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!