30 September 2005

Pay Day

I have heard that some teachers cry when they receive their first paycheck. The monetary value of the work they've done does not compute and they weep. I may be off the mark, but when I received my paycheck today I wanted to do cartwheels through the staff room. For the last fifteen months I have been living on student loans which I've supplemented with occasional substitute jobs, proctoring SATs, and part-time holiday work at REI. I have stopped short of donating plasma by asking my parents for small "loans" here and there. I've been making it through the last two months on $100 a week! So, while I certainly felt like my 15 hour days should be compensated in a much bigger way than my paycheck shows, I'm also delighted to be making money at teaching -- finally. Last year was like volunteer teaching as a student teacher and I resented that any classroom supplies I had to buy were essentially accruing interest.

Despite getting paid for the first time this year, today was a rough one. I actually said this to my students: You know. I could quit my job today. I got paid. Yeah, I think I could make it another few months on the money I got today. I could actually quit! What do you think about that?

They got very quiet, for the first time. I lucked out. They could have cheered at the idea of never seeing me again, but they didn't. I'll be frank: I did consider quitting my job. I am tired of my students. Here's why:

A student who I see three periods of the six period day (English, Advisory, and PE) wore an afro wig to school today. I should have confiscated it immediately, but decided to ignore it. Instead of working on revising his autobiographical essay, he shoves the afro wig down his pants, walked around the room, and flaunted his fake pubic hair. He was written up for sexual harassment just yesterday! When I tried to take the wig away (after he took it out of his saggy pants, of course), we got into a ridiculous tug of war and I eventually gave up the cause though walked away with strings of curly black hair threaded through my key lanyard. This is so frustrating. I want to help my students become better writers. I am tired of trying to build a civilization.

And now I'm home on a Friday night with the remnants of a bad cough, money in my pocket, and no where to spend it (except rent and student loans). I'm looking down the barrel of an evening of grading and a weekend of more grading and planning. I'm doling out F's and preparing for the onslaught of complaints next week when report cards hit. It won't matter that I spent three hours of my sick day calling students with last minute reminders to get their work in or fail. It will be my fault in their eyes.

At the end of all of this, I don't think they paid me enough!

29 September 2005

A Day Off

Yesterday I took a "day off." I have been feeling under the weather for a week now and decided that if I didn't stay home things would only get worse. But what a price to pay for staying home. I spent most of it working on final grades for the marking period and calling the homes of students who are about to find an F on their permanent record. I made so many phone calls, calls I never have the time to make or the energy left to make them with by the time school is over. Not only did I work more than rest yesterday, but I returned to the aftermath of a storm today. At the end of every day, my classroom is littered with paper balls (I've been told this is a uniquely 9th grade thing to do), but the sheer quantity of paper balls was tripled in comparison to the normal mass. One student decided to try and speed up time and get the sub off track by moving the minute hand of the wall clock with the paper face. He succeeded in breaking off the second hand and leaving the clock stuck on 1:00. I managed to fix it this morning, and he came to tell me what he did without offering an apology. In addition to this, there is now a population of fruit flies occupying my room. We haven't seen a janitor in over a week. I am strict about not letting kids eat in my classroom, but they still throw all kinds of junk into the garbage bin and down into the air conditioning vent. They are complete slobs.

I just spoke on the phone with the sub who covered for me yesterday. Not too long ago I was in her shoes. And if I haven't made it clear, the thing I hate the most about my job is that it is a lot like subbing, except I have to go back every day. My students are incredibly disrespectful, loud, messy, and annoying. Of course, there are only a handful of disrespectful students, but they manage to paint an ugly picture of the entire class. The woman who covered for me is no older than me, still standing, but not likely to want to return any time soon. I apologized for my class' behavior and felt ashamed. Then she said, "It's not your fault." That's the thing: these students aren't my fault and yet I'm somehow responsible for changing them. I am doing my best to put in place the structures they need and the routine to succeed, but they have come to me with bad habits, bad manners, and teenage hormones. What can I do about that?

This week, as a staff, we have put several boys on behavior contracts. Now when they are defiant, it goes in their record and after five they are suspended. After three suspensions they get sent to another school. What does this accomplish? It gets them out of my hair, but it opens up a space for the kid who was expelled from another area school. Today I was walking to the gym with one of these contracted students. He showed marked improvement in his behavior on Monday and Tuesday, and my guess is that it was in anticipation of the all staff meeting being held in his honor yesterday morning. Today, however, only one day after being put on a behavior contract and he's back to his former ways. He told me today that he doesn't care if he gets suspended and doesn't know why he is coming to school anyway. He said he would rather just be on the street. This makes no sense to me. I think of students with this mentality as the ones who struggle academically, who lack confidence, and support at home. This young man doesn't fit that mold. He is very smart and could easily be one of the best students in class if he cared. His mom is active in his life, too. I just don't understand. I do know that he is deeply wounded by his father's absence and blames his mother constantly for it. He is lacking male role models and I've seen him be a completely different person in the presence of an adult male. I cannot see how taking to the street is a real option for him. And yet, today at the gym he decided to trespass into the aerobics room, use the stereo to play his music, and then threw two backpacks over a wall into the office of a personal trainer before taking off down the street. He is unmanageable and way beyond the scope of what I can do for him. He is likely to end up at the continuation school, but I can't imagine he'll do much better there.

I am trying to figure out a consequence for my students tomorrow for their misbehavior. I'm hatching a plan to have them all write a reflective essay about yesterday followed by a massive cleaning of my room. Anyone who does not comply will have to stay after school and scrap gum from under the seats. Sounds like a nice plan, huh? Except the last thing I want to do on a Friday afternoon is spend any more time than necessary with a group of kids who completely disregard what I say. I can hear my grandmother in shock right now, saying, "Gosh, in my day when an authority figure told you do something you wouldn't consider not doing it." That is not the case today. The question is how to value the backbones of my students without being their victim?

28 September 2005

Dealing with ADD

During today's kayaking outing, one of the boys was given his final strike and can no longer go out no the water with us. We were paddling through the Marina when a yacht tried to come in and dock. He had to get over to the side, but this one student paddled right out in front of the yacht and disregarded the instructor's demands. The truth is, I don't think this student knows how to paddle in reverse because he wasn't paying attention to instructions earlier. The instructor realizes this too and later was more sympathetic than when he paddled over to my student to yell at him that he would not be welcome back. The bottom line, however, is a safety issue.

