The Library is Not a Fruit

Bad Reputation

2011-11-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

I have already managed to give myself a bad reputation. It took very little, really. All I had to do was grade a few papers and, BAM, I'm ruined.

It's not quite that bad really. There are lots of girls here who like me quite a bit. I think.

Here's what went down:
A teacher asked me to teach a series of lessons. I said yes. I suggested we give a practice assignment that asked students to read an article related to class and respond to it, using paraphrased passages from the source material and including in-text (parenthetical) citations. I offered to grade the papers too. I created a rubric for the students so they would know exactly what we expected. We read the article and discussed it. I taught a lesson on paraphrasing. I went over the grading criteria. Then, we gave them about 4-5 days to write their 1-3 paragraph responses to our writing prompt.

When I graded them, about 80% failed the assignment. Totally fell on their faces failed. Why? Perhaps they didn't ever (not one time!) refer to the article we read together. This meant, of course, that they didn't paraphrase a thing or practice using citations. That's a fail.
Perhaps they summarized the article and never wrote a single word responding to the prompt, that asked for some commentary/analysis. That's a fail.
Perhaps their writing was so bad, so riddled with errors, that it was clear they didn't even bother to spell check. That's a fail.

So, the teacher and I decided to give them another chance. Perhaps they didn't understand what I had taught them (although several students did, in fact, ace this assignment, so I don't know). Perhaps the instructions weren't clear (but I really, really think they were). We let them do it again. For full credit. We gave them another week.

This time around, almost all of the students who bothered to re-do the work got and A or a B. Why? Did I re-teach the content? Nope. Did I dumb it down? Nope. This time, the girls followed directions, took themselves seriously, and did the job they should have done in the first place.

But now. Now the little darlings have spread the word. The librarian is a hard grader. She's mean. She's unfair. She's too tough. We don't want her involved.

On Friday, the junior US History teacher and I are sitting down together to read 50-point research proposals that his students have had a month to write. We've team-taught a series of lessons, presented resources, given examples, and gone over the rubric. Today, they told him they are scared of me. They don't want me to see their papers. They heard this from the sophomores who failed the assignment that was grade by me. The sophomores didn't mention that they got to re-do it, or that they didn't complete the assignment the first time around. They just mentioned how uncool it is that the librarian has anything to do with anything.

Sigh.

Some of the girls like me. I know they do. They've told me.
Lots of the girls respect their tough teachers. I hear them talk about it. The toughest ones are the favorites.
It just takes time, I suppose. I have to get used to the fact that I'm in a new place where there's a status quo. Who am I to barge in and expect people to cite their sources? Who am I to waltz in here and think that college-preparatory students ought to be preparing for college level work?

I would have thought the same thing at their age. And it's not that it hurts my feelings exactly (I learned many, many years ago not to let students anywhere near hurting my feelings). It's just....what? It's frustrating to think that somewhere down the line they've gotten the impression that a job done should get the same credit as a job well done. When did that happen?

The US History in question just stopped in to tell me that he hopes I know how much he's looking forward to grading these proposals together. He says it's a good thing they're scared of me, because the girls are more motivated to do well on this paper than they have been on anything else he's assigned this year. He says that being afraid of me doesn't need to turn into disliking me. They'll get to know me and then they'll love me, like they love the other toughest graders.

I suppose he's right, and I appreciate that he said so. In the mean time, I'll try to smile a lot.

A Whole New Ball Game

2011-10-06T09:22:00.001-07:00

In order to get a handle on this school, this library, and these girls, I put together a survey and asked 340 students to provide answers to questions about their reading habits, library habits, research habits, etc. The results were very enlightening. Stunning, really. Shocking, in fact.

This is what I found:

64% of students do not check out books from the school library

72% use the library's web page "rarely" or "almost never"

the top 4 reasons for visiting the school library are: printing, photocopying, using a laptop, and working on homework

the 2 least common reasons for visiting the library are to check out recreational reading material and to ask the Librarian for help

only 38% of students say they use the library for their history classes, only 18% for science, only 6% for fine arts

32% say there are no books in the library that they want to check out

51% buy the books they want to read from a physical bookstore

34% spend ZERO time each week reading for pleasure

students prefer to read romance, mystery, and realistic fiction

61% do not use a public library

85% turn to Google first when conducting any kind of academic research

So, there you have it. A VERY different scenario from my previous library setting, where tons of kids read avidly, almost no kids could purchase their own books (there is not a single bookstore in that part of South Central), and the Librarian was the first source of information for research.

I suppose I didn't really use my high school library for much either. It was pretty outdated, and I don't have any memory of the Librarian, so I don't think she was a very dynamic member of the school community. I got my books from my parents or the public library. Perhaps I don't need to lament the low circulation here. Perhaps I should focus my attentions on the research skills the girls are lacking and the need to get them college-ready in terms of seeking information. If course, I want to cry when I hear that so many of them spend no time at all reading for pleasure. That, to me, is sad. That I want to change.

Next up, surveying the teachers. I am very curious about those results.

Crime Scene Investigation

2011-10-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

My new school has a Forensic Science class. How cool is that? This morning when I got out of my car, I noticed that a hideous and brutal crime had taken place right outside the school's entrance. Luckily, our students are on the case. What do you think happened?

It may be hard to see in this picture, but right above the chalk outline of the head is a long string of pearls, and to the right of that is a tiara. Clearly this murdered young woman was on her way somewhere special. The rose petals make me think she was possibly involved in the Rose Court for the Rose Parade, as are many young women in this part of the LA area. The one thing that really confuses me is how the car that ran over her made it out of the parking lot. If it was coming from the left of this picture, surely it would have crashed into the building after running her over. Unless the driver was so skilled that s/he was able to brake and reverse within inches of the stucco. And why is some of the rubber from the tire on the pavement? What can it mean?

This is what school is all about. Every student in the school is encouraged to submit her theories about the crime. I can't wait to hear the results. I'm a happy librarian.

Hiatus Over

2011-09-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, hasn't it? After my last post, I needed a good, long break from thinking too much about LAUSD. I went to New York with my darling husband. I finished the school year the best I could (which perhaps wasn't the best I ever could, but instead the best I could at that time). I looked forward to the first summer I'd had off in six years. I visited my parents in Illinois. Mostly, I relaxed and released the build-up of stress and bitterness that had been growing in me because of the hearings and all they represented.

True, I still didn't know what my job would be.
True, my principal refused to allow me to transfer to another school where I might have had more job security.
True, when summer started my future was one big mystery.
True, the image of that weasel attorney swam through my thoughts more frequently than I would have liked.

But I hung in there, with the help of my many supporters. And then I made a decision that changed my life dramatically. I decided that there was life outside of LAUSD. It was a radical thought, one that had occurred to me only vaguely before, as something abstract and unattainable. Life outside of LAUSD had never existed for me in Los Angeles. I worked for that school district from the moment I stepped foot in this here town, and I never stopped. Why, I now asked myself, didn't I ever just stop?

So, I began to look elsewhere. In July, most public school districts aren't ready yet to publicly post their job listings for the fall. I would not apply at a charter on principle. So I looked at independent (or private) schools. I looked at non-profits related to education. I just looked elsewhere. And wouldn't you know it, I found a place. A great place. A professional, nurturing, rigorous place where I'm not only challenged, but valued. How 'bout them apples? Valued! Now, I know I was valued to a certain extent in my old position. There were teachers who adored me, and I adored them. It was not a thankless job. But this job. Well, let's just say that it's something of a relief. That's a large part of what I feel. Relieved. It's just a breath of fresh air.

The day I submitted my resignation to LAUSD was both terrifying and exhilarating. To detach from such a formidable employer is not easy. I was advised by fellow educators that leaving LAUSD was foolish, that there are so many advantages to staying that it's worth the mild level of daily torture. But you know, I think they were wrong. I would trade some crazy seniority level for a day of happiness any time. I am perfectly capable of planning for my retirement without CalSTRS. I mean, c'mon. Millions and millions of other people out there don't work of LAUSD either. I know! It's crazy! I didn't realize that either! I began to feel even more at ease with my departure when I went to visit a dear friend and teacher who has not worked for LAUSD for about three years. What I discovered was this. She's fine! In fact, she's better than fine. She doesn't regret leaving one bit.

All of this is just to say that it was a really, very, terribly difficult decision for me to leave. But it was the right one. I love my students, all of them, old and new. I love my old school (and my other old school). I love the wonderful people I've met in LAUSD. And now I love my new school. So this blog will change a little, since now I am in an independent high school for girls. What will I say about them, about this? It remains to be seen.

I will leave you today with a humorous little anecdote about LAUSD, one of the last I hope to tell on this blog (although the scathing expose in book form is still somewhere in me).

Even though I resigned from LAUSD in plenty of time, the necessary documents were not signed and processed by the right people and the right time, and I was paid on August 5th for work I had not yet done (and would not do) for the 2011-2012 school year. Since then, I have spoken to Payroll Services FOUR TIMES, trying to determine how and when and where to give this money back so that I'm free and clear.
One woman told me simply to put a check in the mail, but didn't tell me where to send it (Um, this is a bureaucracy people. I am not doing that!). I explained to her that a portion of the money was mine to keep (hours worked in June) and that I needed payroll to calculate the exact amount owed. She said I should just do it myself and it would probably be fine. She also asked me if I had spent the money already, and then advised me against doing so. Thanks. I hadn't thought of that.
Another person "opened a ticket" for me so that the issue would get addresses promptly. That was two weeks ago.
A third woman told me that the ticket was opened incorrectly and so hadn't even been assigned to anyone yet. That was last week.
Today I was told that I could receive a letter about the overpayment "at any time" and that overpayment issues take "a loooong time" (emphasis attributed to speaker).

Don't they want their money back? I want to give it back!!!! Why don't they want it back?

Now, here, in this new wonderland, if there's a problem with my paycheck, all I have to do is walk out of the library, down a little hill, into another building, and talk to so-and-so (whose first and last names I know, and with whom I have shared a potluck meal). She will probably take care of it by the end of the day. Sweet relief. That's all I'm sayin'.

Message Received

2011-05-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

In a recent blog post, I wrote that my employer had become my enemy. That was re-posted on The Washington Post's educational blog, The Answer Sheet, and I suppose my employer really took it to heart. At my RIF hearing yesterday, the LAUSD lawyers were armed and ready to take me down.

After an hour of testimony and an hour lunch break, I returned to the stand feeling pretty good. I had answered well and was confident that I would continue to do so. That was until my entire personal blog, 90 pages of posts dating back to 2007, was brought out in printed form and submitted to the court. The lawyers had scoured my musings for ammo, and they found some key posts that did, in fact, make me look like a bit of an idiot for a moment or two. Taken so far out of the context of a school, and particularly my school, some of these posts made it seem as if I was full of it when I testified that I am a competent and active teacher. I wrote about days when I didn't feel much like teaching, or days when I didn't feel that I had taught very much. I wrote about the nature of my job in the library and its clerical demands, and how on some days I felt like I did nothing but shelve books. I wrote about allowing students to watch a movie trailer for Twilight. I wrote about having a slow day in the library. I wrote about times when my teaching practice seemed to be eroding slowly because of the cuts in clerical staff, meetings, etc. I wrote about times when kids worked collaboratively as I stood back and observed, therefore not directly 'teaching'. I wrote about feeling frustrated over the struggle to teach certain content. I wrote honestly and emotionally, reflectively, as one does on one's personal blog.

So, yes, I wrote about times when I wasn't delivering direct instruction, and they claimed this evidence impeached my testimony that I 'constantly' teach. Well, obviously I used the word 'constantly' in the widely accepted usage meaning very frequently (I constantly go to the gym. I constantly go to the movies.) No teacher, not one, constantly teaches in the literal sense of the word. We use the bathroom, we eat lunch, we chat with other teachers, we file papers, we clean the classroom, and yes, we do make personal phone calls sometimes or even, god forbid, answer a personal email between classes.

I failed to mention at the hearing, and I'm still kicking myself for it, that as the librarian, I am at school about 2.5-3 months more per year than the classroom teachers due to our year-round schedule. So even if I did nothing but shelve books or even read the paper for the equivalent of 2.5 months of the year (which I most certainly do not!), I would STILL be meeting the district's requirement of teaching at least 75% of the time in order to return to classroom teaching. Like I said, I didn't think of that zinger until later, so it's now a moot point. So it goes.

On the stand, the fact that the vast majority of what I do is really teaching wasn't apparant to anyone but me, so I looked the fool. Luckily, my lawyer objected to the admission of my personal, emotional, reflective blog into evidence and the judge sustained his objection, admitting only the pages discussed prior to the objection (possibly quite damaging already), and leaving the other eighty-plus pages out. Other than this blog, it didn't feel like they really had much to go on. Well, except for the fact that they suggested I forged a dozen or so letters of recommendation, but the judge didn't buy it. (Can you believe?) I don't know what the judge will rule, and after Friday, I'm not sure it will make a difference to me anymore.

The thing about this that stings is how I feel now, after the fact. I may feel worse than I have ever felt about anything that didn't involve death. They were clearly ticked off at me. I spoke out, wrote an editorial, called the lawyer a weasel in my blog (oops, and I am sorry. That wasn't nice. It really wasn't.), and they brought in the big guns. A top dog from the district (at least, he looked like it) was even there to watch. And maybe they won here, because the way I feel, I just want to get away from them as fast as possible and never look back. I spoke out and I got crucified for it. I'm not sorry I wrote what I wrote, but I am sorry I insisted on having a hearing for a job with a district that is so dead set against having me work for them. I'm sorry I put myself through that particular wringer for the sake of completing a process. I am scared, somehow, about retribution and payback, because that's what that hearing felt like. Like they were going to crush me into a pulp.

So, even though I think I answered the best anyone could under those circumstances, I keep going over it in my head again and again, and I keep experiencing waves of terror that maybe they were right, that I am no good, that I am not fit to work for one of the worst school districts in the land.

Then I remember that I am a great teacher, a really great one, and that they are the ones who are losing here. The children love me and I love them. Teachers love me and I love them. I belong in a school.

Then I have another wave of terror and I just don't know. That they did this to me, made me feel like this, is the worst part of all.

I have less than twenty days left at my school, in my library, with LAUSD. This morning, I don't even want to go back for a single one of those days. Of course, at the same time, I want to go back and work in that school forever. Nine years of my life have been spent there. I've taught whole families of kids there. In my days remaining, I hope to enjoy my students and my library and to prepare that spacious, well-stocked room for whatever comes next, be it clerks or kiosks. And then I will bid LAUSD a fond farewell.

LAUSD, your message was received loud and clear. You are through with me, and you have no interest in working with someone who speaks the truth, and those who speak against you will pay the consequences. However, I would like to take a moment here to sincerely thank you. Thank you for teaching me how to be a teacher. Thank you for coaching me, training me, and guiding me through the world of middle school. Thank you for giving me great evaluations, a few awards, and hiring me for three different, wonderful positions in your schools. Thank you for the eleven challenging, difficult, heartbreaking, mind-altering, life-changing, rewarding, and exhilarating years that make up my professional life thus far. Thank you for all the great teachers you employ who I have had the honor of knowing, and all the great kids who walk the halls of your schools and have changed me forever, for the better. And finally, I suppose, though it's difficult to be sure at this moment, thank you for the opportunity to change my life and grow even more as an educator as I leave your district and find my way in others, or in private institutions, or in non-profits, or pre-schools, or who knows where. I am sure it will be a demanding change, and if there is one thing I have learned as an LAUSD teacher, it's the ability to accept change, to roll with it, to grow with it, and to be better for it. I will not wallow in your rejection LAUSD, and I will not even hate you for your cruelty (for I was unkind to you as well). Instead I will be happy for our time together and think of you (certainly your students and schools) fondly in the future.

Going in for the kill

2011-05-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

I have my hearing, finally, tomorrow. It feels surreal, out of place, and after the fact.

Every other Teacher Librarian had a hearing a week ago, before this media blitz, in which I took part. Will that impact my hearing? Who knows?

Since the end of the TL hearings there have been op-eds, radio programs, and nationally publicized pieces about our fight. Will my hearing be changed?

Will the questioning be more forthright, or more cryptic?

Will the judge be more convinced, or less?

Will my editorial and blog be in play?

Will Superintendent Deasy's radio proclamation to keep libraries intact be taken seriously?

Will I be grilled, or will my testimony be par for the course?

Did the district notice that I wrote a number of pieces that did not favor their choices?

I have no idea what will happen tomorrow.

Here's what I know:

over 15, 000 people have read my blog on this matter, so people care
there are 2, 200 students at my school who care
I am extremely qualified to teach, so says the State of California
Libraries are essential to the propagation of educated societies
Information, and the freedom, access, and understanding of that information, are at the heart of our democratic principles as a society
Librarians are the guardians of that information

So, wish me luck, as I will be attempting to say all of this in a highly stressful situation tomorrow. I hope I don't choke!!!

Draft, Revise, Edit

2011-05-18T07:59:00.001-07:00

Today, an op-ed appeared in the LA Times, written by yours truly. This was the first time I'd done anything of the sort, and the back-and-forth writing process with the editor was really new to me. Over a period of about a week, she and I emailed again and again, paraphrasing, restructuring, cutting, and changing my original draft into what appeared in the paper. Below is the second draft I wrote for this piece. I'm posting it here because some of what I wrote didn't make it into the paper, but I still think it's worthwhile. Since I don't have a length requirement here, I thought I'd just put it out there. Thanks for reading.

In the spring of 2001, I found myself at a crossroads after finishing my first year as a teacher in a South LA middle school. Brought in on an emergency credential, I had been placed in my position with little experience and no formal training. As I struggled with whether I was truly meant to teach, I sought the advice of a mentor, who plainly told me in a fatherly way, “If you can do this, and not very many people can, you must. And you can.”

Over the next several years, as I gained confidence and competence as a teacher, I found myself inspired by Teacher Librarians (TLs), whose libraries were the centers of student and teacher learning. More than once, these librarians guided me towards better, more effective teaching practices that profoundly improved my students’ abilities to achieve.

When I taught 7th grade English, I knew without a doubt it was critical that my students read. A lot. I knew they needed to check out library books and read them at home, that we should read and discuss books in class. What I didn’t fully understand, until a Teacher Librarian taught me, was that I could also discover why students didn’t like reading and then change that. I could read what my students read, and show them how to find challenging, mind-boggling material on related topics. I could do more than plod through classics; I could create lovers of literature. It was a Teacher Librarian who showed me a way to analyze a student’s reading history, to question him on his reading habits, and to pair him with the perfect book that would send him on a quest for more.

I once taught a class of highly gifted students whose curiosity and abilities stretched my limits as an educator. My Teacher Librarian suggested reading with them a memoir, Finding Fish, the story of a boy who overcomes insurmountable obstacles to create a life he has chosen for himself. As we read this powerful book, each student found his or her own inspiration, and we worked with the Teacher Librarian to transform this experience into an exploration of social issues, ethics, and family, until finally the students crafted their own profoundly personal memoirs. These children learned to read beyond the stories presented by authors and saw their own stories within. I could not have done this without my librarian.

It occurred to me then that the librarian is a person who works closely with every single person on campus. This person can improve a teacher’s craft and help students tackle difficult, academic questions. Upon reflection, I found that I wanted to be that person too, so back to school I went, earning a Library Media Services credential and Masters degree.

At that point, my classroom changed from a small, cramped space where 150 kids tramped in and out each day, to a spacious library where I got to interact with up to 500 people every single day, students, teachers, and parents alike. My conversations with students began to include shipwrecks and electric eels, World War II, origami, post-apocalyptic fiction and Captain Underpants. I spend time helping students read difficult passages for their research, helping them select reading material, and teaching them to navigate complicated technology and intellectual property issues. They come individually, in small groups, and as whole classes where I team-teach alongside content-area teachers. I became the queen of all content. As my predecessor often said, “Librarians don’t know everything, but they know how to find everything.” I had the best job on campus, but by no means the easiest. TLs sprint all day long trying to meet the needs of an entire school community. It is wonderfully exhausting.

Soon after I began my work in the library, a teacher came to me about Mario, an 8th grader who said he had never read an entire book in his life. Mario was a struggling reader, an English Learner, and he needed my help. I recommended a title that I had learned about from one of my mentors, a short, funny, mysterious book that appeals to reluctant boy readers of that age. Mario took it home, read it in a week, and came back with a horde of his friends to check out the remaining titles in the series. When he was ready to tackle more challenging content, I started him on a program of listening to audio books while following along in the text, a strategy helpful for building fluency and comprehension. Mario would come to library while on breaks from school (we are a year-round school) and sit for hours, headphones on, reading. I was able to work closely with him to develop techniques for tackling difficult passages and muddling through the strange vocabulary, later transitioning him back into reading the books on his own, no help from the audio. By the end of that one school year, Mario had read 42 books, meeting the Million Word goal set by the state of California for all 8th graders. From zero to forty-two in one short year; Mario was ready for high school. This is the power of the school library.

Since then, I have had students share with me astounding truths about the crucial nature of the library program. Recently one 8th grade girl told me that she would never have learned to love reading if it hadn’t been for a book I recommended to her in 6th grade. She is now on her way to a prestigious college preparatory high school with a nearly full scholarship. Others tell me the library is their favorite place on campus, a place where they feel at home and safe to explore their own, blossoming interests. Some alumni of the school, now attending charter high schools without libraries, come back regularly to ask for recommendations and to beg me to loan them books.

During the 2008-09 school year, LAUSD started a massive layoff process that has finally weaseled its way down to the TLs. Thousands of educators have received RIFs (Reduction-in-Force notices). Some leave LAUSD for the purportedly greener pastures of charter schools and others become subs; some RIFs get rescinded at the last minute. This year, Teacher Librarians with seniority stretching far into the past (in one case, to the 1970s) also got RIFs.

Not only that, it seems that we are barred from returning to a traditional classroom setting as well, even if we ultimately fail to protect our libraries. A new recency rule (or a newly enforced one) states that educators who’ve been out of the traditional classroom for five years or more can no longer return to their original posts. This is in reaction to the utter failure of last year’s attempt to acclimatize teachers who’d been in an cubicle setting for a decade. Returning to the classroom after that long is difficult and should be considered very carefully. But Teacher Librarians have not been in cubicles, but in schools, working with students day in and day out.

I received a RIF last year, only to have it rescinded at the last minute. This year, I was RIFed again, and the recency rule is threatening to take me down for good. Even if my RIF is rescinded and I am able to return to the classroom, there is no indication that the library at my school, or any school, will stay open for the students next year.

