hall killer on the lam, caught in a desperate Bugs Bunny-style attempt to avoid going back "inside"...

hate it when that happens

I wrote this sprawling post the other day, only to have it obliterated when Blogger unexpectedly crashed on me. The "recover post" button only works when the page can be found.

I have been too miffed to update since.

Anyway, I am over it now, but I have an apartment to set up. Updates and pictures soon.

happy tuesday!

And a very happy one it was, as it was a short day. For on-track teachers this meant an hour and a half of PD; for me, the sub, it meant going home at 2pm. I tried the new bus-metro method I've worked out for getting to the new apartment; it is gloriously simple. A complete success.

In fact, I had a few successes today:

I walked into an alien classroom this morning and, before I could even take stock of my situation, students were calling out, "Hi, Ms. L!" and hastily putting their cell phones away.
(Technically that would be Miss L. They are not good on the whole Miss/Ms. thing, though they seem to understand it intellectually after our feminism mini-lesson. I am picking my battles, and this is not really one of them.)

Upon discovery that said classroom's regular teacher was out longer than expected and had not left enough work, one unfamiliar student asked, in a very familiar gleeful tone, if we would be having free time. Again, before I could say a word, one of my long-term students more or less shouted, "Yeah, right! You know we be doin' work in Ms. L's class."

This felt better than I can describe with all the words that I know or can reasonably expect anyone (apart from Amelie) to comprehend.

Also, when checking out this afternoon (at 2 pm - did I mention that part?), the principal's secretary told me that another teacher had requested me for Thursday morning. I am being requested! In addition to being formally asked by the SSLC to continue covering this long-term spot!

It's like being asked to a high-school dance. And then a party on the weekend. By separate boys.

It is not quite like being asked out by boys you like - more like those early dating years when you are not yet discerning enough to decide whether you like them or not, or to have realized that such things matter. It's definitely more about being liked than by whom.

Less fun things:

I have one of those pounding, splitting headaches that makes you lose your equilibrium and your head sway side-to-side. I am attributing it to a combination of dehydration, inadequate nutrition, sleep deprivation, stress, noise, eye strain, smog (which is drying out my eyes and all-around aggravating my allergies) and shifting rapidly and repeatedly from darkness to harsh brightness and back again - otherwise known as "my lifestyle." Does anyone else get these?

I have officially lost my taste for both soda and fast-food french fries. In addition to not tasting good, they both make me very, very sick to my stummy.

Root beer is still OK.

We are moving this weekend, which entails finishing painting the new apartment tomorrow (in the lurid brights I so adore), packing this apartment on Thursday, and driving up to the bay on Friday evening so the four of us (me, Aaron, Jody and Seb) can pick up all of our remaining possessions, jam them into a truck, and drive back down again. I do not anticipate having any free time to see anyone, which makes me really sad and lonely, but I'm telling myself (probably not incorrectly) that they're all so busy with classes right now that they wouldn't be free to see me anyhow. Also, the baby shower (Aaron's sister) is on Saturday, so I must finish the sweater before then. All the pieces are done now; I just have to stitch it together and do the design work. This will probably happen tonight, despite the whole splitting-pounding-balance-losing business.

Assigned the students the prologue to Kindred tonight and warned them that they would be quizzed tomorrow. As the prologue is two and a half pages long, I am steeling myself for the gut-blow of how many students fail the thing. Not to have low expectations or anything, but some of them wouldn't even carry the (264-page paperback) book home with them as it was "too heavy."

