"When Halloween lands on a school day" and other tales from Oakland

So I'm in the middle of teaching in 3rd period today and there is a knock at my door. And I absolutely hate having to stop whatever I am doing to walk all the way over to the door and answer it, because as luck would have it, the knock always comes right when you have miraculously collected the attention of your class, only to lose it in the time it takes to walk to the door and address whatever it is that is deemed important enough to disrupt class in the first place. Actually though, it seems like it all happens during 3rd period. It's a when-it-rains-it-pours-type scenario.

Of course when I answer the door it's a student of mine from last year who decided that it was the perfect time to go trick-or-treating between classrooms. My limited patience did not allow the proper thought process to ask the most important questions (In what class are you supposed to be? What the hell are our site supervisors doing to let this happen? How the hell did it become an expectation of these kids that they will receive candy from every teacher today?), so I closed the door on her face. She'll get over it.

We began quarter 2 today, marking 25% of the school year being up. Things are going pretty well all things considered, but I still had not imagined this amount of nightly planning to still be plaguing me at this point. You would think that I would be able to reuse material, but I'm really trying this year to transfer everything to computer format so that I can offer the rest of my department my materials by the time I leave. I know it sounds archaic to still be handwriting lessons and handouts, but seriously you should try to format all these equations and geometric figures in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. It takes some serious time. Plus, there are no textbook materials that are scaffolded enough to help my NSH or super low-skilled students. NSH stands for Not Severly Handicapped, which is a level of Special Education one step above a separate day-class. In my 3rd period, 13 of my 39 students are at this level. Basically if I can get through 3rd period unscathed, it has been a successful day.

Of course right now I'm running mandatory tutoring sessions set up by our administration every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so by 5pm I'm beat regardless. It seems so silly that because of my hard work and effort in this job, I am "rewarded" with more teaching obligations. I'm all for helping my students out, but this school is running me into the ground and I really don't feel like the administration has taken the time to thank us individually for our hard work. They are taking me for granted, but I'm not complaining too much since it eventually gives me an excuse to fall back on for why I'm not coming back next year. Pretty certain about that. I just completed a DonorsChoose project for 12 boxes of paper for our department and upon wheeling the 20-pound boxes around to my math friends I just kept thinking how ridiculous it all is. I just have to get out before my motivation makes a nose-dive, which I predict will happen the moment I see our still-crappy CST scores at the end of the year. Don't get me wrong - I have full faith and confidence in (most of) my students and that fact that I am pushing them way more this year, but I can just feel myself being set up for devastation when things don't change as much as I thought they did. Plus, I keep getting my former students coming to me for homework help and their homework makes me want to march over to the other math teacher and slap them in the face. (In your 10+ years of teaching high school math in California, do you still not know what concepts are and are not tested on the CST and the high school exit exam??? Why are you wasting their valuable time with this nonsense???) Enough of that though.

I've been trying to do and think of other things besides teaching as much as possible to keep me sane and stay happy, so I'll cover the other current events. I'm sure you've already heard about the Occupy Oakland riots; the proximity and intensity of police sirens and helicopters overhead allows me to gauge the situation each evening even before turning on the television. Tomorrow the citizens of Oakland are trying to organize a general strike, which makes me laugh thinking about how taking a day off is harder in most cases than actually sucking it up and teaching a day of school. It's also kind of ironic how I don't make enough money in my job to feel comfortable taking a day off to protest the inequality of financial distribution in our country. It makes me wonder what kind of jobs all of these Occupy protesters have that allows them to take days and weeks off at a time. Maybe it's the fact that I'm so zoned in to my own job, but it seems as though there is so much going on in the world around me to which I really don't even have time to respond. It would be nice to have a job where I have time to actually cultivate a well-informed opinion about current events before they are replaced by new current events... Just a random thought.

Oh, also I wanted to mention the craziness of our school's earthquake drill a week or two ago. It was California's earthquake awareness day, and our drill proved officially that we would all die at school in the five minutes it takes to funnel us all out the back door instead of making the 10 yard walk from my classroom to the strangely labeled "Emergency Exit Doors" (if an earthquake isn't an emergency, I don't know what is). But while inching down the hallway en route to the doors on the other side of the school, I could only smile realizing that it was all par for the course. I figure we still do things like that to create a unique school personality that can never be replicated among any other public schools. The craziness I was referring to was actually the fact that in 6th period that day, we actually had an earthquake that shook the walls a bit, and later that evening another one hit, both between 3.0 and 4.0 magnitude. The timing was eerie to say the least, and I would have forgotten about it if it weren't for another one at 5:30am last week that woke me up. So far I have felt five earthquakes since school began this year, compared to just one in the whole two years prior. Creeped out a little? Me too.

Okay, time to man the candy bowl for Halloween. Do you think they trick-or-treat in this neighborhood?

3rd year charms...

Sorry, the title did not quite convey the sarcasm I had hoped it would.

Earlier this evening, as I spent my time using a spatula to scrape off the old star stickers from a used laminated assignment chart poster, I thought to myself, I need to write down what I am doing at this very moment to remind myself that I never want to have to do this ever again. Let the records show that reusing class posters is not worth it. This particular instance made me realize that there is an absurd amount of things that I do besides stand up and teach in front of a class. In fact, that may be the easiest part of the job.

With Steve Jobs' passing today, and considering my roommates adoration for all things Apple, we naturally watched one of Steve's commencement speeches to Stanford graduates. His message was to not try too hard to see how the dots of your life will connect ahead of time, but rather to make choices in jobs and life that make you happy and look back later to see how the dots connected themselves. Now, I am a very gifted person in that I can make stress out of nothing, so first let us just ignore the fact that I may not be able to comfortably live my own life with this motto. But considering that I admire the ability to live that way, it made me think about the parts of my job that make me happy and upset.

First of all, it is true that this job makes me happy. It makes me happy that the majority of my students from last year go out of their way to greet me around school or visit me in my classroom or stop by just to tell me that they miss being in my class because their new teacher "...don't teach nothin'!" It makes me happy that my students got the highest state test scores out of all the math teachers at RHS and that I am respected by my administrators and coworkers as a more "legitimate" teacher than I certainly felt my first or sometimes even my second year.

Secondly however, this job upsets me. It upsets me that so many of my students from last year cannot learn in their new math class. Did I hold their hand too much, or did I provide them with the same resources that they need in their new class? It upsets me that my abysmal state test scores are above every other math teacher's on staff. It upsets me that our students' incredibly poor performance in math somehow prevents the administration from ever acknowledging anything good that I do. It upsets me that nearly half of 9th graders have not memorized their times tables or mastered adding and subtracting negatives. It upsets me that my life right now consists only of eating, sleeping, teaching, planning, grading, tutoring, photocopying, and playing soccer (aside from Mondays which are date nights).

Monday was my first personal day of the year, and I planned it four days in advance, meaning that on my way out on Friday, everything was already taken care of for me to take the day of on Monday. Honestly, I forgot what it felt like to temporarily lose the layer of stress in your upper back and shoulders and to actually relax for once on the weekend. Tomorrow is Back to School Night, so it is back to the daily grind now, but I just wonder if I will ever get to the point where I can truly relax in my job.

I doubt it. I spend way too much time redoing lesson plans to better suit students' needs, and I am sure that the standards I set for myself are unreasonable considering the emotional fallout that exists from learning of all the trauma the devours these students' lives.

Anyway, the first unit tests are in and it looks like we're beginning the year once again with a 55% Algebra average and a 65% Geometry average. It hurts my soul a little bit to feel like I am not improving from last year. Of course, this year our Freshman House gets the lower-level special education students, so maybe that helps to add a little perspective. All I know is that unless Unit 2 goes better than Unit 1 did, this will be one long and painful final year.

Summer Review: Part Two

Oh man. It is October and I still have to fill you in on the rest of my summer life since June. This scenario is freakishly similar to how I feel teaching every day. Always behind. It is a never-ending game of catch-up. But to get us back on track, here goes:

Back in June, after seeing my sister graduate from high school I flew back to California to teach summer school - which by the way is something I swore to never ever do. Here is a textbook example of how you can get me to do anything if you ask me on a happy optimistic this-job-is-awesome day. But honestly, it was a special summer program for kids who chose to sign up, which is a million times different than teaching the D and F students who do not want to be there. Still, there were plenty of students who admitted that they were there either because they had nothing better to do over summer or because their parents signed them up to stay out of trouble. These were the kids who decided that this was "fake school" and that they did not have to do anything. But whatever, I'm used to dealing with those attitudes by now, and I was much more optimistic in the idea that I was able to teach classes of only 13 and 14 students (Glorious!). I actually have some of those same students in my classes right now, and Jackie actually has one too, which is pretty awesome.

