Christmas Break FINALLY

I found that there will always be new challenge every week to which I must react, but unfortunately the most recent has been the slow deterioration of my computer. The four and a half years of my Dell laptop has seen replacements of my keyboard, charger, and screen, and now battery life has been reduced to about seven minutes and the clicker doesn't work. All that has been taken in stride, but the final straw was the failure of the already-replaced screen. Now the challenge is deciding whether I want a new laptop or desktop. Needless to say, new blog posts were difficult to accomplish without a working computer.

As usual, a lot has happened since my last post. Thanksgiving break was insanely short, making the December school days seem to last an eternity. The last week was the worst week since the beginning of the year; the students were appalled that A) I gave out a test during the last week and B) that I refused to let them just watch a movie in class. The excuse of choice was, "...but we aren't doing anything in any of my other classes..." Whether or not that's true I have no idea (believable for some of these teachers). I'm already worried they're going to forget everything over the holidays, which makes the nearing end of semester particularly scary.

Despite being December, the events that unfurled during the last few weeks in West Contra Costa Unified School District suggested anything but Christmas spirit. I haven't had the chance to do a search for the stories on the internet news sites but here is what "the most wonderful time of the year" entailed for one of the TFA girls that lives with us: a little over a week ago, her school was on lockdown for three hours because of a race riot taking place on her campus at De Anza High School (a couple miles from my school in Richmond). Apparently huge groups of black and Latino students were creating a massive fight that ended in four teachers getting assaulted and eleven students arrested. Six of those arrested were students of our friend's - and I might add that this is the same girl that was originally given 70 students in one biology class; it is also the same girl whose plane to New York for Christmas got cancelled because of the snow storm. Not only that but there was some other fallout from the original riot (including two black girls spray painting "F*** Mexicans" all over the school on the lockers), making me wonder how the hell she has not put in her two weeks notice yet. My school comes from the same hate-filled community but at least doesn't ever have anything quite as scary as that.

The other event happened last week at the nearby middle school - this time it was a 12-yr-old girl getting raped by a 14-yr-old boy on campus during school hours. Apparently it's still up in the air whether or not she was actually raped or if she claimed that so she would not get in trouble, but the teachers at my school are right: the huge thing here is that there is sex happening in the middle school building. The whole thing really is sad, especially considering that these teachers that have to deal with all these issues are facing huge cuts to their benefits, prompting so many teachers I know to ask, "Why should I stay here?" when they know they could be financially so much better off in another school district (that would hire them in an instant). The new district-union agreement goes into effect on the first of the year, so there are at least a few teachers at my school that said goodbye at the holiday party. When our union leaders actually tell us the information we need to know, I'll be sure to pass it on. Hopefully with the new year comes a fresh start to just about EVERYTHING in WCCUSD. They need it badly.

In other news, I organized a co-ed soccer team a couple weeks ago with a whole bunch of people in TFA and we had way too many people interested, so I had to be a jerk and tell handfuls of people that they couldn't play for lack of space. However, a nice side effect has been the fact that our team is actually really fun and really good. It's about time; my roommate and I have been aching for some good and fun soccer. Other than that, I think just about everyone I know is ready for the holiday break, although I fully predict the weeks when we get back to be super rough...

Week of Weird

This week was a little odd- okay, most weeks are odd, but I decided to write about it this time because I realize I seldom write on happy days.

First of all, the majority of my students had no idea that we had Thursday and Friday off, which suggests that Thanksgiving is not a big deal to this community. I was appalled, because when I was in high school, I always knew when the next break was; strangely enough, that much hasn't changed now that I'm part of the faculty. In retrospect, I regret telling them because I had a lot of kids say that they just weren't going to show up on Wednesday, which I can say was apparently somewhat true today.

Secondly, some of the things these kids say are just ridiculous. In a conversation with Kheyon yesterday, he asked me if I was "all white," to which I gave a confused look. He clarified by saying that most of the "white" kids at the school only looked white and were really half Mexican. I guess Mexican is the trump race then when you're half and half... I responded that I guess yes, I am entirely of European ancestry, and he replied, "cool- you're only the second completely white person I've met." I hope I'm setting a good impression in his mind for the entire white race. I feel so much responsibility now!

Not to be outdone, my entire 5th period class (which is strangely 95% girls) really wanted to hear about my weekend. I told them I got a substitute on Friday because I had a wedding to go to, and they ran with it, asking me why I hadn't told them I was getting married. It's hard to say if they were kidding or not. Gotta love these kids, but they are so gullible. A handful of them still think I used to play for the San Jose Earthquakes soccer team. I had fun making up that elaborate story to them - sometimes I make up little lies to them about my life just to see what they will believe. They've narrowed down my age to 23 (still wrong), but even then, I had someone today ask me if my son goes to Richmond High. Apparently there's a student that looks like me; even so, I decided not to get into a conversation about the possibilities of me - in my early twenties, having a kid that is 15. Needless to say, my kids have a long way to go in the common sense department.

Speaking of common sense, my students and logic do not get along. Today was a minimum day and I didn't know what to expect or how many students to expect, so I'll admit: I gave a semi-unprepared lesson, if you can even call it that. We did a word problem and some (really easy) sudoku games, which overloaded a lot of my students with "too many numbers and too many rules." My question is: how do you teach logical reasoning to them. Today was a return to my thoughts earlier this year of "how do you not understand this?" Oh well- today wouldn't have been a good day anyway for a lesson because our clock stopped working (but PS: most of these kids can't read an analog clock anyway, so it was only me that was affected).

