"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.