The original post-summer-school plan was to go on another long hiking trip, this time through the Sierra Nevadas for about 212 miles along the John Muir Trail. Unfortunately our late wet spring afforded California too much snow to handle, and it stuck around too long for the trip to work. Remembering the beginnings of our trip last year, it was certainly not too hard convincing us to save the trip for another time. Plus, Jackie ended up being invited to be a bridesmaid in a somewhat spur-of-the-moment wedding of her friend and coworker in Tahoe. It worked out great though; we were able to spend a week down in San Luis Obispo visiting friends, hiking, mountain biking and learning to surf (me specifically), just before hiking and camping near Lake Tahoe before the wedding. It was just the relaxing summer I needed.

I do wish I would have been able to visit extended family during my "time off," but between still being relatively broke and attending two bachelor parties and two weddings of my own friends, teaching summer school was essential. I do have a million things on my mind right now about school, but I'll save that for a new post.

Summer Review: Part One

Hello again. It certainly has been a while. These posts may be long to catch you up to speed on my life, so in case you want the super short and sweet version, here it is: summer came and went, and right now having finished the second week of my third year, I am very happy with my decision to stay. But honestly my life is much more interesting than that so read on if you please.

It is curious to think about how writing in this blog does not feel quite as crucial for my life as it did two years ago. Could it be that for once I feel that I am somewhere within reach of the way I would like this job to be, or that I am somewhat within grasp of driving home happy for weeks at a time? It could be that I am in a relationship right now, or maybe it is the fact that I am surrounded by new teachers at school, making me the veteran. More on that later.

And no, that was not a typo, I am in a relationship of almost six months now to a girl I really care about. If you have been keeping up with the posts these past years, you will know her as Jackie, the girl I went on the hike with last summer. If she were writing this post, she would want to draw your attention to the fact that no moves were made on the trip on my end, and it took about seven months more for anything to happen at all. She would probably also emphasize the fact that she made the first move on me. But those are her words.

I have found that this job is much easier when you have someone to share it with on a daily basis, especially someone who knows exactly what you are going through. Most of you will know that Jackie teaches 9th grade Biology at another high school in the district just across the freeway from Richmond, and some days her job makes mine look like a walk in the park. I could go back through all the posts since my teaching began and find all the references to De Anza High School and the crazy things they have to deal with, or I could just say that she keeps me honest and helps me see the optimistic view of a day at RHS. She is incredibly self-motivated and driven, athletic and competitive, beautiful and smart, funny and genuine, and her CST scores confirm that she is amazing at what she does. She is pursuing a third teaching year as well and, like myself, is taking her life year by year in terms of what to do afterwards. It has been amazing having her support, which by the way completely beats out the therapeutic release of blogging, so maybe that is why I took a summer hiatus. Or maybe it was because I had no idea how to write or talk about serious relationships (still don't, really) and realized that if I posted anything I would have to address it somehow...

Okay, if I continue to write everything on my mind to fill you in on current events since the last post I will be up all night, and frankly I am still exhausted from the second week of teaching, so maybe I'll write more tomorrow morning. Goodnight.

The End of the TFA Training Wheels

I know, I know. It's been a while since my last post, but it's probably for the best; after all, I didn't want my blog to become a countdown like last year, because honestly this year is a night and day difference from last year at this point. That being said, thank goodness the year is through. The last month seems to always be a little frustrating, because you can always find ways to improve your classroom, and by mid-May, there's not enough focused time in the classroom to try something new and see how it plays out. As a result, I now have a post-it note on my desktop accruing all the details that I want to remember to include for my theoretical classroom next year: things involving behavior management or even long- and short-term planning (because holy crap there is no way I am going to be planning the night before AGAIN in my third year). With the year officially coming to a close I feel like I actually have some energy now to figure out how to solve some of those recurring problems. But it's a battle against the clock, because some crazy phenomenon makes it so that the further into summer you are, the less you remember about those days where you just wanted to quit on the spot.

I think part of the reason why that is is because somehow these kids never get up in arms with me about their grades. In fact about half of them are genuinely surprised when they don't get an F - which scares me a little, because that means that they aren't even recognizing the fact that once in a blue moon they actually tried. And that one time they tried REALLY HARD. It's totally a psychological game that you have to play with these kids and their grades, especially for my Algebra students, who have already failed the class once. I pretty much don't give out F's unless you didn't show up or you didn't ever try to do what I asked, and I think for some of them, getting a D feels like progress to them in such a way that even though they will be taking the class for the third time next year, hopefully they are convincing themselves that they will pass next time for sure. Like I've said before, step one is to convince these kids that they CAN graduate high school. THEN we'll start pushing college. I talk about college as often as I can, but sometimes I'm afraid that it overwhelms my fragile lower-skilled students. In all, for my 9th graders, only 51% Algebra students received a C grade or better from me and in Geometry, 63% passed. I'll have to go back and uncover my grades from last year to see if there was any trend.

The last day of school was certainly different this year compared to last, and honestly I was a little sad to see all the student go. At least, I was sad until I turned around and saw the absolute mess that was left for me to clean in my classroom... because, oh right, I forgot to mention the fact that our custodian in charge of our 9th grade hallway quit (I would too) and we still don't have a replacement. I was surprised at how many students actually came the last day of school and even more surprised with the number of kids who wanted to take a picture with me or say goodbye before they left for the year. One in particular I will keep for a long time, so that I can always remember the good things. Here it is:

Thank you Mr. Bretle, (<-- I know, it kills me too)

For teaching me Precalculus. I honestly enjoyed your class. I didn't talk much but hey I'm a pretty quiet person. Even though I didn't communicate as much as my peers I enjoyed going to class and actually learn. This was my second year taking Precal and I learned way more than the year before, I don't mean to brag but you're a pretty awesome teacher. I believe this is your last year teaching at Richmond High and whatever you end up doing after this program I hope you continue to teach :)

I haven't had a good teacher like you in a while and I truly appreciate all the hard work you put in for students to fully understand math. I always loved math, I wasn't hella good at it but I loved the challenge of math. After taking your class I reconsidered math of some sort of major. What I'm trying to say is that you seriously have a gift LOL as corny as it may sound its the truth. I came to the point of hating math last year to loving it this year. You're an awesome teacher and you should continue teaching :) (Please)

Yours truly,

Patty G

...And THAT is why teaching summer school does not bother me one bit at this point. As I am now officially an alumnus of TFA, I'm kind of excited to do everything my own way :)

Grade-A Soccer, Grade-F Education

So today at lunch the teacher team played our first game against students in the student-organized soccer tournament outside on the tennis courts. AND we beat the JV soccer boys (who's "weak" now, Eduardo???). AND I scored over half our goals. Needless to say, I earned some serious cred. Half of my students all had their heads against the fence watching like kindergartners at an aquarium, and yet cheering and yelling like it were a boxing match. Oh, and 5th period right after lunch was shot when sweat dripped from my nose onto a student's paper while I was stamping for credit. If there was any day that I wished more than ever to have a window in my classroom, today was it. Nevertheless, soccer is a good medium to remind me that I still do enjoy my job.

Then later the teacher across the hall gave me some good rationale as to why I sometimes hate my job. And, quite frankly, it serves as the same rationale as to why I will not be staying in this position for the long haul. To understand, you'll have to take the time to visit this link: http://reportcards.edtrustwest.org/district-data?county=Contra+Costa&district=West+Contra+Costa+Unified&report_year=2010

The site provides a good snapshot of publicly available data ranked against the state's largest unified school districts. Along with rankings are grades that accompany the four indicators that help describe our effectiveness in serving our Latino, African-American, and low-income students.

The report uses information from California's Academic Performance Index (API), performance and improvement of students of color and low-income students, the achievement gaps between our white students and Latino and African-American students, and college readiness based on completion rates for the California college-preparatory sequence known as the A-G standards (your basic credits of English, math, science, etc.). I'll give you a minute to check out the site before you read on. You can check out other districts in our Contra Costa County too, or look at the stats for Oakland Unified in Alameda county if you are interested at all in the other districts nearby that TFA addresses. Go ahead, I'll wait.

I present to you the entire background of this study and report because even seeing what I see every single day does not make me any less surprised that our school district, West Contra Costa USD, is the ONLY school district in California that received an overall grade of an F. I knew that we were ONE of the most failing districts in the state, but I had no idea that we were (un)officially THE worst, according to The Education Trust - West, a statewide education advocacy organization working to close opportunity and achievement gaps for students of color and those in poverty.

In conclusion, on paper, we suck. And it's really depressing that a year of blood (check), sweat (check), and tears (double check) has done nothing to alter our grade ranking to anything other than another shade of F. I would argue that the study needs more qualitative analysis into things like about how much extra effort is required or offered by a district's teachers, about positive relationships between students and teachers, or even about the amount of violence, crime and poverty that exists in a community to draw a picture of what kind of life these kids live inside and outside of school. But then again, I know that if I were in one of those great districts receiving a B grade on the whole, hearing a district like WCCUSD make comments like that, I would tell my F-grade district friend that those are just excuses. After all, so many things in the educational world are data-driven, like district funding and college acceptance. And plus, these positive qualitative experiences that these kids are getting from us are much less effective when the kids aren't able to WRITE about it cohesively in a college application. It's so sad that these kids experience so much more than anyone ever knows, and yet these experiences are hindering their ability to learn HOW to communicate these experiences effectively. And that, my friends, is what we call a negative feedback loop. Negative on two fronts: they are falling behind scholastically of course, but they are also getting poor training in ways to communicate their feelings as a sort of release - kind of like, oh, I don't know... a blog.

