Six Weeks Remaining

...and not a moment too soon.

I took another day off today; the stresses of the week on top of the crazy class schedules during CST testing was a little too much to handle this week. It was nice instead to spend an evening with friends from UW that are now working in the Bay Area. I got a tour of Facebook in Palo Alto out of it, so that's always cool.

For starters, the math CST on Wednesday was quite discouraging - way harder than any of us thought, and a lot of my amazing students said it was impossible. Actually, the two weeks of CST testing in general were discouraging since I got to see the standardized testing behavior of the students at our school. As it turned out, since testing was done in the kids' second period, and since that is my prep period, I got all the overflow students from the PE classes, which was awful. Each testing day was like a flashback to the beginning of the year when the students test the teacher to see what they can get away with. Let's just say I was not planning on kicking a kid out of testing for throwing grapes against the wall.

Since I never got to see my own students testing, it felt as though all their preparation was in vain, because I wasn't looking over their shoulder to make sure they were taking it seriously. For the group taking the test in my class, there was at least one student that filled in his answer bubbles with a zigzag pattern, and showed me before he turned it in, as if he did it to see what my reaction would be. Other than that, I feel like we were given poor training (if any) to learn how to proctor a state test, which I'm sure the students picked up on.

The worst part was having classes after three hours of testing, and convincing whiny teenagers that I am still holding them responsible for doing work. The only day I was nice was the day of the actual math CST, when we watched Super-Size Me. I told them we were watching it because I was appalled at what they eat for lunch everyday. The reality is that there are tons of overweight kids at school, and so many of them know someone close to them with diabetes. Of course the impact of the film is still up to debate, especially after one of my students came in after school simply to show me that he was eating McDonald's.

Thursday was a rough one. My roommate woke up at 4:30am to be the first one at his school to picket for the one-day Oakland teacher strike, only to cross the lines at 8:30 and teach for the day, and then picket again after school. I don't know how he pulled it off without making enemies, but it sounds like it's possible at a small school like his if you play your cards right. With the amount of head-case teachers at my school, there is no way I would cross a picket line for fear of future slashed tires. It might be just around here, but unions can get ugly.

Anyway, the news at my school on Thursday was that a boyfriend-girlfriend couple from Richmond High - two seniors - committed suicide Wednesday evening by jumping in front of an Amtrak train. All I can think is that it's no wonder RHS gets a new school psychologist nearly every year. We just need to get through these last six weeks without anything else happening!

That being said, I also learned yesterday that there are many devastating things that happen to students that I never hear about. For instance, in the main office on Thursday I saw a student of mine that has been gone for over a month from my class, and she was actually a decent student. Upon asking her where she had been for the last however long time, she replied that she had recently gotten stabbed in her side, so she was unable to sit in a desk at school. I was definitely a little shaken up by that.

I've found that it's possible to remain ignorant of many of the things that happen in the community of Richmond that affects the kids. Certainly the gang rape and the deaths become common knowledge at school, but there are other things that you will only learn by talking to students or other teachers. On the one hand, I want to know everything that goes on in this community so that I know where my students come from, but at the same time, I wish I didn't hear some things, like for instance that an RHS student was arrested for armed robbery last week and will be facing more than a decade of jail time. It's one thing to just hear that fact, but it's a whole other thing to hear it from a teacher who had him last year or the year before and could honestly say that he had more potential than that.

Thoughts for year two: how do I instill morals and good choices into my students? ...because I don't want to have to think about a student of mine dying or going to jail. It's quite the opposite of what we're supposed to be thinking of - having students going to college. But I'll be realistic and say that my main goal is that my students graduate high school. When the graduation rate is 50%, I think that's an okay goal.

The Butt Incident

I feel obligated every so often to remind myself and everyone else that this blog tends to become an outlet for frustrations and hardships, so it is not a fair indicator of my happiness (and sanity) level throughout the year. As such, I figured I would take the time on this amazingly beautiful Friday to explain the happy and ridiculous things that happened today.

Since today was our last review day for CST material, I made a big show about how amazingly, incredibly excited I am that they are taking the test in the next two weeks and that they are going to be more prepared than they ever have been, so they should get excited too... to which they replied that I am crazy and have a horrible sense of humor (but they laughed, which I pointed out). Despite their reaction, I had more than a handful of students saying to me that they'll probably skip school on some of the CST days, but they'll be sure to be at school for the math test. I told them that I was about to tear up. At least I know they're going to try. Showing up is often the hardest part for them.

Of course, that was Geometry. Algebra has quite a different dynamic; so much so that today I heard from another teacher that students in my class have been taking pictures of my butt on their cell phones when I'm not looking. Since I have no idea which students they are (ALL the students have cell phone problems), I'm just not going to draw attention to the situation and hope it passes. I thought we were done with the whole crush-on-your-teacher thing when they found out that it was not going to help their grade whatsoever. Maybe it's just because of my giddy Friday mood, but I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. It probably won't be as funny when I catch them doing it in class. I'll probably have to scare them with a whole sexual harassment lecture. Until then...

A Bad Week and a Good Read

It's not the fact that parents are less involved in their kids' education, and it's not due to the fact that so many in the community are economically disadvantaged. I think the biggest factor that separates the achievement levels that we see is the amount of violence and conflict that proliferates every day in this community.

Veteran teachers are even saying that this year is the worst yet - at least for that I am glad this isn't the norm for a school to deal with. Case in point though: yesterday there was shooting at Pinole Valley High School in our district during a track meet that left one student injured. At least every time something like this happens, the criminal is not a student - which is not to say that they weren't former students that dropped out.