And to top off this short week, we had a student-faculty volleyball game in which I played, and consequently landed myself in the position of boys' volleyball coach. At least that's what the principal and the sports coordinator think. I had to explain to them that while I'm honored and will think about it, I really don't know that much about volleyball - only that I love to play it. Boys' volleyball is in the spring, so we'll see I guess. But that just goes to show the lack of leadership around here if they are willing to put me of all people as the head of the volleyball team...

This is definitely a unique place, but I think I'm finding my niche and the students are coming around to me. I had to take Monday off too for a meeting, so when I came back on Tuesday, I had tons of students saying that they missed me! Well I'm not naive; I just choose to disregard the sarcasm in their voices. They love me.

Now if I could just get them all to learn math.

Union Scandal

I almost forgot to update the status of our potential teacher strike - yes, apparently the teachers' union is still considering it. "Considering it" is tricky language however, because the union reps have realized that our disorganization has put us now in a place where we probably won't win anything from striking. The only amount of money we would win back would be the amount of money we would be losing by not coming in to work... at least that's how our rep explained it to us. The whole voting system is totally messed up, because we already voted to go on strike if the district did not meet our demands, and last week we had another union vote.

The slimy thing though, was that the vote was more or less weighted in one direction simply by the language on the ballot. Our reps presented the terms of our most recent contract, and we were to vote "yes, we accept those terms" or "no, we want to strike." On purpose, the union leaders did not include a choice saying, "no, we do not accept those terms" because they knew that the union members were afraid of doing a premature, disorganized strike. The word around Richmond High anyway is that they have given up and do not want to strike, so they are trying to legitimize the decision by making everyone vote to not strike and accept the offer. Confusing, I know. The situation would be funny if it weren't for the fact that the agreement says that teachers with families will still have to pay $500/mo on healthcare for their dependents starting January (among other things: class sizes, etc).

On top of that, word is that our union president is facing impeachment... or whatever you call it in a union. She definitely wants to go on strike, and school district gossip says that during the vote count (the initial count was in favor of not striking by only nine votes) she took them all to her room to do a "private recount" and found that the recount was in favor of striking. Scandalous, ridiculous, and totally disorganized. Welcome to West Contra Costa Unified School District.

October was a long month

I realized recently that leaving the previous post un-updated suggests a lot worse than I have actually been feeling. Don't get me wrong - the days around the last post were rough, mainly because I was just too frustrated to even think about lesson planning. Unfortunately, the chaos at school coincided with the last week of the quarter as well as the week my students were taking a math Benchmark Exam. Needless to say, my kids probably could have done a lot better on that exam if this gang rape case had not turned our school upside down. I'm surprised that through it all I still managed to dress up for Halloween on Friday. My kids had been telling me I look like Michael Phelps, so I wore a swimsuit, flip flops, goggles, and a homemade Olympic medal, which was fun. I had just enough energy to go out with friends to San Francisco that night, but stayed in on Halloween from exhaustion. I think I just took a day off from life that day - lounging and sleeping a lot.

The weeks since then have been a lot better. After a particularly emotional meeting with my TFA advisor, she paid me some special attention and visited my worst class twice in one week to give feedback on how to improve. I think it helped a lot, and at the very least, I can leave school happy instead of pissed off at my 7th period Algebra students. Also, in the week after Halloween, the student body organized a community event to stand up against violence; it was really great, with music and tons of student involvement. During the week, too, the kids passed out strips of blue cloth for everyone to wear during and after school as a reminder that our student body DOES care about horrible things like this that happen. In all I think the most destructive thing that came from the homecoming chaos was that the media made it seem like none of the Richmond High students cared or felt like this was anything out of the ordinary.

I think everything is as back to normal as possible now, although I am way behind on grading and am brainstorming new ways to give credit so I don't drown in all these papers. As it is, my roommate and I are equally contributing to a mess of an apartment - paper and teacher supplies everywhere. On the bright side, I've heard that this November/December stretch is not nearly as awful as the October month was, so things are looking up. Plus, I've been asked to help out on the soccer team (girls JV I think...) for one day a week, so I am pumped for that.

In all, things have actually not been that bad - my finances seem more in order than ever before, I'm staying in shape with soccer and actually pretty healthy food (I never eat fast food), and I have a pretty good relationship with my students. It's just discouraging and hard to swallow when I hear from multiple sources that success is rarely found during your first year of teaching when you teach in a place like Richmond. There's always more work to be done, so right now, I'm just having trouble knowing when to stop and be satisfied.

And also I need a vacation. I'm already committed to a Mt. Bachelor ski trip in January, and am organizing a Lake Tahoe trip in February. The thoughts of skiing will get me through the rest of 2009 :)

I Don't Even Know What to Say

Today I realized what it's like for these kids to try and focus on school when there are bigger things going on. These are not the articles I would have liked to have read upon making it to school this morning:

http://www.contracostatimes.com/top-stories/ci_13644237?nclick_check=1

It can also be found on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/27/california.gang.rape.investigation/index.html

Up until now, it just seemed like everything was a little crazy and disorganized. I feel so naive to have thought that even here, this kind of shit would not happen. The girl is not in one of my classes, but is in our Academy, so she's in all my team teachers' classes. The worst part is that the girl is a special education student, and I am already considering which of my own special education students could fall victim to the same thing. Today's team meeting was a somber one, especially considering the fact that for the Teach For America teacher across the hall, not only is the victim a student of hers, but the arrested suspect is a past student of hers. I had one kid taken from my class today for questioning, so even I couldn't focus today, let alone my students.

