Let's be honest, this is a procrastination post.

I got back from credentialing class today at 8:30pm, with planning still to do for tomorrow, but my energy is boosted by some comments from my classmates. Upon introductions to my newest table group in class, my group-mates agreed that I "have a ticket to heaven for teaching at Richmond High," which makes me laugh, because it's really not that bad. I firmly believe that even if I had taught at my own high school, there would be an entirely different group of stressors that would contribute to my life being just as pleasant. Of course, the magnitude and seriousness of those stressors my differ widely.

After working through a logic exercise today in class, too, my table partner said that I could get such a better job, and should apply to Chevron based on how I answer the logic problems. It's definitely interesting how people believe that jobs such as teaching at Richmond High are at the bottom of the totem pole as far as teaching goes. It makes you wonder what quantifies the "best" high school teaching job: an "easier" one with high performing students predisposed to going to college, or a more challenging one with lower performing students and a much bigger potential impact (in my first year, that 'potential' word is key...). But I suppose it would be nice not having to lose your temper in Algebra once a week...

If nothing else, the craziness has forced me to explicitly identify any "me-time" that I have set aside for myself. Recently this me-time has taken shape in the kitchen, and my newest Costco membership has only bolstered that. Sunday morning was pancakes AND waffles, and Sunday night I made "Salmon Fillets in Red Wine" for five, courtesy of the cookbook I have recently been poring through. Next on the menu is "Pan-Seared Steak with Red Wine Sauce." As you can see, the current trend is any dish that gives me an excuse to finish a bottle of wine.

Blackout

The fact that this is the second post in two days can only mean one thing: today was another crazy day.

First of all, I think I've figured out that the reason why so many people around here are put off by Seattle rain is because they think that Washington rain is the same as California rain. Wrong. California rain comes in storms, with winds that toss your car around on the way to work and an amount of water that floods the streets of Oakland. It's a rain that makes a good percentage of students not come to school...

So anyway, midway through first period today, the power went out, which is not a big deal unless your classroom doesn't have any windows... like all of the classrooms at Richmond High. I was only glad it was pitch black as I was embarrassingly feeling my way across the class to where I thought my desk was so that I could feel my way through the drawers to find the emergency flashlight that I had organized so well that now I couldn't find it.

After finding the flashlight we sat around as a class for two hours without power, moving from the classroom to the commons and losing track of my students one by one. In the end a pretty big amount of students just left to go home, and if I could have, I would have joined them. The boredom was only briefly delayed by a hilarious conversation with my students about how to spell my last name - keeping in mind that my name has been on the back whiteboard since day one and all the students say it all the time. I thought I had heard and seen every possible spelling, but this one takes the cake. Evelyn was positive that her first period Geometry teacher was Mr. Bretto. Unfortunately that one might stick for a while... at least until I make a test question that asks them to spell their teacher's name.

More California rain tomorrow!

Hitting the Reset Button

Clearly I have found that when things get hectic, the blog is one of the first things to go. Not having deadlines or external expectations on this thing really tests my personal motivation and willpower.

I am currently at school on a work day (no students) so that we can finish grades for the semester. Second semester starts tomorrow, and the idea of being done with half of the year is truly glorious. Hopefully this entry emanates a happy mood considering I just got back from a Oregon ski trip this past weekend, spending time with younger college friends - and playing the part of the wise out-of-college friend (they're so gullible...). The first half of the day today has been devoted to a visit from Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and a presentation on the topics of her book, "Trauma Stewardship" http://traumastewardship.com/, which was actually amazing. She talked all about how to make your profession a sustainable and joyful experience, which I will admit has been a new year's resolution for me. In the faculty conversations that followed, I was surprised to hear that many teachers that have been around for a long time think that this past semester was the most difficult yet, for violence and other reasons.