My job is awesome.

back on campus

After last week's "vacation" (ie 40 hours of professional development,) it is back to the sub's life for me. On my triumphant return, I discovered:

• My school is now approximately 85% less competent.
  I arrived this morning to see that Mr. B, 1/9 of our Assistant Principal force and the man in charge of assigning subs, coordinating and ordering resources and technology, and working with new teachers, among other things, was not at his ordinary post in front of the gates, greeting the students and turning away those in blatant dress code violation. Instead, it was Campus South's principal, Mr. B's boss, looking grim. In the front offices, no one knew what sub jobs were open or what the plan was for the day. Once in a classroom, I noted that the voice making the morning announcements over the loudspeaker was not, as it should be, Mr. B's. While Mr. B has been absent from time to time, this seemed different, unplanned - and nothing was going right. It took another few hours before someone confirmed my worst fears: Mr. B quit last week, apparently in frustration at the lack of support he had in running the school more or less single-handedly. I can't really blame him -he had to lie in bed every night and wonder, What do the other 8 APs do? Anyway, I'm sure he got a job at a better school which will hopefully realize his worth. As for us...well, God help us now.
  
  
• My long-term position was dissolved...and undissolved.
  Apparently they got rid of all but two English classes, then had a balancing meeting and decided they could keep the class after all. A teacher has been hired, but she is at another school right now and needed to give them notice. I will be the sub for the next two weeks, until she gets here. The drama classes are gone (praise Jebus) and some new English classes are being brought in. Additionally, the head of the SLC, who has been laying the smack down on these kids the last few days, has come up with a list of assignments which need to be done in the next two weeks and which will be part of the students' permanent grades. So, that takes away the planning element, leaving me free to ward off student advances, confiscate cell phones, encourage/cajole/beg students to work...
  
  
• The drug problem is that serious.
  I haven't witnessed much of it myself, though friends and colleagues have busted kids for smoking pot and sniffing glue on campus, and in one very special episode, actually doing meth in class. Today, though, we had to drag our kids back into first period because we had paramedics in the main building, and no one had bothered to make the Please stay in your classrooms announcement until after students had already begun flooding out into the hallways. (This would not have been the case had Mr. B been there.) Once we got the all-clear, a distinctly not-Mr. B voice announced that we'd had four students ill and that the paramedics had needed the hallways clear to tend to them. Four? One is a seizure. 75 is food poisoning. But four can only be drugs.
  
  
• Vacation makes everything easier to deal with.
  Even if it is professional development.
  
  

out of the classroom!

I'm in professional development this week, getting trained to use my program. Exciting! It's a five-day training with three days of follow-up over the rest of the school year, and if today was any indication, there will be enough material to comfortably fill about 1/3 of that time. The worst thing about it, apart from the length (for which my years of schooling have more than adequately prepared me), is the veteran teachers. Some of them are wonderful. Others are bitter, angry, prone to derailing the conversation, incapable of turning off their snarky running commentary, and generally much worse-behaved than I would tolerate from a classroom of teenagers. Additionally, one gentleman who has been in the profession for "30 or 40 years" is given to asking things like, between English Language Learners and monolingual English speakers with extreme difficulty reading, "which ones are dumber."

It's horrible to say, but I am glad not to be at school, the reason being that my long-term position will not be there when I get back. Long story short: A-track, being closest to the traditional calendar, is very popular and thus generally overpopulated. My school attempted to correct for this, and in fact corrected for it so well that there are now "too many classes" and "not enough students," necessitating the speedy removal of seven or eight teaching positions. My sub spot, as an unfilled position, is an obvious target, as it involves no actual firing. So it is back to day-to-day for me. Sigh.

Problems with this scenario:

• "Dehired" teachers likely to leave for other schools in frustration rather than shifting to still-unfilled B and C track positions
• Not sure how a track with "not enough students" still has classes where students must sit on the floor
• School is still aggressively trying to OT students who were late on the first day of school, regardless of their attendance, behavior, and work habits in the meantime
• Day-to-day blows

Clarification: "OT" means "Opportunity Transfer" which means "we are sick of yo' shit and are shipping yo' ass to another school." An opportunity, theoretically, to start fresh, as though you're not blacklisted from the minute staff realizes you're there (which is the second you set foot on campus.) I have heard of students being OT'd at least six times.