The whole thing is horrific, but on top of that, I had several students expressing how upset they were that the event has been made out to be a Richmond High School issue instead of a Richmond community issue, and how the news made the students seem emotionless to the event. Apparently the students were referring to news interviews of parents of primarily white East Bay high schools. Contrary to popular opinion, not all of our students are part of Richmond gangs. That being said, the end of the quarter is this Friday and I wish there was a way I could get my hands on a list of all gang-affiliated students in my class, because right now I really just want to give all of them failing grades.

Homecoming

Holding the profession of being a teacher really hasn't made me feel too old, but it truly felt bizarre being asked to chaperone the Homecoming dance this weekend. Long story short- I declined. After witnessing the craziest Homecoming pep rally I have ever been a part of, I am glad I ended the week right there.

As another tribute to the disorganization of our school, Friday was rally day, with students wearing their class colors - surprisingly, it was okay to make the senior color red. And the day ran as usual, with me wondering what the hell is going through these kids' heads as both my Algebra classes decided to show up to class without papers or pencils or backpacks - nothing at all. Days like these reinforce my prediction that middle school must have been a joke for these kids to think that the teacher is going to waste an entire 45min class period simply because we have an assembly at the end of the day. Although after experiencing my first rally, I believe that I too will be distracted the entire day of the next one, simply out of anticipation of chaos.

After six shortened class periods, students were running out of their classes into the commons area where somehow the entire senior class had managed to each get a can of silly string. I did not wait to find out what would happen after that and instead made my way to the gym, where the students filled the bleachers by class level. It was hands down the loudest high school event I have ever attended; it didn't help that the entire thing was run completely by students - no administrative announcements or anything throughout the entire thing. Come to think of it, I only know it was a homecoming rally because halfway through, the football team ran out and jumped around in the middle of the gym for a while to loud music. The two girls "in charge" were apparently sophomores based on the color of their outfits, and were wearing microphones like pop singers do at a live performance. It was fitting because that's what the whole thing felt like. Oh yeah, and one of the emcees was the girl that has been skipping my 7th period Algebra class for five weeks now.

Anyway, it is clear that this demographic (or generation?) of students expresses themselves primarily through music and dancing. From an organized rendition of the Mexican Hat Dance and a four person performance that can only be described as serious dirty dancing (WAY worse than my high school!) to the dance team's version of the entire Thriller music video, there were a lot of kids enjoying the spotlight. It was the most energetic school event I have ever seen, although with that came lots of silly string EVERYWHERE and a few eggs and apparently one orange. According to every teacher I talked to, this year's was the best so far. Last year, during the parade that followed outside the school, two floats apparently ran into each other head-on and students were in the middle of the street preventing the flow of traffic. Times like these make me wonder if these students read Lord of the Flies in English class - or if it maybe hits too close to home. These kids are crazy!

Outside of school, I've finally gotten around to doing real-person things. On Wednesday I signed myself and my roommate up for a soccer team that we found on Craigslist. We lost the first 8-on-8 game and I was horribly out of shape but taking my mind off of school and feeling motivated to exercise has been like a breath of fresh air. The team is a bunch of guys like us, just dying to play soccer, so I think it's a good scenario. Likewise, friends from San Francisco came to the East Bay today to join me in hiking the 7 miles up and around Mt. Diablo. Great times and great views; I want to go hiking every weekend now. And I learned today that it is tarantula mating season in Mt. Diablo State Park, which was confirmed when I came inches away from stepping on one today! Definitely my first time seeing one in the wild. My roommate would flip if I told him about it...

A New Week

Last week was a rough one. The sad thing was that it was only a four day week - we had Friday off - and yet I felt the need to take a personal day to make it only a three day week. What can I say... when it rains it pours.

I was exhausted after only one day of teaching on Monday, and then had to spend four hours of my evening at California State University for credentialing classes. Upon getting home, I decided that Tuesday would be my first substitute teacher day, mainly because I had no plans ironed out for the next day. The silly thing, in retrospect, was the fact that I still ended up making lesson plans for my sub the next day. But my day off was much needed, and I actually got a lot accomplished that I had been putting off forever. I perfected my extra credit system and created all new seating charts.

On Wednesday every high school in the district gave PSATs for three hours in the morning to every student in our first period. By the end of the test, less than half of my students were spending the time to read each question before filling in a bubble. In their defense, the system was completely disorganized because myself and other teachers really had no idea what we were doing. Discipline was difficult because the consequence of voiding their test if they cheat did not matter to those who did not care about the test in the first place. The people who made the PSATs would cry if they saw how poorly the tests were delivered and executed. And then following the three hour long test, the kids were expected to go to every period and actually learn something. Ha. Yeah right. My kids were saying, "Mr. Bretl, I'll try, but I bet I'm not gonna learn anything you teach today." I don't blame them.

And Thursday ended with a bang. One of my kids smacked another across the face in 6th period, opening a previous cut the kid had, sending blood ALL over the kid and his desk. Both kids were sent to the office, and I don't expect them back tomorrow. But again, no learning happened after the event, and my 6th period students were nice enough to fill my 7th period in on what had happened so they spent the first half of the period wanting to hear the play-by-play. By then I just committed to trying a new start on Monday.