I really feel for this student of mine (we'll call him Mateo). Whatever your beliefs about ADD or ADHD, put those aside for a minute and realize that those who are diagnosed suffer regardless of whether you believe in the disease/condition or not. Mateo stopped taking medication, per his doctor's orders, in middle school. He is off the wall on almost a daily basis. He talks in a high-pitched whine that is grating to say the least. He is also small for his age, but chubby which he publicly blames on free access to his uncle's taco truck. In the first weeks of school, he was my number one adversary until one day when he returned with his completed reflective essay after being dismissed from class and we had a heart to heart. He told me about the ADD and that he often gets angry in class. His angry materializes as incessant talking/whining and jokes. He told me he used to have a stress ball that he squeezed but students stole it from him last year (which reminds me that I was going to try to find him a new one and have forgotten it in my millions of other things to do). To make matters worse, Mateo is an outcast. The other students are dead tired of him because he is distracting in class, annoying, and different.

During our impromptu after school meeting, I suggested that he and I have a plan and a signal. If he needs to get up from his assigned seat because he is angry or overly restless, he shows me the signal and then takes care of his needs. I have a side table by my desk and a folding chair he can set up. Mateo now pulls his left ear when he needs to move. Well, that was the plan, but he's taken to just sitting away from the group on his own from the beginning. Sometimes he asks me if he can go for a walk and I let him. Yes, he is getting special treatment. I can hear my professor from the "Teaching Students with Special Needs" class I took last year saying, "Being fair is not treating everyone the same. It is giving people what they need as individuals." It is better for Mateo if he can walk away. It is also better for the class who can then concentrate on their own work. The good thing about Mateo is that he is smart and he has skills. With five minutes of focus he can do what takes other students a half an hour. This might be part of the problem and part of his lack of focus; it may be a way he's coped through being bored in school. I don't know. What I do know is that I wonder about the idea of mainstreaming all special needs kids. I want them to feel they are part of the fold of the school, but at the same time they do have the ability to severely stop the learning of others. If his behavior in my classroom became a safety issue as it does on the water, I would have the ability to remove him. But, that is not an option and I have to find a way to work with him.

I am getting better at keeping my personal irritation with him out of it. I feel like an advocate for him, and I'm frustrated that the other students are so mean to him. I need a plan and some supported back up on this because I think Mateo is in a position of being harassed and possibly even hurt by other students. I have heard tormented comments in the hall about him being "raped by his father," and there have been many comments made about his sexuality, students believing he is gay. One day last week, when I asked the class to write about what they would change if they could change anything in their life, he said, "I would change me. I'm too creepy and no one likes me." He was not shy or embarrassed about saying this but blurted it out to the whole class, who laughed and then got yelled at by me. I didn't fix the problem. I just got pissed off. The good thing is that as I write this update I know that I need to take this to the larger community. I am not the only teacher of Mateo's and we need to ensure his safety at our school. I'm off to write that email and then put my social worker hat to bed.

26 September 2005

Pass or Fail

At a recent staff meeting we discussed the problem of students not completing assignments. One staff member suggested that when a large percentage of students are not completing the assignment, then maybe it's time to look at your pedagogy as a teacher. Several teachers felt offended or threatened most likely because as engaged teachers we are constantly examining our pedagogy and revising based on our students' needs. Soon there was division between those who think we are coddling our students too much by bending to their desires and those who think students really should be at the center of our teaching.

I'm not sure on which side of the divide I stand. But I do know one thing. After spending most of Sunday recording grades for my 18 seniors in Poetry Writing, there is a serious problem. More than half of the class has a D or an F. I'm required to submit grades this Friday. Several of these students are already on academic probation and receiving a failing grade in this class could be the deciding factor in whether they graduate or not. I am infuriated that this is the situation. I have purposefully structured the class so that it is supportive of the variety of special education students and academic probation students I have (my class is sort of like a collection of all the students who don't quite fit anywhere else). I told my students straight up on the first day that while I'll give them thoughtful feedback on their poems and suggestions for improving them, I will not sit around and try to decide if they've written a C poem or an A poem. For all intents and purposes, this class is a Pass/No Pass class. I tried to sell it to my class as "an easy A" or "the kind of class that will boost your GPA." I am shocked that so many are not taking advantage of it. There are currently seven students with A's and A+'s while eleven are failing. Granted, several of my "failing" students are special ed. so I will modify their grade by requiring fewer assignments, but as for the rest of them, I'm at a loss for words. It is not as if they didn't have warning. I distributed progress reports two weeks ago. I purposefully did not give them any new assignments for a whole week and gave them a deadline to get in their late work. Many of them turned in their work. One student even stayed until 5:00 on a Friday night to get his stuff done. The problem is that after they submitted late work, they slacked off again. They are now missing a whole new round of assignments and classwork. I am ticked off. I do not want to fail these students. I do not want poetry to be the class that broke the student's diploma. I don't want poetry to leave a foul taste in their mouth.

And yet, they must have a foul taste from school if this is how they are operating. I know that there is at least one "A student" in my class who has a "D." She is trapped in some sort of vicious circle of turning in late work only to slack off again. I don't know what to do. There are other variables, too, like the death of one of their classmates in the first week of school. Should that be considered in their grade, that many of them may be mourning and I don't even know or have any way to gauge this? Listen to this soft talk? Aren't I supposed to prepare them for the "real world"? How many of us have had to push ourselves through a hard day, a hard week, even when we experienced a family member's death, a desperate break up, a medical emergency? What employer out there is going to weigh all of this so gently and modify a grade or payment?

Where is the hard line? Is it in my classroom? A few years ago several new teachers who graduated from my program got jobs at the same high school. They were assigned senior English classes. All of these new teachers together failed a significant percentage of the senior class because they refused to give into the mentality of "Well, they are seniors. They aren't going to do anything anyway." All four of the new teachers were fired because of it, because they were honest, because they held their students to high standards. I sat down with my principal today and told her what was going on, and she did not bow down from the possibility of so many F's, though she suggested I think about the motivation of a high grade. I read her point, but I can't dole out B's or even C's to students who have not earned them.