It's not like these kids are all hard cases with one too many strikes against them. Two case studies in the educational burlesque that is the OT:

Shaun, a junior, member of the varsity basketball team. Sits by himself when his teammates do groupwork so he will not be distracted; asks for comprehension strategies and reads with silent, ferocious determination. Says, unprompted, that his biggest goal is to be the first in his family to go to college. Takes extra time to explain the assignment to Jamaal. Is in his seat, on time and prepared, every day.
Jamaal, another junior, also on the team. A SpEd student who loves to make people laugh and who has trouble with comprehension of verbal instructions but who checks himself when he gets too distracted and will not let you leave until he understands what to do. Also in his seat, on time, prepared, each and every day.

Last week both of these boys had looks of real distress, and when I asked them what was wrong, they told me the same thing: They're OTing me. I was late on the first day.

I told them, call your mom. Go get your coach. Get all your teachers - anyone who will fight for you. Nothing - nothing - makes me angrier than an educational system that works to weed out students who are desperate to learn.

not a rant

Last week was Hell Week as far as subbing was concerned, with me running class-to-class baby-sitting more or less feral children, as they all become when they go weeks on end without a consistent teacher for more than two days in a row.

Then I got hooked up with these really cushy jobs. We have some new teachers who did their student teaching here and were hired, but are still finishing up their last credentialing classes or haven't done their mandatory training week with The District, so they require a credentialed presence in the classsroom at all times. That was my job. I was more or less an FA - chilling behind the desk, making notes, helping students with their work. My mentor was responsible for my getting these cushy jobs, as he thought it would be good for me and the other teachers to gain different perspectives. He also wanted to displace the sub who had been filling this position in one particular social studies classroom, as he has the unfortunate tendency to commandeer the lesson from the teacher and preach God's word to the students. So he got kicked out and I was moved in. He was not happy.

Then we found out he'd gotten moved next door to an open long-term English position. You know - the kind I have been asking for since before I went off-track. The kind no one was aware we had available. After a few days someone did the complicated math and moved me into the English class, displacing "Mr. Church," as my kids call him, once more. Now he is day-to-day again, meaning he's taken a cut from ZZ (long-term) pay. Boy, does he hate me. He will not even look at me when we run into each other at the sign-out counter.

The English position has three preps, meaning I must prepare for and teach three different subjects per day. They are: English 10, American Lit, and Drama. Drama?!? Out of two full classes, only two students wanted the class. The rest were just sort of put there. One of the drama classes is a delight; the other requires constant maintenance. In American Lit today we started reading The Things They Carried (the short story, not the larger collection.) It took all period to get started because none of them had any clue what Vietnam was all about. As in, I asked what would have been going on in the world when O'Brien got out of college in 1968 and they were like, World War 2! Me: No, that was in the early 40s. Them: Oh. Uh...Pearl Harbor! One period was really into it and listened intently to my shoddy explanations of geopolitical intrigue. The other period, my last of the day, kind of made me want to die inside. The one girl giving me the most grief was like "I wish I had never come to school today. I am never coming to this class again." I told her, "Well, that's your choice. But I'll be here, and I hope you come back."

Pants. On. Fire.

Again, though, most of my kids are insanely sweet and really just need structure.

They did get one of their previous subs fired, though. At least, one girl did, and then transferred out of the class. The rest of the class is up in arms about it and I notice she hasn't been around lately, which is probably wise. The story is that she asked the sub, who was "tight as hell" and "real," about how drugs get into the US, and then went to the office and told them he was telling the class about drugs, which got him into trouble. I don't know the specifics; the social studies teacher I was FAing for tells me that kids used to say he talked about "weird stuff" even before this, but never specified what said "stuff" was. All I know is, he's gone and my students feel terrible about it, especially since it brought Mr. Church down upon them. This is also an excellent reminder never to trust your students with anything of real importance to you. This sounds like low expectations but really it's just covering your own ass. Example: the first of many students to tell me this story reported that "We were supposed to go to the dean and tell him what happened. But...we forgot."

I started school last week. I have class every Monday night and all day Saturday a few times a month. It's not hard, just inconvenient, though located very close to the apartment.

