"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.