These grades are compounded by a sudden drop in attendance of my class. Granted, it's a first period class. Many students show up fifteen or thirty minutes late. But many more are not showing up at all. Their grade is clearly affected by poor attendance as I give points for classroom work and participation. Most of the students I am most concerned about weren't even here today to receive the print outs of their missing assignments. In my mind, they deserve the F.

But then I think about extenuating circumstances. There's my student who has lost both her parents. She lives by herself now and works after school. Earlier this week, her car was stolen. And another student who lives with his grandmother and had a family emergency last week. Still another whose mother is an alcoholic. What good does loading an F onto an already heavy load do? What real world do I think I'm preparing them for? They are already living their own real world that I know so little about.

If I return to the idea of examining my own pedagogy, I become lost. I thought I was creating an opportunity for excellence, a climate of support and experimentation, a place to build confidence. I'd like to throw grades out the window because I hear my tired, sad, almost beaten down students trying to stand and be heard. I have to weigh if the passing grade or the failing one is the greater gift, and remember to give with love which doesn't always look pretty.

24 September 2005

Spontaneous Teaching

My morning freshmen English class is much more obedient, but less engaged. Now that I'm getting used to the energy of my afternoon class, I'm finding I prefer the talk to the silence even if I have a headache by the end. Yesterday something magical happened in the morning class. As we moved through the final vignettes of "The House on Mango Street," which traverses ambiguous scenes of rape and domestic violence, I asked my students to complete the graphic organizer I'd created which included a box for them to write what the vignette reminded them of in their own experience (activating schema) and another box for them to draw a depiction of the vignette (accessing multiple intelligences while helping students visualize what they read). I was completing a model of this on the board as we went along. Problem is that I'm a terrible drawer. Even my stick figures are pathetically disproportionate. The normal thorn in my side, the student who two days ago told me he wanted me to go to another school where I could give other students nightmares, the one who makes farting sounds every time I try to lead the P.E. students in stretches, he was absent yesterday. There was no one to make fun of me, but me. So, I did. For perhaps the first time in this class, I was laughing at myself. I was relaxed and at home in my own teaching skin and it worked in my favor. Instead of belaboring over my pathetic drawing of a clown, I put my dry erase marker down and said, "Alright. Someone has got to come up here and save me." Immediately, one of the students who rarely participates positively came up to save the day. The clown he drew was pretty close to Crusty the Clown and a much better rendition of the one I drew. Of course, I used this opportunity to walk around to all of my students and see that there were working on their own drawings. Sure enough, everyone in the class was on task, and I got to see what fabulous artists I have in my classes. For those who weren't fabulous, I could encourage them by saying, "Look at my drawing! It can't be any worse than that!" We moved through the vignettes like this for a good half hour without my losing the focus and attention of my students. It just so happened that the principal had come in and seen all of this, too. I glanced at her every once in a while to see that she had a big smile on her face. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, a female student who is a great writer and a smart cookie but who prefers to put on an edgy front and often pushes buttons, blurts out (as she usually does), "Ms. Barrett, you are so nice!"

But the best part of the whole period was still to come. At the very end of class, I passed out a poem called "Empty House" by Rosario Castellanos. The poem is a perfect extention of the book we'd just finished. I began reading the poem to the class, not really sure what I would do with it besides read it and ask them to somehow connect it to the book, but I didn't have to figure it out because by the second stanza two boys started reading the poem aloud with me. We moved through it in perfect unison, as if riding a tandem bicycle for three. Their somewhat deeper and quieter voices matched with mine had a harmonizing effect. I am not exaggerating when I say that the atmosphere in the classroom was magical. All thirty-one of my students were on the edges of their seats and several students whispered to others, "Woah, do you hear that? That's cool. That's creepy." When the three of us finished our reading, the class burst into excitement and wanted to talk about the poem and the effect of the multiple voices. My mind immediately leapt to thinking about what a great lead-in this was to the dramatic reading of Romeo & Juliet we'll begin in a week. What's most amusing to me about this is I believe the boys who joined in on the reading really were trying to get at me at first; they thought it would make me mad or derail the reading. I don't think they expected me to keep reading and certainly not to love it. When the class finished exclaiming how much they liked the poem, I said, "That was great! Who wants to do it again?" Overwhelmingly the class wanted to do it again. This time I asked anyone who wanted to to read it aloud with us. The second reading, of course, wasn't as good in sound quality as the first, but it was exciting nonetheless that the class was willing to do a spontaneous choral reading of a poem. Magical, really.

This is clearly one of the best teaching days I've had yet. What made it so good, apart from one truly disruptive student being absent, was my comfort and confidence with the class. I was having a good time and I cared about what we were doing. The night before was Back to School Night. I spent 12 hours at school and by the time I got home, I was too burned out to put much energy into my lesson plan for the next day. I knew we needed to finish the book and I knew I had a poem that worked well at the end of the reading, but I spent less than twenty minutes on my lesson plan and said to myself, "I'll just figure it out." As a teacher, I'm all about careful planning and even scripting out some of the things that I need to say, but I also value the spontaneous moments in the classroom. At the beginning of the year, and with my students the beginning of their high school career, the emphasis is on structure, routine, and the expected. It's been hard for me because despite my very organized and somewhat methodical ways, I fell in love with teaching when I taught poetry for Upward Bound. I set a daily structure for the class, but I had the students supply the class with poems. I never knew what the class topic would be. If a student brought in a poem that exceptionally modeled the use of line breaks, then I did a mini-lecture on line breaks and then spontaneously created a writing assignment for them dealing with line breaks. I loved that class because I didn't know what to expect, because my students were providing the curriculum as much as I was, and because it felt as if it served my students where they were rather than from some place of my solitary ideals for them. Yesterday reminded me of my love of this organic teaching which comes from an organized classroom. There were moments for personality, real stories, and connection in class yesterday. I even found a moment to pull back from the scheduled curriculum and tell my students about the value of applying to private universities, to tell them that they should never let a price tag keep them from applying. I wrote out numbers on the board and spelled out for them my own experience of believing I couldn't afford a private education only to find out that in reality it was the public one I couldn't afford. And even then, they listened attentively. It might sound like a tangential thing to discuss, but it fit in perfectly with the quickwrite prompt to write about what they wanted to happen in their futures and how our protagonist overcame her own poverty and position in society. Education. Writing. Poetry. If this isn't an argument against the scripted textbooks being imposed in impoverished districts across the country as an off-shoot of the Bush Administration's "No Child Left Behind," then I don't know what is. I can hear my favorite mentor whispering,"We don't teach English. We teach people."

