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.