Lunch in the teachers' lounge today brought a real downer of a conversation as we recounted all the crappy things that have happened in West Contra Costa schools this year, from the Richmond raping incident and recent death to the De Anza race riots, as well as the assault on a police officer at Kennedy High and the evacuation after bomb threats at Hercules High School. And that's not including the various cases of students getting arrested at schools from fights. Needless to say, our district's PR is not great right now, and it's more than just the test scores that are making the teachers wish we could just start over.

Every month or two, there comes a week where it seems that all teachers' schedules converge and we all have the worst week of our lives all at the same time. The camaraderie helps us all get to Friday still living, but we lose hours upon hours of sleep in the process. This month's edition was made extra bad since one of my roommate's students died over the weekend in a car accident. For my roommate to all of a sudden become distant and reserved was a little distressing, especially knowing that it's his outgoing humor that makes this job a little easier. Of course, I remember that during November I was a horrible roommate with similar reactions, so I suppose I had it coming.

Anyway, (to lighten the mood a little) on an unrelated note, the headline Time article this week was entitled "Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?" and can be read here http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589,00.html. From my perspective, it's part fascinating and part blasphemy. Either way, it's a case study that I think will leave you very opinionated or emotionally charged... or perhaps that's only when teachers read it.

In other news, California State Tests (CSTs) begin next week, and the math day is less than two weeks away. The countdown begins.

The Comparison

I have never been one to associate spring break with resort-style places like so many of my friends in college (Cancun! Mexico! Hawaii!), so this break was just what I needed. The anticipation of leaving Oakland started way too far in advance, probably due to the fact that March was officially "the longest teaching month" at our school. It did not help that the looming California state assessments were nearing, prompting my Teach For America advisor to get too close for comfort. Interestingly enough, these days it is not the actual teaching job that generates the stress so much as the influence from Teach For America. I understand their goal and philosophy, but there are times when I feel like TFA doesn't acknowledge the hard work that we do day to day. Pushing us to become better teachers is fine, but I often feel that they are more concerned with getting the results they need from us to show the public. I have even heard of some teachers making their tests a little bit easier so that their data for their students suggests a little more achievement; apparently the biggest reason they do it is to get TFA off their backs. I suppose my frustration with the organization that accepted me comes from the fact that my total student achievement (TFA is obsessed with numbers) hangs around a 60%, when our "Big Goal" is 80%. I understand that there are a lot of things I can do to improve my teaching effectiveness, but I wish that these results were taken in the context of our school's test scores. TFA's Big Goal might be 80%, but my Big Goal is to improve our school's test scores.

That being said... (that was not the direction in which I intended on beginning this post) my roommate and I got on the road headed for Seattle pretty quickly after school got out, with the only immediate goal of getting the hell out of California. Teach For America is a great training program in establishing high expectations out of yourself and your students, but throughout the year the organization loses effectiveness, as it seems so out of touch to specific issues that each school is dealing with. My roommate shares this belief, especially since his school was labeled as one of the lowest performing schools in California, dishing him a lot bigger issues to deal with than how to please his TFA advisor. Needless to say, the 13-hour car ride gave us time to vent about it all.

It was probably very healthy for us to not think about teaching for a week, but it turns out we both visited our respective high schools - to gain perspective, I guess. I really don't know what I was expecting to get from the visit; all I know is that throughout the year, I have found myself thinking many times about how easier or less stressful my job would be if I were teaching at my own high school.

I had some interesting reactions to a day of sitting in on math classes, and if it weren't for my roommate having similar reactions, I would feel apprehensive to sharing them. First off, it made me realize that TFA is an amazing organization, and truly knows the correct values and expectations to instill in teachers. I really do not believe that I am arrogant, but we both agreed that if we were to put as much time, energy and planning into a teaching job such as one from the high school from which I graduated, we could easily be the best teacher in our respective departments. Now that's not to say that the students weren't achieving; there were plenty of "if only..." thoughts running through my head as I mentally compared the behavior and academic progress between these students and my own...

What truly blew me away was first the thought that this was my education - what I came from. And yet, in many ways, I believe even these students aren't getting the education they deserve. Perhaps TFA has brainwashed us all to think that no teacher has it all figured out yet, but it seemed upon my visit to my hometown high school that no student was really being pushed. From my perspective, you may be able to understand how that situation seems like a waste of an amazing teaching opportunity. Of course, there are many differences to be seen between the two schools with which I am most familiar. First off, school starts 50 minutes earlier, which is still funny to me, since even at our late starting time I'll still only have seven students on time in first period. Having hour-long classes makes a huge difference compared to our 52min classes at RHS, especially since homework rarely gets done at the consistency of Skyline High School in Sammamish, WA. Because of this, we have to fit in Independent Practice time so that I can trick my students into doing homework problems before they leave. At Skyline, teachers seemed to take a much more leisured pace with the material, with a loosely structured agenda - compared to Richmond, which no doubt requires planning of instruction down to the minute in order to prevent chaos in the classroom. And it's not just that the students are much better at self-governing; the biggest contributor to the difference in behavior is that there are no student-student conflicts in class! Oh what I would give to have a class without a set of students that would literally kill each other if they sat next to one another.

So actually, I return tomorrow to school feeling a little better about myself. Things like class sizes, classroom resources and technology, and the expectation of homework over the weekend may have saddened me a little in thinking of all the ways my school could be better, but I am beginning to understand what was meant when I was told that I could teach anywhere after teaching here.

Teach For America's whole mantra is to close the achievement gap, but the interesting thing is that the TFA teaching strategies would be just as helpful I think in upper-middle class schools too. The irony is that while the implementation of these high expectations would improve the education of the students even in upper-middle class schools, that would almost detract from the original goal of closing the achievement gap, since both reference points would be improving at the same time. So what's more important - closing the achievement gap, or collectively improving the education of the country? Food for thought.