I have spent three full days at the hearings in the last two weeks (and my library has been closed, the weeks just before state testing begins). Finally, today, I was meant to give my testimony, but a paperwork snafu caused the court to delay my hearing, if I am to be given one at all.

So, in the basement of the California Mart building downtown, hearings for RIFed educators have been taking place every day since April 25th, undetected by the bustling world above ground. Teachers come to these hearings to defend their qualifications in front of a judge, hoping that someone in the legal system will understand what the students of this city need. Union lawyers attempt to show that we (TLs) teach on a daily basis, that we are defined by our contracts with LAUSD as (implied by the title) Teachers. In these hearings, the burden of proof seems to be on the librarians, although our credentials are valid in every way.

LAUSD’s lawyers, our employer’s lawyers, do everything they can to prove otherwise. They say that using the Dewey Decimal System requires so much math that we are no longer practiced in the teaching of English. They ask us to recite PE standards for 2nd graders, implying that if we cannot, we should not be allowed near elementary schools. One teacher is asked to duplicate a history lecture in order to prove he knows the content. This, in spite of the fact that his teaching credential from the State of California indicates definitively that he has met competency requirements for the subject matter. Is LAUSD challenging the validity of the State of California’s measures for qualifying teachers? If so, it seems that a different conversation needs to be had, and without us on the stand.

If the RIFs stand and the recency rule stands, 87 Teacher Librarians will be forced to leave LAUSD entirely. 87 school libraries will close completely, or schools will be forced to knowingly violate state Education Code to keep them open with only clerical staff , no credentialed Teacher Librarian in sight. My school’s library is home to nearly forty thousand items, from books to DVDs to art prints. A million dollar value serving over two thousand students, this space may go unattended for years. Or worse, it may be slowly destroyed as well-intentioned teachers and students use it without the help of a TL to oversee, curate, and organize the collection.

There is not only the risk of a financial loss here, but an ideological one. Librarians are the keepers of knowledge and defenders of the right to access that knowledge. Without libraries, our students’ access to accurate, quality information, as well as current, compelling reading material, practically disappears. Without Teacher Librarians, our schools are left further behind the curve and behind the times. We should give our children what we know that they need, not just what we can afford, or what we feel like giving them at the time. In a state that ranks in the bottom half nationwide when it comes to student achievement, can LAUSD really afford to ignore what research has proven to be effective time and again?

During this process, I cannot help but reflect on the words of my earliest mentor. I can do this. I must do this. I am being told that I am no longer allowed to do this.

At What Cost?

2011-05-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

Well, the judge ruled today that in order to return to the classroom, a librarian would have had to teach in said classroom as recently as the '06-07 school year. So all that running around I did because we thought the word preceding might actually mean preceding was for nothin'. Dang.

So now my only hope is to get a hearing and testify. The rumor is that the judge will probably make decisions on individual cases, not on librarians as a group. No hearing, no decision, no job.

Of course, then there's the other side of the coin. Let's say I get a hearing and my RIF is rescinded. That would mean I could continue to work for LAUSD as a Teacher Librarian, right? What happens when there are only fifty schools funding librarian positions, but more than a hundred librarians seeking those positions? What happens is, I'm out of a job. There are a good 70 librarians in the district with more seniority, so I wouldn't have a chance. And because of the recency rule, I couldn't go back to a classroom either, so....

Things look bad.

Still, I shall try to get a hearing and I will try to get my RIF rescinded. Perhaps Governor Brown will make good on that $3 billion dollar IOU and we'll all get rescinded. Then these hearings will have been beside the point, which makes me wonder how much they are costing the district in the first place, cause it must be a lot. Is this another one of those expenditures that isn't truly necessary in the end? Wouldn't that just be the kicker?

Some things the district is paying for in order to prosecute its employees include (note: multiply each of these daily expenses by 27 days as you mentally calculate):

rental of the Exhibit Hall at the California Market Center
furniture rental: chairs, tables, table skirts
court reporter's fee
court reporter's fee to work after hours to write summary reports for LAUSD officials
five armed security guards, 2 in the courtroom and 3 at the entrance, to screen teachers as they walk through a metal detector, to search their bags, and to protect the judge
rent for the other spaces (other floors? some say two whole floors!) of the California Market Center that are being used by LAUSD staff to draw up personnel files on all of the employees taking the stand
wages for those LAUSD staffers to actually do that work on the personnel files
lawyers' fees
judge's fees

Wowsa. That's a lotta clams.

Listen, I'm glad we live in a world where people can't always just get fired flat out with no explanation and no recourse. I'm glad we get to have the chance to make our cases and show that were are qualified. I'm glad these hearings might just save lots and lots of great teachers from leaving the profession altogether. Yet when I look around that massive, empty exhibit hall and think about all the waste, I just get steamed. Are there no school auditoriums that could have been used? Are there no empty offices at the Beaudry building? Do we need to have FIVE security guards at the hearings, three of them manning an entrance that maybe two dozen people come through each day? Did the tables really need skirts?

I wonder how many kids in the district could have been given book to take home for keeps for the cost of renting that Exhibit Hall. Or how many of our school's Million Word Readers could have been given a gift card to a real bookstore (I had an 8th grade boy tell me today that he's never been to a bookstore in his life). I'll bet the cost of that room rental is nearly enough to pay one teacher's salary and benefits for another school year, but whatever, that teacher probably wasn't any good anyway.

Stranger than Fiction

2011-05-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

Since my last post, a great number of things have happened but nothing has been resolved. Hector Tobar of the LA Times wrote an article touching on many of the topics I wrote about (Thank you, Hector!). I submitted an op-ed for publication in the paper, dozens of people read my blog for the first time, a massive rally took place in Pershing Square, and I was finally called to the witness stand, only to be denied my hearing once again. I am beginning to feel like this would make a better novel or short story than anything else, since the twists the story continues to take are rather hard to believe.

Last Wednesday evening, my name appeared on the witness list for the following day, according to the UTLA web page. I geared up, made sure my thoughts were in order, and dug a pair of little-worn black slacks out of the closet. Back to the California Mart I went, sitting through only two other hearings that morning before it was to be my turn (one highlight was when the LAUSD lawyers questioned a librarian about whether he had a couch in his library).

The UTLA attorney who reviewed my case felt I had a good one. Not only do I have three current teaching credentials, but there had been a new development in their argument since I was there last. As it turns out, the recency rule that was threatening to banish me from the classroom forever says that one must have taught in a particular subject area within the preceding five years in order to return to that position. The word preceding, it dawned on the lawyers, could not include this year, the current year, because this year doesn't precede anything, except maybe next year, but since the rule was announced this year, the preceding five years stretch back to 2005-2006. An AH-HA moment, some would say. And oh, how I wanted to shout, "Ah HA!" at the LAUSD attorneys in that moment, because I had been in a traditional classroom in '05-06, so I would be, I presumed, saved.

When the judge called for the next witness and my name rang through the warehouse-like room, I began my walk to the stand with confidence. That is, until I heard the LAUSD attorneys say, "Your honor, this person is not a witness in these proceedings." Uh-oh. (And also, this person? I’m pretty sure that’s what they said. This person, like I am without an identity but just one of a massive herd, like cattle tagged for slaughter. This particular cow is not fit for consumption, your honor. We suspect unacceptable levels of contamination.)

As it turned out, neither the judge nor the prosecutors had me on their lists. This issue had supposedly been 'flagged' twice in the last week with no response from UTLA. A critical form had not been drawn up, signed by me, and submitted to the judge by a certain date, and so, no hearing for me. The judge accused someone of incompetency (poor guy) and then asked for the next witness.

So, what happened to cause all of this? I was furloughed and out of town when the legal papers arrived at my home and were due back to the district. I appealed to the union to declare me as a late-filer deserving of a hearing. I sent the union all the necessary paperwork. The paperwork was not processed. This took at least an hour for everyone to understand, and by that time the judge had called the lunch break. The UTLA lawyers informed me of two options. First, try to get LAUSD to agree to stipulate that I have recency and therefore can return to a classroom. Second, try to appeal to the judge to give me a hearing, even though the paperwork was not in order.

Before I explain what has happened since then, a few comments on these two options:

Option One: If the lawyers can just decide that I can go back to the classroom without bothering with a hearing, then why is anyone who was in a classroom in '05-06 even having a hearing (or am I the only one?)? If, in fact, the word preceding carries such weight, then shouldn't the court simply state that all librarians who were in a class that year are safe and be done with it?

Option Two: If I were the judge, I wouldn't give me a hearing at this point. After two weeks, they've only gotten through maybe 75 cases. The proceedings are supposed to be finished by June 2nd, for goodness sakes. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, more cases to hear. Why in the world should they add another? I mean, yes, I'd like the opportunity, but it really doesn't make a lot of sense for them to add me back in. And yes, I'm a little ticked off that I did what I was meant to do and a paperwork snafu was my downfall, but I also understand that when thousands of people are filing paperwork through one office that is handling all of the organizational matters for a process like this, the law of averages dictates that somebody's papers get lost in the shuffle. It had to be someone, and it was just me.

At that point I was told that the best thing I could possibly do is show that I taught 7th grade English in 2005-2006 so that perhaps my recency could be officially established. I needed to prove this with some sort of documentation because, for some reason, LAUSD itself is unable to do so. My employer does not have a ready record of my employment. Figures.

The strange and absurd struggle I went through to do this is as follows:

The easiest way would be to show my evaluation for that year. Too bad! I wasn't evaluated that year (tenured teachers are evaluated every other year).
Or, I could have the principal from that school write a statement of my assignment. Sorry! She's retired.
Hey, maybe I could call the school district to see if they have some sort of record that I actually taught English in one of their schools. Nope! IF they do, and they don't promise they do, it would be in storage and take weeks to find and, by the way, no one is going to go looking.
Next idea, go to the school where I taught the elusive 7th grade English classes and track down someone who can help me contact the retired principal. A near success, but she's on vacation and won't be back in town for days.
Perhaps my attendance and grade records are still on file at the school. That would work. But no, they are also in deep storage, or perhaps they've been purged, so try again.
In a random stroke of luck, I discover that my husband actually works with the husband of the current principal of that school who is home on maternity leave. So my husband finds her husband at the food truck outside their building and explains the situation. Her husband calls her at home, disrupting some important mother-child bonding I am sure, and she agrees to call her office manager to see if they can dig a little deeper on my behalf. (Really, I am not making this up.)
The next day, it dawns on me that I still know a counselor from that school, so I call her to see if she can access old records showing students' course assignments, and sure enough she can. She faxes me some student schedules showing I was their English teacher.
The principal on maternity leave verifies my assignment and faxes me a statement.
I take all of this back down to the basement of the California Mart on Friday afternoon where they have adjourned for the day. It takes all my strength to hand over these precious documents to the very people who failed to process the last set I gave them, but since I kept the originals and several sets of copies I made before arriving, I go ahead and do it.

And that, as they say, is that. I am no closer to knowing what will happen to my employment status with LAUSD. No overall ruling has been made about librarians as a group. No statement has been made about whether recency will extend to ’05-06 after all. No one has called or emailed me to let me know if the judge is going to rule in my favor, let me have a hearing, or kick me to the curb.

Now, our best chance as Teacher Librarians may be the media. A truly marvelous number of people read my last blog post and re-Tweeted, Facebooked, or blogged it. Hector Tobar’s article in the LA Times received more than 300 comments (some completely inane, but some truly heartfelt) and has been re-posted on countless other sites. Perhaps I will have an op-ed in place this week, perhaps a Librarian will be interviewed on NPR, and perhaps more and more attention will be paid to the problem.

As this story unravels (and as I unravel along with it), one comment posted on the LA Times article haunts me. The reader wondered why we Librarians think it would be ok for the district to allow us to stay at the expense of 87 other ‘regular’ teachers who would be laid off in our place. It’s a point that many people may feel compelled to make, and I will say this to those who find it to be a reasonable argument:

Teachers and teacher-librarians don’t want to bump one another out of a job. Restoring the TLs to their libraries, or even allowing them to return to traditional classrooms, does not have to cost another teacher his/her job. Of course there are budget shortfalls and of course changes must be made to how we use money in schools. The real question that needs to be asked here is how can the school district prioritize spending that leads to student achievement and eliminate spending that doesn't?

There are so many areas where the district could reduce spending in order to put students, teachers, and libraries closer to the top if its list. Like the $4.5 million dollars that was spent this year to develop a district version of the ‘value-added’ approach to looking at test scores (you may remember ‘value-added’ from the series of LA Times articles last year that caused quite a ruckus). There are already a million existing ways to look at and interpret data; we are swimming in data. That $4.5 million did not have to be spent that way, but it was. What we need to ask is why it was, at this moment in time, when true instructional programming is being slashed and burned?

As we are forced into increasingly tight financial corners, really awful decisions have to be made. So let's ask the questions that may lead to some answers, some actions, that we can be proud of in the end. What do we really care about when it comes to the education of our children, learning in general, and the uses of information? If we don’t care about libraries, if we don’t acknowledge their necessary function in any free, educated society, what will happen as a result?

I know, I know, this is quickly changing from an account of my personal experiences at the RIF trials into a deeper, philosophical rant that I may not even be qualified to facilitate. That is not my intention, but it's awfully hard to avoid.

Have you ever eaten a steamed artichoke? I just had one last night. It takes forever. You spend all this time pealing off leaf after leaf, sort of burning your fingers as you go (if you're like me and are too impatient to wait for it to cool). Then you finally get done with all of the outer leaves, and by that time you're pretty sick of artichoke, but you know that you're almost at the heart. Except then you have to get past all those finicky little hairlike things covering the heart, and they get all over the place, sort of like dandelion fluff, and when you finally get to eat the heart, some of the hairlike things get caught in your teeth and you decide that it's a whole lot easier just to buy a jar of marinated hearts than to do this, even though you know this is so much more natural and good for you. You know what I mean?

I think I'm only about halfway through the leaves of this massive artichoke of a problem and my fingers are scorched. I'm about to give it up and order a pizza.

Settle in. It's a long one.

2011-05-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

In the basement of the California Mart building in downtown Los Angeles, one can find a series of bright, cavernous rooms buzzing with the sound of the fluorescent panels that hang from a ceiling of exposed ducts and wiring. In the back of one of these rooms sits three long tables decorated with black table skirts along with perhaps a dozen rows of hard, plastic chairs. The room is exceptionally cold. Footsteps can be heard echoing each time someone makes his way to the restroom or to take a phone call. This is the setting for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s hearings for educators who have received a Reduction in Force notice. In other words, this is where teachers come to defend their qualifications in front of a judge in the hopes that someone in the legal system will understand what the students of this city really need. From what I’ve seen in the last two days, that just doesn’t seem likely.

A bit of a disclaimer, before I dig in. I am not a reporter. I am a teacher, a librarian, and a writer. This account is crafted from my personal perspective, biased as it may be, and combines events from two days observing the hearings. As there were no reporters present, my point of view may be the only one available to the general public at this moment. I do not contend that the events detailed here are exact or verbatim. I do contend that this is the gist of it.

From my cold, plastic chair facing the court, I can observe on my right hand side the attorneys for United Teachers Los Angeles, who are the men that will make my case when the time comes. Their table is laden with binders nearly eight inches thick that are filled with the thousands of documents we teachers have entered into evidence. These are teaching credentials, lesson plans, and letters of recommendation, among other things. Most of this will not be admitted into evidence, or if it is, will be labeled hearsay. What a waste of paper. The UTLA attorneys seem flustered and distracted at their worst, but can be pointed and on top of things at times. They are slightly more knowledgeable about their clients and schools than LAUSD’s lawyers, I would say, but that is not saying much.

On my left is the school district’s table of attorneys. They have a plastic cart filled with evidence binders and their own files of information collected on each of us in what I can only assume was a rather hurried manner. I have come to think of them as evil incarnate. One appears to be content in his role, the other a reluctant but acquiescent pawn who may have trouble looking himself in the mirror at bedtime. They are there to squash the credibility of teachers and librarians without mercy. My employer has become my enemy.

Perhaps the most important thing to note, the most important point of all, is that these legal eagles seem to know very little about education. Pedagogy, current research, and national trends escape them. Their line of questioning is often nonsensical and even absurd, eliciting ripples of laughter among the forty or so educators watching the proceedings. These are the people making the decisions about what will happen, day after day, in our schools.

The hearings crawl along at a snail’s pace, each attorney and the judge rifling through mountains of documents and then discussing which belongs in evidence and which does not. The respondents wait on the stand, suddenly unsure of their own skills as teachers after long and tiresome rounds of questions that mean nothing to a person who spends her days inside a classroom. The students are almost never mentioned by the attorneys, except to ask whether we take attendance for them or enter their into grades into a computer system.

Sometimes a hearing becomes riveting. I find myself perched on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear what shocking question will spill out of the LAUSD attorney’s mouth. The first of these concerns a teacher named Mrs. Cook, a lovely, well-dressed woman in her early forties perhaps. As far as I understand, Mrs. Cook has taught Advanced Placement Government, Economics, and World History at So-and-So High School for a number of years, but not that many. She was laid off by the district because her seniority date did not reach back far enough into the past for them to consider her truly qualified.

Mrs. Cook was there to contest her RIF on the following grounds: One, she was the only of the three History teachers at her school both willing and able to teach Advanced Placement coursework. Two, in the years she has been teaching the AP classes, the passing rate on the AP tests has gone up nearly forty percent, helping many of her students gain credit, admittance, and scholarships for college. Three, depriving the school of their only AP History teacher simply because of a seniority issue creates an inequity of services for the students in that community and her RIF should therefore be rescinded.

Well, duh.

The attorneys from LAUSD asked Mrs. Cook a number of questions, but the really juicy stuff came near the end of her testimony.

LAUSD: Mrs. Cook, didn’t you testify that there are two other credentialed history teachers at your school with more seniority than you?

Mrs. Cook: Yes.

LAUSD: So, if you were no longer a teacher at that school, there would be two other teachers who could teach the AP classes?

Mrs. Cook: Technically yes, but as I said before, each of them has stated that he will not accept a position teaching AP coursework. In addition, they have not received the training required to write an AP syllabus that would be acceptable to the College Board.

LAUSD: But they could, isn’t that correct?

Mrs. Cook: Well, I suppose, but they’ve said that they will not.

LAUSD : Please, Mrs. Cook, just answer the question I’m asking. These two teachers who have more seniority than you could teach the AP classes in your place. Is that correct?

Poor Mrs. Cook: Yes, that is correct.

Unbelievable. Here is how this translates in my mind: The Los Angeles Unified School District does not give a rip that the students at So-and-So High will no longer have a qualified AP history teacher. They do not care who the most effective educator might be. They do not care if the students go to college. They. Do. Not. Care. They have instructed their attorneys to go for the jugular, and to do so, they are ignoring years of mandates that have required teachers to jump through hoop after hoop to become highly qualified. No longer does one need to be trained to teach Advanced Placement. One just needs to be old enough and to be present.

These thoughts are occurring to me for the very first time, even though we are in the third year of massive teacher layoffs. Before sitting in on this hearing, I was under the impression that my large, mismanaged school district was more a bumbling idiot than a conniving schemer. Now though, I have been given a glimpse of the truth.

Some background is necessary here, I think. Two school years ago, LAUSD initiated year one of the Reduction-in-Force (RIF) movement, pleading budget shortfalls. We accepted this as an inevitability of the global economic crisis. It was unfortunate; we protested, we passed out leaflets, but we did not strike. My school lost many wonderful, bright, talented educators to charter and private schools, as well as careers outside of education. Many decided to return to law or medicine, the careers they had dreamed of as children before discovering the nuanced beauty of pedagogy. We persisted with substitute teachers in classes where no one would accept a position. We worried about what would happen next. And then it did.

One school year ago, we experienced another round of layoffs, again reducing our pool of energetic, innovative teachers and replacing them with people who were shuffled around from school to school, or office to school, who didn’t really want to be where the district was placing them. Many stayed only a month or two before fleeing for greener pastures, and the students suffered. The ACLU took action against the district for the inequitable layoffs in schools in impoverished areas. Forty-two schools were declared exempt from year three’s layoffs (in the event they would happen, which of course they did), but mine was not among them. Even though we had nearly thirty teachers who received RIFs each year (many more than in schools in areas with higher socio-economic indicators), even though our school is in an impoverished part of Los Angeles, we were not put on the exemption list because, and here’s the kicker, our test scores were too high. We were, essentially, punished for succeeding.

This year, once again, thousands of teachers went home to find the dreaded notification of a certified letter at the end of a long, taxing day in the classroom. Many didn’t bother to pick up the certified letter, knowing what it would say (side note: how much money was spent sending thousands of certified letters?). Nearly five thousand people, most of them tenured this time around, received the notice and started the wait. The wait consists of three months (at least) of psychological terror during which one does not know what will happen to one’s passion and commitment, income, mortgage payments, and general livelihood the following school year.

Last year, members of the union voted to accept seven furlough days in exchange for hundreds of jobs. This year, LAUSD wants twelve with no solid indication of what will be saved with that sacrifice. We have yet to strike, and this battle is being fought relatively quietly and within our own ranks. It is, unfathomably, not yet part of the general public’s consciousness.

So here I am, in the basement, the light panels zapping my brain as it dawns on me that these hearings are no innocent byproduct of a global economic collapse. Something sinister is happening, but I can’t yet put my finger on it.

On and on it goes, teacher after teacher getting pummeled by bullies who are dumber than dirt when it comes to education. Law, they seem to know ok. Or maybe it’s not law, but something else, like badgering and stalling. That’s how it feels as I watch.

I’m not here just as an observer. Soon I will be under that gun, so I want to see what I’m in for while I can still prepare. The real show for me begins when the Teacher Librarians (TLs) begin to take the stand. TLs are being eliminated by the district, or so it seems. I do not approve of this, nor do I think it will result in any real monetary savings in the long run, since the amount of money that will be needed for intervention later in order to make up for the lack of reading skills this causes will be phenomenal. However, the squabble the TLs are having with the district at these hearings is not even about the closure of dozens of libraries across the city. What we object to now (after having reluctantly and not fully conceding the point about libraries in general, since it has proven nearly unwinnable) is the recency rule that says were are no longer qualified to teach in a classroom setting in our other teaching credential(s), which means we are flat out fired no matter what our seniority dates might be. Twenty-five years as a teacher? If you made the mistake of transitioning into a Librarian position, too bad! You are no longer qualified.