Of course, that is to no fault of our English teachers; I totally understand the depth and breadth of what is required of them to teach to get our kids reasonably on track. Us math teachers can relate. The Executive Director of the organization that runs the study was quoted in the accompanying article that "the grades on these report cards provide district leaders and community members with critical information on how well their Latino, African-American, and low-income students are faring." While I know it is not meant this way, it feels like they are asking, "Do you even know how badly you're doing?" And the answer to you Dr. Arun Ramanathan is yes, yes we do. And while you think that your study will motivate us to try harder, we're just about at our capacity for trying. I may be speaking for myself, but I'm pretty positive that the majority of our staff tries really hard. And the members of the faculty who have no idea what the hell they are doing are here BECAUSE we are the state's F-grade district. Again: negative feedback loop. For those of us rowing the figurative boat (and the ones who may actually read your study), it is already known that the turnaround CAN be done, so your efforts are merely landing as another reminder that our data still says we suck.

On the bright side though, it's relieving to know that there are no districts worse than us. Things may be bad in WCCUSD, but I can imagine many ways where it could be worse - I'm just glad that scenario doesn't exist. I would wish that fate upon no one.

If you have time, check out the full written report here: http://reportcards.edtrustwest.org/sites/default/files/rankings/ETW_DistrictReportCard_2011.pdf

15 School Days Remaining

My God this week sucks. I haven't had one in a while, and I forgot how you can end up wishing that an entire week did not exist. Of course, I will conveniently ignore the possible connection between my feelings for this week and the fact that I spent Sunday participating in the 100th annual Bay to Breakers event in San Francisco. If you haven't heard of it, Google it for some insight into my weekend festivities.

Anyway, it's been one of those weeks where my exhaustion seems to exist even deep down in my very soul, and I know that this clearly means that I should take a sub day to get back on my feet, but I just can't legitimize it with all the review my classes need before their final exam. Plus, we have Open House night for parents, and frankly I am so far behind on grading that I just might wing it this time on grades. I think I've decided that my discussion with parents will be much more behavior-oriented anyway because that is what is fueling the fire that has made this week hell. To put it all into perspective, I yelled - and I mean YELLED - at my third period class today because I was so fed up with how many students couldn't help but to fill class with hateful and disrespectful comments to other students like calling them a "fucking bitch," and other much more vivid names. The yelling I'm sure spurred from my own internal dialogue as this was all happening, like, "Really? Is this really still happening in this class in MAY? And in my second year???" The thing is, they never turn that language on the teacher, at least in my class, and I know it's because I am only respectful to them all the time. But the minute they start "playin' around" with their friends in class, the language comes out that makes my ears want to bleed. It's so frustrating that these kids can whip out an insult in a split second but can't even write a sentence without an error. The worst part is that they have zero foresight (or hindsight I guess) to realize that the fighting happens EVERY SINGLE TIME they start "just playin' around" with each other in class. And then poor 5th and 6th period get my overflow wrath from 3rd period the moment they even drop a pencil. My students and I have had better relationships than this week has demonstrated.

By now I'm sure you're wondering why the hell I am teaching a third year, let alone teaching summer school over break. To be honest, sometimes I look in the mirror and ask myself the same questions - especially this week - but professionally, I have so much on my plate of things to do. As long as I still have ideas of how next year will be a million times better than this year, I can look forward to returning to Richmond High. Of course, these "to do" elements do not always fit into the structure of "how the entire math department is doing it," and as such, I've tried to be way more vocal this year in my own opinions about the things that could bring about positive change. However, skepticism often runs rampant in our department and I get a lot of "we already tried that" looks, which are hard to take because I haven't tried these things yet, and I am a stubborn enough person that these people's bad experiences or failed attempts at trying something new cannot veto my plan to do it next year anyway. I'm being very vague I know, but there's a laundry list of things to address in the math classes and their curricula that I just can't even get into right now. Just know that I still have a positive outlook on my job and that summer school will be my guinea pigs for new plans in the fall.

Also, know that 3rd period sucks. I'll let them know I told you.

"I would have so many girls' numbers by now if I went here..."

In hindsight, stressing the incredible importance of the California Standards Test to my kids was a double-edged sword: while the majority of them took the test honestly and seriously, that same majority right now sees little point to learning anything more this school year. Quite frankly, their agony each day is understandable, considering the fact that only maybe 50% of my Algebra students will be ready to pass on to the next math class. By now, the kids have a pretty good idea in their mind of whether they will be passing or retaking their math class, regardless of the daily elements of trickery that I employ to get them to pick up their pencil and do something. To put it simply, it is no surprise to me that my lowest students have zero desire to learn about simplifying rational expressions when they will begin again next year back at adding and subtracting negative numbers. Who can blame them? It's the higher-end students whose whining really gets to me. It's hard to point out to them in a politically correct way that the reason why they didn't do as well as they could on the CST is because we have been held back all year by their classmates who still count on their fingers, possibly being the same students that misbehave when they don't want to draw attention to the fact that they don't get it. But the thing is that no matter how much I try to tell them, these higher-level students don't quite feel the urgency that I am trying to convey because RHS is the only education they know right now, and based on the standards set by the school and their peers, they are doing just fine. I'd say this is the sole reason that my Precalculus class has been a rude awakening to many a successful student.

Anyway, my meeting in the middle philosophy has landed me at the conclusion to show a video every Friday until the end of school. Please take note - I tell this to my students too - that I said a VIDEO, not a MOVIE. While I am fully aware that they would much rather pass the time with Finding Nemo, I've decided to show them some PBS: NOVA shows that are actually pretty engaging. The frustrating part is convincing the students to give the show a chance and actually pay attention so that they will find elements of math to be interesting. I compare it to my childhood eating habits: if the food looks like I won't like it, then why eat it? It's much easier to push to the side of the plate and act like it's not there. Either that, or spread it around the plate evenly so it just looks like random scraps that were left unfinished. My students would much prefer to shove mathematics to the side of their dinner plate and pretend like it doesn't exist, like peppers or onions or mushrooms in meal when I was seven years old, ignoring the fact that maybe the meal would not have tasted the same without those ingredients. They just are missing the link between math and real-world applications, but every time I try to fill in that void with what I believe to be interesting and engaging things, I can barely get their full attention to even get their brains moving on the subject. Maybe I should use the food metaphor in class.

I have introduced you to my complaints only to give some background to see how sometimes I come home with the attitude that these kids SUCK. And I only feel comfortable admitting that because we went on a field trip today to Sonoma State University and was struck by the fact that these kids are AWESOME. When you only see another person for an hour a day - during which you are trying to get them to perform in the one subject they absolutely despise - your vision of the human being is slightly skewed. It was clear to me today that sometimes these kids really just need to physically get out of Richmond so that they can do two things: for one, it gives them the opportunity to play like they are little kids, because their home community forces them to grow up too fast, making them deal with issues that are too emotionally big for them to properly handle at their age. Secondly, it helps them really think about what they can do with their lives. Something about Richmond makes these kids feel like they will always be in Richmond; but watching the kids get excited about the facilities offered at a college - and the enthusiasm with the idea of living on their own in their own dorm or apartment - made me really happy. I have never heard as many students as today say that they really and truly want to go to college. The cool thing was that I knew it was real because they kept telling me that they wanted to go to THIS college, which I know is because it's the first college they have ever been to, aside from maybe UC Berkeley, which is just ridiculously overwhelming for the average RHS student. Part of me is really sad that in one month I will be giving out way too many D and F grades that will keep these students one more step away from what they may have decided today is what they want to do with their life after high school. It makes me realize that teaching would be a hard profession to leave if I taught the same group of kids each year as they progress through high school, and it also makes me wish a little bit that I could reteach a lot of my D and F students again next year to give them and myself another chance.

One of my students commented to me that everyone he saw was pretty much white, and I told him that most colleges are that way, and that's exactly the thing that the nation is trying to change. It was definitely the first time I felt that a student completely understood the idea of the achievement gap and the mission to close it. Nevermind the fact that this was immediately followed by a conversation about how many girls' phone numbers he would have had by now if he went to school there.

Today was a good day.

Testing

Yes, it's been a while since my last post, and right along with it has been a painful week and a half of prepping for the state test that was altogether too long and too short. In retrospect, I believe the most bang for my buck in prepping my students was the hours I spent reminding them that all I wanted from them on CST day is just for them to focus for the entire testing period. I told them that it didn't bother me if they did not know a single answer as long as they read every question and made educated choices by eliminating incorrect answers. My new angle for this year was to honestly tell them multiple times that it will be the hardest test they have taken all year, and maybe even ever.