21 September 2005

The "thank goodness I have a cool principal" post

The lesson is this: never give your students material you haven't already read for yourself. Today, I was sharing a chapter from "The Poet's Companion" by Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio. The chapter was about writing from an illogical point of view, not worrying about sense. It touched on dreamscapes and the subconscious. I played out a lesson I've known for a long time only because I did not have enough time in the day to prevent it. I decided to trust two of my favorite poets and their book. The beginning of the chapter was fine, a little esoteric and full of college words. But, I thought to myself, "This is good, I'm stretching their minds and giving them a taste of what college is like..." Then I got to the poem that was excerpted as an example of following a dream into a poem. It was called "You've Changed, Dr. Jekyll" by Jan Richman .

I'm reading aloud to the class a poem I've never read or even heard of, and with each word I am becoming more tentative, wishing I'd taken that extra five minutes last night to skim the chapter. I get to the phrase "your uncircumstance" and I'm afraid. But I continue until I'm reading "While your left hand/ conducts an under-the-table ejaculation, your right flips the rusty tongue of a Dream Date lunchbox." Oh no, what have I done! I refuse to look up at my small class of seniors. I'm grateful about five didn't show up today because I just said ejaculation and my face must be bright red. They say nothing. Not even a snicker, but the silence tells all. And at that moment, the door opens and in walks my principal for a surprise observation. There's nothing to do but keep reading even though I want nothing more than to slam the book shut. These are seniors. They can handle it. I want to prepare them for college level discussions, right? But why now with the special education support teacher and the principal here to witness it? Then I say the rest of the poem: "Herr, Doctor, Mr. Dad, you've handed/ down a scratchy decree, this cushion on which I sit to jerk/ off in the meager poem of your hiding place. Five hot minutes/ on the phone with legacy equals a cup of serum..."

Ohmigosh, what have I said? What have I done? The students are still silent. Maybe they missed it thanks to the line break that separates "jerk" from "off." But I can sense that they get it, loud and clear. I move through it like nothing happened, like we are absolutely all adults and there's nothing to be embarrassed about. But inside I'm wondering if this is the second time I've blown it with poetry. Two summers ago, I asked a poetry class to write down a list of favorite words or expressions. Many were culled from hip hop songs I knew and some I didn't know. One expression was "slob my knob" and while I got the gist of the meaning, I didn't pursue the definition. I encouraged the students to put all of the words in their poem. A week later at the staff meeting the issue of not encouraging students to write about sex was brought up. Guilty party? Me.

Poetry is meant to be read with the body. It is not of the brain. This is exactly what Laux and Addonizio were arguing in the embarrassing chapter about self-satisfaction. Poetry likes to slide into the sensual, the sexual, and sometimes the baudy. And I want my students to have full access to the artistic expression and to their own desire and understanding of their body. And yet...

Later today I checked in with the principal to see if she had been bothered. She said, "Oh no. You don't have to worry about that with me. In fact, it was amusing to see what the students did. They looked up at you, up at me, up at each other, and then puzzled went back to the reading."

Had this been my ninth grade class, I might never have recovered.

19 September 2005

The "I don't know" syndrome.

How many students said, "I don't know" today? I don't know.

In the morning class there are about four students who regularly raise their hand to be called on, every time. There are about five more students who will respond if I call on them. The rest of the students, when I call on them say, "I don't know." At other points of the class there is a lot of calling out. The patterns of participation in my classroom are overly aggressive and passive. There is no in-between. In an attempt to establish an orderly classroom at the beginning, my teaching methods are becoming much more traditional than I find comfortable, and as a result traditional patterns of participation are occurring. I have tried cooperative group work, but it's not cooperative. Everything I try to do that doesn't fit the teacher-at-front model, is something that has worked well with tenth graders. Ninth graders are a whole different ball game. I managed to do some student-centered discussions in the ninth grade class I taught a year ago, but I'm realizing now that it worked perhaps only because I had eighteen, not thirty-two, students. I am struggling to find a model where students take turns, but do not talk only through me. I am tired of being the gatekeeper of conversation. More importantly I fear that I might actually be the teacher I repudiate in the opening of my "Teaching Philosophy" paper I submitted to my graduate program:

“'The unkindly spirit of the teacher is strikingly apparent; the pupils, being completely subjugated to her will, are silent and motionless, the spiritual atmosphere of the classroom is damp and chilly' (Zinn 257). In the alternative history A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn cites this classroom observation written by a journalist during the American Industrial Revolution. Education in America, as Zinn claimed, was initially an institution designed to subdue children of the working class to quiet obedience and eventually raise them into unquestioning adults. Education was not a place to encourage dissent, but rather a training ground for 'those who would be paid to keep the system going, to be loyal buffers against trouble'(257).

Even though much progress has been made in the field of education during the last 110 years, it’s no secret that many students and teachers alike still feel uninspired by school. But I believe it doesn’t need to be this way. I wish not to subjugate my students to the makings of calm, complacent, American citizens. Rather I aim to stir revolt in the soul, not a rebellion against this nation but a deep love for it, a love of its literature, landscape, and diversity. I believe that teachers have a responsibility to engage youth on a moral level, to ask them to seek out answers to society’s biggest problems. I believe the classroom should be a recurring, safe, and seminal locus of meaningful and explicit discussion about race, gender, sexuality, and language. Through these discussions, teachers should inspire students to question the status quo and decide for themselves the future of their country..."