So here I am Sunday night, and yes, tomorrow is the beginning of a new week. I'm feeling good. I figure you always need a crappy week to compare back to, so that was it. I'm much better planned for tomorrow anyway.

Enjoying the Sunset

Today was a good day. After a full day of teaching, we had a four hour teacher credentialing class- even so, this is probably the first day that I didn't have to do any planning for the next day. Tomorrow is test day for both classes, and my big accomplishment this weekend was completing them both on Sunday. I think I'll go to bed early!

Driving home from Richmond at 7pm made me realize how amazingly beautiful the Bay Area is. On my right, the sun was setting behind the silhouette of San Francisco and a perfectly picturesque Golden Gate Bridge, and on my left, the glass on the buildings of Oakland were reflecting the fading oranges and pinks of the sky across the darkened bay. Dusk is beautiful and I think I still haven't quite realized that I live in the Bay (okay, Oakland...).

Back to School Night and more

When I was in school, I never imagined that teachers would pray for Friday as much or more so than their students. This job can now be classified as monotonous, and while I have so many plans in my mind of how to mix things up each week, the knots in my back and the cankersores in my mouth and even the lack of sleep prevent these ideas from making it into successful lesson plan form. I realize that sooner or later my kids will get sick of using the overhead. Unfortunately I am out of my quarter's-worth of paper, so making handouts seems an unlikely alternative; as it is right now, my roommate steals a ream of paper each day from his Oakland middle school to provide for me and my Richmond high school.

On the bright side, I would say that my classes are going well. Okay, fine - Geometry is going well. Okay, fine - 4th period Geometry is going well. It seems like the rest of the classes are finally starting to come around and realize that I'm not planning on lowering my standards at all. I've been actually giving them second chances all the time to improve their grades; I'm trying to eliminate any excuses they have for not learning or not getting good grades, because I know a lot of these kids are dealing with serious issues that you or I have never experienced, let alone at that age. In the end, it is making more work for myself, but I can live with that.

It's also a little easier to do this for your students when you have felt the satisfaction of depositing your first real job paycheck. For those 24 hours before most of the money got spent on basic living expenses, my bank account felt pretty good. Definitely more than I have had to my name in years.

Despite this, there is apparently no strike planned, which begs the question of what all of our older teachers with spouses and children will do when January 2010 rolls around and they experience a 23% pay cut for all the money they now must spend on health benefits. On the one hand, I am relieved that I don't have to go through the stress of a union strike just yet, but on the other hand I was kind of banking on the strike happening and spent the whole last week daydreaming about what I would do on my "time off." Maybe I should take a personal day soon anyway. My students have actually been saying that I am their only teacher that hasn't had a sub yet.

On an unrelated note, Thursday was an interesting day. We had our first real lockdown, which surprisingly did not feel dramatic or scary at all - for myself or my students. I don't think I'm phased by the safety issues at home in Oakland or at school in Richmond, because it sounds worse than it really is. Plus, those issues rarely show their face at school. Anyway, I had one of the assistant principals knock on my door during the lockdown, providing me the biggest moral dilemma so far at school. After an angry conversation through the locked door and opening the door to her demands that she let a student in, I gave her a piece of my mind about how it is completely unacceptable for her to knock on a teacher's door during a lockdown. She said she did not know we were in lockdown. The assistant principal. School disorganization at its finest. Oh yeah - and all this happened while I was getting observed by my program director.

This whirlwind day was capped with Back to School Night, where I met about 40 of my students' parents. The students came too with their parents, which usually turned out to be for translation reasons; about half of the parents spoke very little English, and I was not about to try my three years of Spanish from high school. Unfortunately the 40 families that attended on Thursday were not the ones that I would have preferred. Ideally, I could have talked in person with parents of my problem kids or parents of kids that are seriously failing because of truancy or just being multiple years behind in math. However, these are the parents who did not or could not show up. Still, I was impressed at the total trust placed in me and other teachers by these parents - considering the obvious fact that I am merely months out of college and four years out of high school myself. It was just strange how for every parent that I shook hands with, I felt the responsibility and power in determining exactly how the parent-child relationship would go for the rest of the night, and possibly the rest of the month. This realization truly struck me when Cristian's mother looked at me in shock when I explained to her that her son had only attended Algebra three times in the last six weeks. But now adding these parent relationships is only putting more on my plate. Like I said: I need a strike!

Week Five?!

The first unit of teaching has come to a close, but moving on is difficult when so many students are failing. I'm trying to reserve judgment, but I just can't comprehend why these students can't make it to school so often. They are doing a raffle at school for all the students who haven't missed a day of school yet - only 60 out of 2000. And I ask these kids why they weren't at school when they come asking what the missed, and I can tell that they are lying to me when they say they were at the doctor. I don't know what past teachers these students had, but I get the feeling that these students don't actually think that I will give them an F. One of my kids said to me on Friday, "Aren't you proud that I came to school today?" On a bad day, I just want to reply, "No Andres, you actually make it harder for me to teach the rest of the class when you are here."

That's the most upsetting thing I've found is that while there are students here that truly want to learn as much as possible and are committed to it, there are also students that pretty much do anything and everything to detract from that classroom commitment. Case in point - I gave my Algebra class pretty much an entire class period to correct their poor quiz grades for additional points, but a handful of students just didn't want to do the work and instead distracted others. When grades and points are no longer effective motivators, what do you do? Why do these kids come to class? I know there must be things that I can do to remedy this, but I feel like I don't have time for these trial and error games!