If nothing else, I hope reading and reflecting on this book will curb some of my insanity that is beginning to feel somewhat like an addiction to stress - knowing that there is always more to be done, and the general feeling that I am not fulfilling the Teach For America expectations unless I am killing myself with work. I do believe that I will suggest that TFA recruits this woman to speak to new corps members because she talks all about how to care for yourself while caring for others, which is by far the biggest issue I see among friends and colleagues, and often feel myself. Right now, there is always a feeling that I have forgotten something - to a point that I refresh my email three times in five minutes so that I can be aware of everything I need to do... which is so counter-intuitive, because I create stress for myself enough as it is! Sometimes I feel like I have a stress addiction. Maybe that means I'm addicted to adrenaline. I do like scary movies a lot...

Anyway, this presentation came at a good time of the year when everyone really needed it. I certainly needed the break after giving literally half of my students Ds or Fs on their report card. Our teaching community needed it after a shooting that happened last Thursday, killing a former RHS student. Turns out all the teachers just needed to talk about this stuff, because as the analogy was presented to us, we are all like sponges, and unless we get wrung out every once in a while, we can't take in any more of this trauma, and we start becoming desensitized to it. I am looking forward to reading the book, because I think there is more that I can do for myself besides soccer and a good cry every once in a while.

On the bright side, the talks made the whole faculty think about things they can do to improve their care for themselves, and a group of us teachers made a pact that we will run a half-marathon in March, so I guess I'm going to start going on runs with other teachers right after school. I figured it would be good for soccer anyway...

Ok back to grading; grades are due in a couple hours.

Christmas Break FINALLY

I found that there will always be new challenge every week to which I must react, but unfortunately the most recent has been the slow deterioration of my computer. The four and a half years of my Dell laptop has seen replacements of my keyboard, charger, and screen, and now battery life has been reduced to about seven minutes and the clicker doesn't work. All that has been taken in stride, but the final straw was the failure of the already-replaced screen. Now the challenge is deciding whether I want a new laptop or desktop. Needless to say, new blog posts were difficult to accomplish without a working computer.

As usual, a lot has happened since my last post. Thanksgiving break was insanely short, making the December school days seem to last an eternity. The last week was the worst week since the beginning of the year; the students were appalled that A) I gave out a test during the last week and B) that I refused to let them just watch a movie in class. The excuse of choice was, "...but we aren't doing anything in any of my other classes..." Whether or not that's true I have no idea (believable for some of these teachers). I'm already worried they're going to forget everything over the holidays, which makes the nearing end of semester particularly scary.

Despite being December, the events that unfurled during the last few weeks in West Contra Costa Unified School District suggested anything but Christmas spirit. I haven't had the chance to do a search for the stories on the internet news sites but here is what "the most wonderful time of the year" entailed for one of the TFA girls that lives with us: a little over a week ago, her school was on lockdown for three hours because of a race riot taking place on her campus at De Anza High School (a couple miles from my school in Richmond). Apparently huge groups of black and Latino students were creating a massive fight that ended in four teachers getting assaulted and eleven students arrested. Six of those arrested were students of our friend's - and I might add that this is the same girl that was originally given 70 students in one biology class; it is also the same girl whose plane to New York for Christmas got cancelled because of the snow storm. Not only that but there was some other fallout from the original riot (including two black girls spray painting "F*** Mexicans" all over the school on the lockers), making me wonder how the hell she has not put in her two weeks notice yet. My school comes from the same hate-filled community but at least doesn't ever have anything quite as scary as that.

The other event happened last week at the nearby middle school - this time it was a 12-yr-old girl getting raped by a 14-yr-old boy on campus during school hours. Apparently it's still up in the air whether or not she was actually raped or if she claimed that so she would not get in trouble, but the teachers at my school are right: the huge thing here is that there is sex happening in the middle school building. The whole thing really is sad, especially considering that these teachers that have to deal with all these issues are facing huge cuts to their benefits, prompting so many teachers I know to ask, "Why should I stay here?" when they know they could be financially so much better off in another school district (that would hire them in an instant). The new district-union agreement goes into effect on the first of the year, so there are at least a few teachers at my school that said goodbye at the holiday party. When our union leaders actually tell us the information we need to know, I'll be sure to pass it on. Hopefully with the new year comes a fresh start to just about EVERYTHING in WCCUSD. They need it badly.