16 September 2005

The Season of Poetry

Today, I finally got my poetry class to sit in a circle, to look at each other, to share more openly. The assignment was for them to bring in a favorite poem of theirs. It could be from childhood, from a rap song, from a lullaby -- anything. In the past this has been the easiest assignment ever. Students can hide behind someone else's words. There's no analysis, just aesthetic pleasure. I asked them to write a mere 1/2 page about why they chose the poem and where they found it, but half of them brought only the poem. Two were bold enough to bring a favorite poem they had written. One young man who told me flat out the other day that he is only going to pass my class so he can sign himself out of high school as soon as he turns 18 in December, told me he hates poetry, told me he's just "not into it." But today, he brought in a poem from Tupac Shakur's book and said, "I found a poem I actually like." It was simple, more like a prayer about finding strength in God. This student who acts so tough admitted that he liked the poem because it was similar to what he was going through right now. I'm not sure the details of what he's talking about, but I see some sort of turn around with him. Until today, he had turned in absolutely nothing for my class and had an F. Over half of my poetry students did. I told them point blank on Monday when I passed out progress reports that this should be an "easy A" class, a way to boost their GPA. I purposefully did not assign homework this week and told the class I would accept all late work until today because I didn't want to see all of these F's. Some students still failed to turn in their work, but others, like this young man, stepped up to my offer. He stayed after school today until 5pm to finish all of his work and turn it into me to grade over the weekend. He may never love poetry, but I hope he'll come away with something valuable from my class.

Tonight I attended a poetry reading and reacquainted myself with a few of my favorite poets. Both of them were supportive of my teaching endeavors, but it was Dorianne Laux who made my day. I told her I'd used one of her poems in my class this very week, and she thanked me. Then she said, "What about your own poetry?" I didn't have to say too many words; it was clearly written on my face that I'm too tired to write my own. She assured me; "Don't worry, as you go along your body will adjust to this and come summertime, it will know that it is poetry season -- time to write." I know she must be right. She must be right. There is no other way.

14 September 2005

Racism and Hookers

This sun is shining through, literally and figuratively. I'm happy to be writing today from a place of delight and wonder at what went right. Today, I asked my students to write for ten minutes about the areas of their life where they felt the most free and the other areas of their life where the felt the most limited. I asked them to take into consideration the role of their gender, age, race, or religion in their freedoms and limitations. With my first class of freshman, the class that is generally more obedient and subsequently more subservient, the follow up conversation was dull with only the usual five or six students participating. But my afternoon freshmen, the crew that has been the bigger challenge and test of patience, but which clearly has the most sass, the most spunk, and will likely be the ones I remember forever, students dove into the conversation. As I've already mentioned here gender roles and sexism are big topics in my life right now, so we started there. In a class dominated by women (in numbers), there was a lot to say about the double standard many of us have faced. My female students admitted to having more responsibilities at home and less privileges outside of the house. They complained about not being able to play football and the modified rules for co-ed sports. Finally, there was some directed passion! Students were eagerly taking turns to say their piece. I was just about to foolishly move on to discussing one of the vignettes they were supposed to read for homework last night when the self-proclaimed "goth" in my class shouted out, "Wait a minute. What about race? How come we didn't talk about race?"

I'd been so happy with the discussion of gender, that I wanted to count it as a success and move on without tackling race, too. But as soon as she said the word, I was there and ready. I had tried to bring up racism two weeks ago, before my students trusted me at all. The response was ugly and by the end several students accused me of being racist. In fact, I was acknowledging that racism exists, is systemic, and pervasive. I can only guess that my frank talk of it made them suspicious or nervous, a white woman admitting unfair treatment, or in my case -- unfair privilege. Today, we turned to race.

I asked my students, "How does your race limit you or in some cases free you?"

Hands shot up. Everyone suddenly had a story. For the first time in four weeks, I could feel 90% of the class was with me, hooked, and engaged. THIS is why I became a teacher. My students started telling their stories. I prompted them with, "Raise your hand if you've ever walked into a store and had someone follow you to see if you were shoplifting?" All of the hands shot up and yelps of "me, me" and "I have a story" came leaping from their mouths.

All of their stories were similar and all placed the blame on someone who had unfairly judged them because of their race and possibly their age or attire. While all were eager to share their stories, they were also eager to listen to each other. In a class of competitors, there seemed to be the first glimpse of authentic support and empathy. When it was my turn, I managed to keep myself from crying when I said to my students, "I want to thank you for sharing your stories. I hope you will continue to bring your experience to this class. I want you also to know that I acknowledge that as a white woman I have been unfairly allowed certain privileges that you have not. I have NEVER been suspected of something I didn't do, and I do not know what you have felt." And then I found an opportunity to share a bit of myself with them because even though they don't seem to like me or to even care because everything is "boring" or "stupid," I have been told by them in their letters and exit cards that they want to know more about me. I also know that as a student my most effective teachers were the ones who let us in to their lives and struggles too. So, I told my class that the closest I had come to feeling judged unfairly was when I was out and about with my skateboarding ex-boyfriend. I told them that I had never been afraid of a cop until one yelled at me to get off of my board. It was only a glimpse and nothing like the daily discrimination I know my students face.

Pretty soon we were back to the vignette. I wanted the students to talk about whether the main character, Marin, was limited or free in her situation. I wanted them to read between the lines, to see that she was responsible for taking care of the house while her aunt was away and that when her aunt returned she was not allowed to leave the front of the house. They read between the lines alright: almost by consensus they all believed that she was a hooker. This character wore a short skirt and wanted attention from boys. I've read "The House on Mango Street" about six or seven times now and I've never considered Marin to be a hooker. I still don't consider her to be a hooker. But I suppose their is an alternative interpretation, and if I look at the schema my students bring to their reading, Marin is probably a hooker. After all, we have at least two neighborhood hookers who even in broad daylight walk up and down our street, directly in front of the school, directly in front of my classroom. It should not be surprising, then, that they see Marin as a hooker when I see her simply as a girl who feels trapped. As their teacher, someone who every day talks about reading as "meaning making," I have to be open to their interpretations and be true to my word that they should bring themselves to a text.

What I am not sure about supporting, however, is the way they lit into the hooker. Suddenly the class was awash in nasty comments and belittling remarks. She morphed from a hooker to a ripper to a slut and a whore. What a ripper is, I still don't know. I stopped my class and said something like, "This may be a character in a book, and you might think being a hooker is not a good thing, but it doesn't mean hookers are bad people. I'm going to ask you to think about the person behind the profession and consider that she has feelings too. And in reality, she might be our neighbor, a member of our community, someone in your family." Did they hear me? I'm not sure. A couple of students said it was her fault, that she deserved to be talked badly about because she made the decision to sell her body or "do the nasty" (here, I told them it was perfectly okay to say sex in my classroom). I was surprised to find no sympathy for the woman's situation. Similarly, when we came to the vignette of Rosa Vargas who had too many children to take care of, whose husband had left her, all of the students including the girls blamed only the woman for her situation. It was her fault for choosing a loser guy. It was her fault for not using protection. It was her fault for not putting her kids up for adoption.