It was easier this year to flesh out a game plan for how CST prep would go, knowing that I would actually be in the room with 27 of my own students as they take it. Last year, I had a full class of kids I'd never met, making the teacher-to-student motivation less than effective. Luckily for us, this year our admin made sure to make it such that the staff would set up the best testing atmospheres for our students based on the small learning communities in which they were already organized. Of course, being the martyrs that we are, the English teacher across the hall and I decided to let the two other teachers from our freshman House have first pick to create their ideal class... and did they ever. My pick gave me 18 boys and 9 girls, with the process involving sports-like trades. Some students left on the list were clearly more "valuable" than others and thus could be traded for more students. Often one of us had to take one for the team and set the agreement that if I take _______, then you HAVE to take _______. I almost feel like we should earn badges for some of the things we have to do in this job.

To my surprise though, these kids were pretty amazing in that they really tried - reading every single question and answering the best they could. For as much faith as I have in the secret internal drive that everyone has to learn and succeed, I was admittedly talking to myself in the mirror the morning of the first test, giving a couple wake-up slaps to the face to be on my game for what was sure to be one of the most challenging days of the year. If getting 27 kids to stay quiet and seated for three hours of standardized testing isn't a test of your patience and determination, I don't know what is. As it turned out though, my metaphorical suit of armor didn't even see the battlefield, because these freshmen believe it or not actually wanted to give their best effort on the test. All I could think the entire testing period that first day was how diabolical it is that we succeeded in tricking these kids into doing exactly what we wanted. They love us too much.

Whether or not that is true is completely beside the point, but I was super happy with this new development that actually slightly changed my perception of my students. It had been slipping for a while, and I had begun to realize how powerful relationships really can be in the world of education. This inspired a short bout of happiness regardless of the fact that we got hardly anything accomplished in the shortened periods each day immediately after the morning testing. After all, it's not normal that we should expect these kids to be motivated to factor polynomials right after three hours of synonyms and reading comprehension. What I should have done is had a mini-lesson on all the ways that students at Richmond High get screwed in their education. Discussion point number 1: scheduling classes after CSTs so as to reach the quota of classroom hours while avoiding paying teachers additional money. The thing is, these students would not be surprised by this. I think the one way that these kids have a fuller education than anyone else is in the sense that they understand the difference between the way the world theoretically works and how it REALLY works. It's definitely one thing that I am glad I was able to see from having this job. Along this point it is no wonder I have so many kids who actually think that Osama bin Laden's death was a hoax. Quite the cynics for being only 15.

Anyway, I am sitting down to write all this because today we took the math exam and man oh man was it hard. I can definitely say that in class we haven't yet covered half of the material in the questions. It's so hard because the test is very much weighted towards the end of the year, and we begin the year way back in middle school objectives like adding and subtracting negative numbers. I was armed with two stacks of word searches for them finishing early (who the hell can take a math test for four hours?), but they were super squirrelly nonetheless. One of my students suggested that we sue somebody for them having to take a test that they are not prepared for, so to distract her from her own discomfort of not knowing half the test, I asked her to take a break and write out a letter to someone we could sue. It turned out to be more of a distraction than anything else, but hey, not all my creative ideas work. I was trying to pass the time just as much as them. In the end, I am just so impressed at the students' willingness to try their best (for me, really), and yet so discouraged by the thought that we will still have to sit through the same meeting at the beginning of next year to hear how far behind the math department still is of our goal. At the current time all I can think is how all I have done is in vain, but I know that at the bottom of this glass of wine I hold in my hand, I will be able to remind myself that there is so much more to education than a stupid standardized test.

But, since the wine has yet to be drunk, we will begin the countdown at 26. There are 26 school days left until the end of the school year.

Recovery

Spring break has been long overdue, but now that it is here, my lack of motivation is pathetic. I think my body is instead using this week to recover from months of long hours and early mornings. And since it's not been quite nice enough to force me to go do things outside, I've remained in my semi-comatose state until noon each day, at which point I move around the apartment and find very creative ways of not getting anything accomplished. Fortunately and unfortunately, the parking ticket I got this morning I think has served as a reminder that I cannot live this way, even on spring break.

When it comes to school, my brain and body feel fried; last week I missed a day of school for Lakeya's funeral, which was a unique experience to say the least. It was, in fact, my first church experience with a primarily black congregation, which put a unique spin on my mind's definition of what a funeral should be. Honestly, I thought it could have been a lot better, and a coworker who also went said that he thought it was the worst funeral he'd ever been to, but I can't imagine that the planning was very easy, having seen the impact of the week's events on Lakeya's mom and her family. Plus, it was clear that her humongous family was dealing with other issues even before these events. Sadly, the service spent a limited amount of time talking about the girl we all knew, and more time using the gathering as a way to bring people back to God. The whole thing was quite frustrating, but as I watched the impact that the service had on the kids in the room, I realized that maybe this is the only thing that helps the young people of the community to reach out for help. Everybody acts so "hard" in the Richmond community because they don't want to be seen as weak in any capacity.

This experience marked the first time that I have ever cried in front of students, but I believe that this was probably the most ideal time to do so; I hope that any one of my students who saw me realizes that it's okay to display your emotions. In fact, that's why a lot of things were left unsaid about Lakeya: too many people went up to speak, but had to leave the room because they could not handle their own emotions. It became so clear that these kids, and adults too, had bottled everything up inside so much that their reaction even surprised themselves. And when these community members were actually able to express their sadness outwardly, it was as though they were crying for not just Lakeya's death, but the tragedies of so many others that they knew. I have a feeling that this funeral was different from some of the others that many had been to in that this was an open-casket service for a very young child. I realized that the mind truly does not understand the concept of death until you are looking at it in the face. Especially when the face, dressed up for the funeral, looks nothing like the girl you once knew. At the end of the service, everyone walked by the open casket, and I would say that 1 in 5 community members burst into tears, and 1 in 10 sprinted to the back of the chapel at the sight. It was strange to think that what made the funeral so difficult for me was that it was almost as though these people were learning of Lakeya's death for the first time at that moment. At this point, I had almost made peace with the fact, and it was difficult being witness to so many devastating reactions all over again. Needless to say, I am more than grateful to have the opportunity to think about other things for a week.

On the brighter side of things, I broke in my new bike, and mountain biking has definitely become my new spring passion. I feel like I'm on an "if-not-now-then-when" kick, so the next thing on the list is to get a fitness club membership and actually try and reach a fitness goal or two. I'm pretty positive I'm going to do it; it makes it easier that I already play indoor soccer at the same facility. Once again I feel like I have this fictional idea of how much free time I'm going to have this summer to accomplish everything, but even though I realize this fact, I've decided that having too much to do is way better than doing nothing at all.

...and the week that followed

The candlelight vigil was yesterday after school. Originally we had heard that it would be maybe at her home, which would have left me a little more apprehensive of going. It was nice to be able to go, but a few things in particular were very sad. First of all, except for about two or three students, it seemed as though the only attendees were our black students, which reminded me still how far we are from having a diverse student body in the sense that everyone gets along. Racial issues are still strong, and cliques at school leave rifts between Latino and African-American students. Secondly, it is very clear that a lot of our male students don't have a positive male role model in their adolescent lives just based on the fact that no one has properly taught them the correct way to express their emotions. So many of the boys at this vigil were incapable of sitting in silence and we downright disrespectful simply because they don't understand that it is okay for them to be visibly affected by the death of their friend.

That is the story of this week though - I have a handful of students that are acting out in ways that make me feel like it's the beginning of the year again. It's horrible to say, but I hope that these behavior problems can be attributed to their response to this week of madness, and aren't instead some freak coincidental development that I will have to deal with for the next month. I'm already at wits end at this point and I am counting down the days until spring break. It's hard not to be a little fed up with school when you have to wrap your head around the fact that somehow your administration is STILL moving new kids into your classes with only two and a half school weeks left until the state test. Oh yeah, and they were failing their other math class, so I'm so very glad that I have now inherited their sure-to-be-amazing test scores.

Still no word on when the funeral will be; the family is trying to raise money right now so that they can even have one. So sad.

Before I began my two years, I wondered what the odds were of this happening.

One of my students died yesterday morning.

Apparently Lakeya was with her boyfriend late Thursday night, and all the news articles say that her boyfriend accidentally shot her in the stomach with a gun. But let me lay out the events of Friday to you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to burden you with all the sad details, but rather I am trying to write it all down so that I can just plain get it out.

Literally two minutes before 1st period started, a student of mine runs into the room and tells me that the teacher across the hall is crying and they don't know what to do. When I went to go see what was up, she told me that apparently many kids had heard the same rumor that Lakeya had shot and killed herself. Dumbfounded and in shock, I ran to the office to get our assistant principal to cover her class and then ran back to mine where I proceeded to give out the unit test as normal. I was only able to think about the situation when I took attendance and marked Lakeya absent. But even then, shitty rumors like this have plagued our school before, and I have even written about them in this blog. I decided I was not about to have an emotional train wreck given the slight possibility that somebody thinks this is a hilarious April Fool's joke. Because honestly, if there was one girl at school with a screwed up enough sense of humor for that, it would be Lakeya.