That being said, we're moving! We have new apartmenty goodness all lined up; the lease is signed and we get the keys on Thursday. It's cute and very cat-friendly, just like me and Aaron, so we will soon be an even larger, furrier, happier family.

Rant #2: Documentation

Back at Berkeley, I remember the reactionaries at BAMN endlessly shrieking about boosting minority enrollment. At the time I thought them short-sighted for focusing on the last step of a systemic problem, effectively protesting the symptom rather than the disease. They should be looking, I thought, for a long-term solution, not a band-aid: ways to make sure more minority students are prepared to go to college, made competitive by any standards, so this perpetual fight about quotas, lowered standards, and the displacement of qualified white and Asian students can someday end organically.

I've only been in LA for a few months, but it's already clear that my stance was not broad or strong enough. I was (and am) deeply concerned with the institutionalized racism that prevents minority students from achieving at the same levels as their more affluent caucasian counterparts, but I had largely ignored another issue: that of the children of "undocumented workers" or "illegal immigrants" or whatever else you want to call them. Like it or not, a significant percentage of minority (ie Latino) students in Los Angeles are undocumented. Many of them are in my ESL classes or have gone through the ESL program in the past, and many of their families chose to relocate to this country because of the educational opportunities it affords. The irony is that while all students are all entitled to go to high school, their undocumented status prevents them, unless they have private funding, from going to college. Ever tried securing a federal loan without a social security number?

As a result, some incredibly bright and highly qualified students are prevented from going any further than community college. Of 500 students graduating from my school last year, 174 were undocumented, many of them at the top of their class. Lest you think that being "at the top of the class" in a low-performing urban high school means nothing, consider our '05 valedictorian, who in her senior year passed five AP exams across multiple disciplines - English literature, statistics, environmental science, biology, and Spanish language - and now attends prestigious Long Beach City College. This year, the top two contenders for valedictorian are in the same boat. My colleagues joke thinly about marrying them off to American citizens.

It's true that not all undocumented students far outperform the national average. For every student like our valedictorian, there are a handful more who simply shut down and stop trying at all. When you ask them why, they explain to you, quite simply, that since they cannot go to college in this country, they see no point in preparing for it. It's a tough point to debate.

We need to take a good, hard look at our national values. We claim to value hard work, education, and self-improvement above all else. But who works harder than those who come to our country and do the exhausting physical and "menial" labor that native-born, "established" Americans would never touch? Who works harder than their children, who often come here neither speaking nor reading a word of the language, who must become fluent despite home lives conducted primarily if not entirely in Spanish, who daily must prove themselves and their right to be here?

If people want to do something about the racial and ethnic makeup of our colleges and universities, instead of just screaming about it, they'd do well to divide their problems between these dual problems: Why are so few minority students adequately prepared for college? And why are some highly qualified minority students kept out?

------------------------------------------------------

An interesting sidenote: between previewing texts for my English class, I'm working on Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser's follow-up to the bestselling Fast Food Nation. It's a collection of three long essays discussing America's black-market staples: marijuana, pornography, and unpaid labor. The labor section discusses the worst-off of California's immigrant farm workers, the strawberry pickers, and focuses on three geographic areas: San Diego, Santa Maria, and Watsonville/Salinas. So it seems that I'm from all the interesting places in terms of the study of misery.

Madness, incidentally, would be a great book to read while you're waiting for Shame of the Nation to come out.

Rant #1: Kozol

If you've done any kind of social justice study, you've probably heard of, if not read, Jonathan Kozol. Over the last 40-ish years he's written a number of excellent and important books on the underserved, overlooked and otherwise dispossessed of our society, including Amazing Grace, Ordinary Ressurections, Death at an Early Age, and Rachel and her Children. I first read his work two years ago, on a dreary break from school when I found myself cooped up in my barracks-style apartment with nothing much to do and nothing new to read. Wandering between the apartment's two rooms, I happened on a stack of my sister's sociology texts, and picked the one that looked least dry. It turned out to be Savage Inequalities, a searing indictment of the United States' segregated public school system. It was one of those books that didn't tell you anything new, per se, just forced you to look at an uncomfortable problem very long, and very hard. It is one thing to acknowledge that schools in poor, largely minority areas are "worse" than schools in affluent white areas. It is quite another to realize what that really means, every day, for the students of those schools. How can you read about schools with sewage leaks, schools without books or desks, schools located in abandoned, windowless rollerskating rinks, without anger and disgust welling up inside, without being angry with yourself for having nothing to give but hand-wringing and tears? It was while reading this book that I remember, for the first time, thinking, I shouldn't be teaching English in Africa or Asia. I am needed here.

