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.
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