The logic behind the recency rule seems to be based on poor decision making from last year. LAUSD sent scores of people into classrooms who had been sitting in cubicles for ages. These were people with dusty old teaching credentials, waiting for retirement in the cool, air-conditioned Beaudry building in downtown LA. (To be fair, many of these people did real, important work in their office settings. I personally know people who may have been in cubicles, but remained good teachers in spite of not spending their days in schools. A generalization is made here only to drive home a point. You will recall that I am not a journalist presenting the cold hard facts, but a teacher attempting to provide a synopsis of a cold, hard process. ) When layoffs began, these educators were saved because of their time served, but their office positions were cut and they went back to school for the first time in who knows how long. This did not go well. Everything had changed. The research, the curriculum, the technology, the furniture, the processes, the policies, the basic and fundamental understanding of how students learn.

An epic failure, test scores took a dive as unruly and bored children rebelled and administrators struggled to reacclimatize these cubicle-dwellers with slow, low success rates. So this year, LAUSD got wise. Make a rule that says that if you haven’t been in a classroom for five years, you can’t be in one ever again. No more problem, right?

Here’s the rub. The library is a classroom, not a cubicle. Teacher Librarians perform all of the functions that classroom teachers perform on a daily basis. TLs know the content well. TLs attend faculty and department meetings, have conferences with parents, plan lessons, deliver instruction, evaluate student work, and, by the way, are defined by their contracts with LAUSD as……Teachers.

So here I am in this courtroom day after day, waiting for my chance to prove that I am a teacher, and that this recency rule that was applied like a wet blanket over all of us should not stand. When the TLs got on the stand, thing got tense. And so tedious I cannot even describe how badly I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. The best way I can think of explaining the vicious humiliation doled out by the LAUSD attorneys is to describe four scenarios that illustrate their flawed but deliberate reasoning for taking us out of the schools forever.

Scenario One – What Dewey Teach, Anyway?

A TL whose original teaching credential is in High School English takes the stand. Let’s say he’s been working for the district for, oh, fifteen years, the last six or seven in the library. He is attempting to show that he is familiar with the English Language Arts content and curriculum. LAUSD wants to prove he is not.

LAUSD: Sir, are you familiar with the Dewey Decimal System?

Laughter from the peanut gallery as the TLs in the room reflect on the idiocy of these proceedings.

TL: Uh, well, yes. Of course I am.

LAUSD: Could you please describe to the court what the Dewey Decimal System is?

TL: It’s an organizational system used in the library to catalog and locate the books.

LAUSD: And is the Dewey Decimal System an alphabetical system?

TL: Heh. Well, no sir, it’s a numerical system.

LAUSD: So, the Dewey Decimal System uses numbers, is that correct?

TL: That is correct.

Let me just add that in this moment, we are all on the edge of our seats. Where could this be going? Is the LAUSD attorney just stalling? There is no reason we can possibly imagine that he would be asking about dear old Melville Dewey.

LAUSD: Would you say that in the course of your day you use numbers?

Gasps from the audience. What does this even mean?

UTLA: Objection. Vague.

Judge: Sustained.

LAUSD: Sir, would you say that using numbers is an important part of working in the library on a daily basis?

UTLA: Objection! Vague, your honor. Numbers? Where is this going?

LAUSD: Your honor, I am simply trying to establish that Mr. So-and-So does NOT spend at least 75% of his time working on the English content that he claims he is competent to teach.

UTLA: Your honor, the Dewey Decimal System is an organizational system, not a mathematical concept. This line of questioning is irrelevant.

Judge: Sustained. Move on.

So, here is my interpretation of this scenario. LAUSD wants to claim that the Dewey Decimal System is a numerical system and therefore we TLs use so much math in our daily practice that we can’t possibly be teaching much else. Well then, why don’t they put us all in math classes? Riddle me that, why don’t you?

This is, of course, absurd on many, many levels. Our lawyers, the UTLA lawyers, really should have been coached on these matters. The answer to this line of questioning ought to have made clear that all content area teachers are familiar with and use the Dewey Decimal System, as all content area teachers utilize the library’s resources in the course of their teaching, and therefore the Dewey Decimal System is as ubiquitous on a school campus as is any other regular function that teachers perform and is not related to any specific content area. It is akin to using a table of contents, index, or glossary in a classroom textbook to locate needed information. I would have also liked to point out that the use of said system is embedded into what we do in such a seamless way that there is not a chance in hell that we spend 25% of our time on it. If that were the case, it would take an hour to find a book on the shelf that it takes only seconds to do in reality.

Scenario Two – Left Hand, Right Hand: Which is Which?

In this case, LAUSD made an argument opposite to the one above, in terms of the use and practice of content area instruction. This TL holds a Multiple Subject teaching credential, qualifying her to teach elementary school and some middle school. She has been teaching as a middle school Teacher Librarian for a decade. She was an elementary school teacher for a decade before that.

LAUSD: Are you familiar with the California mandates for Physical Education in the first grade classroom?

TL: Do you mean the standards?

LAUSD: Yes, the mandates as set forth by the state of California.

As an aside, no one calls them mandates in the world of education. He meant standards, but he didn’t know it. If he meant mandates, he might be asking how many minutes of PE are required per week, etc. These are not things teachers need to know, but are the realm of school administration. Of course, even though he works for LAUSD, no one told him the difference.

TL: Well, no, not off the top of my head.

LAUSD: So, you don’t know the Physical Education requirements for first grade?

TL: No, not off the top of my head.

LAUSD: Don’t you hold a credential to teach elementary school?

TL: Yes, I do.

LAUSD: If you were to be placed in a first grade classroom position, who would be responsible for making sure the students received the state mandated PE instruction?

TL: I would.

LAUSD: But you don’t know what those mandates are?

TL: You mean the standards? No, not off the top of my head.

Here, the LAUSD attorney wants to require us to have memorized all content area standards for grades in which we have not worked for a number of years. They want to say that we are unqualified if this question stumps us, if we have not honed in on one content area for 75% of our time (the opposite of the argument from scenario one).

Here is what I would say to this: LAUSD, the very district trying to prove we are not capable of adapting, has required each of us to adhere to an ever-changing professional development program for as long as we have been in the district. We meet at our schools, at the district level, and are sometimes even sent to state or national conferences in order to incorporate new concepts, content, and strategies into our daily instructional practice. We have been taught by the district to adapt to new curricula and assessments that are thrown at us every couple of years. We have been taught to learn, and it is LAUSD who has taught us to do so. If I am truly incapable of reading the first grade PE standards and using my many pedagogical skills to create lessons to teach them, then yes, I am an unqualified teacher. Knowing the standards off the top of my head has nothing to do with it.

Here are some examples of the first grade PE standards:

· Kick a rolled ball from a stationary position

· Identify the right and left sides of the body

· Explain the importance of drinking water during and after physical activity

This is not calculus. I think I could manage to incorporate this into my daily teaching routine without have to return to university for an advanced degree. I already have an advanced degree, by the way. It’s in Education, which means that I know how to deliver instruction about pretty much anything, as long as I understand the content. I know how to do all of the things listed in the first grade PE standards, so….

Scenario Three – Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

In this scenario, the TL has worked for LAUSD since, I believe, 1977. He holds multiple teaching credentials, one of them qualifying him to teach high school Social Studies classes, although he has never done so outside of the Library setting.

LAUSD: I see that you’ve submitted a lesson plan into evidence for a research project on various countries.

TL: That’s correct. The students were assigned a country and then did research on the history, culture, politics, etc. of that country.

LAUSD: So, you taught them research skills?

TL: Yes, and I also taught them about the countries they’d been assigned.

LAUSD: So, you taught them about the history of those countries?

TL: Briefly, yes. As you can see, there are about twenty countries on the list.

LAUSD: So, you taught them about the history of Armenia?

TL: Yes, briefly, I did.

LAUSD: Could you please tell the court what you told the class about the history of Armenia?

TL: You want me to give a lecture on Armenian history? Now?

LAUSD: Please, if you wouldn’t mind.

The TL then proceeded to give a 3-4 minute lecture on the history of Armenia. He was spot on, and I think the LAUSD lawyer may have been a bit disappointed. The disrespect for this man’s credentials here is egregious.

Again, why weren’t the UTLA attorneys coached? Several points that I would have made are:

One, research skills are a part of almost all content areas at the secondary level, so why is LAUSD treating them as the bastard stepchild relegated only to the library? Two, research skills cannot be taught in a vacuum; content is imperative or the research is meaningless. And finally, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, when issuing a credential to a teacher, verifies that the teacher has met subject matter competency requirements. If LAUSD takes issue with the CCTC’s definition of subject matter competency, then that should be a discussion between those two organizations. End of story. The TL should not have been made to prove to a panel of lawyers with no pedagogical training (and, by the way, perhaps zero knowledge of the history of Armenia?) that his valid, current teaching credential is actually valid.

Scenario Four – Gotcha!

In this scenario, the LAUSD lawyers just got plain old nitpicky.

LAUSD: How much of your school day would you say you spend teaching?

TL: I teach all day long.

LAUSD: You teach all day?

TL: Yes.

LAUSD: Do you ever catalog books?

TL: Yes.

LAUSD: Are you teaching while you are cataloging books?

TL: (pause) No.

LAUSD: Do you ever write purchase orders for library materials?

TL: Yes.

LAUSD: Are you teaching while writing these purchase orders?

Ack! UTLA lawyers, where are you? First, teachers have conference periods. That’s when they take care of administrative and clerical tasks. Second, TLs do all these things in the moments between classes, or after school, or when a class cancels its appointment because of district-mandated testing, for example. If this is the kind of thing that’s going to persuade the judge to rule against us, I will have lost my faith in judges.

At the end of the first day of the hearings I attended, the judge was visibly frustrated. Twenty TLs had been on the docket and only four had been heard. Each of us brought a mountain of evidence that the attorneys would argue about, one page at a time. The judge asked the attorneys to come to an agreement, to make a deal, to expedite the process. It was clear that she believed the TL testimony would be the same thing over and over. Yes, we teach. Yes, we evaluate student progress. Yes, we are familiar with the content. Blah, blah, blah. On and on it would go, unless the lawyers agreed to something that would put an end to this. Perhaps lifting the recency rule for all TLs would do it. Perhaps rescinding our RIF notices. Perhaps allowing us to have a single spokesperson testify on the behalf of the group (we had chosen such a person and she was prepared).

The lawyers conferred and we murmured to each other while sending out a prayer and crossing our fingers. As a group, we had been pummeled pretty hard. We were tired and no one wanted to come back for another round of this the next day, much less for the weeks it would take if they heard us one by one. We had coffee jitters and our toes were cold from the air-conditioning. We were angry and humiliated, scared of what might happen, frustrated by the snail’s pace and inefficiency of the proceedings. Please, oh please, just make some sort of deal.

The lawyers returned to their tables.

UTLA: Your honor, we were unable to come to an agreement.

LAUSD: Your honor, we want to prosecute them all.

Ouch. Could that be what he really said? Prosecute them all? It was; I was sitting just behind him and heard it quite clearly. So, back the next day, and the next. The same thing over and over again with the same results. I believe that’s the definition of insanity, is it not?

So many questions arise as I think about this process. I have answers for none of them, although I do nothing but speculate as I try to fall asleep, as I drive to work, as I shower. What I think is this:

LAUSD does not want to pay for the TLs because we are expensive. Most of us have been teaching long enough with enough advanced degrees that we are at or near the top of the pay scale. If we were allowed to return to the classroom, our pay would be the same. Better for LAUSD to discredit us and replace us with young teachers on emergency credentials who will make little more than half of what we do.

It is clear that LAUSD has instructed its lawyers to do whatever they can to prove were are unqualified, even though we have satisfied every single requirement for qualification that LAUSD had asked of us for years, not to mention the state itself.

It is clear that LAUSD does not give credence to the massive volumes of research that prove that school libraries are directly linked to student achievement. Perhaps LAUSD is not aware of this research, but I imagine it is just being ignored.

It is clear that LAUSD is not trying to provide the best possible services for its students. The AP history teacher is a case in point. Student achievement is not LAUSD’s highest priority.

What is not clear is what will happen next. Will the libraries be closed and locked? Will the district violate state Education Code and keep the libraries open with clerical staff but no credentialed Teacher Librarians? Who will be the teachers in the coming years, when thousands of qualified and tenured faculty members have been released while the Board of Education announces a massive teacher shortage? Why is there no media coverage of these hearings, and does anyone even know we’re down there in the basement, defending ourselves? And on a personal level, can I continue working for an organization that wants to prosecute me? Even if the judge rules in my favor, can I stomach the thought of taking a paycheck from a school district that will just keep trying to push me out?

On Friday, I returned to my school. It was a pleasure to see the children and to work as a teacher, but it was a bittersweet feeling after having been where I had been. The truth is, there is little time left to make plans for the library’s future. If it closes, if I’m released, what will happen to that room? My library is one of the largest middle school libraries in the entire district, with over 35,000 items in its collection. There are twenty-five computers, three printers, an LCD projector, and shelves of multimedia resources. The value of that library is well over a million dollars. So what will happen to it after June 30^th of this year, if I am gone and my clerks are gone (yes, they were laid off as well)? Will teachers and students just come and go as they please, taking books willy-nilly? If so, why is LAUSD not concerned about the financial loss implicit in that scenario?

Today I am furloughed. Tomorrow I go back to the hearings to plead my case. I do not want to. The next day I go back to school to prepare the library to be closed forever, or to be run a few hours a week by a reluctant clerk, or to be ransacked. The questions continue to pile up, but no answers are forthcoming. Stand by for further developments. Hurry up and wait.

At the bottom of all of this is a political reality that I find so daunting, so dark, that to enter into a discussion of it strikes fear in my heart and nausea in my belly. I believe that this is part of a larger movement in our city (and state, and finally, nation) towards a for-profit education model that takes pressure off of elected officials and puts money in the pockets of clever financiers.

Charter organizations are sweeping the nation, taking over school after school under the guise of a reform movement that doesn’t exist. I believe that LAUSD is in cahoots with this movement. Perhaps it is not LAUSD as a whole, but instead the unseen, rarely heard politicos that move the gears inside the machine, like the Wizard of Oz. The collapse of LAUSD will accomplish some big things for a few people.

A Prediction in Ten Simple Steps:

1. LAUSD proves that its teachers are awful and should be fired.
2. The school board allows charter organizations to take a crack at running the schools.
3. Charter organizations receive public funds meant to finance the education of children (just under $7,500 per student in 2009-2010), but are not required to fund libraries, provide special education services, or pay teachers union wages. This means that charter schools can pay for services that cost only three or four thousand dollars per student, let’s say, and pocket the rest.
4. Charter organizations are allowed to remove students from their schools at their discretion, sending low-performing students back to the public schools just in time for state testing. What luck! Schools with no special education students, few English Language Learners, and the ability to remove low-performing students prior to state testing show, according to the only measures we seem to care about (tests), improvement and success, thus lending credibility to the reform ruse. (Note: Although people believe that charters’ test scores are higher than public schools, in many cases a direct comparison shows otherwise. Why aren’t they higher, I ask you?)
5. Charter organizations (run largely by financiers, investment bankers, etc who are making a nice profit) gain legitimacy as an educational reform model, making inroads in districts across the nation.
6. Mayors, governors, and other politicians get a nice break from answering for their failing school systems.
7. Qualified teachers move on to other careers, while inexperienced, underpaid teachers are worked to the bone and burn out after only a few years.
8. This goes on and on for years. Few people notice, because few people think about schools unless they have school-age children. In a state where people elected not to pay an extra $18 on their car registration in order to fund state parks, who would expect any different?
9. Consumers begin to wonder why the clerk at the Gap doesn’t understand how to calculate the 40% discount on last season’s khaki capris when her computer is down and her manager is on break. This seems outrageous. Eventually, people begin to take note that nearly half of the students entering college need remedial classes, teachers are leaving the profession after just a few years due to burnout, dropout rates increase, and students are faced with huge inequities from campus to campus.
10. Finally, the public demands yet another overhaul of the school system. The charter organizations are evaluated using the same criteria they imposed on public schools years ago to prove their incompetence. The charters are proven incompetent. Local governments reestablish public school districts and states spend millions of dollars for intervention consultants, trainers, and curricula to swoop in and repair the state of affairs. Libraries are re-stocked and re-opened. New teachers are recruited and trained. And we begin again, from the beginning.

As this happens, I will be raising my own children. I will not be allowed to participate in these movements, and I will not be a teacher. I will grapple with how to educate my children and will be forced to forsake my belief in free education for the public, because that will no longer exist. I cannot afford private school for them, and I do not believe home schooling is a good choice in terms of social-emotional development (plus, I cannot afford it). As a person who has devoted her life to the art and science of teaching, I will be faced with no acceptable choice for my children.

Yes, I would like to continue work as a teacher and librarian. People who are teachers, real teachers, cannot imagine doing anything else. It’s a knack, a calling, like a painter or writer or brain surgeon may feel. If not allowed to teach, what will we do? More than this though, I’d like the children, all of the children, to have teachers who are supported, respected, and assisted, not attacked, discredited, and humiliated. I’d like the children to be given what we know that they need, not just what we can afford, or what we feel like giving them at the time. Maybe it’s hard to say what they need or how to give it to them. What is abundantly clear to me, however, is that what they don’t need…is this.

Cut Off One Head, See What You Get?

2011-05-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

Since my last, long post many things have happened, both within my boggled mind and at my school. First and best is that for several days after I wrote, I felt a renewed sense of enthusiasm for my work. It was so surprising to find, just the next morning, that I was experiencing a true sense of joy and purpose in my interactions with the students. Since that time, my school had its annual Arts Week celebration, and I spent all last week teaching students about American painters from the late 1800s to the 1950s, art from the Age of Exploration, painters of the Harlem Renaissance, and Greek mythology as portrayed in ancient vase paintings. I've lesson planned, made summer reading lists, delivered instruction, and basically done all the things I love to do on a daily basis. Sounds pretty nice, right? It has been. I've been thinking that sticking around is pretty tempting, considering there is clearly still good teaching to be done. I've been thinking that it's not so bad, that perhaps all I needed was to vent. I've been thinking that I could put this difficult time to good use, chronicling it for public consumption to increase awareness about the difficulties our education system faces. I've been feeling pretty positive. Until....

1. I saw the budget for the next school year.
2. The district started holding hearings for teachers who had received RIF notices.

So, first, the budget. What to say? It's would be very long winded to give a full explanation, but I think I can sum it up for you pretty well with one line-item, a position called Ed Aide II. This position is currently held by five women at our school. 2 work as library clerks, 2 work in the copy room, and 1 works (I think) in an office. These women work 3 hours a day and make, I'm guessing here, about $10.00. LAUSD spends less than $10,000 a year to fund each one each year. This year, however, LAUSD cannot afford that whopping $50,000 and is taking us down to a limit of ONE Ed Aide II on campus. That one is determined by seniority, which means my wonderful, amazing library clerk who has worked here for a decade and whose children went to school here (one of whom is my other clerk) is going to be out of a job, or maybe will be able to move to another school nearby, but maybe not. So no library clerks, and a copy room that's open three hours per day is prioritized because we don't trust teachers not to break the machine. And four women out of a job.
The three hour meeting that I attended to learn about the budget presented us with countless scenarios like this one that we are helpless to prevent.

2. Late last week, other librarians began to have their hearings to defend their rights to return to the classroom. You see, the district made a new rule this year. If you've been out of the "classroom" for 5 years, you are no longer qualified to be in the classroom, so you're fired. I have been out of the "classroom" for exactly 5 years. The district says that means I cannot teach English, history, or anything else I once taught. Of course, in my current job description and according to my contract with the district, I am still considered a teacher, but I guess just not a teacher of the right stuff. I understand why they made this rule. It's because in the last two years, they put people into classrooms who had been in cubicles for more than a decade. I can see how those people might have needed a few refresher courses before returning to the classroom. I mean, if you left for a cubicle in the mid-90s, you might not be so up-to-date on current literature, pedagogical research, technology tools, etc. I get that. But I'm not IN a cubicle. I'm teaching children every day, and working with teachers to plan instruction, and....oh, well, I am preaching to the choir here. Anyone reading this knows I'm a teacher. For crying out loud!
So, librarians are taking documentation in quintuplicate that shows that they teach on a daily basis and then they are crossing their fingers that the union-appointed lawyer can convince the judge that they teach enough to gain the right to return to the classroom. And this is being done one person at a time.
I don't get to have a hearing. I was furloughed the week the hearing notice came to my house, which was the same week I had to return a piece of paper saying I wanted to have said hearing. I made the mistake of leaving town that week (foolish me for wanting a little getaway while I'm furloughed!), and the district won't accept late paperwork for any reason. So, even if I had my three-hole-punched packet in quintuplicate that would prove I do my job every day (and that my job is to TEACH), it wouldn't matter. No one wants to hear about it.

After the last time I wrote, things got so good for a moment that I had pretty much decided to stay. At least I would stay at some school, if not this school, and keep working for the people who matter - the students. Now though, I may not have that choice. I am waiting for a loop hole, something that will allow me the right to return to the classroom even though I have no right to a hearing. It seems unlikely, but then again, things change rapidly in this district so that one just never knows....

PS - This is TEACHER APPRECIATION WEEK. Please, appreciate your teachers if you get the chance.

A Sure Thing

2011-04-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

There is really only one question to ask:

What sensible Hispanic or African-American middle school student in South Central, Los Angeles wouldn't want to read this book?

Flirting with Disaster

2011-04-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

I have been avoiding this blog for three months and a handful of days. Recently, a teacher at my school wondered if it wouldn't be therapeutic to begin writing again. These past few months have been traumatic, to say the least, for educators all over Los Angeles and in many other parts of the country. I haven't written because I didn't want to whine and complain; this blog is meant to be about the joys of the library, not the crumbling of the public education empire. After three months and a handful of days, however, I can no longer avoid the reality of this collapse, and it is becoming so deeply hurtful and personal that I do need the therapy. Badly. For the first time in eleven years I am seriously considering what life would be like if I just didn't work in a school anymore. The luxury of that decision is so mouth-wateringly tempting that I have found myself browsing nonprofit job listings more than once in the last few weeks. Just to think of a life that doesn't start until after 6am! A one-hour lunch break!

