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 :)