The last Kozol I read was Amazing Grace. I carried it with me while I was going through the district hiring process, which, much like a DMV appointment, can involve hours of patiently waiting in flourescent-lit rooms full of the irate unemployed. A colleague glanced at my book and, spying its subtitle -The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation - told me it was an appropriate choice. This subtitle is dead-on for what we do in The Program: it's about education, yes, but moreover, it's about realizing that in our society as it is currently structured, education can determine the rest of your life - and about having the conscience to act on that realization. My colleague asked if it was worth reading. I told her yes, and also that I read Kozol when I have trouble getting mad. Because really, it's amazing how quickly we become inured to the injustices of society. Those of us from Berkeley are familiar with the cycle: at first you're shocked by the amount of homelessness you see, and you want to help, but you soon start to feel powerless. As time passes, that apathy changes to avoidance, and you shift your eyes away from their gaze; you tell yourself you need your change as much or more than they do. Eventually you become irritated with them - begging all the time, smelling so foul, sitting in your way when you're trying to get to class. You can fight these feelings, but if you don't, they can sneak up on you and catch you unawares.

I have been at my school for just two weeks, and already I am used to it: the lack of bathrooms, the shortage of teachers, the complete absence of keys, the library closed to the students, the "Tardy Sweep" that forces any student late to class to spend the entire period rotting in detention, the track system that robs them of 21 educational days per year - over the course of a K-12 education placing them one full year behind students on traditional calendars. I don't like these things - I outright despise them - but I am not surprised by them anymore. They have become the status quo.

And then, the other day, I looked in my box in the main office and found a copy of an excerpt from Kozol's new book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. The book comes out in two weeks, but Harper's Magazine is running a long essay adapted from the text as its September Report. The book was researched over five years, with Kozol visiting 60 schools in 11 states. The Harper's excerpt focuses heavily on mine.

Is this what you call "coming full circle?" Or is it called "getting what you asked for"? I read Kozol and I wanted to teach in those schools, the ones he talked about. So here I am, suddenly free of any doubt that this is indeed the kind of place he was talking about. He came here, and he talked to our students. And this is what he has to say about our school:

We have fifteen fewer bathrooms than the number required by law.

Bathrooms are so rarely open and operational that students often must go the whole day without using them.

Many rooms lack air conditioners and become so hot that students become sick and cannot focus.

The only vocational classes we offer prepare students for low-paying jobs: cosmetology, sewing, hairdressing.

We in fact offer two levels of hairdressing: hairstyling and braiding.

We force students into these classes, even those who request high-level and AP courses, because academic classes are overcrowded and few.

We force students into classes like "Life Skills," which teach things like the names and locations of the continents.

Rats have been documented in 11 classrooms and the kitchen.

Attending my school teaches students that they are not wanted by society.

All of these things are true.

So here I sit, pissed off at myself, because it is somehow so much easier to get angry about these things when you see them on the page than when you see them every day. Moreover, it is easy to get angry in theory, but to take absolutely no action. I am realizing how many times, already, I have told my students, "I'm sorry, that's just how it is," or, "I don't like it either, but you'll have to bear with me." They come to class hungry as their breaks aren't long enough to purchase food and eat it, and I am instructed not to let them eat; they spend their brief passing periods in line for the bathroom but never make it in, and I can't send them out because they'll get caught in the infernal Tardy Sweep, regardless of whether I write them a pass. My school is a bit militaristic this way, and completely illogical; they believe that students should be in class learning at all times, a proposition I agree with wholeheartedly until the student I have sent out for three minutes, to return much happier and more able to focus in my class, is detained and denied the right to return to the classroom for the remainder of the hour.