The public school system in Los Angeles is on the verge of collapse, or at least it feels that way to me sometimes. More and more schools are being auctioned off to charter organizations, in spite of the fact that many of those charters have not proven to be any better in terms of student achievement. Massive layoffs and budget cuts mean that each day is a struggle for teachers and students trying to navigate the most basic of everyday operations. These operations take so much time on all of our parts (since our staff is down to a skeleton crew) that instructional time starts to disappear, processes erode, chaos ensues. Two BIG charter organizations have put in bids for my school. Meaning that after the next school year, the Board of Education will decide whether those of us who have been working our butts off for the last decade are good enough to keep fighting the good fight, or if some politico has offered a slick enough package to make it seem like selling us out to a charter organization is real education reform, which it is not. I repeat, giving public school control to charter organizations does not equal educational reform.

I just want to be a teacher. That's it. I want to teach children in a large, underperforming school in South Central, Los Angeles. Is that really so much to ask? I mean, I was under the impression for the last ten years that there aren't that many people out there who really want to do what I want to do. Am I wrong? Are people clamoring for this job? I heard an ad on NPR last week for a teacher preparation program practically begging people to become teachers in order to fight the "overwhelming teacher shortage" in this country. WHAT? Where? Half the people I know have been fired in the last two years. They all wanted to work here, chose to work here, and were told they were not needed. Now I'm being told the same thing, and even if I manage to scrape through and hang on for one more year, my school will probably be usurped by a charter kingdom that will most likely shut the library doors because, according to many (if not most) charters, it doesn't make financial sense to fund the library program. This is, of course, in opposition to pretty much all research done on the subject, which proves time after time that libraries are critical to student achievement. But whatever, right?

Here's the thing. I don't want to fight a political battle for the next year, breaking my neck to write a competing plan that will explain why what we do here was working quite well until a third of our teachers were fired two years ago and another big chunk was sent home again last year, and another group again a few weeks ago.

I don't want to have to beg the Board of Education to value school libraries. They should already value them, don't you think? They should be able to see that our school's test scores were going up steadily, year after year, and only took a dip AFTER the first, massive, painful round of layoffs that stranded our students in classrooms with substitutes every day or people who had been out of the classroom for more than a decade.

I don't want to hear bad news every day.

I just want to be a teacher. I am a teacher. Why don't they want me?

This whole thing is somehow deeply, personally painful for me. I find myself feeling resigned, depressed, and rejected. I worked so very, very hard to become a good teacher. My first year in the classroom was as bad as they say it can be. I struggled in front of my students and wept when they left the room. I drank too much tequila on the weekends to dull the pain, and I somehow found my way to the surface, gasping and flailing, to find that I loved the job and wanted to do it forever. I found a mentor who told me to persist, that I should and I must, and I followed that advice even though it was the most difficult thing I've ever done. I have earned three teaching credentials and a Masters in Education, but the school board is going to make me attend a hearing to defend my qualifications as a teacher, as if all of that time and work means nothing to them.

I have never met a single, real human person who has said that they think teachers or libraries are unimportant. Where are these people? I suppose I'm grateful I don't know them, but the fact is, they're controlling my life even though they seem to be invisible figments of our collective imagination. Does everyone just SAY they think teachers are awesome but then secretly answer some clandestine survey saying the opposite? It's so hard for me to understand, and that lack of understanding has translated into (as all good teachers know) frustration, fear, anger, and apathy.

So what do I do? That's the real crux, is it not? What the hell do I do?

1) Flee. Get out while the gettin's good (although it's not really that good, is it?). Leave public education for the seemingly greener pastures of....what? Nonprofit work? That's where I get stuck.

2) Stay. Keep plodding along for the sake of these marvelous children. Figure out a way to stay at least one more year before the school board has its menacing way with us. Cope with the everday tension and pain. Keep checking out library books to the kids who, thank god, don't know the difference.

3) Fight. Join the protesting masses. Write on this blog vehemently and often. Write letters and sign petitions, work long hours, respond to Google groups, attend more meetings, and sweat it out.

It's funny. When I became a teacher, I would have chosen the third option without a single qualm. No questions asked, fighting would have been the obvious choice. What does it say that the most appealing of these now is to flee? That's where the pain really hits home. I've changed, and maybe it's this thing that I love, being a teacher, that has changed me. And maybe that change is not altogether positive.

So, if you've read this far, thanks for being my therapist today. I may call on you again sometime soon. Just out of curiosity, what do you think I should do? Flee? Stay? Fight? I'd love some advice here. And just to be sufficiently nerdy about getting that advice, I've created a little poll on the sidebar of my blog where you can tell me what you think! Oh man, I am just a born librarian. What are they thinking, trying to get rid of me?

I am the Decider

2011-01-04T12:28:00.000-08:00

Having thought a lot about the dilemma posted here yesterday (What the heck is my job anyway?), I've made a decision about the direction this semester must take. I needed a focus and now I've got one. I plan, in a positive way, to withdraw from campus life. Well, no, not exactly. Here's the thing - with a few dozen secondary libraries already closed or staffed with clerks only, there's a decent chance my days are numbered in this position, right? So, do I want to push forward with projects I'll never complete, only to be unprepared to pass the torch to someone (or no one) else at the end of June? No, I do not. Not to mention the fact that forward movement is totally out of the question on this campus right now anyway.

Yesterday ten or more teachers at our school learned that they would no longer be teaching what they have been teaching all year long. Why? No one really knows. Some district-level loophole closing (or opening) meant that Mr. Q had to move from 8th grade Algebra to 7th grade history and science, , Ms. C moved from 8th grade English to 7th grade something and a brand new first-year teacher who JUST got her credential was hired to take the 8th grade class (WHAT???), and so on. In addition to those confusing changes, another teacher is out on leave for two months and so has a sub, another has taken a position elsewhere and so a science teacher has become an English teacher to fill that position (wait, who's taking the abandoned science class?), and so forth.

So really, how am I going to innovate or collaborate under circumstances like these? Our poor, under served students. This is really and truly a tragedy for them (the teacher shuffling, not my lack of innovation).

Instead, I will get this library in ship shape. Every unfinished project I will either finish or dismantle. I will finally, after five years, go through the previous librarian's file cabinets and bring them up to date. I will catalog all of those pesky, strange materials that have been hiding in cabinets and drawers for ages (like the authentic Egyptian papyrus a teacher brought back from a trip). I will clean up the links on the library's web page, diagnose the problems with computers #2 and 14, weed out the unread and obsolete biographies, properly store the school's archival materials, and basically tie up every loose end that's been dangling since the summer of 2006 when I arrived on campus as the librarian. The previous, wonderful librarian left in a major medical rush and I spent a year tying up many of his loose ends, many that stretched back to the school's opening days in 1998. That was sort of fun, really, because I had to act as a detective, which I liked. However, it prevented me from getting a proper start here. I do not have to leave things that way (if I really do have to leave this summer), and so I won't.

This feels right. It's focused and it's not dependent on the participation of others. It's just me finally getting to the end of my To Do list. And hey, if I get to stay, I'll get to work in a pristine library for the first time! Not bad.

A Case of the Mondays

2011-01-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

It's the first day of second semester and things are unusually quiet in the library. I've blocked off the first week of school to train new student helpers, prepare for the upcoming weeks, and generally catch up and all the things I didn't do last semester. As I go through my To Do list today I cannot help but ask myself, Why am I doing any of this? What is my job? It's a little hard to say what my role is anymore. Am I still a teacher? I can't always tell. Here's a glimpse of my day so far. What do you think?

7:15-7:30 - Checked out books to kids before the school day began
7:30-8:15 - Taught the Yearbook class for my friend who was really ill this morning. The kids reviewed yearbook pages to by submitted for printing this week while I took attendance, reset passwords, called tech support. So, not teaching at all.
8:15-10:00 - Began training new Student Librarians by having them complete two interactive, online activities in groups. So again, I had nothing to do with it (except for months ago when I created the activities in the first place).
also 8:15 - 10:00 - Reset passwords for teachers; showed a new teacher how to access the admin page for her part of the school's website; checked out books to random students;
10:00-11:45 - More training of new students (same); chatted with a few teachers about their upcoming library visits; responded to some emails
11:45-12:15 - Lunch (for the kids). Stood behind the counter and checked out about a million books
12:15 - now - more emails; checked IN books dropped off at lunch; looked at circulation statistics

So, what the heck IS my job? Like I said, this is a SLOW and atypical day. Still, these are not challenging, stimulating, thought-provoking activities. They are mind-numbing, boring, tedious, and simple activities. I feel a bit like someone's assistant, but whose?

I am not complaining, even though I realize how it could sound that way. I am, in fact, trying to inject a little analysis into my day. This morning I registered for the annual American Library Association conference in June. While perusing the conference workshops, it dawned on me that my role here has become unfocused. I tend to put out little fires all day rather than working to build something new and innovative. But what would that new and innovative thing be? And what IS my job?

There is nothing to be done about the fact that all these passwords need to be reset, the books scanned in and out, the emails answered. But does my day have to lose all structure because of it? If I were asked what I've accomplished as school librarian this year, or for the entirety of 2010, I would be at a loss. I have kept the doors open most of the time. I have kept most of the computers running, most of the books on the shelf, most of the magazine subscriptions up to date. I've acquired a few hundred new books for the kids through donations, personal spending, and begging. I've resurrected the old coffee pot in the back room and started it percolating again. I've gone to a few meetings and missed a few others. I've reacted very dramatically to news of more cutbacks on library spending with more demands on library staff.

This is not what a great year should look like. Rather than feeling discouraged by this (as I have been for many, many weeks) I now feel a deep craving for purpose and focus. I need a plan. A structure. Something to make of this place and of my role in it. But what? It has to be something insular, to a certain extent. Collaborative efforts are the best, for sure, but they are also unreliable and extremely difficult to pull off in an under-performing school when testing is approaching like the Grim Reaper. Anything I can accomplish between now and mid-June will need to be done with minimal support from other adults on this campus. So I have to think semi-small; it should be something I can handle, something that will be fun and rewarding.

I could...... establish a regular rotation of student book clubs? This would satisfy by love of talking about literature with kids. It could be maintained over long periods of time. But when would they meet?

I could..... bring back Game Day. I used to keep the library open once a week after school for gaming, which was really, really fun. Not a bad idea.

I could..... establish a regular after-school element to the library program. Maybe stay open a few times a week for Game Day, homework help, etc. Of course, this only works if I'm willing to stay after school a few times a week. Am I? I don't know. Maybe.

I could..... spend the rest of the year doing an in-depth analysis of the collection, including an inventory and list of recommended additions (for grant writing purposes, perhaps?)

I could.....conduct some informal, qualitative research about student reading habits/preferences and write an article for publication in School Library Journal or elsewhere

Ah well, all of these things sound good. The trouble is choosing one to do well, rather than trying to do them all and getting a sorry result. Something to think about....

The Root Cause

2010-11-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

A teacher at my school recently wrote a great blog post that is starting to get a lot of attention. You can read it HERE. She writes about the ways in which 'failing' schools like ours are subject to all sorts of mandates that limit our ability to do the things we know (and research shows) are what the students need in order to be successful in school. She makes the point that "the root cause of our students' under-performance continues to go neglected: poverty, crime, violence, and hunger". She is right, of course. No amount of teacher training on how to deliver vocabulary development lessons will ever make up for a student's lack of breakfast. No scripted curriculum requiring teachers to deliver identical canned instruction to each and every student can begin to address the needs of a child whose parent has just been deported. As much as we need to constantly improve our teaching practice, we also need to be realistic about what our students need and how those needs are all so very, astonishingly different.

This, of course, is a really hard thing to do. Each kid comes to school with unique, often hidden, baggage. Some of it is good, like the student whose father teaches at East LA Community College and takes him to all sorts of writers' events and art openings there. Or the young girl who has been playing violin for years and even got to sit in with the LA Philharmonic last year. We don't always know these things about our students, at least not right away, and to the detriment of their schooling. When teachers are forced to limit their interactions with students to a very expensive, very rigid set of activities defined by the school district to intervene in our 'failing' classrooms, there is no longer room for the kind of personal exploration and discussion that allows these character traits and special skills to shine through.

On the flip side, there is the other kind of baggage. The bad kind. The kind that we combat every day and only slowly, if at all, can change. In small, mundane ways, kids put up walls that block them from getting anywhere close to successful. These barriers tend to have a snowball effect, as in the case of a young lady who ended up calling me a bitch last week. Over a $9 book. Let me explain.

The 8th grader in question (let's name her Shontae) owes a book to the library. It was due June 2. This has prevented her from checking out more books from the library, since the policy is that the books must be returned or paid for in order to check out more books. We often allow students to make weekly payments on lost books so that they can continue to use the library. All of this has been explained to Shontae many times, but she still will not take care of it.

On the day in question, Shontae's teacher and I were trying yet again to find a way to clear her account. You see, she needs an independent reading book for her English class. All 8th grade students in the state of California are supposed to read one million words independently. This is worked into her grade. This is the way she can improve her reading skills. This is one of the ways she can prepare for the strenuous state reading tests at the end of the year that require her to have staying power in her reading habits (and that determine whether our school is failing or succeeding). Without the ability to use the school's library, Shontae cannot really do any of these things. One might suggest that we just forgive Shontae her trespasses and let her use the library in spite of the overdue item, and maybe that will be the end result since I hate to deny anyone books, but the truth of the matter is that this sort of policy is ubiquitous in schools, important, and relevant to educating kids about the real world they will soon inhabit.

On this day, Shontae came up with some new information about her missing book. She said that she never checked it out, that a friend of hers stole and used her library card to check out the book. Skeptical but open to the idea, we called in the friend to ask his version of the story. If he confirmed that he indeed had the book, we would happily transfer the item to his record and Shontae would be free and clear after 6 months of stalemated negotiations. The friend (let's call him Deshawn) denied the charges against him. Yes, he once had the book, but it was simply a short-term loan from Shontae, who was the one who checked out the book inthe first place. Deshawn had returned the book to Shontae months before.

Ok, so, Shontae....we have a bit of a problem. Would you like to talk with Deshawn a few minutes and figure out the discrepancy in these two versions of the case of the missing book?

Sadly, Shontae did not want to speak to Deshawn about it. She wouldn't even look at him. She stood right next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and stared straight ahead, shrugging her shoulders and muttering, "I don't care." I sent poor, sold-out Deshawn back to class and turned to Shontae to say, "I'm not sure you told us the right thing. I'm afraid we can't put the book on Deshawn's account, so what are we going to do?" This is when it happened.

She turned, walked away from the counter, and spat out, "I don't care. I'm not gonna pay for any book. I really don't care....BITCH!"

Shontae's teacher turned to me and simply said, "Do you have a referral?" She sent Shontae to the dean and had her suspended. The teacher later told me that Shontae's mother also said that SHE didn't care either and did not intend to pay for the book, and she expressed surprise and dissatisfaction that her daughter would be suspended for so petty a crime.

All of this trouble for $9.86. Why is Shontae so angry? Why is her mother so angry? Do the powers that be really think that more teacher training, more assessments, more workshops, more meetings would change this? Shontae's difficulty is not stemming from the educational system or her teacher's abilities in the classroom, except for the fact that we are not allowing that teacher (or me) the time to really focus on her, to help her see her strengths, to help her identify her glowing abilities and draw them out, to build her self-esteem and reduce her stress and anger. The Root Cause of her under-performance is not being addressed, not by the educational system and certainly not by the political system that drives the choices about our schools. Our 'failing' school may be failing Shontae, failing to reach her, but it is not for lack of trying. Apart from completely disregarding her negligence and allowing her to lose a library book with no repercusions, I have done everything possible to accomodate her in terms of replacing that book. She doesn't want to. Neither does her mother. So now what?

The official answer is to test Shontae more and evaluate her teacher on the results of those tests. Maybe they'll even fire the teacher someday for not being "highly qualified" enough to raise Shontae's test scores. In the meantime, what will happen to Shontae? How is she being served by this model?

In a classroom where a student like Shontae sits right next to the student who plays with the LA Philharmonic, the teacher needs to be able to approach each student's needs differently. Doesn't that make sense? Aren't they totally different personalities with different support systems and different messages and values circulating at home? The teacher needs to be allowed to work like Ms. Beadle in Little House on the Prairie, with each child one-on-one, learning about their lives, coaching them as they grow up and outward. Ms. Beadle wasn't given binder after binder of lessons prepared by non-teachers and told to follow them to the letter. Because Ms. Beadle was a teacher - a person with a craft that is personal and progressive in its development. And Ms. Beadle's students weren't numbers in a database. They were children, with likes and dislikes, families, abilities, disabilites, hardships, and successes. They needed her, and they respected her because she was able to act as a guide and a stabilizing, nurturing force.

The more I think about it, the more I have to wonder. Did anyone ever call Ms. Beadle a bitch? WWMBD?

Chuck Norris knows no boundaries.

2010-11-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

Today while cleaning up the library I found a page of Chuck Norris...jokes? Sayings? Maybe axioms. No student's name was on the hand-written page, so I'm sorry to say I cannot identify the Norris fan in order to return it. Instead, I'll share these bits of wisdom with you, as written, no corrections made.

Chuck Norris

When Chuck norris types or says "LOL" hes asking you if you wanna be kicked in the "Liver or in the lung."

Chuck norris doesn't need to breath the oxygen comes to him.

Chuck norris doesn't use anti-virus viruses use anti-Chuck norris.

Chuck norris doesn't pay the goverment, the goverment pays him

Bird is not the word "Chuck" is

Hitler didn't kill himself because they were loosing the wae. He killed himself because chuck norris joined the army

Chuck norris doesn't guess when he plays guess who: he knows

Chuck norris puts the "fun" in funeral

Chuck norris knows no boundaries, the noudaries know him

chuck norris doesn't go to hell, hell comes to him

why did the chicken cross the road?? because chuck norris was walking towards him

It's hard to say what I enjoyed most about finding this artifact. Maybe it's the thought of a couple middle school boys (probably boys, right?) huddled together in the library at lunch, cracking each other up as they come up with Chuck Norris joke after Chuck Norris joke. I love this especially because it's so clear how they hit upon a formula for reversing statements in order to make them funny, and then they ran with it. Or maybe it's the fact that Chuck Norris has such longevitiy, such staying power. He fascinated boys when I was in middle school too. Back in the late 80s, 12-year old boys sat around doing this exact same thing. Does Chuck know how influential he's been? Is he aware of the magical powers that exude from his person and infect pre-adolescent manhood, year after year after year? I hope so. This was a great find, and it really made my day for some reason. I have always wanted my library to be the kind of place where this kind of thing can happen.

One of those days

2010-11-08T13:41:00.000-08:00

I am having one of those half bad, half good days.

The bad:

I heard a teacher say, "You better pay attention, cause I'm not gonna help you."
I have no afternoon help, so while I am teaching classes the phone rings and rings and rings. When I finally do answer, people say, "I have been TRYING to CALL you." They are all mad.
It is 2:40 and I just finished my lunch. I microwaved it at 11:30.
My student librarians have been making so many shelving mistakes that I haven't been able to find several books I've needed.
A teacher called in sick today and then sent her kids over with a substitute (not supposed to happen).
The kids here with the sub are supposed to be researching a "significant event". Most have them have chosen random earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Why? These are hard to research.
I keep looking at the clock and thinking it is an hour closer to quitting time than it already is because the school's clocks have not reset.

The Good:

Two of the kids from the class above are researching the advent of Coca-cola. They are reading to each other from the World Book Encyclopedia in slow, halting speech. They are enjoying what they are learning.
It was light outside when I left for work this morning.
My lunch, although cold, was both delicious and healthy.
I had a student bring back a book that I recommended on Friday, finished and ready for the sequel. She has decided her favorite genre is dystopian fiction. I also love dystopian fiction.

I hope that by the day's end the list of good will be longer, and the list of bad will seem insignificant and funny.

I. Am. Mortified.

2010-11-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

On a recent trip home, my mother gave me a pile of old belongings to go through to see what I wanted to keep and what she could pitch. Treasure of treasures, my diaries from age 11-15 were in that pile! Oh, the humiliation. I thought they were lost for sure, and now I'm not sure if I'm relieved that they aren't out there in the hands of someone else, or mortified that I now feel compelled to go back and read them. I think mortified is it, because, you see.....I wrote poetry. Yes, twelve-year old poetry. Pages and pages of it. Mom, if you already read it (which I totally would have if I were you) I hope you don't love me less.

I thought it might be fun to sprinkle a few of those gems here now and again, for your reading pleasure. Since you are all my dear friends (I think, cause who else would be reading this???), I thought I would dedicate this first one to you. It is called "True Friends". I will transcribe it as it is on the page, but please try and imagine wide, looping handwriting to make this experience as authentic as possible.

Ready?

True Friends (written circa 1988)

Friends can't

wait to see each-

-other. They don't

care what you

look like, where

you live or what

you wear.

They love you

just the way you

are. They don't

love you becau-

-se of your car,

your taste or your

hair. They love

you just the way

you are.

I know. It's good stuff.

But before you get too hopeful, let me end with a bit of a warning to you, just in case you are taking life, and the friends who love you for the way you are, for granted. My young self would also like you to know (from the very next page of the diary, no less):

Life is forever

if you play

your cards

right. But if you

start to bluff

it could be

ended tonight.

I have NO idea what that is supposed to mean, but it's pretty dark! Or possibly religious? Hmmm, this is going to be extremely painful for me..... and also fun. Hope you like.

Earthquake Preparedness

2010-10-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

Well, it turns out that we at this school are totally unprepared to deal with an earthquake, should one happen from 7:30-3:30, Monday through Friday. We had the most bungled earthquake drill today, which ended with the principal barking through the hand held radios that some of us get to carry, "This just isn't working! We have to do it again! Just ring the bell for lunch!"

What went wrong? What went right!

The entire thing can be summarized in the following radio exchange that ended in the Principal's fevered cry that called the whole thing off. To put this in context, you must know that all of the students were on the PE field, lined up with the classes they were in when the alarm sounded. Various staff members were assigned to search and rescue teams and were searching their assigned wings of the buildings in order to rescue accident victims, played by other staff members and students. My role was to sit at the "Reunion Gate" where we would reunite students with the parents, which is something we've never actually practiced with any success. I predict chaos at al times. Anyway, the principal and others (including me) are connected by radio. The rescue teams report to the principal at the command center when rooms/floors/buildings are clear or when they've found a "victim".

So, on the radio we hear:

Teacher: Command center, command center, we've got a victim in room 3107.
nothing
2 minutes pass
Teacher: Command center, we've now got two victims. We're bringing them in.
Principal: I have to know what the room numbers are! (angry)
Teacher: Command center, that would be rooms 3108 and 3107.
nothing for 30 seconds
Principal: But don't they have broken legs????
Teacher: (pause) Yes, uh, that's right. Broken legs.
Principal: Then how are you going to move them??!!??
Long pause
Teacher: (sounding like he hopes this is the right answer) Uh....stretcher?
Principal: This just isn't working! We have to do it again! Just ring the bell for lunch!