I feel like there's something here. These characters could live in my students' families, their neighborhoods, and god forbid, could be the students themselves, and yet there is this inward finger pointing: you can choose a better situation; you can fix your problem; you need will power, strength, and common sense. My students are blaming individuals for their circumstances, but when it comes to their own behavior it is a contradiction; when my students make bad choices it is never their fault. They seek sympathy and explain their own blame away.

I'm left with the question: how can I open them up to the contradiction before them and give them a key to their own choices?

Such a large question, and finally an important one. We are not discussing where to put your homework or how to sign out to go to the bathroom. We are preparing to ask tough questions that might not have answers. Yes, this is a breakthrough.

13 September 2005

Seeing Red

Here we go. An anecdote from Monday (was that yesterday?). I hung up on the wall the "Where I'm From" poems my freshman wrote in the second week of school. They wrote the poem and had to illustrate it in some way. One girl turned hers in to me with a red background and the phrase "Norte X4" across the top. When I was in high school, blue and red gangs separated into Bloods and Crips. In my adulthood blue and red gangs have separated into Republican and Democrat. At the school where I teach I knew that blue and red were Sureno and Norteno, but I didn't know which color represented which. She handed me her poem and I suspected it was a gang reference so I asked her, "Is this something appropriate to hang on the wall?" She looked a bit sheepish but replied, "Sure..." Call me crazy, but my time for reflection is a bit limited, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and put the poem up on the wall. It was, after all, one of the better poems and she had taken such care in her illustration. The next day, though, students from all of my morning classes gathered around the poem and asked me who had written it. Of course, I withheld that information. When my poet returned to class I asked her to stay afterwards. We walked up to the poem on the wall and I said, "So, does this refer to a gang?"

She said, "Yeah."

I asked, "Are you representin'?"

She said, "Yeah."

Then I said, "Because your poem has attracted a lot of attention, some of it negative. I want you to think about whether it's a good idea to advertise your affiliation with this gang. I am concerned you might get hurt."

Her response was a simple, "I ain't trippin. But you can take it down if you want."

I took the poem off the wall and delivered it to the principal with a mental note to myself to keep an eye on my young freshman. As my principal tells me, freshman in particular are the ones who affiliate with gangs. They have not bought into identifying with our school yet, so they bring their own band. By tenth grade, there is less interest. That said, even my seniors seem obsessed with red.

It used to be my favorite color.

12 September 2005

Relationships in the Classroom

What I've known since beginning this job is that it is the personal relationships with my students that make my job worthwhile. Of course, there's also an incredible amount of creative energy that goes into teaching, and that appeals to me too. What has been so hard about the last few weeks is that all of my creative energy has been used up and I've felt like no relationships have been developing. Things are perhaps beginning to change...

On Friday, I had an extremely uncomfortable advisory class period. These four boys, most of them 10th and 12th graders, were purposefully pushing my buttons and I was falling for it, getting madder and madder each time, which only egged them on further. Maybe because it was Friday and I was exhausted, I could not get the personal distance I needed from the situation to see how to improve it. Thankfully I share this advisory class with the other rookie teacher (even more a rookie than me at 23 years old). I left the classroom for a breather and let him settle the boys. I immediately went to our school mom. She really is the mother of several former students. She got involved when they attended and she's never left; thank goodness. Her job has now been formalized and she's paid for the long hours she puts in at our school. She does a little bit of everything and has a big presence on campus. The first week of school, the freshmen thought she was the principal. What's great about her is that she is very supportive of the teachers, but she has excellent relationships with the students. So, I went to her because I knew that she was on solid ground with the 12th grade ring leader in my class. She pulled him from class and had a long talk with him where he admitted he was purposefully trying and testing me and encouraging the rest of the class to do the same. He admitted that he didn't like me. Our school mom relayed all of this back to me in the kindest, most gentle way, and assured me that he would come talk to me on Monday. Well, over the weekend I thought about my own behavior and realized I'd been holding on to some things too tightly, that my need to seem authoritative had gone overboard: truthfully I didn't care if students chewed gum in class; I only cared that they didn't leave it in class (on the floor, under desks, etc.) So, today I asked this student to go for a walk with me, which he agreed to do. In fact, he said, "I knew you were going to ask to talk to me. I was going to talk to you first." We found a quiet place on campus and had a heart to heart. I reminded him that he is clearly a school leader and because of it he has some responsibility to help create the kind of school and class he wants to attend. He admitted to derailing my class (though he did not apologize). I admitted to being a little uptight about some stupid things. He said, "I'm going to be on your side from now on," to which I said, "I hope that you will see that we can all be on the same side." And after that, we just talked. He had his photos from a fabulous Outward Bound trip he got to take to Hawaii this summer as a part of their urban scholarship program. We bonded over our backpacking experiences. I feel hopeful that this little bit of time I took to spend with him will greatly improve my experience with this class. If only I had opportunities to have one on ones with all of my students... With 32 freshman in each period, it's a bit daunting to say the least.

