Dirty Dancing and Uncensored Music - It's Prom Time

There's something really depressing about having to tell a parent with only two and a half weeks left of school that their child has an F. It's difficult to understand how some parents can be so surprised after an entire year of progress reports and grades being sent home. Unfortunately for some of these parents, they only understand the grade printout I give them, and don't understand enough English for me to explain all the good things that happen in class for their son or daughter. Math is traditionally the lowest performing subject at Richmond High, and as I looked around on Open House Night on Thursday, it seemed as though other teachers were having a lot happier interactions with their visiting students and parents. Of course, I was the only math class in my hallway, but I heard that other math teachers had similar experiences. I think over the summer I might consider brushing up on my Spanish because this night only reminded me that one of my goals for next year is to communicate way more with parents. It's just really intimidating when you know for a fact that the parents on the other end of your phone call do not speak English at all. I realized I really need to get on that next year, in large part due to the sheer number of parents that were in shock that I give homework every night. Apparently it's pretty common for my ninth graders to tell their parents that they don't have any or that they finished in class. I think next year I'll make getting a signature from their parents part of their homework at the beginning of the year.

I'm actually pretty excited about starting the year over in a few months, to start things off with all the proper discipline actions and rules and procedures; I have had a lot of thoughts about "if only I had everything figured out on the first day of school..." Plus, next year our school will be getting about seven new TFA teachers since we have so many leaving. In one year, I will have gone from new, first-year teacher to veteran teacher. In three months, I have to act like I know what I'm doing for all our new TFAers, especially for the two math teachers we will be getting. To tell you the truth, I'm a little bummed I no longer get to be the "new-teacher-that-is-doing-much-better-than-we-did-in-our-first-year" teacher that everyone says to me - either out of truth or just plain courtesy to build my self-esteem. It's just weird that all of a sudden I have enough experience now to give help and constructive criticism to the new guys. I think it's similar to the feeling after being a freshman in high school or college, and realizing that next year you have to flip the mature switch so that you can all talk about how immature the new guys are.

In a nutshell, that's why I really want to get a break from teaching ninth graders - but of course I've been told that next year I'm teaching even more Algebra classes and probably an upper-level math class like Precalculus. I am super excited about the upper math class, and the possibility of teaching some of my awesome students again, but I'm actually pretty pissed that I'm not teaching any Geometry. All I've been thinking about these last few months is how I'm going to organize my materials this summer, and because of that, how incredibly awesome Geometry is going to be. Of course, I've been told what I'm teaching next year about 20 times, all from different sources, and every person has told me something different, so I'm going to assume nothing. Richmond High organizational skills strike again.

That being said, RHS prom was an incredible success. The event was in San Francisco at the SF Design Center, and the venue was actually pretty cool. Thanks to the horrible Homecoming events this year, we were over-prepared with staff chaperones this time, myself included. It's weird to think that we were all surprised that nothing bad happened; although it's much easier to handle the 374 students that were there compared to the couple thousand at school each day. Of course, when I say nothing bad happened, I'm not including the alcohol the students were drinking before and after the dance, and I'm also not including the dance moves that were the equivalent of having sex on the dance floor. And believe me, this doesn't even compare to the "dirty dancing" that my own high school was (and probably still is) familiar with. I was assigned to the third floor of the complex, so I don't know if anything was done about these minor (but not really that minor) things. All in all, having to stand in one place for two and a half hours was incredibly boring.

I had fooled myself into thinking that chaperoning was going to be a little fun, because I went out for dinner with a whole bunch of teachers in SF before our shift started. As it turned out, all the older teachers chose the 6:45-9:30 shift, and all the young teachers took the 9:30-12:15 shift, so we decided to make use of our formal attire beforehand. At dinner, I found out exactly how naive or uninformed I've been all year - they all had the scoop about EVERYTHING that has been going on at Richmond, inside and outside of school. I also learned that young women teachers are as bad as high schoolers when it comes to gossiping, and I think that's where they get the gossip to begin with. Anyway, it gave me an interesting perspective of TFA teachers (pretty much everyone there was TFA) - either we have some very creepy or dangerous characters as teachers at Richmond High, or TFA teachers are overly judgmental. According to dinner table conversation, our football coach at school has sexual harassment problems and deals drugs to students; he is, coincidentally enough, the one the confiscates the drugs from students to begin with, so it all makes sense. There is also a teacher on campus that literally hides students in her room when they don't want to be in their own class - in fact, we have been told to not accept any hall passes from this teacher and a couple other faculty members. It's definitely hard to maintain expectations of a positive learning environment when the staff isn't even all on the same page. According to the table's harsh review of our faculty, we are all over the map, so it's no wonder kids get away with so much crap at school. Although it did make me wonder what they would have said about me if I weren't there. Hopefully nothing - I tried not to add anything to the conversation and simply observe. If nothing else, it just reminded me that all the teachers - not just me - desperately need this summer break.