Aaaaaannd SCENE!

Comprendez Vous?

2010-10-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

Our students' reading comprehension skills are, to be frank, pretty terrible. In fact, this year, for the first time in a long time, our students did worse on the reading comp portion of the state tests than they did the previous year. We usually make some gains, but nope, not this time. So we're focusing in on these skills, which makes me reflect for the millionth time in my career on what they really are. How do we comprehend what we read? How does a kid who is 12 make sense of the material presented to him/her on a state test, or by a teacher, or in a magazine? There are several reasons why students do poorly on these tests, of course. One is stamina. They are presented with several 2-3 page passages, usually BORING passages, and asked to read and answer a dozen questions about each. This takes hours. It is dull. And the kids have no staying power. They are used to reading for 10-15 minute stretches, maybe. They are used to being coached through everything they read. They are used to being given clues, prompts, encouragement, definitions, and visuals. They are rarely asked to slog through long or difficult passages on their own, and they are therefore ill equipped to do so on the tests. This is most kids of course. I also know kids who read for hours upon hours every day. These kids do fine on the tests though, and so I'm not too worried about them for the moment.

So, how do we comprehend what we read? And what to we do when we don't understand the meaning of a text, any text, including blogs, films, conversations? I ask these questions because I am about to embark on a difficult and possibly rewarding journey that will require a lot of work on my part and will inevitably stall all of the other projects I have started in the past several months. Luckily, I have been feeling disgruntled and blue a lot of the time lately, so I haven't really put too many irons in the fire, as is my habit. I intend to up the ante in the library. Instead of bringing classes to simply get book recommendations and check out books, how about bringing classes to LEARN A READING SKILL and then get book recommendations and check out books? Sounds radical, does it not?

The idea is this. When teachers sign up to bring their classes, I find out what the kids are doing in all of the content areas. So let's say they are studying post Civil War America in Social Studies. I can then prepare a lesson/activity on, say, historical fiction about that time period in which the students will learn to read heavily accented dialogue or dialect. We don't think about it much, but at one point in our lives, we didn't know how to tackle words that some crazy author deliberately misspelled! So I can teach them, using an exciting passage from an exciting book, and then - BAM! - I can recommend more books of that genre and get them reading something new and challenging.

Seriously, this may sound obvious, but it's just not been the way things have worked. So far in my life as a librarian, the only lessons I really get to teach are outside the purview of other classes. Things relating to technology usually, or maybe using reference materials. But a straight-up Language Arts skill? I haven't directly taught one of those in years. And I love to! Usually teachers aren't too interested in having their material usurped.

What I need to ponder now is what types of reading comprehension skills will fit this model. Some ideas that come to minds are:

dialect and accented dialogue
the nonsense vocabulary of Sci Fi and futuristic fiction
the use of textual clues (like italics or page breaks) to indicate flashback
non-standard dialogue (few or no "he said" "she said" indicators
textual clues indicating internal dialogue (again, often italics or parentheses)
interpreting allusions to other, perhaps unknown, literary/historical/artistic works

Um. I know there are many, many more. Any ideas?
I think this could be really cool.

Class Rules

2010-10-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

Apropos of nothing, I just heard a teacher say to his class, "Who is not clear on my policy on dilly-dallying? Raise your hand if you need to go over my stance on dilly-dallying again."

Why no hands?
I want to know the dilly-dallying policy!
I wonder if the kids even know what dilly-dallying is.

Other policies I would like to know, just in case:
Lollygagging policy
Dawdling policy
Monkeying Around policy
Hem-Hawing policy

An Aside on Suicide

2010-10-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

For some reason, suicide has come up lately. There is the ever present student request for books about kids with "drama" and "problems" like suicide, abuse, etc. That's nothing new. And there are some really powerful books on the topic that treat it with the gravity necessary. Then there is the recent teacher request for book recommendations related to bullying and sexual orientation, a response to the recent discussion of teen suicide in the news. Also, par for the course to a certain extent.

But these benign suicide regerences were followed by an email sent by the LAUSD superintendent that was titled RECENT GAY SUICIDES. In all caps, just like that. Strange that it would be in all caps. Strange that the word gay was really necessary. Is there a difference between a gay and a non-gay suicide (I mean, I know that societal factors may differ for gay and straight kids, and that all suicides are different and personal; I just mean, do they really differ in level of sadness or importance)? That title is just begging for someone despicable to say something really awful like, "That suicide was so gay." In fact, I can't believe I just typed that. I feel really uncomfortable about it. But I'm going to let it stand, because I think it makes my point. It's like when people say "that black kid". Why don't they just say "that kid"? Anyway.

In the first sentence of the letter to the school district, the superintendent expresses his condolences to "the six young students who committed suicide". Probably the readers know which 6 he means, but I wonder if there are families of a 7th or 8th kid out there who just experienced a similar loss. Where are their condelences? He lists some district resources for students who are struggling with despair. One of them is the district's Youth Suicide Prevention Program. This 'program' consists of one man, Richard Lieberman, who works his butt off and is responsible for every student in LAUSD, in a way. That's a lot for one man to do. In conclusion, the superintendent has sent five LGBTQ Resource packets to each secondary school and encourages principals to make sure all staff reviews those materials. Right. I can't even say how inadequate this response is. This school is a terrible place for LGBTQ students, and I would imagine it's not the only one. It's inhospitable, harassment is rampant, and there is zero school support or activism relating to issues of sexual orientation or gender identity. I don't really see how 5 resource packets is going to do a thing. I've only heard one teacher even mention the recent suicides, much less decide to talk to her students about them. Our zero tolerance policy for this sort of harassment is a huge, huge joke. Anyway, enough about that. I'm sure you get my drift.

On a totally different note, suicide has also come up in a new graphic novel from Audrey Niffenegger, the writer of The Time Traveler's Wife. Audrey also wrote a haunting and fascinating book called Her Fearful Symmetry. Suicide happens to take a prominent role in that book as well. As for the graphic novel, The Night Bookmobile, I have a mixed review (that includes spoilers). In the author's note, Audrey says that this is the first part of a larger work. I look forward to the continuation of the work, for reasons I will state in a moment.

The basic concept is that there is a Library out there that houses everything you have ever read. Receipts, bookmarks, fliers, novels, articles, everything. And there is a librarian who manages this collection. Every time you read something, it's added. You may or may not ever encounter this library, but Alexandra, the teller of this tale, comes across hers (housed in an RV) when she's out walking late one night. She soon becomes obsessed with finding it again. She spends the next nine years wandering Chicago looking for it, reading voraciously, and wondering what her personal librarian thinks of her selections. When she encounters the library again, and then one more time 12 years after that, she begs to become a librarian too. She is refused, told she cannot, that the rules won't allow it. Then she goes home and kills herself. She takes some pills and slits her wrists and is immediately welcomed to the afterlife by her librarian who congratulates her and assigns her the library of a young girl who has just read Good Night Moon alone for the first time. He has been reassigned to a non-reader, which he finds disappointing, but still, he's glad to see her. I'm simplifying, of course, but that's the basic story. Did she know that death was the only way into the library business? And if so, why was her life so unsatisfactory that she was unwilling to just wait it out? I suppose that's what obsession is.

So, huh. Audrey's afterword is very interesting, and explains in more detail the concept behind this story. I do love the idea that these personal libraries are kept somewhere and by someone. What has each of us read that we've never discussed with anyone, either because it's a secret or because we've just forgotten? And how many books have I read that have slipped my mind so completely, but that I'd be joyous to find on a shelf somewhere?

But the suicide really gets me. And, as my dad so thoughtfully pointed out, the suicide as entry ticket to immortality or a heaven-like space, well, that really gets me too. Not that I am a religious believer that suicide sends a soul straight to the fiery depths. But here it is almost a necessary right of passage to the next, desired stage of existence. That's DARK man. Very dark. And by the way, what happens to Alexandra's library after she kills herself? Does she no longer get to add to it? In the earlier frames of the book, when she first finds her library and personal librarian, he is reading while sitting at the wheel of the RV. Does his reading material get stored somewhere? OR does he only get to read material from Alexandra's library, in which case, couldn't that just be torture? If part of the delight is to peruse the shelves filled with all you have read, then it would be a great loss to die and begin to manage someone else's collection. I would think Alexandra would rather stay alive, contribute to her own library, and look forward to a once-a-decade encounter with it. Now, as cool as it sounds, she is just going to sit around the afterlibrary and watch little Sarah Rebecca learn to read. It'll be years of Clifford the Big Red Dog! Awful. I think maybe she didn't know what she was getting herself into.

This sounds like criticism, and in a way it is. I hate to say anything negative about the work of Audrey Niffenegger, because I think The Time Traveler's Wife is one of the most perfect books I have ever read (and re-read about 4 times). As much as I may question this new book, CLEARLY it's an interesting concept. Otherwise, I wouldn't have so much to say about it. This is what I meant when I said I'm really into the larger work that she's creating. Where will she go with it? Some of my questions may be answered in the future.

So here I am on a Friday afternoon, pondering the many forms that suicide has taken in library-related discussion this week. Weird. Very.

Like a Broken Record

2010-10-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

I have got to say, it is not easy being me sometimes. When I made the shift from working directly with students only to working with students AND adults equally, I never new what was coming. I did not expect, for example, that adults would be just as reluctant to work hard as the most disagreeable middle school boy. Or that adults would ignore emails and memos, claiming to never have known about this or that policy. Or that adults would pretend to listen during a presentation, but really their eyes were glazed over and their daydreams were interfering with their ability to glean even the most superficial information given.

But it is true. Adults do all of those things and more. Not five minutes ago a teacher asked me how to do something that I taught him how to do in a workshop on Friday. He didn't ask in the "I'm so embarrassed that I can't remember what to do next even though I know you just showed me, so please forgive me" sort of way. He asked in the "Wow! That's totally new information that's blowing my mind because I've never ever heard of such a thing" kind of way.

Another teacher today claimed that the reason she sent her kids to the library with a pass scribbled on a scrap of paper is that she never received the school-wide official hall pass binder that all teachers received the first week, and also she's never even heard of such an official pass. But she does suppose that, yes, if would make sense if she wrote, say, the date or time on the hall pass scrap of paper. Maybe even her name could go on there, so I'd know which teacher sent the kids. And even their names could be added, so that I'd know how many and which kids were meant to be there (we are a haven for ditchers, otherwise). She'll give me that. Seriously, if you are wondering why I would care about the form of a hall pass, it's because kids love to ditch class in the library. It's quiet, it's peaceful, it's easy for them. So I just have to know that everyone here is supposed to be here. Makes sense, yes?

On the other hand, I get to talk more to adults who are doing really interesting things in their classes or with their lives. Like the 6th grade math teacher who works on antique sailboats, or the technology guy who is part of a competitive dragon boat racing team. In one 7th grade class, a teacher is reading articles about bullying and sexual identity in response to the increasing number of suicides among the young gay population. Stuff like that is good.

So it's a trade off. I get a lot of the good stuff, and a lot of the repetitive, predictable behavior that teachers learn to expect from students. One teacher signed up for a whole bunch of library visits to keep from getting scolded for never bringing his class, but then conveniently forgot each time, so the kids never got to come, be he's covered just by signing up. Come to think of it, the adults' bad behavior is just like the kids'.

Some things that SOME teachers do that is a lot like some things that SOME students do:

Come to school tardy with lots of excuses (for kids: my mom/dad wouldn't leave on time; for teacher: traffic). I've used this one. It's almost never really the traffic.
Come to school dressed inappropriately (for kids: usually not suited for weather; for teachers: really high heals or way too casual/rumpled).
Talk while the teacher is talking (in the teachers' case, this would be while another adult is talking during a meeting)
Sleep while the teacher is talking (same as above)
Fail to listen
fail to follow instructions
fail to try to solve one's own problem before asking for help, even if it's a really simple problem to solve
fail to turn in papers
claim to never have heard of the assignment/memo/announcement/issue
claim to never have received the assignment/memo/announcement
use an absence as an excuse to get out of work/responsibility
claim that "He/She told me...." to shirk responsibility for a mistake or misinformation

I know teachers who do these things. ALL of these things. So if we do these things, especially during meetings, because were are not engaged, and we feel that were are being mistreated or neglected, doesn't that mean that our students do these things in our classes for the same reasons? Or do teachers do these things simply because over time the behavior rubs off on them? And does this happen in other professions? Lawyers behaving like clients, cops like criminals, doctors like patients?

*****Breaking News*******

I paused my writing because of a ruckus in the stairwell. Let me describe to you what happened in the last 20 minutes of my life.

A class came in. 8th graders who have been in school since July 6th but have not yet been to the library. Not a single time. You can assume that this means they are not reading. Nor do they remember how to behave in a library. They stomp in, followed by a substitute teacher wearing sunglasses. She does not remove the sunglasses the entire 20 minutes. I had an inkling this class would show up, but since the same teacher's morning group didn't come, I sort of assumed he was blowing it off. Especially since when I asked him what lesson he was preparing, he shrugged and said, "You know. Research."

I stopped the kids at the door, reminded them where they were, and invited them in. After assessing the situation, I determined the following: the kids didn't know why they were there, the sub didn't know why they were there, since they were 20 minutes late we only had 10 minutes to go, the teacher had PLANNED this absence and knew he wouldn't be here, and finally (last but SO not least) some of the kids thought they maybe were supposed to be working on a paper called "Does technology help us or hurt us?"

But some of the kids thought that, no, they had already finished that paper. No one was quite sure. I really just don't know what to say. This is so much worse than my usual crappy teacher experience. I could write pages about the problems just in that paper title!

It's funny how well this ties in with what I was writing before. It's classic teacher acting like student behavior. The teacher in question is most assuredly one that comes to mind when reading the list of behaviors above. What is going on in that classroom on a daily basis? It's a chilling thought.

To end on a slightly funny but slightly depressing note, I just had this conversation with a 7th grader:

Me: "So, your name is Justin?"
Boy: "Yes."
Me: "But it's spelled J-A-S-T-E-N?"
Boy: "Yes. The nurse messed it up when I was born."
Me: "Huh. Well. You should write her a letter and let her know."
Buy: "She's dead."
Me: "Oh."

Aliens are SO last year

2010-10-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

Last night I was thinking about the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I never read it as a child, but I did pick it up in my early years of teaching, and I loved it. It's exciting, action-packed, suspenseful, with an admirable main character and a crazy twist ending. I recommend this book at my school countless times each year, every time thinking that I'll get a bunch of boys hooked on this intergalactic story of military training and combat. I stand at the front of the classes, gesticulating wildly, jumping around to illustrate the excitement of each moment of Ender's ruthless training for battle with the aliens. My eyes widen when I describe how completely mind-blowing the ending is, that even I, Ms. Murphy, veteran reader, did not fully see it coming.

There have been, like, 2 kids who have read this book in the last five years.

Aliens are just out. I have to face facts. No one cares. No one cares about robots, rocket ships, spaceships (although they like NONfiction about UFOs), intergalactic voyages. Even time travel is a hard sell. These have been replaced by the supernatural or paranormal stories that pervade popular TV and film culture as well. Vampires, werewolves, faeries, ghosts, hauntings, psychics, even long dormant mythological beasts - these are the characters that populate kids' fantasies today.

So, why?

The obvious explanation is just that tastes change. A fad is a fad is a fad. This too shall pass. But here's the thing about that. Vampires were in when I was in middle school too, more than 20 years ago. They weren't just in; they were HOT! Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys! He was scary AND sexy (a combo that these modern-day "nice" vampires don't pull off, I might add). That movie was huge. Along with Once Bitten (comedy), Vampire's Kiss (Nicholas Cage's finest film), My Best Friend is a Vampire, and Salem's Lot (SO scary). These were not all books first, so I digress. It's interesting though that what they WERE was either funny or scary. They weren't, for the most part, about romance at all.

Ok, so now I want to know both why kids don't like sci fi AND why the new vampire oeuvre is all about love. But back to the sci fi for now....

Is Sci Fi out among this age group because science itself is out? These kids aren't talking about NASA or Mars or the moon. They don't want to be astronauts, probably because they've never even heard of a single individual contemporary astronaut (and really, have you?). US students rank below about 20 or 30 other countries in terms of their knowledge of science, so it follows that science fiction, which takes real scientific principles and speculates, wouldn't be too engaging. If you don't know the science, why would it be fun to speculate? One exception seems to be end-of-the-world Sci Fi, usually about a drastic global warming scenario, but sometimes about meteors hitting the moon, nuclear catastrophe, or plague. Of course, this is more about doom and apocalypse than real science, which brings me to my next question.

Is this about religion?

Years ago, Harry Potter was demonized by the religious extremists in this country, and kids all around the nation weren't allowed (by their parents, not their librarians!) to read it. Now we have a Mormon writer of a semi-erotic vampire series totally dominating the minds of our teens. I don't want to be anti-religion in saying this, because I AM NOT. I think religion can bring great happiness and purpose to a person's life and that is good. (I myself am not religious, but I know a lot of nice religious people.) However, the question has been begged:

While science fiction is speculation usually based on scientific principle or even fact, and therefore in some sense it can be argued that the things that happen in science fiction COULD actually happen, you know, scientifically....

supernatural fiction is based in the faith that beings outside the normal realm of science and experience, but of this earth in some way (and therefore not an undiscovered alien race) really do exist and can impact our lives in profound ways, including romance/love/marriage....

and doesn't that sound a little religious? Hmmmmm.....

So is the slow, decades-long transformation of American culture from scientific world dominator to religious world dominator evident in this trend in books for young people? And if the answer is yes then, again...why? For what reason do we look for (and find) such enthralled satisfaction in stories of completely unlikely creatures meeting and falling in love with us? Or protecting us? Or, in the case of Bella in Twilight, allowing us to transform into that same unreal form (metaphor for religious conversion very evident here)?

(Huh, on a side note, are there many human-alien romance books?)

And why do teens today enjoy that concept so much more than the one in Ender's Game - that humans are strong and capable, that we can and will go out and kick some butt if anyone threatens our humanity, that our intelligence is our most powerful weapon, that being smart is the best thing one can be, that being human is note necessarily a weakness, that we live in a human community that must be united to survive. Those are some really great messages, if you ask me. In the face of global warming, for example. We could use some of that! Of course, Orson Scott Card is known for being a bigot and homophobe, as well as discrediting global warming.....so, well, yeah. I guess we might not want to lean too heavily on his messages either.

Ok then, how about A Wrinkle In Time! That's a goodie. Same messages there, really, without the military annihilation. Intelligence, united humanity, individualism, strong female characters, tight family bonds, loyalty. Lots of good stuff there.

Again, I am getting off point. Although, I think I may have lost my point altogether because I am completely fascinated by everything I am saying!

In sum:

Has SciFi been replaced by the paranormal/supernatural because of:

a passing trend?
a lack of interest in science?
a growing semi-religious faith in that which cannot be seen?

And from those questions arise these:

Why does the paranormal/supernatural fiction now focus on human love for that supernatural being, compared to twenty years ago when the focus was fear of the being or humor at the expense of the being? Is this social commentary on the mainstream feelings toward certain religious faith in this country?
Are there human-alien love stories for young people, and if so, what are they?
Why is Orson Scott Card able to write such great books when he is actually not that great?
What does this all mean? and/or Am I just blowing a lot of smoke?

That last one is a doozie. I'll have to think on that some more....

A Great Success!

2010-09-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report that 182 people visited the library last night.
What a relief!!!!

Notes On Various

2010-09-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

It happened again. Right in the middle of a promising YA book, the girl became a dufus. Maybe that's not fair, since I was really enjoying the book, and will probably enjoy it well enough to the end. But come on now, it was exactly what I was talking about in my previous posts.

Girl, unsure of herself, works at fast food restaurant with two boys from her school. Boy #1 is a supposed political activist who drinks mocha lattes, reads Russian literature, and badmouths big corporations. Girls loves Boy #1 and feels that he is way out of her league.
Boy #2 is a goofier, more "normal" boy, burps, looks at girls' chests, but also waits every night to see that Girl's old car starts, passes Girl notes in class all the time, and reveals (without really meaning to) that he also has read some Russian literature. So, he's smart, and he CLEARLY likes Girl. But Girl just thinks he's annoying and focuses her sights on Boy #1, who HAS a girlfriend, but still makes mix CDs for Girl and caresses her cheek in the parking lot. Jerk.

At one point, after Boy #2 shoves a bully into some lockers in defense of Girl, and Girl's best friend points out that this means Boy #2 likes Girl, Girl actually says something like, "No, he doesn't like me, he just can't walk straight." And she believes herself, at least mostly.

I know I wrote my YA character Louisa the same way, and I understand about glass houses, so this is not an indictment of the writers. It's just such a powerful coincidence that so many people would portray teenage girls this way. It must mean something, yes?

On a completely different note, it is Back-To-School night once again. The last time I wrote about this, it was comically sad. No one came to the library. I believe this was because a) I did not aggressively encourage anyone to come to the library because, b) it was the end of the school year and we were all burnt out, especially since c) everyone knows parents don't come to conferences just a few weeks from the end of school.

At the very beginning of this school year, we had another Back-to-School night. I was ordered to close the library and stand in the quad to direct parents to the proper classrooms. I spoke to 3 parents in 2 hours. I was furious. I was humiliated. I protested.

Tonight, which is a combo Back-to-school for A-track students and parent conferences for C-track students, I convinced the administration to let me keep the library open. I insisted it was a critical part of our school that the parents need to see. I stomped my feet about the fact that I actually HAVE students whose parents I'd like to meet (both the Yearbook class and my Student Librarians).

Now I am paralyzed that no one will come. What if the library doesn't need to be open on these nights? My promotion of the evening was severely limited by the 4 furlough days I had last week and this week. I've really only promoted this with a few fliers and announcements to every kid that's come through the door for the past three days (that's hundreds of kids). I've prepared several hundred giveaway books (things we can't use anymore) and that's usually a big draw. Anyone who is into Star Trek, Encyclopedia Brown, or the Hardy Boys is really going to hit the jackpot tonight, boy!

But the question remains. If the library is open, will they come? Cross your fingers!

Wah!

2010-09-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

Our school's test results from the 2009-2010 school year.
58% on English and Math is considered proficient.