But, I am trying to find small ways to hear from each of my students on an individual basis and build some relationships, knowing that this will improve my life and our experience together. On Friday, I had them write "exit cards," a response to me on a notecard which acts as their ticket out of class at the end of the day. I asked them to tell me how their three weeks had been; if they were happy with their seat in the class; and anything else they thought I should know about them in addition to all they told me in their introductory letters. By and large the results were good. Of course, all of my students who are truly struggling in English (because it's their second language) think the class is boring. One student writes, "I don't think I can pass but I am going to try really hard. The three weeks that we've been here have been boring and hard." Another writes, "Because is boring reading and writing to teach more I that this three week been good." I am witnessing the beginning of their high school friendships. One pretty shy girl, who I just discovered last week would prefer to go by her second name rather than her first but was too embarrassed to tell me or any of her classmate, wrote, "This three weeks have been awesome! I love that I made new friends. Also the teachers are really nice to me." Others struggle to find their place; "I don't really like the people but school's cool, but NO GOTHS ARE HERE!" and another admits, "I'm a nerd. The past three weeks were the saddest weeks..." I love the response from one of the most responsible and best behaved boys in the class. On the second day of school, I asked them to write a letter to me. In his, he told me he had crushes on three girls in my class, so I wrote him back and asked him if it was distracting to him. Believe it or not, he responded on his exit card with "Nah, it's only one girl and I'm dating her. Yup. But don't worry she doesn't distract me and neither do I." I am sure it is the girl who sits right next to him, which says a lot for proximity. She writes, "I like sitting next to _____ because he is not annoying like the other boys." Truthfully, they are working well together. My favorite, though... I think it comes from a young woman who comes to our school every day on a 40 minute bus ride. In her letter to me she had told me about a teacher that really encouraged her in the past. On her exit card, she writes, "Remember the letter I wrote about the inspiration teacher. Well, I would like you to be that teacher this year!"

Clearly, I have some serious work to do, especially with developing the English of some of my English Language Learners, but I'm feeling a bit more excited about using up all of my creative energy now that I know a bit more about the people behind the students. What I must remember is that it works the same way for them, a relationship will build their interest. I have introduced myself to my students by letter and again through a poetry assignment, but that is all. Beyond this, I am still a stranger to them. I need to look for ways to disclose more about myself while still maintaining the distance I need.

09 September 2005

After Happy Hour: A Blog about Sexism

It's Friday night. I'm finally home after tackling Happy Hour with some of my co-workers. It was meant to be relaxing but in effect it extended shop talk into the night and I now feel like I've been working for 15 hours straight. I'm exhausted, sore from leading the students in push ups at PE yesterday, sore from having my privacy invaded and my money stolen, and tired of it all. A hug at the end of all of this would do me good. The cat wasn't very responsive to my need for a little bit of affection tonight.

The last few days have been hard to detach from. The sexism I am facing from my students and the blatant disrespect of my position, heightened by the fact that I am a women, is shocking. I was not prepared. In my experience as a substitute teacher, the boys were obedient if not subservient. Once, as I prepared to fill in for a fourth grade teacher who had lost her voice, I saw the boys run up to the window and take a peek at me, their teacher for the day. Then they shouted to the other boys, "Our teacher's fine! I'm gonna be so good today." I may not be fine, but there certainly was some sort of womanly power at my service with the boys I've taught in the past. It was the girls I had trouble with, generally. They seemed to get territorial with me. But at this school, it's the reverse. A class of all girls (which I practically have in the afternoon with 21 girls and only 10 boys, would do me well at this point. I was not expecting to feel so tested, judged, and even disliked by the boys in my classrooms. I am not imagining this. The other female teachers are battling it too while the male teachers at my school suggest I call the boys out on it.

Yesterday, when we split the boys and girls in PE and the assistant principal left me with the boys... we were in the courtyard doing stretches before running the mile, and one of my advisees, a very beautiful girl, walked by. One of my ninth grade boys who has been a handful since day one, made some very explicit and inappropriate comments about her as she walked by. I called him on this and told him it was inappropriate, which got me no where. Immediately afterward, I was in the lunch room discussing this situation with my colleagues (there are more male teachers at my school than female). One of my colleagues suggested that I should have said to him, "Man, you have to work on your game. How do you think you'll ever get the ladies if you talk like that?" This suggestion disgusted me. As soon as my colleague suggested it, he rescinded the idea stating, "I guess that wouldn't really work coming from you, but a guy could say it." That's just it folks, this is much larger than any conversation I could have with the kid if the men at my school are discussing women in this way even if it's their way of reaching the boys on their level. Women are game. How am I ever to earn the respect of the boys in my class when they are steeped in a school culture where male teachers egg their male students on and where the boys are raised in a culture where women are subservient, nevermind that women are the foundation of their lives and many of their fathers are missing in action? It appears to me to be a battle I can't win. But the battle I must somehow win is not believing the message that I'm inferior because I'm a woman. I would be lying if I didn't admit that I feel low right now. I think I must have been somewhat sheltered from this stupid man's world, at least partially. Did my own school, my own family, my own culture do such a good job of promoting me as a full and equal citizen despite my gender that this encounter can be so jolting? I have faced chauvinism in this country, in Spain and Morocco, and in personal relationships, too, and yet I feel unhinged and unprepared for this.

08 September 2005

Illegal Things

I wish I had some delicious tidbit to share or new analysis on the adolescent brain to share today, but I don't. I'm left with a bad taste from today because moments before leaving my classroom (again the last person besides the janitor to leave the building), I discovered that $18 had been stolen from my wallet. I never carry more than $20 in cash to a school site and prefer not to even take that much. I have been overly-vigilant with my laptop, locking it up in the file cabinet every time I leave the room, locking the door to the room when I have an errand to run. Most of the teachers leave their doors wide open and I've felt a bit like the paranoid newbie. But, I have too much to lose. It is not the monetary value of my laptop as much as it is the content of my writing files. But for now it's my only solution if I want to use a computer at work since there is no working computer in my room. So, I'm $18 poorer. Things could be worse, but it still makes me mad. I can't think of when or how it was stolen. The truth is I was away from my room much of the day for PE, but my door was locked. The assistant principal had his LCD projector and laptop in my room, but it looks like cold hard cash is more useful.

This is just another test, I'm sure. How much can we get away with with the new teacher, they must be wondering. Last week, I was assigned a senior to my prep period. I was told he was a good kid who just wanted a quiet place to study and I was the only one with second period free. I said yes reluctantly even though it is my only prep time. I was told I could use him as a TA if I wanted, but the one time I asked him to punch holes in the handouts for my freshmen, he tried to punch all the holes on an entire class set and it was not helpful. The day after that, he came in and put his head on his desk for a half an hour while I busied myself with grading and frantically trying to get everything ready for the next period. About ten minutes before class ended, he got up and walked out of the classroom and as he walked out I called his name. He ignored me. I had an errand to run and was told that it would be okay to leave my room as I needed to and leave him there unattended. So, I went about my business. When I returned from my errand he was in the room again, staring into nothing. The room reeked of marijuana, but always being the last one to detect the sent of marijuana at concerts, I didn't trust my gut at first. And then I couldn't deny it.