In other news, I organized a co-ed soccer team a couple weeks ago with a whole bunch of people in TFA and we had way too many people interested, so I had to be a jerk and tell handfuls of people that they couldn't play for lack of space. However, a nice side effect has been the fact that our team is actually really fun and really good. It's about time; my roommate and I have been aching for some good and fun soccer. Other than that, I think just about everyone I know is ready for the holiday break, although I fully predict the weeks when we get back to be super rough...

Week of Weird

This week was a little odd- okay, most weeks are odd, but I decided to write about it this time because I realize I seldom write on happy days.

First of all, the majority of my students had no idea that we had Thursday and Friday off, which suggests that Thanksgiving is not a big deal to this community. I was appalled, because when I was in high school, I always knew when the next break was; strangely enough, that much hasn't changed now that I'm part of the faculty. In retrospect, I regret telling them because I had a lot of kids say that they just weren't going to show up on Wednesday, which I can say was apparently somewhat true today.

Secondly, some of the things these kids say are just ridiculous. In a conversation with Kheyon yesterday, he asked me if I was "all white," to which I gave a confused look. He clarified by saying that most of the "white" kids at the school only looked white and were really half Mexican. I guess Mexican is the trump race then when you're half and half... I responded that I guess yes, I am entirely of European ancestry, and he replied, "cool- you're only the second completely white person I've met." I hope I'm setting a good impression in his mind for the entire white race. I feel so much responsibility now!

Not to be outdone, my entire 5th period class (which is strangely 95% girls) really wanted to hear about my weekend. I told them I got a substitute on Friday because I had a wedding to go to, and they ran with it, asking me why I hadn't told them I was getting married. It's hard to say if they were kidding or not. Gotta love these kids, but they are so gullible. A handful of them still think I used to play for the San Jose Earthquakes soccer team. I had fun making up that elaborate story to them - sometimes I make up little lies to them about my life just to see what they will believe. They've narrowed down my age to 23 (still wrong), but even then, I had someone today ask me if my son goes to Richmond High. Apparently there's a student that looks like me; even so, I decided not to get into a conversation about the possibilities of me - in my early twenties, having a kid that is 15. Needless to say, my kids have a long way to go in the common sense department.

Speaking of common sense, my students and logic do not get along. Today was a minimum day and I didn't know what to expect or how many students to expect, so I'll admit: I gave a semi-unprepared lesson, if you can even call it that. We did a word problem and some (really easy) sudoku games, which overloaded a lot of my students with "too many numbers and too many rules." My question is: how do you teach logical reasoning to them. Today was a return to my thoughts earlier this year of "how do you not understand this?" Oh well- today wouldn't have been a good day anyway for a lesson because our clock stopped working (but PS: most of these kids can't read an analog clock anyway, so it was only me that was affected).

And to top off this short week, we had a student-faculty volleyball game in which I played, and consequently landed myself in the position of boys' volleyball coach. At least that's what the principal and the sports coordinator think. I had to explain to them that while I'm honored and will think about it, I really don't know that much about volleyball - only that I love to play it. Boys' volleyball is in the spring, so we'll see I guess. But that just goes to show the lack of leadership around here if they are willing to put me of all people as the head of the volleyball team...

This is definitely a unique place, but I think I'm finding my niche and the students are coming around to me. I had to take Monday off too for a meeting, so when I came back on Tuesday, I had tons of students saying that they missed me! Well I'm not naive; I just choose to disregard the sarcasm in their voices. They love me.

Now if I could just get them all to learn math.