Further thoughts on the "Bella Problem"

2010-09-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about this idea that girl protagonists in YA fiction can be, well, let's just say less-than-100%-awesome. It didn't start with Bella in the Twilight books, but it is most noticeable there, in terms of recent publications. Plus, since the Twilight books are so well-read by pre-teen girls, the ways in which Bella is a wuss may be more influential than one would like.

First, some titles to add to the butt-kicking girl characters list (thanks to reader comments and further reflection):

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli (Stargirl is not the narrator, but is pretty butt-kicking and totally central to the story)

Lyra in The Golden Compass (and the rest of the series) by Philip Pullman

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr (there is a love triangle here, sort of, but the girl solves her own problems in a big, strong way)

Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer

ooh, and the girl character in Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix (although not the narrator, again)

I wonder how one avoids the pitfalls of writing girl characters who are unsure of themselves, timid, malleable, or generally vapid. I've been trying to write a YA book for over a year, and my main character is a complete moron when I think about it in these terms. She makes all the wrong decisions, completely ignores the obvious, constantly accepts sub par treatment from boys, and cannot see what's good for her to save her life. Now, I must say that I intended for her to be that way. It's sort of the whole point of the book. But when I think about it carefully, I have to wonder why I made that choice, and why it seems like a great idea to put her out there for the pre-teen girls of the world to read. She's an anti-example, maybe. I gave the book to an 8th grader at my school last year, just to see if I was headed anywhere good. She read it in about 3 days and came back to say that she loved the book but hated the main character. So, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I hated Bella but loved reading the Twilight books. Part of the fun of watching a horror movie is the idea that we can yell at the screen, "No! Don't open that door, you fool!" Maybe there is a part of us that really likes to do the same thing when we're reading. When Bella prolongs Jacob's agony over her by kissing him as Edward stands and watches, don't we want to yell at the screen, "You idiot! Why are you doing that?" That tension is exciting and fun, and I think that in writing my book, part of the pleasure is actually to make the reader squirm at how agonizingly stupid the main character really is. And it's not hard to do that, since when I think back to what I was like as a teenager, I want to scream at myself, to warn myself, "What are you thinking? He's a total Neanderthal!" or "Have you lost your mind? That's the last thing you should do/say/think/believe/try!"

So what's the difference between an adult's reading of these stories and a pre-teen girl's reading of the same material? Where we can appreciate or even enjoy the discomfort of the angsty situations, since in most of our cases we've experienced some level of those feelings ourselves, the kids who are reading these same books are just at the beginning of their own years of misery. So does this act as a warning for them? Or a road map, an example, a set of instructions, a preview? Does a pre-teen girl take important lessons away from reading about the behavior of these girls, or does she just enjoy the story and leave it at that? And how do those writers who are able to create un-afflicted girls do it? Were they that well-adjusted as kids? Maybe their imaginations are far superior and they can just pretend that they know what it was like to be a strong, confident, unwavering teenage girl.

It makes me wonder if I could write something different, something that is not a reflection of my own experience or memory of high school. To write something that is instead a picture of what I would have liked to be, even then, even as I went through each day knowing that I wasn't.

And what about the boys? We can't forget about the boys.....

You Can't Do It All...

2010-09-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

When did you learn to tell time? Or the order of the months in the year? How about your own birthday? Was it before the 6th grade?

I thought so.

Each year, I teach our new 6th grade students to use a computerized reading program called Accelerated Reader. This program requires the kids to log into an account after reading a book in order to take a short comprehension quiz. To log in, they need to know how to write their birthdays numerically. 6 numbers. 2 for the month, 2 for the day, 2 for the year. No slashes, no dashes.

This ends up being REALLY hard for about half of the 6th graders each and every year. One big issue is that they don't all know how to assign a number to the months. In this case, I'll say something like, "Let's start counting then, January being #1. So, what comes after January?" Often the kid will catch on right away, but now and again I will get a blank stare. There I am, holding up two fingers, my lips poised in an almost-F, front teeth sticking out on top of my lower lip, ffff-ing a little to help them along. But the blank stare continues until I hear a meak, nearly whispered, "March?" or "April?"

No. It's February, kids. February comes next.

Another obstacle is this:
I ask, "So, what's your birthday?"
They say, "1998."
"Well, ok, that's the year, but what about the month and the day?"
Sometimes, I do not kid, they do not know. Other times they know the month and day, but not the year. This I can sort of understand. The former sort of implies they may never have celebrated a birthday, which is really too bad.

In any classroom, there is always (ALWAYS!) material that slips through the cracks for one reason or another. A fire drill, state testing, prolonged illness, unexpected anything. Yet some things are repeated, year after year, especially in elementary school, so that the students are given every opportunity to figure them out. Nevertheless, each year there are plenty of 6th graders who do not seem to be able to:

tell time
capitalize the beginning of a sentence, or a proper noun
use end punctuation
name the months of the year
spell the word library (libery is not a fruit!)
spell their last names (yikes!)
tell me their birthdays
tell me their phone numbers (safety be damned)

Of course, I am sure the 9th grade teachers who get the kids from my school would be happy to provide a list of all the things our graduates cannot do. And that's my point. What the heck ARE we doing then, if not helping kids learn the tell freaking time????

In order to understand this, I took a look at the content standards for elementary school. These are the guidelines the state sets for what each grade level should be learning. I have to say, I think these standards are much more accelerated than when I was a pup.

Kindergarten students are expected to locate the title, table of contents, name of author, and name of illustrator. Huh. I wonder why? But, ok.
Oh, yes. Here it is. Kindergarten students will "Name the days of the week." and "Identify the time (to the nearest hour) of everyday events (e.g., lunch time is 12 o’clock; bedtime is 8 o’clock at night)." Hallelujah!

In 1st grade, we strike gold again, for they must: "Use a period, exclamation point, or question mark at the end of sentences; Use knowledge of the basic rules of punctuation and capitalization when writing; Capitalize the first word of a sentence, names of people, and the pronoun I". Ha! So they learn these things in KINDERGARTEN and the FIRST grade. Five- six years of practice seems like a lot, but perhaps the rocket science of proper nouns and periods takes longer to brew in the average child brain?

In second grade, things get really serious. Maybe there's just no time to reinforce the basics anymore, because it's on to the kind of academic rigor that will prepare them for whatever lies ahead. These little 7-year old darlings should "use knowledge of the author’s purpose(s) to comprehend informational text", "Determine the purpose or purposes of listening (e.g., to obtain information, to solve problems, for enjoyment)", and.....ok, enough.

But wait, a 2nd grade student should also:

"Explain how the United States and other countries make laws, carry out laws, determine whether laws have been violated, and punish wrongdoers";
"Describe the ways in which groups and nations interact with one another to try to resolve problems in such areas as trade, cultural contacts, treaties, diplomacy, and military force";
"understand basic economic concepts and their individual roles in the economy and demonstrate basic economic reasoning skills";
"Describe food production and consumption long ago and today, including the roles of farmers, processors, distributors, weather, and land and water resources"

....no really. ENOUGH! I CAN"T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

Why are we doing this to our little sweeties? And WHY are we doing this to ourselves?
Does a 7-year old child need to know the ways groups and nations interact with one another to try to resolve problems MORE than s/he needs to know that May comes before October? I think the LA Times has missed its mark with all of these articles about how much we teachers suck. And these parents who feel their children need to wait until age 6 for kindergarten, well No Wonder! This stuff is brutal.

My schooling went like this:

In Mrs. Bean's class I made a drawing of an ear of corn using the letter 'C' as the kernels in order to learn to write my letters. (I also made artwork using Q-tips dipped in bleach, but no teacher is perfect.)

In first grade I learned to write my letters, ate my first pomegranate, played with snake skins, and got my first F.

In second grade I made a gen-u-wine Indian village out of clay, listened to Mrs. Williams read Charlotte's Web and Where the Red Fern Grows out loud after lunch, and wrote a story called "Bats, Bats, Spooky Bats".

In third grade I was in charge of passing out milk tickets before lunch.

In fourth grade I read Judy Blume's Are You There God It's Me Margaret? four times.

In fifth grade I made the aforementioned model of Nicaragua.

In sixth grade, months and time-telling would have been a laughable problem should any of my classmates have admitted ignorance on these subjects. Probably I learned those things in 1st or 2nd grade, like the California kids now are supposed to do. When I think about my niece (who is four), I am convinced that she could learn anything thrown at her. The real question is, what would I LIKE her to learn in the next few years? To tell time, certainly. The months of the year, absolutely. As for the rest? I think I'd go for things like: working in groups, planning ahead, using a library, staying organized, asking clarifying questions, etiquette, loving to read, creative writing, and other strategy and process-based things, rather than content that will inevitably be repeated at every level throughout her education. Of course, processes cannot be taught in a vacuum; some content must be added in order to make it work. ARG! This is HARD!

In the end, I have no idea why these kids can't tell time or name the months of the year. Or why they haven't yet mastered concepts that were first introduced to them in kindergarten. Or why they've had five teachers since then who have either tried and failed or not tried at all to teach them these things. I also have no idea why the state of California thinks it's a super great idea to pack all this crazy content into the 2nd and 3rd grades. Somehow, these things seem to be at odds, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make sense of it. Where is the problem? What is the solution? I just don't think anyone knows, nor do I think anyone has ever known. Maybe that's why education is such a tricky business. And maybe it's also why I love it.

Are we all this dense at age fifteen?

2010-09-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

As I read more and more YA fiction, something has begun to bother me. It's about the girls in so many of the stories. What is wrong with them? I mean, why in the world are they so clueless?

Here's what I mean. Most people would agree at this point that Bella from Twilight is a total ninny. She's klutzy and weak, always in need of a hero, willing to let herself be destroyed to keep her man around, etc. I've been poo-pooing Bella for a long time, recommending other titles to my female students in order to give them a chance to read about some butt-kicking, no-fear chicks. Problem is, even the girls who appear to be awesome at first often end up as mind-numbingly dense when it comes to boys. So frustrating.

Example: The totally fun books in the Mortal Instruments, and now Infernal Devices, trilogies by Cassandra Clare. I talk these up all the time. They are supernatural books, so they appeal to the Twilight drones. They have romance. They have danger. They have adventure. They are better than Twilight all around. However, in this new installment (a prequel to the first series) called Clockwork Angel, the main character Tessa is infuriatingly stupid about whether or not Will (sexy demon-killer) really likes her. This is in spite of the fact that he planted a seriously smoldering kiss on her while they were sprawled on the attic floor, he recovering from ingesting vampire blood, she delivering the holy water that would be his cure. He risks his life numerous times to save her, blushes furiosly every time their eyes meet, and every other character in the story has made some comment to Tessa about Will's interest in her. Yet she still doesn't believe it. She constantly wonders to herself why he is so rude/cold/distant/confusing/aloof. For god's sake woman!

Another example: Pretty much every book by Meg Cabot. I like these books. They are light and funny. They usually present some real confict about friendship to which my students can relate. But in practically every dang book the girls spend the entire time misreading very clear signals from boys about how they feel. Signals like: being asked out on a date, holding hands, audibly beating hearts, defending against bullies, phone calls at night, embarrassment at being called about having this crush, etc. The girls don't see it until the very, very end of the story, at which point I am literally yelling at the page every few paragraphs, "What is WRONG with you? Just freaking kiss him already!"

My question is this: Was that what it was really like? Are these realistic portrayals of teenage girls? I cannot remember. What I do remember was never thinking a single boy liked me all through high school. Could that have been true, or was I just like these girls, blind to the reality all around me?

When and how do we begin to learn to read the signals? In middle school, we send ambassadors to one another's lunch tables to explain this or that other feeling and ask for a response. In high school, what did we do? Have our friends call the other person and ask? I don't think so. That would have seemed juvenile. According to these books, we did nothing. We remained totally confused and frustrated, one moment believing our dreams were about to come true, the next feeling utterly rejected and hopeless.

When I was in fifth grade, every student in the class was paired with another to do a project about a Central American country. To choose partners, we drew names of countries from a hat. Then the teacher would call out the country and the two people would stand up to see who their partners were. When Nicaragua was called, I stood up. So did Ben Lee. The entire class went, "Oooooooooooh", in a very embarrassing way. And then? Nothing. Did Ben Lee become my boyfriend? No. Perhaps while building our cornstarch-and-saltwater model of Nicaragua (volcano included I believe) we exchanged desperately confusing signals that caused us to have rollercoaster like emotional reactions. I don't remember.

I would like to read a YA book in which the female protagonist is direct and unobstructed by her low self-confidence. Does that book exist? Maybe not, because that girl may not exist. Except that I really, really hope she does. Maybe a YA book with a girl character like that would inspire some real YAs to get it together.

Some thoughts about contemporary YA fiction:

It's harder to think of a boy protagonist who feels quite this way.
Many authors introduce a love triangle. Why? Are they really that common? They seem to incerease the confusion and frustration. Even Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, a book with a seriously butt-kicking girl main character, has a prolonged love triangle that tears her apart.
When there is no love triangle, the girls tend to be stronger emotionally.
Boy characters with low self-confidence are often funny in YA lit. Humor supersedes awkwardness. Girls with low self-confidence are often clumsy, misunderstood, or introverted.
Girl characters are often wondering "Does he like me?" rather than "Do I like him?". I think this is highly realistic, but I wish it were reversed. I spent a lot of years worrying more about whether I was liked than if I even liked the person in the first place. This is bad.

So, I am in search of really kick-butt girl characters so that I can spread the word. I am also curious about what anyone else things about this topic. How far off the mark am I, for example?

Finally, some books with girl protagonists who are very, very cool and are not involved in love triangles and do not, if memory serves, completely fall apart because a boy does or does not glance their way:
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn
A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Razzle by Ellen Wittlinger
Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
The Earth, my butt, and other big round things by Carolyn Macler
Bloody Jack by LA Meyer (she is SO awesome, I can hardly stand it!)
Undone by Brook Taylor (my memory is a little fuzzy on this one, but I know I loved it)

Was this really current once?

2010-02-02T13:17:00.001-08:00

Poor kid. Is he speed walking?

complete title: Vinegar Pancakes and Vanishing Cream

Love it. Is there a movie?

Um, those jeans are HOT!

Hilariously dated YA book covers

2010-01-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

Leave the seat up. I BEG you!

2009-11-06T12:39:00.000-08:00

Why is it that about 50% of all middle school boys do not know how to properly use a bathroom? Don't they learn this when they are, oh, I don't know.....three?!?!?!?
I have a bathroom in the library. I allow students who work for me as Student Librarians to use it. Sometimes I let a kid with an emergency use it, or a kid who used to work for me, or a kid who just hangs out in the library a lot. This is something I should not do for two reasons.

Boys often do not life the lid! Ew! I really could not care less if they put the lid DOWN at this point. I would just like them to lift it in the first place so that they do not coat the seat with, well, you know. Gag.
Boys do not flush. What? How do you forget to flush? So, entering the bathroom often results in a surprise, and it's not a good one.
Boys cannot aim. Why is this? They've had a decade of practice, yet the floor (yes, the FLOOR) is often slippery with their......blech, I want to barf just thinking about it.

I don't understand this. I have NO idea how to address it ("Um, guys, could you please flush the toilet and try not to piss all over the place from now on?"). I can't stand the potential humiliation of that conversation.

At this point, it's a real gamble any time I walk in there. SO. GROSS.

Experimenting on Angsty Children

2009-10-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

I've become increasingly interested in my students' music lives, particularly their knowledge (or lack of it) about bands that I consider classics of teen angst, like The Smiths, The Cure, and lots of others that kids have been wallowing to for a few decades. Over the years I've found a certain subset of students who are aware of these bands, usually through an older sibling or an aunt/uncle. Those kids tend to be the ones I would have considered the cool kids if I were in middle school with them now. Their bangs cover their eyes. They wear black. They smirk.

A few days ago I was teaching a class and I happened to mention Madonna (who knows why?) and a girl said, "Who's Madonna?" My jaw dropped for a moment and I was about to admonish her for her negligence when it hit me. Madonna doesn't translate. She's not actually timeless. Her songs from the 80s and early 90s sound dated now. I mean, who among us regularly pops in La Isla Bonita or True Blue and really rocks out? Once a year maybe, but there are other bands that we do still listen to with regularity, bands that still sound fresh, like the Pixies or Depeche Mode. It's no wonder she hasn't heard of Madonna. Madonna appeals to old people now, people who liked her when they were young. Young people don't care.

This realization made me think about which bands from my youth still sounded fresh, which ones would teenagers today latch on to and make their own the way I did with bands from before my time. Along with all the contemporary music I listened to back then, I also played my parents' Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin albums. I discovered Bob Marley as if he hadn't died with I was in kindergarten. Even a lot of the music I listened to as a surly teen was technically before my time. New Order's first album came out in '81, the Violent Femmes' in '83, and The Smiths' in '84. I was in grade school then and wouldn't discover these bands until junior high when my sister and my friends' siblings showed us what we needed to know to be cool.

So I am going to conduct a little experiment. I've created a playlist of 20 songs that I liked when I was 13. Songs that were cool. I'm going to burn a few CDs and give them to a few students who have already expressed some interest in one or more of the bands. I will ask them to listen to the CDs over the weekend and answer a few questions about them. The questions are:

Have you ever heard this song before?
Do you recognize the band/singer?
Can you name the band/singer?
Can you name the song?
Do you already listen to this band/singer?
Do you want to hear more like this?
Rate this song an a scale from 1-5, 1 meaning you hate its guts, 5 meaning it's freakin' great.

On Monday, we'll chat about what they thought. I want to know how deep their exposure has been, and I guess I also want to get a chance to be a part of exposing them further if they so choose. I am grateful to so many people who turned me on to cool music, and I think it'd be rewarding to hear what these kids like to listen to when they are staring at their ceilings, hating school, hating life, wishing for adulthood and freedom. Isn't that what we were thinking about then? It's the memory I have when I listen to so many of these songs. I'd also like to know how they know what they already know. Who's their source?

Wish me luck, and here's the playlist:
The Smiths - Girlfriend in a Coma
The Pixies - Wave of Mutilation
Violent Femmes - Blister in the Sun
Fugazi - Waiting Room
Pixies - Monkey Gone to Heaven
Nirvana - Breed
Violent Femmes - Gone Daddy Gone
The Cure - Why Can't I Be You?
Morrissey - Every Day is like Sunday
Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus
Morrissey - Suedehead
Depeche Mode - Never let me down again
U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday
Nirvana - Heart Shaped Box
Echo & the Bunnymen - Lips Like Sugar
The Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored
Jane's Additcion - Jane Says
Dinosaur Jr. - The Wagon
The Church - Under the Milky Way
U2 - New Years Day

Perhaps I Need a Spa Day

2009-09-04T14:14:00.001-07:00

Today one of my students told me that I look like I am sick. I'm not sick. Ah, well.

Is that Manure?

2009-08-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

Today fires in the San Gabriel mountains (I think) have caused Los Angeles to be covered in a cloud of pungent, hot smoke. The temperature is high, and even walking from the library to the classroom building is extremely uncomfortable. Now add in manure.
For some reason, the school district has chosen this last week of August, one of the hottest of the year, to spread truckloads of manure over our school's PE fields. Particulates are flying through the air, mixing with the smoke and the heat to create a wall of hot stink. A few minutes ago the bell rang for lunch. More than a thousand children poured out of their (mostly) air conditioned classes to eat the fried, greasy, school-issued lunch in the heat and manure. They are almost all wearing heavy, black hooded sweatshirts which they refuse to take off. This is the only personalized clothing item they can get away with and still be in uniform, so they insist on wearing them no matter the conditions.
After they get properly sweaty and steamed up, the bell will ring again and they will march back into windowless classes (or the library) to sit and cook for the next three hours. They will smell and the rooms will heat up to the point that there might as well not be AC at all.
Sometimes this job is disgusting.

The Pesky Little Bloggers

2009-08-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

This year, my friend Jimmy and I took over the school's Yearbook class. Hm. We aren't sure that was a great idea. Neither of us really cares all that much about yearbooks, so we decided to make a little more out of it. We now call it Yearbook/Media, and we've created a student news blog. Our kids are writing editorials, conducting interviews, writing reviews, composing polling questions, acting as photographers. It's pretty great.

We set up a system of Elders, four 8th grade students each assigned a caseload of reporters. They check in on the stories, edit, and finally publish. This is all happening using Google Docs and Blogger. There is no paper in sight. We are happy.

So check out the Laams School News blog in its fledgling youth (only two days old!). My favorite article so far is called "Educational Institution...or Juvenile Detention?" It's a bit of a spoof, and the photography is fantastic.

Saved to a Library Computer

2009-06-30T11:09:00.001-07:00

I Am a Nerd Magnet

2009-06-18T11:54:00.001-07:00

Two boys (6th grade) were caught hanging out in the library stairwell and the end of 1st period today. One of these boys is one of my student librarians. The other is here two or three times a day. They were ditching PE. Well, sort of. They had gone to PE and then sneaked out at the very end, after everyone had changed back into their normal clothes and was waiting to be dismissed. That meant that they were probably only in the stairwell for 10 minutes or so....but still.

So, I interrogated them. First C arrived (having been sent by his science teacher - you see, I only found out about this after the fact; I didn't actually catch them). He explained to me the details of the situation and then said that he hated PE at the end of the period because the teachers were still supervising the locker rooms (so nothing bad can happen) and the students are left to their own devices out on the field (good plan). C says that he gets pushed, hit, and called names by the other kids. I believe it. He is not your average boy. C shed a few tears and I told him that I didn't want anyone to be mean to him, but that he couldn't just sneak out of class when he felt like it. I explained all the reasons about safety that I thought were so bogus when I was a kid, but now I totally understand.

Then D arrived. I assumed that his reasons for sneaking away would be the same as C's. D is a sleepy-eyed kid who dances to the beat of his own drum. When I asked why he had done it, he told me it was because he wanted to be the first in the library at Nutrition. He wanted as much time here as possible to read and look at Where's Waldo and Ripley's Believe It Or Not books. I was flattered....but still.

So I took the poor boys (one sniffly, one unphased) to the deans' office. I asked them to sit and wait while I explained the situation. When I told the dean that D just wanted to get to the library as fast as he could, she said, "Wow, you really get the big nerds up there, don't you?" I laughed, because it was funny, but I was a little ruffled by it too. Yes, I get the big nerds. The huge nerds, the total nerds, the major geeks, the complete losers. It's true. It's safe here, and it's also awesome. What most people don't know is that I also get the drama kids, the soccer players, the rockers, the Emo's, the giggly girls, the mean kids, the skaters, the gamers, the golden girls and boys, the misfits, the outcasts, the teachers' pets, the teachers' worst nightmares, the braniacs, the freaks, the jocks, the rebels, and the princesses.