Week Three

Just in case you were wondering, gum in the hair still happens in high school. That was my 6th period yesterday. These kids are crazy right after lunch (yeah- there are five periods before lunch) and the fact that they are freshmen does not help matters. I definitely have some characters as students though; I am blessed with the presence of Anita every day, a girl who has absolutely no manners whatsoever- and yet is really smart, so she shouts out every answer. When I ask her to stay silent to let some other students learn too, she reminds me that her mother always says not to care about the other students in the class- only on her own education. Needless to say, she is not well liked by her other 6th period classmates. And then in 4th period, Fabio has convinced the entire class that I look like Michael Phelps, and has "accidentally" asked for help by saying "Mr. Phelps..."

I can deal with all that, but I must say I was disappointed to grade the quizzes last Friday and find that each class got about a 60% on average. Then again, I am also disappointed that the school is still in the third week switching kids in and out of my class. It makes grading a nightmare for a new teacher. Not to mention the fact that I expect 1st period to learn less due to truancy. At the end of last week, I had only seven students in class when the bell rang and then 18 tardies throughout the period as people rolled in. On one hand, I feel like I shouldn't have to spend each morning catching all these students up to where we are- I want a negative effect so that they decide to actually show up on time. But then on the other hand, it is my goal as a teacher to have them all on track... all the time. So every morning I am exhausted after 1st period trying to get everyone caught up. Hopefully they'll respect the time I'm putting into this. After all, from other stories I've heard from other TFAers, my kids are relatively angels (knock on wood).

Just a quick update - time to get back to planning. (I spent too much time this weekend in San Francisco getting enough ahead - although I will say that the best thing about holiday weekends is not the extra weekend day, but the fact that the week is only four days!)

The Honeymoon Phase

...is what the first couple weeks of school have been referred to as by a fellow teacher at my school. While I do thoroughly enjoy my kids, I get the feeling that the math department doesn't get quite the honeymoon experience as do other departments at RHS. Today I talked to my students about how test scores from last year show that only 8% of all students at the school meet the "proficient" level for algebra after a year of instruction (and only 1% for geometry). My students suggest that these appalling results are because they don't care about the California Standards Test. Today I made a mental note that this issue would be my biggest to deal with over the course of the year, since our departmental goal is to drastically improve those numbers. Meanwhile, the administration wants us to start curriculum asap so we can close that gap, meaning overnight I had to fix my lesson planning so that the first lesson is tomorrow. I guess they don't believe a diagnostic test is that important for my 160 students.

Apparently though, I have it pretty good. A fellow TFA apartment-complex-mate works at nearby DeAnza High School as a Biology teacher and she has 190 students total, with at least one class over 50 students (in a lab set up for 24 students). She assures me that they are definitely breaking fire codes at that school, and with that many students, keeping authority is impossible: today she had three students call her a bitch, and the f-word is all too common. Thankfully I don't have that to deal with.

Still, teachers at my school have called this one the worst year yet when it comes to scheduling, because even with the frequent ridiculous class sizes, there are others with rosters of only seven or eight students. But don't worry - we have been informed that these problems will be fixed by the third week...

...By then I will have already given a unit test in my class, so I fear for those changes and I pity the students that have to go through that. Teachers in the meantime are furious, so needless to say, the strike authorization vote last week resulted in a 93% yes vote from the United Teachers of Richmond. Tomorrow we make picketing signs before school. Still haven't decided how I'm going to approach that scenario... All this just seems like unnecessary grief when I am up to my ears just trying to finish my algebra and geometry lesson plans for tomorrow. I already promised my kids I wouldn't be boring.

First Day of School!

West Contra Costa Unified School District is a difficult place for a new teacher. Not because of the students, not because of the area, and not even because of the other teachers. It's difficult because everything is organized so last-minute. I had to learn everything about my school in one day - very overwhelming to say the least - and set up my classroom in one day (I should have taken before and after pictures). Still, my classroom is a little depressing next to those of other more established teachers.

Let me just say that today was an awesome day. Especially considering the nervousness I had approaching the school this morning, and the lack of preparedness I had for the sheer number of students attending Richmond High. That being said, I learned a few things today:

1. Teachers (more than just me) get nervous on the first day of school too - perhaps even more so than students.

2. Teachers spend all lunch period gossiping about their students, already deciding which one their favorite is.

3. Teaching the same thing five periods in a row really messes with your mind.

4. To teach five periods in a row, you must equip yourself with throat lozenges - I hope this sore throat goes away by tomorrow (otherwise not only will I look young, but I will sound young too when my voice cracks all over the place).

5. Replacing a well-liked teacher like Ms. Seawright makes kids give you a hard time and have immediately higher expectations.

6. In the evening, the janitor throws away anything and everything in the hallways. Including textbooks. I found mine in the dumpster this morning (I salvaged them). The silver lining is that now I have a good relationship with the librarian (I hear this is nothing but a good thing).

In the grand scheme of things, besides demographics, RHS is not much different than any other high school. Okay, what I mean is that it feels like any other high school. The kids act like normal teenagers and apparently our soccer team got second in state. However, the structure of the school is really not like anything I've ever seen (no windows in my classroom) and the math test scores from the school are downright awful. There is a daycare in school for teenage mothers and an office for the on-site police officers, which is weird to me, not to mention the fact that the nearly 2000 students all have lunch period at once. Chaos.