So, I said, "It stinks in here."

"It does?" he responded in a classic fashion.

"Yeah."

"Like what?" he asked incredulously.

"I don't know... why don't you tell me?"

"I have no idea." With that class was over. I immediately went next door to retrieve the math teacher to do a smell test of my room. He confirmed the smell and then confirmed that when he'd gone to the bathroom five minutes prior, he had run into this student of "mine" in the far stall.

Needless to say, I reported this to the principal who said she'd caught him smoking pot in the alley last year and would talk to him. Over the weekend I decided I didn't want him in my class at all because my life was stressful enough without feeling like I couldn't let my guard down during my one prep period of the day. And here's the success in this. Where students are testing me and trying to take advantage and where I usually fail to say explicitly what I want or need, I succeeded in telling my principal that I did not want him in my class anymore. I did not apologize. This is victory!

07 September 2005

Trash Ball & Title IX

Last week with the help of the assistant principal, we introduced my students to the game of Trash Ball. If Trash Ball doesn't sound familiar to you it's because it's an urban school invention. At my school, we have limited facilities. There is no gym or playing field but we do have half a basketball court, proudly fundraised and built by the students last spring. We do not let our lack of facilities keep us from pursuing healthy choices and physical education; we make up games to play with what we have. One of those inventions, before my time, is Trash Ball. A combination of many games you've played before, Trash Ball is basketball without dribbling. Soccer without the kicking or positions. Football without the tackling. The goal is to get the kickball into the trashcan which is held by two people on your own team. It is a moving goal, and rather than tossing the ball past your opponents' keeper, you try to get the ball into your own goal zone. The beauty of Trash Ball is that it doesn't matter how many people play, so we have successfully played with a full class of 34 freshman, boys and girls alike.

After warming up in the classroom, reviewing the rules, and talking up the prestige of being good at Trash Ball, the assistant principal and I lead the crew out to the playing field (otherwise known as the empty parking lot). The AP and I both joined in on the game, which seems to have inspired some of our students and stunned the rest. One of the smallest boys in my afternoon class of freshman came up to me with his big dimples fully depressed and said, with wide eyes, "You are playing with us?!"

"Of course!" I said.

He took a step back and then said incredulously, "But... you are a... woman!"

Keep in my mind my adult life was positively shaped by athletics. Making the basketball team my freshman year of high school saved the quality of my life and helped me finally drop those extra 25 pounds of childhood insecurity. By the time I left high school, I'd joined the Varsity soccer team, and indoor soccer team, and had lead my basketball as the team captain. I often think about sports as a life-saver for me, sports that lead me to backpacking and hiking and a tolerance for hard work and sweat. I've kept on playing, never at any level of superiority, but for fun on co-ed soccer (indoor and out) and basketball teams. It's hard to imagine making it through teenage-hood without play. I have Title IX to thanks along with my small high school with a bad reputation that didn't attract the best athletes which left vacancies on teams for me to fill. So, when my male student charged me with being a woman and thus incapable of playing, something teenage and angry opened up inside of me.

I stepped up to him, ready for a verbal fight. "What did you just say?" I shouted. "You better come with me to the sideline because if you think a woman can't play this game, you have some things to learn right now!"

He backed up, his dimples fading away and a look of fear in his eyes. His buddies must have seen this because they gathered around to hear what I had to say. He tried to backtrack into, "But, Miss... I meant, you are OLD!"

We all know at 27 years, I'm hardly old, but to this 13 year old boy, I'm ancient, old enough to be his mother, old enough to be his teacher. My first instinct was to believe that he was making a comment steeped in the machismo of his culture. I remembered the co-ed indoor soccer pick up games I used to play at the soccer arena in San Jose. Most days I was one of two or three women on the field. Some days I was the only one. My teammates and opponents were mostly men who had recently immigrated from Spanish-speaking countries. It was clear that my presence on the field did not comfort them as they had not had the experience of playing sports with woman in their own countries. It was intimidating to me, too. I felt like I had to constantly prove my worth and my strength on the field. I recall distinctly the day I ran up to defend the approaching forward. I managed to kick the ball away from him before kicking him, accidentally in the ankle. I was about to shove off of him and down the field with the ball when he reached out and held me back, as if catching me from falling. I know he had only the best of intentions and he asked me if Iwas hurt when all I wanted to do was follow through with my steal.

Thankfully, something stopped me from my first instinct. My student wasn't making a sexist remark at all. In fact, he was stunned because I was an adult woman and I was about to play a sport called Trash Ball in a vacant lot with teenagers. If I'd taken a step back sooner, I would have seen how absurd this must look. As I drove home that night I thought about the incident, about how mad I got at my innocent student, and I knew I must apologize to him for yelling and truly being angry with him -- a miscommunication. But, wouldn't you know he wasn't in class the next day and then we had the three day weekend. Finally, yesterday he returned and I pulled him aside as he came into class. I apologized to him for my reaction and explained what I thought he had meant, which he refuted. Girl power's one thing, but I think I'll have to keep in check when it comes to my students.

Then again, maybe not as they are asking for me to get out there and trash talk. I am occupying another world these days, slowly becoming acculturated to my new environment. There is so much about this city that I don't know and certainly don't understand. The day of Trash Ball, my students were calling me out for a challenge. Even the girls, walked right up to me and said things like "I bet you suck at this game," and "I bet we can kick your butt." Again my first instinct was not useful -- to take it personally and feel hurt. So, I let my second kick in and I went out and played even harder, nodded my head at my students as if to challenge them to push even harder. And at the end of the day, I knew that I'd passed one of their tests. They'd passed one of mine too: they had mettle.

Yesterday, I had to ask a student to repeat himself over and over again. I expected to understand a little more each time, but I was really lost. I finally broke into a big smile and said, "I'm sorry. I have no idea what you are saying to me." He laughed too, and responded, "Looks like we'll have to teach you ghetto talk." To which I replied, "You have a lot to teach me." Clearly, I don't need to travel more than eight miles from my home to be very far away from what I know. And clearly, the teacher in me is really the student in me.