The point is, I get it all. The library is an equal opportunity space. I will admit that a certain population dominates up here, but I think that's cool. A nerd-dominated space is somewhere that I, personally, don't mind spending time. Especially since these nerds like to READ.

I am sorry that C is having a hard time. I like him a lot and I wish kids would just leave him alone. D, though, really made my day. To ditch a class to come to the library, well, that makes me feel good. Kids do it all the time, but they are really just trying not to be in class by faking passes to the library. It's not that they want to be in the library, but that they don't want to be somewhere else. D's intentions were truer. It was here that he wanted to be over any other place in school, so much so that he broke a rule and got sent to the dean.
Talk about a warm fuzzy.

Hiring New Blood

2009-06-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again, and I've begun to accept applications from students who would like to work in the library next year (as an elective class). On the application, my two favorite questions ask the students their reasons for wanting to work in the library and any special skills/talents I should know about. Here are some great responses from today's batch.

When asked to describe the reasons for wanting to work in the library"

"I always wanted a job when I get in my teen years."

"The library is the best place to be because of two reasons: first you can read and reading helps you learn, and second the library is a nice quiet place to get unstressed."

"I want to work in the library because I am tired of doing nothing about books in the wrong place and out of order." HIRED!

When asked to list special skills/talents"

"I have Day ja vu a lot when I sleep. I can do 2 things at the same time." Are these separate or related skills, I wonder?

"I love to dance and I have great skills. I also have a great talent of finding books."

"Excel, in drama, singing, talking, vampires and monsters."

That's all for today. More to come.

Economic Crisis + School Uniforms = Teen Angst

2009-04-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

Today I had a meeting with the principal about students who want to use the library while they're off track. (For those of you out of the loop, our school is year-round, with three tracks that go four months on and two months off. So, there are always two tracks on, and one off.) In the past, we've allowed off-track kids to wander onto campus and come to the libary as long as they could show their school IDs at the front entrance. Sadly, some young darlings have chosen to abuse this arrangement, bypassing the library entrance completely to visit teachers in their classes, go to the PE field or locker room, or just randomly wander. It makes sense that the principal needs to tighten things up a bit, and we came to a decent enough agreement that kids could visit the library from 8am-11:30am while off track. They still need to sign in at the front entrance, show their IDs, and (this is new) wear their school uniforms.

This is the part that really interests me. They're off track. They are coming from home for maybe as few as 10 minutes to return a book. Why do they need to change clothes? I'll tell you why. According to our assistant principal in charge of security, our uniform policy is going down the tubes fast and we need to save it before there is mass chaos at the school (Oh no! Cute shoes! Funny t-shirts! Personal style! Aaahh!).
More and more kids are showing up every day completely out of uniform. What is the reason for this? Is it defiance, protest, civil disobedience? Nope. It's the economy. I really wouldn't have thought of this, since I just assumed that kids who bought their uniforms at the beginning of the year would still be able to use them. Then I remembered that, of course, kids grow. So some of our families can no longer afford to buy new clothes for their kids. Or at least not two sets, one for school and one for home. But there are other, less obvious reasons for this too. Our kids and their families are moving, and moving quickly, into and out of their homes. We have kids coming back from Riverside and other outlying communities where their families hopefully bought houses and then could not make it work, or had ballooning mortgages, or lost their jobs and came back to live with family. We have kids who are evicted and actually have to leave their homes without being given the time to pack all of their things. Perhaps some of them even come home to a house or apartment where the locks have already been changed and their things have been lost in the shuffle.

So what does the school administration do in this situation? Is there some kind of precedence? They can't very well punish a child in these circumstances, nor can they abolish the uniform system. As of now, I believe they are using a two-step process to fix the situation. Step one has some interesting implications.

Step one: Have the parents sign a uniform waiver so everything is on the up-and-up. You see, the school district has a very secret uniform waiver that parents can request that allows their student to come to school without a uniform. At most schools, the administration will try to talk parents out of this, listing all sorts of scary security reasons that justify uniforms in the first place. Every once in a while though, one meets a cool kid in cool clothes and asks, "Why are you not in uniform?" The cool kid will coolly reply, "I've got a waiver, miss." And then one can share a short moment with the cool kid where the following is communicated telepathically: You have cool parents who thwart the system, therefore you too are probably cool, and you should know that I am cool and thwart the system, only I can't really do so openly because this is a school and I am a teacher, but you should know that I dig it, man.
In terms of this current uniform and economy crisis, however, the waiver serves a different purpose. It's just there to make sure that everyone's i's and t's are properly dotted and crossed, and I'll bet that it is presented to the parents in such a way that they walk away believing it is only available as a temporary measure and not as a permanent choice. The danger for the administration, obviously, is that some of these kids and parents will uncover the truth and decide they want to continue the waiver for good. I'm really hoping that happens, if only to observe the hands-tied reaction of those who will undoubtedly hate it.

Step Two in the process to get these kids dressed is to send a very nice man to the home of the student and (I believe) begin some paperwork to get uniform clothes for the family that are paid for by.....and here I just don't know. The school, the district? It's anyone's guess. What I heard today is that it takes a few weeks to make this happen, so I assume paperwork is involved. And who is this nice man? None other than our Pupil Services and Attendance officer, known to most of us as the Truancy Officer. Usually when you see him coming, it means someone has missed a lot of school and the school demands answers! He's actually very kind and nothing at all like Edward Rooney, but nonetheless, his job can't be easy or uplifting. Going into homes to discover the root of trouble that causes kids to miss school or not have proper clothing must send him home at night with knots in his shoulders and a heavy heart.

So there it is. Direct and visible impact of the GEC (global economic crisis, pronounced geck). It must be manifesting in other, more discreet and sneakish ways. In part I am extremely curious about them, and in part I dread knowing.

Two Good Days

2009-04-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

In spite of all this layoff hooplah (which is not getting any better, btw) I just had two of the most satisfying days of teaching I've had in a long time. Yesterday was better than today, I admit, but I'm counting them both as successes. Here's what I did....

A US History teacher (8th grade) came to me a couple of weeks ago with an assignment he wanted to do with his students. Civil War Biographies. Could I help? Of course. We talked for a while and I admitted to him that I thought the assignment was a bit of a snooze. Really, I liked writing bios in school, but i thought that the kids might respond a little better if we mixed it up. I've been working to make some inroads with the history department for years, so this was my chance to design something cool and incorporate technology.....and basically win them over.

I convinced the teacher to drop the birth, death, family, education, bo-ring angle. Instead we developed three basic questions the students needed to answer. What was the person's role in the Civil War; how did s/he contribute to its outcome? What clues from his/her childhood inform us as to why s/he ended up playing that role? What could s/he have done or decided differently that would have dramatically impacted the outcome of his/her life (or in other words, what were the paths untaken?). Aahhhh...that felt better. The kids would be forced to analyze what they read, rather than just listing loads of 'who cares' information.

I developed an example product. The teacher developed criteria for grading the product. I collected probably a hundred web resources for the kids to use. We were so ready, it's not even funny. And you won't believe it....

It worked. Every kid got it. Every one got INTO it, which is amazing. (Well, not one. One ate cookies, cussed at me, stole another kid's keys, and was picked up by the dean all within the first 10 minutes of class. It was impressive.) The rest of them, though, were amazing. We did everything electronically. They took notes by copying and pasting text and images onto a Word document, keeping track of each web address as they went. No antiquated note-taking practices here! They used multiple sources (in one case nine!) and they saved their work to the school's network so they can access it from any computer on campus next week.

They asked really cool questions, like how did John Wilkes Booth get away from the theater, anyway? They showed me a picture of the chair that Lincoln was sitting in when he was shot. It has a dark stain that was once thought to be blood, but now we know is hair pomade. They liked that. They read speeches make by Frederick Douglass. They read Jefferson Davis's 1861 Inaugural Address. They were intense! I'm not sure I've seen anything like it for a loooong time.

It was a good couple of days, and it reminded me of what it takes to be in the classroom day in and day out with the same kids, plugging along, teaching the same lesson to six groups, teaching it again to students who were absent, grading their work, finding new ways to deliver that dang 'ol instruction. It's hard! I am exhausted. I'm often exhausted by my job, since it's very go, go, go. It's a different kind of tired, though. My days are varied and unexpected. I talk about science and math and books and ancient empires and vampires and earthquakes and video games every single day. The variety keeps it light. These past two days, though, oh man. Six times I said, "In order to save to the network, you'll...". Six times I said, "In order to give credit to your sources, you'll need to copy the URL to your notes....". Six times I said, "In just a few moments, you'll need to do your final save.." And so on, and so on. It's tedious to say the same thing six times, you know?

The teacher was happy, I was happy, and now I am ready to go home and flop. I don't want to talk for the rest of the night. I need to watch a movie and rest my brain for a while.

I hope people know what it means for these teachers who might be losing their jobs. They like to do this, after all. What will they ever find that's as satisfying as this?

Beyond the Bell is Busted!

2009-04-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

LAUSD's Beyond the Bell Branch is not going to be funded next year (or so we've been recently told). This is the branch of the school district that takes care of before/after school programs, Saturday school, summer school (and for year-round schools what they call intercession), honor band, drill team, outdoor education, and Students Run LA (a marathon training program for kids).

At my school, our after school programs offer guitar club, a video game space, soccer, basketball, homework help, and lots of other activities. The kids get snacks, they are supervised, and they often stay at school until 6 or 6:30 in the evening.

Where are these kids going to go now?

The Beyond the Bell Branch website states : LAUSD has made a commitment that all students within our district have access to high quality, safe and supervised educational, enrichment and recreational programs that engage and inspire learning and achievement beyond the regular school day.

I guess they'll have to remove that part. Oh wait, the whole website will probably be taken down. That'll take care of that.

I am willing to talk about a pay cut, furlough days, and lots of other solutions to the financial problems of the school district in order to save Beyond the Bell. Because where will our students go? Maybe they'll go home to an empty house. That'll be great. Or maybe their parents don't want them to be home alone, so their parents will try to rearrange their work schedules and end up getting fired. Also super great for our kids. Maybe they'll go to friends' houses where there are no adults. Or they could hang around at South Park, where there are tons of adult men lingering at all times of day. Perhaps they could just roam around the neighborhood and play with some of the many stray dogs I see every day. That would certainly give them some outdoor education. Or maybe they could flood the few overextended community centers in the area that already have trouble making ends meet. I'm sure that would all work out fine.

What is wrong with the people making these decisions? Our students need these programs badly. They need a place to spend time with positive adult role models. They need to be supervised at all times; they're in middle school for goodness sakes! Middle School! They cannot be trusted to make strong, healthy, careful decisions when they are given hours of time home alone. I mean, c'mon. You know it's true. How many of them are going to go home, do their homework, eat a healthy snack, feed the pets, empty the dishwasher, and curl up with a good book? I can think of a couple kids who might, to tell the truth. But there are hundreds, thousands who will not do anything even close to this. This is bad, people. Very, Very bad,

More Super Fun Times at School

2009-03-30T11:56:00.001-07:00

First, some clarification from my last post. I suggested that the district redistribute teachers from areas like the valley where fewer people got RIFfed to make sure that all schools had equitable layoffs and re population by cubicle dwellers. It was a humorous suggestion. Of course that would never work. My point was that it would sure get the attention of those involved, and that attention may help rectify the situation. I meant to point out how unfair it would feel to those teachers and families to have their entire lives and school communities disrupted so thoroughly. I was hoping to illustrate the fact that those "nicer" areas may be more successful in blocking such disruptive action, while our more "disadvantaged" neighborhood simply gets bulldozed for the millionth time. I repeat, I do not actually think teachers should get moved from one school to another on the whim of a principal or district-level employee.

Having said that, I would like to applaud some of the teachers at my school for beginning to take some action. This weekend, they developed this blog, Don't Forget South Central. The letter posted by our teacher Ms. Infante was sent to the superintendent of schools. It was then distributed to all certificated staff within LAUSD. Yay Martha! So that's progress.

I've been attempting to collect numbers from other schools to find out how many teachers got RIFfed. So far, I know very little.

Millikan MS in Sherman Oaks. 18 out of 80 teachers RIFfed. According to LAUSD's website, this school is 48% white, 35% Hispanic, 11% Black, and 6% Asian. 15 of their teachers are first-year teachers.

Gompers MS on 112th Street in Watts. 38 out of 80 teachers RIFfed. The school is 71% Hispanic and 29% Black. They have 19 first year teachers and 25 more with just 2-5 years experience.

Bethune MS on 69th Street in South Central. 35 out of 90 teachers RIFfed. The school is 86% Hispanic and 14% Black. There are 30 first year teachers and 35 with 2-5 years experience.

Cleveland HS in Reseda. 11 out of 180 RIFfed. The school is 15% White, 62% Hispanic, 6% Black, and 16% Asian. They have 16 first-year teachers and 44 with 2-5 years. Um, what? With 60 teachers with less than 5 years experience, why only 11 RIFs? I don't get that.

Fremont HS on 76th and San Pedro in South Central. 40 out of 240 RIFfed. The school is 91% Hispanic and 9% Black. There are 58 first year teachers and 96 with 2-5 years.

Los Angeles Academy MS on 56th and Avalon in South Central. 42 out of ~120 teachers. The school is 93% Hispanic and 7% Black. There are 36 first-year teachers and 48 with 2-5 years.

Mark Twain MS in West LA. 7 out of 52 teachers RIFfed. Here there are 25 teachers with a year or less, and 19 more with 2-5 years. Again, why only 7 teachers RIFfed if that is the case?

Pio Pico EL in what I might call Mid-City or West Adams. 27 out of 95 teachers RIFfed. 23 of the teachers at Pio Pico have about a year of experience.

It occurs to me that some of the district's info on teachers' experience may be bogus. I don't really think we could possibly have 36 first-year teachers at this school. Maybe they mean first year in LAUSD? I know there are a lot, but this seems ridiculous.

Whatever the case may be, a few things are clearer after looking at these numbers. First, high schools may be retaining a larger percentage of their teachers. This is most likely because their credentials are in specialized subject matter, and a chemistry or algebra teacher is harder to replace than a 4th grade teacher (according to the system currently in place). The other thing that is clear is that I don't have enough numbers. I'm trying to collect them, but the going is slow. I will keep you posted.

Some Serious Social Injustice

2009-03-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

35% of the teachers at my school are in danger of losing their jobs. More really. Only teachers with tenure were given the courtesy of receiving RIF notices from the district. Those teachers who are so green they barely have their paperwork stamped will be given only 15 days notice before leaving their jobs.

At neighboring schools, I have seen numbers that show up to 49% of teachers in danger of being let go. These are all schools in South Central LA, Watts, and other socio-economically disadvantaged communities. Rumor has it that some teachers in West LA schools aren't even aware of the layoffs. I heard that in one valley school, only 4 teachers got RIFfed.

A proposal:

Instead of laying of 42-50% of the teachers in disadvantaged areas and replacing them with the before-mentioned cubicle workers, instead we should just redistribute. So, some teachers from the valley and West LA could come to our school, and some of the cubicle workers could go to their schools, so that it all worked out evenly for our students.

I'll bet if our superintendent created a plan along these lines, this matter would get the publicity it deserves. Can you imagine the parental response? It would by mayhem. Now I just need to figure out a way to make it happen....

Who needs good teachers? Not us!

2009-03-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

So, here's what's happening at my school (and across the district in varying degrees):

Over the weekend, 42 teachers got RIF (Reduction in Force) notices that told them that as of June 30, their services are no longer needed. Forty-two! Nearly half of the faculty.
These are not just brand new teachers. Some have been with the district for nearly ten years. Many are our best, most successful, most charismatic educators. A few are stinkers, it's true.
These teachers received RIF notices because LAUSD is $718 million in debt. We don't know if we'll get any money from the state or the federal government, and we won't know until May. So these are "worst-case scenario" notices, and we hope the teachers won't really have to go. The district is offering 2000 people early retirement, and other measures may be able to offset the 8800 RIFfed positions.

Anyhoo, you might be wondering, "But who will teach the children????"
Who, indeed.
The teaching positions are not going to be eliminated. No, no. Class sizes will grow, it is true. But in most cases, the RIFs are to accommodate the downsizing of the administrative offices. You hear me right. The administrative offices are too full of people. Can you believe it? We have more bureaucrats that we need? I wonder if that has anything to do with our budget crisis.....
So, who are these people, working in the dreaded, hated Beaudry building downtown (and several other mini-Beaudrys around LA)? Some of them are clerks, secretaries, etc. Some of them are executives and the like. Many (dare I say most?) of them are former teachers. Teachers who chose to leave the classroom, chose to leave the school site, for various reasons.
What are these reasons, I wonder?
For some, it was a genuine desire to do something bigger, something that could impact more kids, more schools, and more teachers. I can understand this impulse, since I also left the classroom to work in the library. I wanted to impact more kids, more teachers. I think I do.
For others, it was out of fatigue. Get me out of here! They cried.
For still others, it was necessity. They were bad teachers. They moved from school to school, and still they got poor evaluations. Eventually, they were hidden in cubicles, protected by the union, to live out their days.
I am simplifying things, I know. I'm trying to make a point, here.
So, these former teachers have not been in the classroom for years, maybe even decades. But they have seniority over the teachers at my school who got RIFfed (I will get to seniority in a moment), and so they will not be laid off. No! They will be moved back to the schools, back to the classrooms that they clamored to leave. They will become educators again, and our school will change forever.
So many questions arise, don’t they?
How can the union let this happen? And what is the union’s reaction to the RIFs?
How will the children and the school be served if unwilling, outdated teachers are forced to return to the classroom or lose their jobs?
Where is the social justice, when 42 teachers from this school in South Central got RIFfed, and schools in the valley had only two, four, or six teachers receive pink slips?
These and many other questions will be the subject of my enlightened commentary over the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more dish on the state of affairs in LAUSD, please.
Before I go, however, I really need to address the union paradox that is going on right now. First, a disclaimer. I am a member of my teaching union, and I believe in unions in general. Having said that let me now anger many, many people.
In a way, this is our own damn fault. (pause for a lightning bolt to strike me down)
Of course, it’s not our fault that the budget is screwed up, or that the administrative offices waste money like nobody’s business, or that the entire country is in the middle of economic collapse. That is not our fault.
It IS our fault, however, that there are crappy, surly, outmoded educators scattered around the district, still on the payroll because the union makes it impossible to fire them.
I once knew of a teacher who knocked a kid down and kicked him in the ribs…..and just got transferred. I know teachers who read the paper in class, spend all their time online, tell kids that they are stupid, scream at the class to shut up, show R-rated movies on a weekly basis, and owe schools hundreds of dollars in lost and broken materials and equipment. They might get transferred to a new school, they might get transferred to Beaudry, but they probably will get to keep their jobs until they retire. I don’t like it, but it’s they way of unionized labor. We need the union to protect us. We do, I know we do, I pay my dues, I believe in the concept. The union, however, has done too good a job. We, as a union of educators, really need to revise the way we protect our own, because we are now (and by we, I really mean our students) are now going to suffer for it.
You see, the seniority system has been championed by the union. The seniority system is what will now allow the district to lay off motivated, wonderful educators and replace them with people who prefer an office setting to a classroom.
I don’t have a solution to the problem of seniority. I know that there has to be some objective way to evaluate teachers, and there is none, and so we rely on seniority because we don’t know what else to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased that I am protected because of my seniority, but I also believe that the quality of my work would protect me equally if that happened to be the measure used to determine who must stay and who must go. I work hard, I want to be here, I collaborate, I improve myself, I use technology, and I love the kids. I think I could stand on that. I think a lot of the teachers who got RIFfed could stand on their performances too. I know they could, because I watch them perform, and they (many of them) are excellent, natural-born teachers.
Think of your very best teacher, and then imagine you never got to have that teacher because s/he got RIFfed. Urg.
So, the union wants to strike. They want us to start by coming in an hour late every Friday. Huh? The union wants to punish the district, but the union’s policies helped create the district’s solution to this budget crisis. The union wants the district to cut waste in order to spare teachers. Me too! But I haven’t seen any kind of balance sheet that would tell me if that is even possible. Tally it up people! Can we save 8800 teachers by cutting paper waste, external consulting contracts, unnecessary testing materials, multiple academic coaches at each site, and software licenses that nobody uses anyway? Does that equal 8800 teachers’ salaries? And if it does, doesn’t that just mean that 8800 people working at the administrative offices stay in their cubicles and continue pushing carbon paper in triplicate? And is that really ok?

Man oh man, I could go on forever.

If you’ve read this far and you don’t hate me yet, that’s fantastic. If you do, just let me reiterate: I don’t know what the solution is. I think the district and the union need to do more, need to give a little, need to reevaluate their overall philosophies of what is best for our students. I think that bad teachers should find another job. I think that administrative offices should reduce waste by using new technologies. I think that good teachers should get to stay and teach whether they got their contracts last year or twenty years ago, because I think there are people who can teach and people who cannot teach, and I think it is an art, a science, an instinct, and an intense love of children that requires more work that most people ever put into anything. I am so sorry this is happening, and I hope that when we are on the other side of it, our schools are better, not worse.

Like I said, stay tuned.

The Problem with People

2009-02-06T14:25:00.000-08:00

Every week, Ms. G brings her class to the library. Her class consists of three students. I've never quite figured out why she only has three students, but I think it must have something to do with the fact that these kids have been labelled "emotionally disturbed" at some point in their school careers. Along with these three students, there are three adults (besides the teacher) assigned to the class. Each kid has a one-on-one, as they are called. Normally, these one-on-ones are really just under trained, under payed babysitters. Not in all cases, but in most.

Anyway, Ms. G's class usually just spends time looking for books, reading, working on projects, etc. The adults read magazines and books. It's mellow and usually follows the basic school policies for classroom behavior, although there is never any real curriculum or instruction happening. But that's fine, because all kids need some plain old library time, right?

Today did not work out this way, I am sad to report. This is how it went down:
The kids came in. The one boy (who really loves to read) renewed his book and hunkered down at a table, perfectly happy. The two girls went to computers, presumably to use the catalog. One aide went into a conference room, closed the door, and started working on...what? School work (as in undergrad or grad school work)? Aide #2 sat down with a magazine, aide #3 did the same, all the way on the other side of the library. No one was anywhere near the kids.

Then walks in....the sub. Oh, man. He introduces himself as a retired teacher, sits down, and makes a call on his cell phone. This does not bode well.
I let it go, however, choosing to believe that the kids will prevail over their lack of leadership. The boy did; the girls did not.