I remember Program veterans telling me, early on, that you have to decide if your loyalty is to The Program or to your school. I'm realizing that this is something of a false choice. Everyone involved is ostensibly trying to help my students, and "choosing a side" doesn't necessarily do much for me or them one way or the other. In the end, I think, I need to remember (as I always try to) that my loyalty is to my students. Crucially, though, I must act on it. I have students in classes like fashion, cosmetology, and the ubiquitous "Life Skills" (which one of my Program colleagues, interestingly, has been assigned to teach.) I have students taking "soccer" as part of their academic day, and also "filmmaking," which might be great, although I'm not entirely certain we own any kind of filmmaking equipment, and I'm certain students wouldn't be able to take it off-campus. I don't know what I can do about these things, especially in my first year. I do know, though, that I can be the teacher who makes my kids read a few young adult novels in addition to their ESL program, and who pushes my seniors to read tough novels and write long essays no matter what I'm told about what they are and are not capable of. I can start investigating the AP situation, how many we have and what I would have to do to start one up in the coming year and on my track. Our school has some AP classes, but in a school of 5,000 with three separate tracks, there can really never be enough.

Anyhow. The question for me is mostly how to hang on to my anger, and then how to turn that anger into a better life for my students. It would help me, though, if other people would get angry, too, so they might scream at me when it seems like I'm accepting my situation. So, if you can, go to the newsstand or the library and read that Harper's piece. If you are out of country, it may take awhile for the expat bookstores to get this month's issue, if they stock Harper's at all, and I certainly don't expect you to buy the thing at import cost - but maybe you could keep an eye out, too, and read the thing on the sly. I could even mail photocopies, if people were interested. As for me, I'll be buying the book when it comes out. The reality is that sometimes it's easier for me to believe what's in black and white than what's all around me every day. No one wants to believe they're surrounded by misery.

Week Two: Still going strong(-ish)

This week I started my temporary career as a day-to-day sub. Anecdotes/observations from the past three days:

• 2: Number of classrooms I was sent to which contained no students
  2: Number of classrooms I was sent to which already contained another sub
  1: Number of classrooms I was sent to which contained the actual teacher
  0: Number of times I have held a room key - any room key - in my hand
  
  
• Covering four periods of geometry, I initially thought kids were having trouble with their algebra review worksheets because they had forgotten the order of operations. They had, but that wasn't the whole problem. They had also forgotten their times tables. They did not seem to realize that they could just do the (admittedly tedious) addition; instead, they sat staring at their papers until I came around to each one individually and helped them through their problems. They were intially suspicious of this seemingly foreign practice, but by the end a few expressed regret that I was not staying in their class. Little do they know: I have entirely forgotten any geometry I ever knew.
  
  
• Covering one peiod of special ed, I had some students who read more fluently than my seniors, and others who could neither read nor write at all. One boy labored over his name for several minutes, then told me that his classes mostly consist of teachers "helping [him] spell." I intellectually knew it when I declined to check the "Special Ed" box on my application to The Program, but I really, really know it now: teaching SpEd is a whole other job than "regular" and ESL teaching (already two very different jobs.) It requires a whole other set of skills an an arsenal of personalized tactics and support strategies. I have the hugest respect for the good special ed workers out there. There are many - though of course, nowhere near enough.
  
  
• High school sports directors should not be allowed in the classroom. Today I covered for the sports director, who was on campus all day setting up for tonight's football game but who pounced on me the minute he overheard me asking who needed a sub. His students did not know what class they were in (all levels of English, incidentally, though the room betrays no hint of it) and told me he intends to "start teaching on Tuesday" when there's no first-game-of-the-season to worry about. I spent much of the morning flashing back to my own high school biology class, the bulk of which was spent sans teacher as he made equipment- and scheduling-related phone calls from the storeroom.
  