The classroom walls are paper thin and every announcement on the intercom is read in both English and Spanish, so there's a few things I have to get used to. Luckily the teachers offer an amazing support system, so I'm not too worried. Only exhausted. Now I just have to figure out what I'm teaching tomorrow...

Iminent Disaster

I spent forever trying to make a clever play on words for the two impending strikes soon to take place in the Bay, but I gave up on baseball inuendos. Both the BART strike and the Union Teachers of Richmond strike have been called off for a while, but the possibilities of each are doing all to make my life more stressful than it needs to be right now.

Tomorrow I go to new teacher orientation, in hopes of finding someone at my school who could help me out in the event that rapid transit chooses to shut down; I also meet all the people making up the future picket line that I may have to cross in order to make money this September. The good news is that the UTR strike is called off for now; the bad news is that most veterans to the district expect it to go on after school starts - and after I have met all my students. The district has slashed its funds going to employee benefits, only pinching people like me but devastating people whose entire household is reliant on those benefits. I see a rock and the hard place approaching. The Bay Bridge is closing all Labor Day week too, so let's just hope the planets aren't aligned - otherwise it may all happen at the same time.

Today was a session for our "Academies" at Richmond High School, something like interest groups or career paths in high school where a chunk of the student body learns under the direction of a group of teachers. I can see it being a good thing, guiding students to college and career interests. Although, I'm in the Law Academy, so apparently no prior knowledge is required... Agh! Disorganization!

Getting these Posts Back on Track

School doesn't start until August 25, but we all had to get settled in the Bay earlier so that we could get a headstart (or just a start...) on lesson planning for the school year. During the summer, pretty much everyone was lesson planning night by night and I guess the lesson we were supposed to learn was that working night by night is not sustainable. Before school starts we're supposed to have a structure of units, learning goals, and lesson plans for the year, with specifics weighted towards the beginning of the year. Oh, and I suppose I should tell you that I'll be teaching 3 periods of geometry and 2 periods of algebra 1 during the year...

The remaining weeks mark the final stretch for taking care of teaching and credentialing logistics so everything runs smoothly for us in the fall. I've found that "smoothly" can be interpreted in many ways with Teach For America. For instance, I would say that things do not always run "smoothly" when all of our correspondence to our school and teacher credentialing program must be done through TFA. It wastes time and causes confusion, among other things. And I seriously doubt I'll be using the word "smoothly" to describe how my teaching experience is going this fall when I have to attend classes of my own after school 3-5 hours at a time once and sometimes twice a week. We attended two additional days of course planning training earlier this week, with a specific session devoted to mental health. Luckily, I think I have a great support system around me in Oakland - six other TFA people live in my building and a good number more live nearby.

I'm living in an apartment complex just outside of downtown with a slight view of the lake. It's basically your typical apartment with mostly good things: a large, nice layout, huge windows, a pool; but then of course it has its quirks, like a sleazy assistant apartment manager, light switches on the wall that do not turn anything on - not even any of the outlets, and no ceiling lights at all actually. With no furniture of our own and the need for ample floor lamps, our place is beginning to look like an IKEA showroom, but I suppose I can live with that. And by the way I think our apartment is actually quite nice - nice enough to willingly show it to my parents I mean.

Other than our mattresses finally getting in, the only big news is that Nicole, one of our TFA building-mates got her car stolen literally the first day we were here. Strangely enough, it wasn't stolen from the apartment or in Oakland. The TFA sessions earlier this week brought us to the Berkeley Marina each day, and her car was taken in broad daylight from the hotel parking lot. Since then, the police found it, completely totaled. I think Nicole has proven that this support system we've got going will work out just fine.

Oh, and I've already figured out my first real world example of algebra for my math class: would a sane person choose a U-Haul or a Penske truck for picking up a craigslist couch? U-Haul is cheap but charges by the mile and Penske offers a flat rate. I'm sure the high schoolers will enjoy hearing that their own math teacher got suckered by the prices and got fooled into thinking that U-Haul was cheaper. Or maybe I should tell the story to them as strictly hypothetical...

Transitioning

Oh, where to start... We only recently got internet set up in our apartment, so I know my updates have been lacking. The four weeks of teaching summer school at Hamilton High are long gone now and today marked the end of the additional two weeks of class my students had after I left. The good news: one of my students messaged me on Facebook that he received two B grades from my class; the bad news: I have multiple students that have found me on Facebook.

Amidst the mess of my room right now (no surprise there) I uncovered the exit surveys we gave to our students on our last day of teaching this summer, asking questions like how they think we did as teachers. Needless to say, the secret that we were new teachers was uncovered a long time ago by our students. The stack of papers is definitely a self-esteem booster, but I find it strange that even the handful of failing students said I was a clear and effective teacher and ranked me a 9 out of 10 as a teacher. Still, there's a handful of responses that I think I'll put up on a self-motivation bulletin board that I'll probably create:

"10 - Mr. Bretl is cool and looks alot like Tom Cruise..."

"I would want him to teach my friends because he's a wonderful, and great teacher, he can brighten a dull room."

"He is really chill and he explain things with time I'll give him a 9."

"It would be great if he could teach here, Because he is calm and patient, thats always good in a teacher; because you'll confront alot of hard-head stundents. But on the other hand I think your a great instructor. Thanks for all the help. 10."