Union Scandal

I almost forgot to update the status of our potential teacher strike - yes, apparently the teachers' union is still considering it. "Considering it" is tricky language however, because the union reps have realized that our disorganization has put us now in a place where we probably won't win anything from striking. The only amount of money we would win back would be the amount of money we would be losing by not coming in to work... at least that's how our rep explained it to us. The whole voting system is totally messed up, because we already voted to go on strike if the district did not meet our demands, and last week we had another union vote.

The slimy thing though, was that the vote was more or less weighted in one direction simply by the language on the ballot. Our reps presented the terms of our most recent contract, and we were to vote "yes, we accept those terms" or "no, we want to strike." On purpose, the union leaders did not include a choice saying, "no, we do not accept those terms" because they knew that the union members were afraid of doing a premature, disorganized strike. The word around Richmond High anyway is that they have given up and do not want to strike, so they are trying to legitimize the decision by making everyone vote to not strike and accept the offer. Confusing, I know. The situation would be funny if it weren't for the fact that the agreement says that teachers with families will still have to pay $500/mo on healthcare for their dependents starting January (among other things: class sizes, etc).

On top of that, word is that our union president is facing impeachment... or whatever you call it in a union. She definitely wants to go on strike, and school district gossip says that during the vote count (the initial count was in favor of not striking by only nine votes) she took them all to her room to do a "private recount" and found that the recount was in favor of striking. Scandalous, ridiculous, and totally disorganized. Welcome to West Contra Costa Unified School District.

October was a long month

I realized recently that leaving the previous post un-updated suggests a lot worse than I have actually been feeling. Don't get me wrong - the days around the last post were rough, mainly because I was just too frustrated to even think about lesson planning. Unfortunately, the chaos at school coincided with the last week of the quarter as well as the week my students were taking a math Benchmark Exam. Needless to say, my kids probably could have done a lot better on that exam if this gang rape case had not turned our school upside down. I'm surprised that through it all I still managed to dress up for Halloween on Friday. My kids had been telling me I look like Michael Phelps, so I wore a swimsuit, flip flops, goggles, and a homemade Olympic medal, which was fun. I had just enough energy to go out with friends to San Francisco that night, but stayed in on Halloween from exhaustion. I think I just took a day off from life that day - lounging and sleeping a lot.

The weeks since then have been a lot better. After a particularly emotional meeting with my TFA advisor, she paid me some special attention and visited my worst class twice in one week to give feedback on how to improve. I think it helped a lot, and at the very least, I can leave school happy instead of pissed off at my 7th period Algebra students. Also, in the week after Halloween, the student body organized a community event to stand up against violence; it was really great, with music and tons of student involvement. During the week, too, the kids passed out strips of blue cloth for everyone to wear during and after school as a reminder that our student body DOES care about horrible things like this that happen. In all I think the most destructive thing that came from the homecoming chaos was that the media made it seem like none of the Richmond High students cared or felt like this was anything out of the ordinary.

I think everything is as back to normal as possible now, although I am way behind on grading and am brainstorming new ways to give credit so I don't drown in all these papers. As it is, my roommate and I are equally contributing to a mess of an apartment - paper and teacher supplies everywhere. On the bright side, I've heard that this November/December stretch is not nearly as awful as the October month was, so things are looking up. Plus, I've been asked to help out on the soccer team (girls JV I think...) for one day a week, so I am pumped for that.

In all, things have actually not been that bad - my finances seem more in order than ever before, I'm staying in shape with soccer and actually pretty healthy food (I never eat fast food), and I have a pretty good relationship with my students. It's just discouraging and hard to swallow when I hear from multiple sources that success is rarely found during your first year of teaching when you teach in a place like Richmond. There's always more work to be done, so right now, I'm just having trouble knowing when to stop and be satisfied.

And also I need a vacation. I'm already committed to a Mt. Bachelor ski trip in January, and am organizing a Lake Tahoe trip in February. The thoughts of skiing will get me through the rest of 2009 :)