  
• The administration at my school is a joke. We have two principals and nine assistant principals. No one seems to know all their names or what they all do; the two principals are engaged in a protracted battle of one-upmanship and active undermining of the other camp. The schools is being divided into two campuses, North and South, which communicate by radio when at all and may be on different schedules next year. As the student who led me around campus on my first observation day astutely remarked, "There should only be one king for every kingdom." Not wanting to undermine my administrators before my first day of work, I told him that was true, if we automatically assumed we were dealing with a monarchic system. But even then, I knew he was right.
  
  
• All those people, and still, no one knows what the hell is going on. Who needs subs? Where is the person in charge of subs? How do I get to the top of the day-to-day list? No one has been able to answer any of these questions, with the exception, today, of "Where is the person in charge." (The answer, incidentally, was "Not here.") I have just been showing up every morning and asking who needs coverage. There is almost always someone, though I usually have to ask about four different people, and yesterday I got stuck in the principal's office for one period, helping the secretaries out with data entry. I debated refusing to do it, as it's about ten thousand leagues outside my job description, but they really needed the help, and besides, I was getting paid for the time. I also learned a lot about my school, not so much from the data I was entering as from all the gossip and backbiting you overhear when you're sitting in a high-traffic area in the chair of someone who most people routinely ignore anyway. It was a good experience to have, but I won't do it again - it felt too weird, like being back in middle school when I used to help my mom and the secretaries at her school make up student packets and end-of-summer mailings.
  
  
• Overcrowding is a real problem, and no one quite knows how to fix it. However, we also have the equally severe and completely solveable problem of uneven student distribution. First period geometry, for instance, had thirteen students; fifth period of the same exact class had about 50. They covered every available surface, including desk- and tabletops. A few refused to sit on the floor to do their work, as the floors have not been cleaned in months. I could not in good conscience force them to.
  
  
• I was intitially fearful of subbing, but in my incredibly limited experiences so far, other peoples' kids have been great. They have nothing to prove with me, there's that permanent Day One taboo against stepping too far out of line, and there's no grading involved at all. Of course, the experience is a thousand times better when there is a lesson plan waiting, which is not always the case. My plan this labor-dabor weekend is to make up a small Emergency Sub Kit which I can use in unprepared classrooms and leave for my own sub if I ever have a sudden emergency that's so big I can't spare ten minutes to scrawl a rough outline of the next day's activities.
  
  
• I finally went to the textbook room. As I suspected, it took over an hour to inspect and preview all my options. The selection is wonderful - I was hoping to find "a modern play or two," but instead found Jean-Paul Sartre, August Wilson, Eugene O'Neill, Lorraine Hainsberry, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, George Bernard Shaw, and Tom Stoppard. I was crossing my fingers for several specific novels, including 1984, The Bell Jar, Things Fall Apart, and Snow Falling on Cedars. All were present. I was pleasantly surprised by books like The Stranger, The Sound and the Fury, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, Heart of Darkness - all rich and complex works whose presence seemed too much to hope for. Maya Angelou and Barbara Kingsolver were both there - but so were Toni Morrison, Isabel Allende, Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alice Munro. And of course, let's not forget Sandra Cisneros.
  
  
• The textbook lady seems to like me a lot more now, presumably since I spent so much time poring over the stacks. I must say, I like her too - she does her job well and she's clearly there for the kids.
  
  
• I wrote a couple of big rants this week, one about undocumented students and one about Jonathan Kozol. Stay tuned.

let's get political...political

Today is the first day of B-track break. For my small school learning community (henceforth SSLC or CALA, Culture and Languages Academy), that means two days' worth of professional development. Today's meeting was mostly about creating and implementing a unified discipline policy, but at times it veered in other directions. Let me be clear that I am off the clock right now, and that the opinions I express are solely my own (for questions of education award), and then please allow me to call your attention to political matters. This fall, Californians will have the pleasure of voting on Prop 74, an insidious little piece of legislation backed by "Governor Schwarzenegger's California Recovery Team" that will increase teachers' probationary period from two to five years, and then completely undermine the idea of permanent status by allowing school boards to terminate, with a "modified process," any teacher who has received two "unsatisfactory" evaluation marks.