By third period, it was becoming pretty clear that mentally, my students weren't all there, and I knew this test was almost a waste of time, because who the hell cares about systems of equations and inequalities when your classmate just died? Luckily or unluckily, all of us in third period were distracted a little while longer from thinking about it when a mouse literally ran across the floor of the classroom. This sounds way too much like a cartoon, but I swear to you, we all first saw it because a hat was moving on the ground all by itself, and then it must have gotten scared because it bolted for the space between the closet and the wall. It is still a mystery to me where that hat came from, because nobody claimed it even after I threw it in the trash can. I can't blame them though; I would never wear a hat again after a mouse (rat, really) had been wearing it first. Right now, I am debating whether or not I should even grade those tests.

During my free fourth period, Lakeya's resource specialist, also TFA, came in to confirm that she had died, but that her boyfriend shot her. At this moment I realized that part of the reason why I didn't believe it in the first place was because I just knew that there was no way that she would commit suicide. In fact, I should mention that she was one of my top students in first period, always participating and finishing homework on time (one of the few). For some reason it has always been my first thought that when something awful like this happens that they were probably not a very good student. That is probably very unfair to assume and apparently very wrong. Come to think of it, on Thursday after school, I had to run to get site supervisors to break up a fight that was about to happen between my top A+++ student and some other girl, so maybe the opposite is true. It would make sense, after all, because the students with the best grades are the ones that try really hard with the intention of changing the path of their own life. Those incredible students are usually the ones with the most incredibly heartbreaking stories. I would say that Lakeya fell into that category; she was the youngest of many siblings consumed by gangs and violence, but you could tell that she was really trying to get somewhere in life to hopefully leave it all behind. She had her own anger problems, but it was built up from years upon years of experiences that you or I will never have to endure. Two weeks ago she was suspended for five days for threatening the English teacher across the hall in the middle of class, but she acknowledged her anger problem and signed up to be trained in restorative justice at school. At a school like Richmond, bad attitudes in students usually come from something that has absolutely nothing to do with the teacher, so I will just remember her as a student with a lot of life and someone that actually enjoyed my class (which is rare in 9th grade Algebra).

I hesitate using the word "fitting," but sometimes things seem all too coincidental at RHS. In English class, Lakeya had just finished typing an essay about what it means to lose one's humanity. Their class had been reading Night by Elie Wiesel, and so everyone had to decide if the main character had or had not lost his humanity based on the things he did and said near the end of the book. I hate to compare our school to a Nazi extermination camp this way, but seriously when you look around at how the kids deal with something like this happening, you begin to wonder where the line is for keeping one's humanity. The students are like sponges, and so much of the sponge is already filled with so many other traumas that there is no room left to appropriately deal with this one. For instance, the English teacher across the hall was told the news by one of Lakeya's close friends: "Ms. Price, did you hear about Lakeya?" "No, what happened?" "She's dead." She said it bluntly with an awkward smile on her face, which sounds awful and heartless, but consider this: I think that it is a fair assumption that we have all experienced at least once a time when even though laughing is the least acceptable thing you could be doing, you can't help but to laugh. It's emotional overload for sure, but is it losing your humanity?

Have you lost your humanity if you know that you feel sad - or should feel sad - but you just can't cry at all? I am not very good at getting myself to cry by myself; I usually use a sad movie or something and the visual stimulus of someone else crying about the same thing as I am experiencing is usually what works. So, in fourth period when I walked over to the grief counseling area and saw the only student out of 20 actually outwardly expressing her emotions and crying, I was finally able to cry a little. I would have cried more if I had known that Lakeya was this student's cousin, and was the third family member that would be buried THIS WEEK. I found this out later when some other teachers and I went on a walk and discussed how violence has gotten worse in Richmond since spring began.

In fact, with Lakeya's family history involvement with gangs and violence, us teachers still feel like something is up and that it wasn't just an accident. I suppose this is probably a normal reaction to deaths like this, but it just feels like things don't quite add up, and as much as I loved this student and want to pay my respects at her funeral or at a vigil for her, I don't think I feel safe going, because events this year have proven that there is no safe place against drive-by shootings. I don't remember if I wrote about it, but less than a year ago a man walked into a church during a funeral in Richmond and opened fire. This is the first time that I really personally feel the effect of violence and safety concerns in the community in which I teach, and that makes this experience that much worse.

The next hardship will be how I handle class on Monday. If this had happened earlier in the week, I would be in a very different place right now because I wouldn't have had time to appropriately deal with it, and based on my being a zombie through fifth and sixth period yesterday, I am thankful that I have time to mentally prepare my plan of attack for first period on Monday. But here's the thing: I was trained as a teacher and not as a therapist. It's not that I don't want to help these kids through a tough time, but more that I am terrified of getting into a situation where I have absolutely nothing to say. When you start to talk these kids about real emotional things and begin to uncover the true emotional responses, you get to realize how much shit these kids have suppressed over the years, and how many of those experiences they think is normal. What I really want to explain to my class is that the reason why I try so hard in my job is because I want to give my students the opportunity to see life outside of Richmond. I want them to have the proper resources to make it in life somewhere safer and happier. I want them to live in a place where they don't have to reserve half their mind for traumatic experiences, because if I had to blame one thing, THAT is the reason why success in education is challenging at our school. I want them to be able to redefine their vision of "normal" life. At the very least, I hope that they can see that it is not normal to lose one of your classmates in 9th grade.

Believe it or not, despite all this, I'm actually doing okay. Yesterday involved a lot of tears, some alcohol-induced, but I feel like I got it all out and it's not building up inside of me like last year's traumatic event did. I think that talking with my kids on Monday about the elephant in the room will help as well, and I can only hope for the best for next week. I have no idea how I will ever get these kids ready for the state test in the beginning of May, but, hey, those feelings aren't new :)

Save Great Teachers

Fortunately my job is safe for next year, but my roommate's is in question. Here's Michelle Rhee's new video to the public on how dumb the "last in, first out" policy is in our districts. Not too long, worth a watch:

http://studentsfirst.org/video-save-teachers

Things I Learned in the Past 24 Hours

1) The Teach For America organization is more ridiculous than I thought - in a good way I suppose.

Yesterday I attended the First Annual TFA Bay Area Benefit Dinner as one of many corps member guests. We had to apply to do this and give a little blurb about why we joined and what we thought of TFA - which I imagine was for the staff to pick the corps members whose stories and perspectives were "acceptable" to publicize to very influential people and potential donors. You may not have read about it yet, but TFA can seem very corporate sometimes in their impersonal characteristics or "canned" feel, and that is one of the reasons why I've felt that I've sometimes avoided drinking the TFA Kool-Aid. I don't feel supported or listened to when things become super robotic and uber-data-driven.

Anyway, the dinner brought guests like Condoleeza Rice (who walked by me two feet away) and MC Hammer (who actually introduces himself as MC Hammer), so it was intimidating to say the least. The ballroom in the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco was full of CEOs of major corporations like Visa, the San Francisco Giants, and Bank of America, and countless other Heads of Whatever. I was not aware of how deep these peoples' pockets were until the first live auction item was sold for $75,000. It was the purchase of a 16-person suite at AT&T Park and the experience to throw the first pitch at a Giants game. I imagine that it will turn out to be some kid's most expensive birthday present ever. The lady that bought that also bought some Summer Olympics trip thing for $27,000 as well, making her a donor of over $100,000 in a matter of 10 minutes. I got her business card and was not surprised that goes by only a first name: Trish. No more, no less. Fitting I think for some crazy lady with a shit-ton of money. Even after the live auction was over the auctioneer just got people to raise their paddles to to straight-up donate $10,000 at a time to TFA. I would say that the night raked in $500,000 for TFA in the bay, but I was amazed to find out that the purchases of seats at the dinner alone brought in $1 million. Here we are, the government on the brink of eliminating TFA funding, and the organization pulls a stunt like this. Holy crap. And yes, this is only the FIRST annual event. There has been so much untapped wealth until now!

2) According to our vice principal at Richmond, I am the best math teacher we have.

This means two things: she thinks way higher of me than I thought, and she thinks way lower of everyone else than I thought. I heard this little tidbit from another staff member, but the asterisk to the statement is that it was said with an angle for me to stay teaching in the 9th grade. There have been plans for me to teach more higher level classes, but our vice principal in charge of scheduling thinks that "we should keep our best math teacher in the 9th grade, otherwise the students will never make it to upper level math." I hate that I know the flattery will get me to stay teaching 9th grade.

3) Girls are valuable gang members because they can stash weapons and/or drugs on their person and bank on the fact that the police do a less-than-thorough pat down since the younger, newer officers are afraid of getting the attention of a lawsuit for touching them inappropriately. We had a presentation given today after school about gangs in Richmond, and I thought this was interesting.

4) Never bet a student that you had a worse night sleep than them. It unearths a story that you probably didn't want to or shouldn't hear.

That is all. Aren't you supposed to learn seven new things every day?

Changing Education Paradigms

There is no better way to spend 12 minutes of spare time than to watch this video. It's engaging, informative, and really makes you wonder about the future of education. It makes a part of me wish I studied education in college. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

I will not let school consume my life. I will not let school consume my life. I will not let school consume my life.