The week at home following that experience was nice, staying for a friend's wedding (first close friend to get married) made the transition brutal once again. I made the drive from Seattle to Oakland - 14 hours - the morning after the wedding in my buddy Mitch's car. I didn't really have a plan as to how to get back down to the Bay with all my stuff, so long story short, I learned how to drive a manual transmission car in less than a week and packed the convertible the tightest it has probably ever been packed. And still, I forgot things. One thing I did learn from the experience, however, is that 5 Hour Energy really does work. The trip was a breeze, all things considering.

So anyway, home is where the crapload of belongings are - which is Oakland right now, and will be for a while. My beautiful* apartment is located a few blocks from both Lake Merritt and the nearest BART station, though I haven't ridden it yet. More on this to come!

*beauty is in the eye of the beholder

I Wanna Teach Alone

For years, I've hated working in groups. It probably has to do with the perfectionism in me, but throughout high school and college I tried to overcome this weakness. Still though, when dealing with less than ideal groupmates, I get frustrated at the decisions they make that I now have to deal with.

Needless to say, team-teaching has played out like most of my group experiences have; normally I'd be worried, but apparently this has been the common scene for all groups at Institute. You end the experience taking your team relationships to the extreme: love or hate.

I think I've said it before, but as a team we rotate among the concepts we teach. And in math, the whole idea is that the concepts completely build off each other, so once something is taught one way, you're pretty much committed to teaching and reteaching it that way for the rest of the lessons.

One of my groupmates tries way too hard to be the cool teacher and in doing so, decided that he would teach factoring of polynomials using the "factor booty" method. I can't describe it in words, but I will say that one of the steps involves drawing a "butt" on your paper, and now I feel like an idiot in class every time we have to factor something on the board. Let's just say our styles of teaching don't quite mesh...

But I can deal with that. What I'm having trouble dealing with is the style of our faculty advisor. Each teacher trainee must have a registered teacher in the room at all times for the scenario to be legal, so our faculty advisor is him. The thing is: even though we do all the teaching, he does all the grading. When the students got their progress reports for summer school, he even added in comments that he had not told us about prior, so now we have students asking us why there are certain comments on their reports, and in some cases all we can say is "...I don't know- I'll have to ask Mr. Sanchez for you..." And I am just waiting for the phone call from Ms. Valladares wondering why her daughter got 30 points taken from her for texting in class (and as a result going from a C to an F-... That's right! An F-! Now I have Jackie thinking that there's nothing she can do to pass the class, so why try...) The sad thing is that when TFA leaves this school in a week, the faculty advisors teach for another two weeks, so they have the final say in grades.

Now don't get me wrong, I definitely wouldn't have students pass that obviously have not learned the material, but I would still do many things differently if I had the class to my own. I'm sure I'll look back at this and laugh at how good I had it with all the support people around me, but in the meantime, I wanna teach alone!

On my way back from lunch I saw someone's dorm window with a "5 days left" poster. I'm sure they'll turn it into an "hours left" poster by the end of the week. I have a feeling this last week will be rough. After all, it's crunch time for our students: they have to take another assessment on Thursday so TFA has their student achievement data!

In the meantime, soccer...

The Good and the Bad

I’ve decided that regardless of the overall tone of each entry, I’m going to start them on positive notes. The problem is that the urge to write for me comes hand-in-hand with the need to blow off steam, so this will definitely be a challenge for me from here on out. I promise you won’t be subjected to entries like this very often; I only feel like I need to set some context for what I’m dealing with day to day.

Good news first. About half my class has an A or A- for progress report day. Some students have seriously completely transformed their studying and participation behaviors over the short period of two to three weeks, and their written reflective responses to their grades after the first test have been very interesting reads – a few have explained how they originally didn’t want to be at school but now they really care about math and succeeding. Things like that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

On the flipside, we have six failing grades and a handful more on the brink. Two of our students even got worse scores on their test than they did on their diagnostic test on the first day, even when they were the exact same exams. It’s scary how easy it is to leave someone in the dust and not even know it – especially when the student is quiet enough that they don’t speak up when they don’t understand a concept. Hopefully we’ll make up for lost time with those students this week so that they can actually comprehend the current lessons. I’m actually meeting with one of the students this Sunday for extra time to catch her up to where we need to be. It just would have been nice to know about her learning disability before talking to her mother on the phone about what I can do for her child.

As painful as Institute training is, four weeks teaching in summer school is really not an ample length of time for what we want to accomplish. For one, four weeks isn't even enough time for the school to legally tell us which students have an individualized education plan due to a learning disability. I’ve found that it’s really hard to have the goals of realistic teacher training and student achievement mesh well, because what helps a teacher prepare for teaching on their own doesn't necessarily align with what helps students achieve. For instance, we work in teaching teams, so my students see three teachers each day, rotating through each lesson. However, when I'm not leading a lesson, I have to act like I don’t exist in the classroom anymore. If a student has a question, the lead teacher has to answer it; if the class misbehaves or gets totally out of control, too bad – the lead teacher has to deal with it because “in your region you have to deal with these things alone.” I understand the idea behind this, but ultimately, class time is often wasted just for teacher “experience.”