In theory, this is great for our students because it means only the best teachers are in the classroom, no matter what their status. Practice, however, rarely aligns with the theoretical, this being no exception. Teachers at my school are scared, based on their past experiences with administration, that the passage of Prop 74 will mean not that the bad teachers will go - there are too many of them, for one thing - but that it will instead be a tool for school boards and administrators to get rid of the vocal teachers, the ones who voice displeasure at idiotic "reforms" that do nothing for the students, who demand pay for time worked, and who commit any other crime against the well-oiled machine that is the educational bureaucracy.

The thing to remember is that "permanent status," as it stands, does not mean you have a job forever. The dismissal process, however, involves lots of documentation and, if requested by the teacher, a hearing, as well at 90 days in which to improve. Prop 74 wants to get rid of all of that unneccessary "procedure" and "due process." My overwhelming impression is and has always been that when bad teachers are not fired, it is because a bad teacher is still slightly better than no teacher at all, and with a teacher shortage as severe as California's, I think we would do best to spend our efforts aggressively recruiting and retaining excellent teachers. People don't want to teach in California because it's not worth their while. They work too damn hard for too little money, with the guillotine ever hanging over their heads. And while Prop 74 claims to "[reward] the best teachers [while] weeding out 'problem teachers'" (and yes, that phrase is raising my eyebrows), the only "reward" it offers is "being allowed to keep your job."

The fear around these parts is that the whole thing is part of a sinister Republican plan to completely and intentionally undermine the public education system, priming schools for lucrative privatization. It sounds a little crazy until you notice that for more information, you're directed to joinArnold.com - and until you hear that this kind of thing is happening all over the place, even down the street, with one of LA's most troubled high schools in talks to be taken over by Green Dot, a successful but controversial charter-school organization. I haven't been around long enough to start weighing in on conspiracy theories, and I need to see charter schools for myself before I commit to a stance one way or the other. But what does worry me is an issue captured succinctly in the "Fiscal Effects" section of the prop report:

Given the longer probationary period, districts could dismiss more teachers during their first five years. This could result in salary savings by replacing higher salaried teachers toward the end of their probationary period with lower salaried teachers just beginning their probationary period.

My mom works in schools; she always has. In my young life I've seen more pink slips, reduced hours, ingenious ways to avoid paying health insurance, and multiple-positions-combined-into-one than I can even now make sense of. One of my friends here works in Jewish day schools; she has her MA in religious studies and has heard that this may make finding work difficult because she is entitled to higher pay. I have never - never - heard of an increase in any budget that was easy to access, came with few strings attached, or lasted longer than a yer or two before being decreased to below the original amount. My life experiences up to and including this very moment have made me immediately suspicious of any way to cut costs in schools. School costs a lot, but it does not cost nearly enough for what we are asking of it. It's only the future of the nation we're talking about here, only the life prospects of entire generations. For my kids in particular, a good K-12 education isn't the difference between a state school and an ivy league; it's the difference between learning the language of their nation of residence, or remaining effectively illiterate and doomed to repeat the cycle of poverty. They should have the best teachers we have, no matter what that costs. I'm sure the people behind Prop 74 think that's what they're giving us, but the best teachers we have think differently.

Anyway, the thing is ahead in opinion polls right now, and it sounds pretty good on paper, the way the whole "Defense of Marriage" thing did a few years back, until you stopped and realized that marriage didn't really need defending. All I'm asking is that you not go with public opinion on this one - look into it, read the counterarguments, think it over, and above all, talk to an educator or someone else on the ground inside schools. Then, take that information and pass it on.

This is my favorite part of the ballot:

Unfortunately, Opponents of Prop 74 Don't Want Reform:
They will stop at nothing to defeat Prop 74 and have spent millions for television ads to confuse voters on the reforms we need to get California on track.

Advertise? How dare they!