It's easy for me to remind myself that there are other things in my life besides school, and often happier things at that. But, rereading blogs past, I often realize that it is just as important to remind the internet abyss that 1) I am often much happier than the text suggests, and 2) there is more to my life than my job. So I thought I'd do a brief update:

I'm still playing soccer, but the sports of choice these days are skiing and mountain biking due to the fact that I just purchased my very own skis and mountain bike. Needless to say, last weekend was my most expensive weekend to date, and I have not had the opportunity to use either pieces of new equipment yet. My next phase of time management self-improvement is to make time to go biking after school some time. A couple TFA friends of mine also have bikes, so ideally we can head to the hills in the afternoon. And then pretty soon Jackie and I will be planning out our potential hike of the John Muir Trail for this summer. We hope that 214 miles in California will seem like a walk in the park compared to the 275 miles in Washington last summer. After all, we are both a year older and wiser.

I'll be honest, I thought my "brief update" would be a little longer, but I suppose there's only so much you can fit in between teaching and planning for three different classes. It's funny; one of my former students from last year comes every so often for tutoring and he always leaves telling me that I need to teach Algebra II so I can be his teacher next year, as if it would be no big deal to teach a 4th set of curriculum standards. When I tried today to explain to him the difficulties as it is with teaching three different classes, he replied with, "Well at least you get paid more for it." I think my laughing in his face made clear two things: one, that teaching three classes leaves me a little delirious each day, and two, that our salary has nothing to do with the amount of different curricula we teach. Although that certainly should be the way we get paid, because I guarantee I do exponentially more planning than the teacher who teaches five of the same class every day. Then I could have bought my skis and mountain bike sooner.

I do think though, that this is not the worst job to be consumed by. At least there's so much going on in the school world each day and each week that things are always unique. Disheartening? Sometimes, but boring? Never. From the classroom to the national debate on education, there's always something going on. I hesitate calling it "exciting" because that's not quite the word to describe my roommate receiving a pink slip in the mail from Oakland Unified School District. Due to crazy budget problems, they sent out these potential layoff notices to nearly 50% of the employees in the district, creating a perfect real-life demonstration of the last-in-first-out philosophy in the teaching world. In the corporate world, when money gets tight, a company forces its older, higher-salaried workers to retire to leave room and funds for younger and cheaper employees. In the teaching world, there is not a significant enough difference in salaries between older and younger teachers to make a difference financially in who gets laid off, and a pension system would not work quite as well as in corporate businesses if there's no money to use.

I don't know if I've said it before, but all the ridiculousness at RHS is due to the fact that a positive school learning culture is relatively new to our school, and the district for that matter, so it is taking a long transition for certain teachers and students to understand the seriousness of expectations for them. In fact, we have one of the strongest administration staff in the district, and despite the union rules of seniority and such, they somehow end up getting new TFA teachers every year, even in such bad hiring conditions. There's some loophole they've found or some breaking of rules that is going on, but least it feels like they're doing everything in their power to improve the school, because let's face it: you may have no idea if a TFA teacher will be successful or not at Richmond, but at least you can be 95% positive that TFAers will believe that things can be turned around for the better. We have too many teachers who plainly suck because they can't be convinced that their students can in fact succeed if they are only provided the right environment and guidance. With the union, our admin has had to approach this bad teacher situation from a creative direction, so it seems that instead of trying to fire the teachers, they will bug them until they decide to leave on their own. This involves many classroom observations and asking the teachers to teach a subject that the admin knows they are not prepared for. There is certainly some gambling involved. For instance, a handful of these bad apple teachers are teaching English Language Development classes, and frankly are hiding in the classes with scripted curricula and students whose parents don't speak English. You don't hear much complaining about how much they stink simply because the parents don't know to be concerned. Technically these teachers are credentialed for English classes, so according to rumor, the plan is to ask these teachers to teach mainstream English classes where you actually have to plan your own lessons and there are actually parents who will try to get you fired if you don't teach a damn thing. With this as their only option, the teachers will choose to get placed elsewhere, and it would be foolproof except for the fact that while RHS sends these teachers to another school, we will be receiving replacements that are likely not much better because other schools do the same thing. The downside to not being able to fire them is that you can't get the disease out of the district. It's like trading lung cancer for pancreatic cancer. It's gonna kill you one way or another.

Speaking of which, I found out last week that one of my students from last year has leukemia. How awful is that? I have said before that there seems to be an unusual amount of health problems in the area, and Richmond is not exactly sitting in the most ideal of locations, surrounded by two freeways to the east and south, a major rail route to the west, and Chevron refineries to the north. It's hard to explain delicately to your students that their goal should be to get out of Richmond. For many reasons. But then at the same time you want to educate its citizens such that they have the tools to tackle their own community's problems. For anyone with a Netflix account, you absolutely NEED to watch "Brick City," a documentary about Newark, New Jersey, and the steps its mayor and citizens take to improve their situation. It's crazy how much Newark and Richmond/Oakland are alike.

Okay I'm done. I will not let school consume my life.

Math is hard.

I don't know if this is a trend at all schools, but it's pretty common nature at RHS for every teacher to act like theirs is the hardest job. As in, "Oh yeah? Well guess what I have to deal with..." Maybe not in so many words, but the point gets made time and time again, and it's a hard urge to fight. After all, math IS the hardest subject to teach at this school. See? I can't help it.

But seriously, here's how it all sums up from my perspective. Math is hard because pretty much from the first course to the last course you ever take, everything is cumulative and builds on itself. I would compare it to constructing a building, where you cannot build the second floor until the framework for the first floor is complete. Because of this, I have to think daily about the best way to approach a new concept for students who lack the confidence or skills from the fundamental math concepts. To use the same metaphor, everyday I am brainstorming ways to build the second floor before the first floor is completed. Certainly not impossible, but tricky indeed.

English is hard to teach at Richmond because so many of the students are English Language Learners. That's not to say that the students have a hard time communicating in the English language, but if you took a day to walk the halls of RHS, you would realize that English speaking and English reading and writing are just about two completely different languages to learn. The community vernacular totally interferes with the ability to string together complete sentences in a meaningful way.

You'd think that I would be totally overwhelmed with how low these students' math proficiency is, but by now, I am a pro at predicting what will and won't be confusing or what concepts will most certainly require a reteaching of the underlying fundamentals (the rule of thumb is to ALWAYS reteach the fundamentals haha). That being said, I don't think I could handle being an English teacher. For math, there is a clear goal in mind every day. To understand a concept means to be able to answer a set of problems correctly. And by the way, there is only one correct answer. In English, I don't understand how teachers could possibly divide up the curriculum in a satisfying way. For instance, one of my students asked me to help him with an essay that was a requirement to get into AP English next year. Many times I reminded him that I am not his English teacher, but he insisted. After a (very) rough draft, he asked me to "look over it." And let me just say that my favorite part of English was writing and grammar, because it all feels very structured and is the closest to black/white, right/wrong answers as you will ever get in English class. So, needless to say, I had to take a breath and think for a second about the appropriate amount of constructive criticism to dish out. In math, it is very easy to pinpoint the problem in addition to identifying all the correct steps. In dialog, "Okay, that's awesome that you did all these steps, but here is where we made a mistake." In English, how do you spin it? "Okay, that's awesome that you spelled all these other words correctly, but you actually forgot the B-E- on the front of the word 'BEcause.'" In my own education, I was drilled with the notion that your writing can always be improved, so where do I stop in correcting this kid's work? He has misspelled words, fragments, incorrect uses of commas and apostrophes (those make me cringe), bland word choice, little to no sentence variation, and some sentences that I asked him to read aloud to me because I just plain had no idea what they were saying. Thank goodness he already knew how to arrange it into paragraphs; I don't think I would have had the patience to deal with that. And I think it's safe to say that ending with a preposition will never ever be the most pressing issue in a student's essay, so forget mentioning that.

It's just so weird to me that these kids aren't able to translate spoken comprehensible ideas and thoughts into written comprehensible ideas and thoughts. How does that breakdown happen? I spoke to my students' English teacher about this and she said that feels like she is teaching five different things everyday, including things like vocabulary and just creativity in writing in general. And since reading is so difficult for them, they are able to pick up less in terms of vocab and writing styles from what they read. I certainly don't envy English teachers. I will say that often when a worksheet of mine asks my students to "explain" something that they are doing, I get a little window into what English class would be like, and I don't think I would like it. THAT would be my definition of being overwhelmed. Then again, less students have such strong negative feelings towards English than they do in math (I think), and our English test scores are nowhere near as dismal as our math scores, so who knows.