That being said, Teach For America is one of the most reflective organizations I have ever known. They survey regularly after each procedure or experience is complete – and at the end of every week – to figure out what they can do to make things work for us. They are super receptive and actually send representatives from their operations team to have emergency meetings when surveys uncover corps member dissatisfaction. Already in these past few weeks, there have been many procedural changes and even staff “leaves of absence” as a response to surveys and discussions, so I definitely see the advantages to the high level of structure and organization in TFA. It seems as though their goal is to make it so that corps members have absolutely no excuses during their experience here, and I truly appreciate that. And with that plug, I feel it only fitting to share the video we watched in session a few days ago. It gave me chills. This guy is my new hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU

On the normal side of life, I made time for a movie and saw “500 Days of Summer,” and walking out of the theater we saw Kate Beckinsdale. Alright, I only saw the back of her head, but everyone else with me saw her face so we know it was her. Anyway, I loved the movie and recommend it to everyone.

Okay, back to lesson plans.

Halfway through Institute

So I guess I'm really more than halfway done, having been here at Loyola Marymount University in LA for three weeks of our five week stay, but in reality everyone has their own way of measuring the time passing here at Institute. Some measure it by what we get for lunch this week, some with a countdown of days in their dorm window. I'm just measuring it by the number of teaching weeks gone by. Thus far, I have been an Algebra 1 teacher for 9th and 10th graders at Hamilton High School for two weeks.

I suppose I should say this whole experience began in Berkeley even before coming down here - mind you, this happened only a week after graduating, so the pace of life has not slowed since frantically finishing my senior capstone project at the U. I found that it's quite an ordeal to make sure I've "said goodbye" to all my friends in that short span, especially with the need to prepare my things from school and from home to move my life from Seattle in a matter of days. But one "last night out" and two overstuffed luggage bags later, I stepped onto a plane heading to the Bay.

In Berkeley, we experienced the week-long version of Teach For America logistics presentations and what they consider training to get us ready for training in LA. I really only took two things away from that week. The first: TFA is a well oiled machine, almost entirely statistic-driven and quite corporate-feeling on the large scale (good or bad, I don't know). Second: Institute teaching training is not meant to be fun - and it won't be. Myself and friends were pretty sick of being told this by the end of the week, and I particularly didn't enjoy this opinion being made for me. All in all, TFA is a great organization, but that is not to say I don't have my rants... more on this later.

One thing TFA does well is incite a level of camraderie amongst its corps members. Good or bad, ups and downs, we definitely have the feeling by now that we are all in this together, which is weird, because I often feel a little out of place among the Ivy League graduates. Now that's not to say that I am friends with everyone here; there are a handful of people that I just want to ask blatantly to their faces "How did YOU get here?" It's just definitely an interesting dynamic. I keep telling people that the corps is full of type A personalities so things can get pretty intense and heated throughout all of this, and then at the end of the day you realize that all these people have varying degrees of "work hard play hard" personalities. It's weird to think of the possibility that all my teachers from elementary to high school would all get drunk or go clubbing on the weekends... I suspect this is one area where, as recent graduates, we won't be quite like the other teachers.

But enough of that- I'm sure I'll have more to talk about on that subject throughout the next years (that's weird to say). Anyway, here I am at Institute, and I will admit, the first week was hell: so much information being hammered into our heads from so many angles through various strategies of repetition... Being able to actually teach has been the best part about this experience, because after two weeks of wondering what we got ourselves into, we got reminded exactly why we are here.

I wake up around 5am every day, leave for school in school bus full of teachers (quite a sight when we unload at the school) around 6:30 and my three person teaching group welcomes students with a handshake into Rm 607 at Hamilton High School to be seated and ready to learn Algebra (again) by 8am. The catch is that this is summer school and all our kids have failed the class once before. Let's just say I was not mentally prepared to reteach adding and subtracting negative numbers when the lesson plan for the day was to teach solving two-step inequalities. Oh yeah, they don't know how to multiply or divide negative numbers (and sometimes positive numbers) either, which makes it difficult to explain how you need to flip the inequality sign when you multiply or divide by a negative number...

That first week was rough. I've told people that I felt bipolar for those first days in front of the class. After all, my kids really seem to like me (one student said I should teach their old teacher how to teach), but understanding the material takes a lot more than them just liking me. Since then, I have gotten into a better groove of things, but our exam results from Friday left our group a little discouraged. To no surprise, TFA sets a summer goal for each student based on an entrance exam, and their reaching of the goal is measured in an exit exam (the exact same test) taken after teaching the material in summer school. Overall, our kids met 56% of those goals in the class. Unfortunately, our own goal as teachers is to on average reach 100% of those goals, and even worse is that some of these goals for students would still equate to C or even D grades during a normal year. Apparently getting them to pass the class alone is a bigger feat than imagined.

I'm sure I'll rant about this later, but you'll notice that these students of mine just experienced Algebra 1A - a semester class - retaught in two weeks (ridiculous I know). Tomorrow we begin Algebra 1B, even when a few students didn't improve at all in proficiency in the first ten days of class. Each day we break into small groups with the three teachers, and my group is the one that needs the most help, so I'm hoping to finish this Institute experience strong!

As far as being told Institute is not fun, I very much disagree. For four weeks now I have surrounded myself with some of the most motivated individuals I have ever met from all over the country. Most of these people have amazing life stories and are incredibly sincere, opening up to help others as well as themselves during this experience. There is a group willing to play soccer pretty much every day after school (...whether or not it's a good choice, since we have seriously limited free time) and every weekend there are new and fun plans with friends. Last night we went out to Korean BBQ and karaoke afterwards... so guess what, TFA? I'm having plenty of fun and there's nothing you can do about it.