In terms of other classes, there's always the English language reading and writing barrier that limits what the students may gather from a textbook, but at least in things like science and history the concepts are completely new, so for the most part, success or failure has no predetermination. It pains me at the beginning of the year to check the state test scores for each individual student and to come to terms with the amount of reteaching that I really will have to do. I hope these teachers realize their incredible advantage when they begin the year with all their students on an (almost) equal playing field. All their students begin the year being 0% proficient in the material, and the state test scores that they receive at the end of the year are an accurate depiction of the effectiveness of the teacher. In math, you might say that some students begin the year with a negative proficiency in that they are ill-prepared from the last class, and this gaping hole in understanding must be addressed before any new learning can happen. Using my time to do this means less time to address all the curriculum content standards, and in the end leads to low scores on state tests. At the beginning of each school year, we look at the test results from the previous year, and frankly our math scores make it look like we are teaching them nothing. And I mean NOTHING. I can't speak for other math teachers (and probably shouldn't based on the things I've heard from students), but I often feel like so much of what I do goes unnoticed - all the sweeping up of previous years of problems in math really helps with my students' fundamentals, but certainly doesn't match up to the vigor of a state test to boost their preparedness.

Right now I am the furthest behind out of all Algebra teachers. When I write it like that it seems that it was a mistake and that I fell behind, but in fact I planned out my lessons in a slower pace than my colleagues. I think I'm getting more students to understand the material, but here's the problem: I'm pretty much committing to poor state test scores since I may not even make it to the last two entire units before the test is given. Or, who knows, maybe I'll get better scores since some of the students may get decent scores on the earlier material. Am I doing a service or disservice by moving at a pace more fitting to my students? It kills me to think about my handful of A+ students who are missing out on so much more of the curriculum because the other 30 students in their class can't keep up. I guess it will be a good experiment and maybe once and for all I will know what to do for next year.

It's no wonder there are no Republican teachers...

...After all, I can't imagine getting the verbal backhand from your own political party:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-28-2011/crisis-in-dairyland---angry-curds

So frustrating. But I absolutely love Jon Stewart's commentary. So spot on.

Sick Reflections

So here I am at Lake Tahoe with the intention of having a real vacation for our second winter break (much needed), but lucky me, I get super sick the night before it all and now have missed the first three days of skiing. It's been painful to hear everyone else's incredible stories from the days, but even more painful to realize how predictable this kind of thing has become. I don't get sick during the school week, but the moment I have more than weekend of break, my immune system goes into hibernation. Probably not good.

I suppose it could be linked to the outrageous week that took place prior; I still can't believe the situation that led to the expulsion of my student, and clearly by my last post it is very frustrating to realize how easy it is to live in this world - the same greater metropolitan area, even - without ever knowing the problems or the injustice that exist on a daily basis. I will concede that I was a little under the influence during my last post, which I vow to never do again. It's difficult though to enjoy a Napa trip when the only person I see eye to eye with is the birthday girl.

I purposely waited at least a week to mention this other occurrence though, that happened just a day after the pot brownie fiasco. The principal announced over the intercom that all teachers need to meet in the theater during lunch - which anyone can tell means something serious, because as a coworker of mine would say, "This better be important or the union will hear about this. Lunchtime is OUR time." And sure enough, it was very important and very disturbing. Apparently another student had gotten expelled that morning after our on-campus policemen and security officers found a sawed-off shotgun in his locker. The thing is though, while you all may be freaking out and wondering why I'm not giving my two weeks notice right now (which totally doesn't work as teacher), I view this as a situation of community gangs breaching the school community borders. I'd be willing to bet a hefty sum of money on the fact that this kid made this (very stupid) decision to prove to some other gang member at school that he was serious and that he wasn't joking around. I guarantee that he had no intention of using the gun. At school.

Maybe it sounds like I'm in denial, but all the violence that takes place in this community is on weekend evenings in situations where there are no witnesses to get someone convicted, or, if there are witnesses, they are too scared for their lives to speak up. For instance, one of my students witnessed her own brother getting shot but for fear of her own life, she changed her last name. Richmond High can be improved in a million and one ways, but I think they have done an incredible job with keeping the interactions of the gang community out of the school community. We have boys and girls discussion groups and restorative justice circles, which are amazing (see restorative justice under wikipedia), so a shooting at school is just not a very big fear of mine.

Gangs do not scare me as much as they originally did. They are predictable, and as a coworker of mine said, "would not waste their time on conflicts with teachers." I remember my response to that statement was an awkward chuckle. What scares me more are the unstable kids. Enter Tuesday.

But before we talk about Tuesday, let's discuss a slightly funny occurrence in the class across from mine. Remember, it's the English class with all my same students. When they were in their poetry unit, this teacher's first period was not particularly thrilled about reading their poems aloud, and one student specifically mouthed off to her about how he hates poetry and doesn't give a shit about it, yada yada. At the end of the day she was telling me all of this, saying how first period "was a bunch of little assholes today" (after school is out, her language loosens). And sure enough, the kid from first period walks in, she jokingly covers her statement by asking him in fact, why he was such an asshole to her that morning, and he explains that he came to apologize. All in all, she was embarrassed, but not as embarrassed as when he told his mom and she called the school. I don't think I made it clear enough that she is an amazing teacher, and nothing like this has happened in the five years she's worked at RHS. She had to make a formal apology and everything, but after that, everything was back to normal right?

Wrong. The next unit involved reading Night by Elie Wiesel, and since these kids have absolutely no idea about the Holocaust, there is a lot of background teaching beforehand. To do this, the teacher explained prejudice and how it has existed in this world past and present, and as an activity, had all students write down some instance or occurrence they experienced or knew of that fell somewhere on the ladder of prejudice, from speech and discrimination to genocide. When everyone was leaving class, this kid approached the teacher and asked if he could put his post-it on the ladder, and, surprised that he hadn't already, she asked him where it should go. He said genocide, to which she asked what instance he was thinking of. And, with a creepy smile on his face, he said that he wanted to kill everyone at his middle school. Her dumbfounded response was, "could you be more specific?" and he said, sounding surprised that she didn't know, that that was why he was expelled from his middle school.

Now, when I say that this school district fails at organization, this is what I mean. Don't you think it would be important information for a teacher to know that one of her students has some past thoughts that could be uncovered with the discussion of the Holocaust? And sure enough, in his file, everything was written out as he said it, except that he wasn't actually expelled. With 24 days left in the school year, his middle simply told him to not come back. I love how so many people don't see the issue in passing a problem along to someone else. As a math teacher I am particularly fond of that.

Anyway, back to the story. As a teacher, she is legally obligated to inform the administration and counselors of the information she just heard, and given the intensity of the situation, the next step is to do a psych evaluation of the kid, since he is off the meds he is supposed to be taking. Keep in mind that this is the same kid who told his mother about being called an asshole and now this mother is being called to school about another interaction with this same teacher. There's a tiny bit of humor there. Clearly though, she is in denial because she told the teacher that she shouldn't have asked him about it if she didn't want to hear the answer. Yikes. Long story short, he is now doing independent study with a counselor instead of being in her class, and his mother is suing the school... or the school district. Whichever makes more sense. The disturbing part though is that the Holocaust unit clearly changed how this student holds himself, and he has been creepily hanging outside her class since this all began. THAT is scarier than a sawed-off shotgun at school. And who knows if it is related, but this teacher across the hall got her car keyed in the staff parking lot. First time it's happened to her in five years. Creepy.

Few things that happen at Richmond are surprising to me anymore, which is sad, but the next day was the cherry on top of a twilight zone week. My students in 6th period could not focus because students kept mentioning the name of one of the other teachers at school and giggling. This scenario never plays out well, so I tried to get them to spill the beans about what was so funny, but they wouldn't say. It was only after school was out that one of my Geometry students came to say how appalled she was at other students at this school to do that to such a good teacher (in my mind I'm thinking, "Do WHAT?"), and so I got the scoop from another teacher that some students had taken her phone, gotten on her email, and found NAKED PICTURES of her. I should have prefaced this by saying that this first-year TFA teacher has already been experiencing serious sexual harassment by her students, but she hasn't been able to summon the bitch inside of her to quell it. According to other female teachers, that's what it takes. By the end of the week, the comments were gone in my class, but literally the whole school knows about this, so I'm wondering how it will play out when we get back from break.

Basically I'm just trying to figure out where this sickness of mine came from. I spend five days each week in a small windowless room with some 180 kids and I don't get sick, but the moment I get time to relax, I am deathly ill. What gives? Also, $40 antibiotics is outrageous. I have to complain to someone. Still, these breaks seem to come at the perfect times, so I can't complain too much. Plus, I got nominated this week for a TFA teaching award, which was pretty cool.

By now you can tell I've got cabin fever so I'll leave you with a priceless quote from one of my ninth graders. He's applying for a program at Stanford for the summer and really needed a letter of recommendation from me. I was putting it off because I was really sick but I did it because he wouldn't stop pestering me about it, and when I sent it, I reminded him of all the ways he could make the application process run more smoothly in the future, like giving his teachers more than a few days' notice for a recommendation. By the way, I have to believe that he is a much better writer than this... I'm asking his English teacher on Monday. Funny nonetheless.

In response to receiving the letter I had written and sent him:

"thank you so very much so sorry for the trouble i cause you and please get well i don't want a substitute on Monday your voice is a little monotone but your always be better that a substitute

my regards Marco"

Wine tasting, i.e. white people party

Some people just don't get it.

What I mean is that they don't understand how good they have it or how privileged they are. I totally understand that few people get to experience the same perspective as I do, but many interactions with people this year have prompted me to wonder how he or she would survive at Richmond High. Specifically, I'm talking about the people who make absolute fools out of themselves - usually while drinking - and perpetuating a stereotype for white people.

I just got back from a trip to Napa Valley for a birthday party, and don't get me wrong, I enjoy drinking - wine especially - but I do not enjoy sharing the experience with someone who is a selfish mess. I think I'm very easily embarrassed by my peers, and somehow these days, if the person is white, I almost feel more ashamed than anything else. It's strange when the working world and the weekend world clash, and as the limo drove through Richmond on the way to Napa, I couldn't help but to realize how none of the drunk people around me knew what the community that we were passing through was like. Nor did they care, or even know where we were. For a split second I pictured us as we were, riding a party limo through Richmond, and at once I was glad we were not stopping because of the image we were setting for all white people.

I don't know if I ever wrote about it, but at the beginning of the year, I believe my students enter their classes with a belief or a fraction of a belief that in general, white people don't care about them. Many of the "white" teachers they have had are only white in relative terms; they are half Latino, or the white teachers they did have truly sucked and arguably didn't care too much about them. Needless to say, there's always some conversation that comes up about their interpretation of white people and it's usually connected with the idea of having money. It weird, because them saying this typically makes me a little proud that I'm making a mere teacher's salary. They were pretty appalled to find out that I didn't own my own house. But to be fair, when I was in high school, I never understood the whole idea of living with a roommate either.

Anyway, the party today was just too many white people that fit the stereotype mold. Is it weird to say that? I feel like this is the first time I have really been aware of my own race. I've always understood the idea of racial identity, but when it gets talked about, it's usually about minority groups. I guess spending every day in a community with a totally flipped demographic makes me hypersensitive to the impressions people make that are representative of white people in general. I don't know what conclusions should be made, but here are my observations. There are countless people in this world who are hopelessly ignorant, and countless more who take things like money for granted. The majority of people I hang out with in a social setting are white people. Therefore, the people who in my mind "just don't get it" are typically white people.

I've realized that I really value the perspective I've taken from my job, and truly respect others that take the time to view the world through someone else's eyes. But you know, some people don't look for that in their life, and it might be because they don't care, or it might be because they don't know what they're missing. I'm trying to assume the best intentions, so let's say it's the latter.

I believe that this country would be a way better place if everyone had to do some form of service at the beginning of their career. Perspective is a crazy thing.

Soccer, Drugs, and Poetry: Quite the Combo

A couple interesting things to talk about today...

First of all, the soccer season is now officially over, which means I no longer have an excuse for having poor eating and sleeping habits. It is certainly bittersweet; for one thing, it was a great experience and I feel like I could really be an effective coach of my very own team if I were able to put all my energy into it. I am a better soccer player on my own team now, and I have a good relationship with pretty much all the JV players. A couple of them are in my classes, so the good relationship killed two birds with one stone. That being said, I'll be the first to admit that I haven't complained this much since the beginning of my teaching stint. You might say that that was not that long ago, but for the craziness that happens daily on the job, I'd say that it was a VERY long time ago. Since the beginning of November I have been saying that I really like coaching except for the fact that it is killing me slowly but surely. In all likelihood, the limited amounts of sleep each night for the last three months have actually probably taken a few years off. I'm sure the sodium level in my revised freezer food diet contributes just as much, so my first resolution is to start eating real food again.

It is going to be hard to explain to the other coaches that I can't be involved next year, but the fact of the matter is that I could have been such a better teacher these last few months. It kills me to think of where my students could be right now if only I had had the time to hold mandatory tutoring after school for students who really needed it back in Chapter 3. Then again, it would have killed me to not do the coaching bit and wonder what I could have been like. I think I can be good at both positions, teaching and coaching, but not at the same time. It wasn't too hard to realize this fact after thinking about my endless weeks of emergency lesson planning on the day of each lesson. I truly am blessed with luck to have always had an effective plan by the time the bell rang each period. There were some nail-biter days, but I made it through without any scars, so I call that a success. Naturally, I now think that I will have SO much extra time to do all the things I could never get done before, but now that soccer is truly over, I can feel myself thinking of all the procrastination tactics that I never had time for before. Isn't that pathetic? The one saving grace I guess for the last three months was that I must have been pretty efficient at getting things done. I've been in "oh shit" mode this entire time and the way I can tell is that I woke up this morning sick for the first time this entire school year. You can usually tell when I have just gotten over a very stressful experience because I'm either sick or have canker sores and/or acne.

The coaches I worked with were very knowledgeable about soccer tactics and practice strategies, and I now have a way better tactical view of the game. It was also very interesting to be involved with a primarily Hispanic/Latino soccer team to see how they play, their strengths and weaknesses, and their perspectives of the game. For one, it is a common thought in these kids' heads that the referee is racist, which was very interesting to me. There were actually many times where I couldn't decide if the referee was appearing to harbor a little racism or if he was simply one of the worst refs I've ever seen. As a coach I felt more and more like I was able to empathize with the players. This is especially the case because our away games often reminded me how different my primarily white upper-middle class high school experience was, and all I could think about was how the other team's families in the stands probably have absolutely no idea the kind of world our players live in. I could go on and on about living in close quarters with way too many people with not enough money and no health care, but I think I'll leave it at that. I take a little pride from being able to sit with our team and laugh at the fact that two home games were rescheduled to be earlier so that the away team wouldn't have to be in Richmond so late. They have no idea. But I guess if you view your surroundings based on how the local news presents it to you, you're just plain ignorant. Plus, our local news is laughable in how awful it is.

And this segues perfectly into the story of yesterday. We are on a Monday hot-streak this month, but this one takes the cake. To preface, I will remind you that all of my students also share the same English teacher, so in second period English yesterday, one of my students pleaded with the teacher to get a drink of water because his mouth felt dry and numb and he was beginning to feel nauseous. To any slightly experienced teacher, this screams DRUGS right away, and coincidentally, it was nearly identical to the incident earlier in the year when one of my students took ecstasy right before English class as well. As it turned out, he was high on marijuana, but it was because of a pot brownie he had been given. Despite what your first impressions might be, this kid had never done any drugs or anything like this before, so when shit hit the fan and his parents, the school administration and the police were involved, he was sobbing, half because of the fact that he still had such an intense body high and was still nauseous. It turned out being only the tip of the iceberg though, because there was a huge investigation into where he got it, which turned into a ridiculous list of "he/she gave it to me," involving some 15 students. In the end, all signs pointed to a student in my class with a B average who was a great kid with no behavior problems ever. I still can't believe that he was the one selling pot brownies on campus for $8 a pop. He admitted it though, and apparently he's been doing it for some four months now! There is even one girl who needs counseling now because she thinks she is addicted to the brownies. The worst part about it though is the back-story to why this kid has turned drug-dealer. According to him, and I totally believe him, his dad has been making him sell them to turn a profit. Apparently somebody owes his dad a lot of money, and the only way he can pay him is in pounds of weed. Hence the pot brownies. Of course, when the dad got called in, he denied it all; I don't know what to think about that. Personally, I would say that it is his fault that his son is now expelled from Richmond High. Usually teachers can vouch for students in cases where a student is caught doing something totally uncharacteristic, but since he's been dealing at school for so long, there is nothing that can be done. It's sad. He had such potential. This place never ceases to amaze me.

I'd rather end on a happy note though, so I thought one of my student's poems from English class would be nice to share. The structure of the poem was the same for all students, but it's still pretty awesome and it really highlights the importance of diversity in a child's educational experience. Of course, the English teacher has told me that she wishes the assignment had more of an impact on disrespectful comments in class...

Just because I'm Mexican

Doesn't mean you have the right to call me a "beaner"

Doesn't mean I eat tacos, burritos, and tamales

And doesn't mean I drink.

Just because I'm Mexican

Doesn't mean I only speak Spanish

Doesn't mean I can't learn new stuff

And talk funny with an accent.

Just because I'm Mexican

Doesn't mean there is a party at my house every day with loud Mexican music

Doesn't mean I will end up in a fast-food restaurant or a low-paying job

And certainly doesn't mean I need to have a darker skin tone.

Just because I'm Mexican

Why do you boss me around?

Why do you call me names that make me feel bad?

Why do you treat me differently

Just because I'm Mexican

The poetry unit in English is the time of year that I learn the most about my students simply from the things they write. The English teacher shares some of them with me, but most students do not hesitate to read their poems aloud to the rest of the class or to hang them on the wall for everyone to see. Right now they are doing a poem about their life, and it reads, "If you could live my life, you would see... you would hear... you would smell... you would feel... you would taste... if you could live my life." I've said it once and I'll say it again: it's amazing the amount of larger-than-life adult-sized problems that these kids deal with on a daily basis.

Darn it. I really tried to end on a happy note.

:)

There.