A few minutes later, I hear the girls giggling and saying things like, "He look nasty!" This is probably not school work, I think. It is not. They are looking at pictures of Chris Brown on Google images. If you do not know who Chris Brown is, I do not blame you. He is a singer, heart throb, and major cause of swooning among 8th grade girls. So I ask,

"Ladies, what are you supposed to be doing for class right now?"

And they answer, "Nothin'! We got a sub! We just s'posed to come to the li-berry."

To which I respond, "Well girls, we don't allow free time on the computers, or during school hours in general. I'm sure there is something that we can find for you to work on that is school related."

During this interaction, the girls get increasingly fussy, grunting things like, "This school is dumb!" and "I hate this school!"

The aides and the sub continue their relaxing reading time.

I go to one aide and say, "Are there no lesson plans for today? They can't just browse Chris Brown pictures. What have they been studying in class?"

She says, "Well, I'm just a sub."

Great. Two subs. So I ask the other aide (the one not closed into a conference room). She says, "So you want us to leave?"

I look at the sub. He says, "I see where you're coming from, but I'm just a sub."

Ok, before I tell you the rest, let me just ask a question here. Since when do subs have ZERO responsibility for delivering instruction? Are they not expected to read and execute the lesson plans left by the teacher? And if there are no plans there, are subs not expected to have a bag of tricks to use to get through the day? Educational videos and games, books and stories to read aloud, etc. A single backpack can easily arm a sub with activities that are worthwhile for the kids.

So, I say, "Well, I suppose if there is no plan, and the girls are not going to use the library's resources, then yes, it would be best if you return to the classroom." I cringe for the poor boy, and I know they will do nothing academic in the classroom, but I cannot allow that to be the case in my classroom.

The girls get up and disappear into the stacks. "Ima getta book! Ima getta book!"
The subs and aides drift listlessly towards the door.
And then everything is just sort of suspended in time. No one coming or going. So I approach the girls one last time.

"I think we've been pretty clear that it's time to go ladies."
"We gonna get a book!"
"I'm sorry, but I think you've lost the chance." See, I don't take kindly to kids being flat-out rude, rude, rude to an adult in a position of authority. I get what defiance, insolence, teen angst, and general grumpiness are all about. What I don't accept is pure, unadulterated rudeness.
"I don't CARE!" This is the more vocal girl. "This a ol' raggedy library anyway!" (We have one of the best library's anywhere around.) "This a ol' ugly library! I don't know why she [me] always got somethin' to say. Fuck! With her fat self, this school's dumb. I hate this school!"

Girl 2 chimes in a bit, but I don't catch it. The subs and aides are already out the door. They're gone. They are so done for the day, and since the teacher is not there, their job has been reduced to waiting for the bell, just like the kids.

As they walk back to their room, I look out the window to watch. Each of them moves in a mosey, adult and child alike. None wants to go into that stuffy, dim classroom and sit there with angry feelings about the library and their wasted, pathetic Friday afternoon. I've ruined their day, with my anti-Chris Brown policy and my raggedy fat-ass library.

This sums up so many of the problems with this school, this system. It's a parable, a story to illustrate the kind of low standards and just-keep-them-busy mentality that pervades too many classrooms. It's a sorry way to end a good week.

On the other hand, my boys are here again. One is wearing a loose tie over his t-shirt. Another sold me a caramel chocolate bar for a fundraising effort, and I promptly gave it back to him to eat. They happily moved boxes of books in the rain for me. They asked me if I was really sure when I told them they had done a good job and could spend the last few minutes pursuing their personal interests, which they are now happily doing.

This begs the question: What's the difference between 'free time' and pursuing one's personal interests? Good question, and to many people it would look like the same thing. Here's why it's not: students who actively pursue their personal interests seek deep understanding and complex information from a variety of sources. For example, a student I am working with wants to write 'a book' about vampires. He asserts that vampires are real. He plans to read fictional accounts of vampires as well as vampire lore in order to write his book. He uses reference books, novels, and web sites. So, pursuing his personal interests often looks like he's just checking out some random vampire website during school hours. Some would assume he's goofing off, but he's not.

That's why I always ask what the student is supposed to be doing, or how that site is somehow relevant to a pursuit of knowledge and understanding. I know immediately when it's goofing off and when it's serious. If those girls had explained to me that they were working on some kind of project to, say, take a book they have read and cast the (imaginary) movie, and they needed to find the perfect photo of Chris Brown to do the trick for the main character, I would have known they were pursuing their personal interests in a thoughtful, purposeful way. I would have encouraged and helped them.

So, why aren't those girls doing a cool project like that? And why do some kids at this school get to, while others are just shuffled into a class with three bored adults who simply want to go home as soon as the bell rings? Can you IMAGINE what a one-on-one adult to student ratio could really do? The power of that is astounding, yet it got Ms. G's class nowhere fast this afternoon.

Now one of my boys is watering our plants. Soon they will be gone, and my fat self will head home in the rain to unwind, read my book, have a beer with my sister, and kiss my niece. I'm ready.

I'm Surrounded!

2009-02-04T14:48:00.001-08:00

There are currently ELEVEN 8th grade boys in the library. They are the smartest, funniest, coolest ones, too. Sic of them are my Student Librarians, four of them are student Tech Operations workers (out of work today because their leader is absent), and one is just visiting. They are hard at work, helping me number, label, sticker, tape, and box a few thousand books. There are constant complaints, jokes, questions, mysterious sounds, laughs, and whatever the modern equivalent of yo-mama slams are. One of them just got his new 8th grade class t-shirt with all the 8th grade students' names on the back. The other boys are pawing him, nearly knocking him over to find their own names and their friends'. Every few minutes they ask me if they can stop working and just hang out. Then they warn me that letting them do so would be a big mistake. Then they look at me expectantly, as if I am just fool enough to give them the go ahead in spite of my own (and their) experience. They keep asking me what to do if. What to do if there are more than 36 books in a box. What to do if some of the books have different covers. What to do if they run out of green stickers. What to do if they run out of blue stickers. What to do if Ms. Murphy runs screaming from the room.

As I said, they are the best, brightest kids. They are applying to $25,000 dollar a year private schools on the west side. They know exactly what to do, could do it better then I could, and will most certainly snigger about my silly little procedures later when I am out of ear shot.

But they are in 8th grade, and they cannot be contained. I will so, so miss them next year.

Robert and Javier - Bloggers!

2009-02-03T13:20:00.001-08:00

Finally, I've convinced a young person (two, actually) that writing and publishing online is cool. I can't tell you how many deaf ears this message has fallen upon. For a while now, I've been trying to show kids the way that people are using online communities to, well, do just about everything. The thing is, the only thing they seem to understand is myspace. Forget about the fact the myspace is just one of thousands of online communities. They don't see it that way. For most of my students, there are no other websites where people can talk, laugh, joke, publish, and admire each other to a dangerously compulsive degree. Well there are!

So, how did this miraculous blog creation happen? It was a total fluke. Because an English teacher happened to be encouraging her students to enter a variety of writing contests online, I decided to show them a few of the many teen-authored sites where they can regularly publish their fiction, poetry, artwork, and music/game/book/tv reviews. I also (on a whim) showed them a few teen-authored blogs about fashion and music. I wasn't trying to convince them that blogging was for them. I have tried and failed at that, and have curled into a little fetal ball to ride out this wave and wait until a new idea hit me.

I left the students to their book-choosing, assignment-avoiding, friend-teasing, end-of-day activities and went about mine. Then Robert, dear, sweet, smart Robert asked, "Ms. Murphy, so, how can I make a blog?"

Hip, hip hooray! Javier joined in and they are, right now as I write this, customizing their new blogs, adding content, and transforming into the little digital natives that I knew they could be.

It's always seemed funny to me that we older, less intuitively tech-savvy adults assume that all teens and pre-teens are born with wires growing out of their ears and antennae embedded in their skin (oh, wait! we don't need antennae anymore! do they know what an antenna even is???), but the truth is, many of them are more clueless than we are. Hard to believe. They don't just learn to crawl then walk then speak then blog then master the online universe based on pure machine instinct. Someone must show them, and that someone WILL BE ME!

Well, maybe it will and maybe it won't, but inspiration has struck again and I am unfurling myself from the crumpled, balled-up librarian in the corner. My wings are drying off in the light of Robert and Javier's discovery, and I am ready to tackle the problem of teaching these so-called digital natives how to type/search/save/print/google/blog/copy/paste/highlight/find/email once again.

Robert's Blog Idea

2009-02-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here with a student who's going to make a blog!

Jehovah's Witness Meltdown

2009-01-22T14:03:00.000-08:00

The entire school district in LA slowed down on Tuesday to watch the Inauguration, which I believed was an obvious and reasonable thing for the schools to do. I would never, ever have questioned this activity as one that might possibly disrupt a child's world view in any way. Until N.

N is a boy that stands out the moment you meet him. His pants are pulled up very, very high. His eyebrows blend together in a fluffy, soft looking unibrow. There are often beads of persipiration on his upper lip. N is not tall, he is constantly in motion, and he rarely makes eye contact. He loves to read, loves to play computer games, and is often so deep in his own world that he doesn't hear his name being called over and over and over again by his patient, kind, friendly school librarian.

When Obama's speech was nearly over, I noticed that N was preoccupied. He was in and out of his backpack, knee bopping quickly up and down, looking for a pencil, looking everywhere but up at the screen. When I caught his attention, N shook his head back and forth, mouthing something that I couldn't understand. I crooked my finger at him (pleasantly) and he got up and stumbled over his pile of belongings to join me away from the crowd of kids watching the speech.

"What's up, N?" I asked.
Foot tapping, he replied, "I'm not comfortable with this. I'm a Jehovah's Witness."
Huh? So, I ask, "N, I don't understand. Is there something about watching a president speak that isn't ok with your religious beliefs?"

Does that sound harsh? I didn't think so, but that's when the waterworks began. From that moment on, it took thirty minutes, many tears, a call from N to his father, another teacher, and a lot of confusion on my part to finally come to these understandings about N and maybe about Jehovah's Witnesses (but I think N has got to be confused about some of this).

- N was made uncomfortable by the invocation. Ok. So was I.
- N was not able to make much of a distinction between the invocation and Obama's speech.
- According to N, the Jehovah's Witnesses do not recognize the president as a true authority figure, and so having the school stop to watch the inauguration was in some way a violation of the separation of church and state.
- According the N, he has no interest in voting (ever) because man's laws do not really matter, that people will do what they will do, and the consequences will be what they are.
- Because N was distracted, because he is often distracted, he is negatively representing the entirety of the Jehovah's Witness population. He commits "bad acts" and is ashamed. (In fact, N has ADHD and is 11, but apparantly that is beside the point).
- Boys in N's class make fun of him for his religion.
- N used to be bothered by the many religious activities in school, but he says he has mostly gotten used to it.

In the end, N elected to spent the remainder of the inauguration (what amounted to about 5 minutes at that point) sitting in the main office waiting area.

The questions this interaction brings up for me are ones that both surprise and infuriate me. My first reaction is simply HOW CAN ANYONE DO THIS TO THEIR CHILD? HOW CAN ANYONE CHOOSE TO CONFUSE A POOR KID INTO TEARS? The boy seems not to know exactly what is going on, and clearly his religion is being used to make him feel ashamed of his behavior. This makes me both angry and sad.

Upon further reflection, however, I think there are some issues here that I wouldn't have expected. First, of course, is that N has a point about the invocation and benediction. They don't really have a place in school, but I don't know how we would have easily worked around them to watch the speech.

Second, N and his family have the right (although I feel a little uncomfortable saying this) to reject the idea that any living person has authority over their lives. They have the right to stand away from politics and rely only on the ten commandments to rule their lives. Don't they? During our discussion, N mentioned that one of the commandments says that one should not worhip false idols. In N's mind, we were worshiping Barack Obama on Tuesday. He has a point, does he not? It may be as close to worship as I've come in, well, my whole life. So that fact that I do not see this worship as religious does not mean that someone else, like N, might be bothered by such an open display of reverence, sanctioned (even required) but the public school that he attends.

Now, I am going way out on a limb here. I do not actually believe that having kids watch the inauguration in school is anything like asking them to observe a religious celebration. But I can see how N would be confused. I can see that we blur these lines to such extremes on a regular basis (Halloween, Valentine's, certainly Christmas; all of these have religious and secular followings, and all of them are permitted in schools to a certain extent) that a child whose parents may not be clarifying things well would cry in frustration and fear of offending his god, or his mom, or his dad, or his whole congregation.

I am grateful that my parents never put me in this position. I am sorry that N is so confused, and that he was unable to see the greatness of what happened on Tuesday. I am sorry that I know nothing about his religion and therefore could not be a comfort to him. I am sorry that my immediate reaction was a biased, judgemental one that condemned his family's beliefs to the realm of kooky extremism. I hope he can one day reconcile his religious beliefs with his ADHD, with his responsibilties as a citizen of this (or any) country, with his peer group, with his parents' expectations. How will he manage it?

The Names! The Names!

2009-01-14T14:40:00.000-08:00

Do you remember Beronica? Today I met Birginia.

A few minutes ago I heard a teacher call across the room, "Stalin, stop doing that."

Yesterday I met Ike's little sister, Ikiesha.

Who takes a kid's toy?

2008-12-15T14:05:00.001-08:00

It's been a long time since I've written anything here, I know. Honestly, I've been feeling a bit blah about my work, about the state of the public education system, about teachers' unions, about my co-workers. A three week vacation helped a great deal, and last week was the first time in months that I felt, once again, like I have the greatest job on earth. And I do. Sometimes bad things happen in good jobs, though, and today was one of those days.

Over the weekend, someone who works at the school (or who stole keys and learned the alarm code - not likely) came into the library and took my laptop and charger, several digital cameras, and the Playstation 2 that my boyfriend donated so that I could hold a weekly Game Day after school.

WAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Why do people do things like this?

I noticed the PS2 right away. Its cord still dangles from the top of the Fiction Coh-Cre bookcase, just as I found it this morning. At first I figured that someone borrowed it. A few teachers here use the PS2 and Rock Band equipment from time to time when they have a group of students who've earned a reward. It seemed odd though, that anyone would have come to borrow it Friday afternoon after I had already left for the day. I emailed the staff asking that it be returned. I heard nothing back.

Later in the day, our tech guy (Mark) stopped by for a visit. He mentioned that one of our teacher's laptops was stolen over the weekend. I mentioned the PS2 and he suggested that it was almost certainly stolen. It was only then, at 1pm, that I went to see if my laptop was on my desk. It wasn't. Nor were the 4 digital cameras that I had been using late last week.

One may wonder why I hadn't noticed the laptop until so late in the day. Truthfully, I don't use it much, and I'm almost never in my little office. And the cameras? Yes, they were just sitting on my desk, not locked away in a cabinet as they most certainly should have been. In my defense, I am a flake. Also, almost NO ONE has key access to my office. Plus, I just didn't think anyone would do this.

It's the Playstation that really gets me. What about Game Day? What about the Rock Band tournament that I was planning for the spring? What about all the kids who love to come sing, play guitar, and just be with each other? I think you have to be a low-down dirty dog to steal from kids. A flea-ridden, mangy, stinky, oozing, low-down dirty dog.

Make a Wish

2008-10-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

In the library, I have a "Make a Wish" form that kids can fill out to request a certain title or topic. I keep their suggestions in mind when I'm purchasing new items for the collection. Today I started looking through their suggestions and came upon this wish for a new book/author:

"Booty Tits"

What are those? Any ideas? Or is it suppsoed to be Booty, Tits? I'm pretty sure that's not a book title, or an author's name. But perhaps I'm wrong.

Add it to the OED!

2008-09-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

Today a student told me that he saved his Power Point presentation on his "chip card". That means flash drive. I think.

It's the Thought...

2008-09-19T11:46:00.001-07:00

The object pictured here was given to me today by Veronica. She came up to me with a shy smile and said, "I got this, and I don't really want it, so, like, I wanted to give it to you." Hmm. Thanks, Veronica. I love it! How did you know I would love this so much? She says it's a donkey. I'm not so sure about that.

Two days ago, Veronica asked me, "Does plucking mean killing, or just taking the feathers out?" I explained, and then she explained that HER MOTHER ATE HER PARROT! WHAAAAAT? Her mother ate her parrot. Plucked it, cooked it, ate it. I asked if this parrot was a pet (I'm not sure what I was getting at here. What else would a parrot be?). Veronica said that, yes, it was a pet. It talked. I wondered aloud why her mother would eat her parrot. Veronica had no idea. She hadn't asked. I'm not sure I would ask my rabid, crazed, Glen Close of a mother either if I were Veronica. Geez!

Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish!

2008-09-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

Students often approach me asking if I could buy a certain title, books by an author we don't carry, or more on a favorite topic. When a kid is a very regular library patron, and I know s/he is just dying to get the next book in a series, I usually just buy the book myself and consider it a donation. It's hard to keep track of what they want, though, and I have recently added a Make A Wish box to the library in which students can drop a slip of paper detailing their reading desires. As you can imagine, the large majority of their requests are completely bogus. Very few are actual titles or names of authors. Many are TV shows and characters. Plenty are highly inappropriate or lewd. The vast majority are related somehow to the Disney corporation. I love the Make a Wish box. Here are a few wishes that were made this week (I have been true to the students' spelling and spacing):
Tinker Bell
Godzilla
Pokemon Michel Jaskson
Stephen King: Cell
Pokemon Novel
Suite life of Zack and Cody
Holloween Poems
Dora
Jonas Brother
Jonas Brathers
Jonas Book
Scary Stories 3
Scary Stories !
family gay
UFO books seris (I think this is series?)
Telitubies
Jonas Brothers
Jonas Brothers
Jonas Brothers
Twel (I have no idea what this one is)
teletubies and barnie
Breaking Up!!!
InLove books
Earthquckes
I wish I can take the Guinness world records 2008 (this book is non-circulating)
ProNAGRophy
Simsoms
porno
todal drama instand (my favorite, read as: Total Drama Instant!)
Pronale Ms Merfy (What? I would love to know what this says)

Lame-Ass teaching

2008-09-09T10:45:00.001-07:00

One of the many frills that comes with working in the library is that I am the Goddess of Lamination and Photocopying. Meaning, a half-broken laminating machine and an ancient Duplo machine are located in one of my work rooms, and I get the pleasure of teaching people to use them, change ink, change laminating film (although I leave this pain in the neck to my assistant), fix paper jams, etc. I'm very handy when it comes to Duplo repair. I also get to look at all of the items that people leave in the Duplo machine after they've made their copies and walked away. Most of the time, teachers are copying informational letters to send home to parents, or quizzes, or reading material for their students. Every once in a while, though, I get a glimpse of some hand-drawn chart or worksheet that a rushed, under prepared teacher has thrown together at the last minute. Usually, this is not a good thing. Usually, these are sloppy and meaningless. Today's example is both. Let's take a look at what is wrong with this "learning" activity, shall we?

1. If the teacher was making copies of this, that means the teacher planned to pass one out to each student. That means that the students were going to be asked to write their answers out on a sheet of paper. What do you want to bet that this teacher will also ask the students to write the questions along with the answers on that sheet of paper, thus making the activity take longer so the teacher has to do less actual teaching and can focus on something more important like reading the newspaper, surfing online, or balancing his/her checkbook? I am willing to bet a lot on this one.

2. The students are instructed to "Use pages 137-140" to complete this activity. That means that they will be asked to sit quietly with a textbook, looking for answers that correlate exactly with the questions. The questions are probably listed in sequence to go along with the text. The students will be asked to do zero thinking. They are only hunting for recognizable words and phrases.

3. The questions are poorly written. So poorly written, in fact, that if I wasn't sure that the students wouldn't need to understand what was being asked, I would worry that the students wouldn't understand what was being asked. Let's look at each question one at a time.
- 1) Why were most kids taught to read? I assume the teacher wants to know what was the main purpose of education during the Great Awakening. This phrasing, however, fails to ask that. I would tell a student who wrote this question that it lacks clarity and that the reader wonders which kids, where, when, what the heck are we talking about?
- 2) How did poor kids learn? Well, look. This is a question that just cannot be answered, even by the best experts in the fields of psychology, education, child development, etc. How do people learn? How does anyone learn, and what does being poor have to do with it? Again, the teacher doesn't actually want to spark that discussion here. The teacher wants the students to locate a sentence in the textbook that reads something like "Children from poor families usually learned by _________".
- 3) How was literacy rate measured in the colonies? Way to model proper use of the word the, Teach!
- 4) (Please note that on the original document, this question is indeed number 4, but is listed before number three.) The Primer contained what 2 things? Hmmm, let's see. Two things. Two things one might find in a book. Paper and ink? Page numbers and letters? Chapters and a table of contents? Once again, the teacher doesn't really care what was in the Primer. The students are only supposed to look for a sentence that says "In most cases, students would read from a Primer containing _____ and _____."

I don't know if I can go on. It's too painful. Let's just skip to my favorite.

- 7) The Great Awakening was a _________ movement. I'm going to say bowel. Wait, that can't be right. I'd like to change my answer. Especially since the teacher has helpfully mentioned that I'm looking for a nine letter word. How will I ever figure it out? Can't you just picture a room full of kids counting how many letters are in the words on pages 137 - 140? It was a squirrels' movement. No, a squelched movement. A stevedore movement. I've got it! A kowtowing movement. That's gotta be it!

Apart from the many questions this worksheet discovery demands that I ask myself about how our current system has failed this teacher and his students, I must also ask a more practical question. What, if anything, should I do about it? Do I alert the Social Studies department chair that someone is a lame-ass teacher and should be identified and provided with some sort of intervention? Should I show my Assistant Principal? Should I tape the page to the wall by the copier, which would both expose the teacher and allow that person to claim his distinguished work? Probably I should just file it away in my scrapbook to be used later in my memoirs. Sigh. I think this one is going to get away with it. Beware your child's tired, frazzled, hasty teacher, just looking for a little peace and quiet. The next thing you know, these kids are going to be dimming the lights for a round of Heads Up Seven Up so the teacher can get a little shut-eye.

Nothing Left for Me To Do

2008-09-04T13:50:00.001-07:00

I have three volunteers who have taken over my library so thoroughly that I have nothing left to do. Well, not really. I could do a lot of work that I don't want to do. I could plan ahead, or reorganize my files, or begin massive projects that would benefit the entire school community but would take hours and hours of work on my part, not to mention the frustration and tedium of completing truly great massive projects. I could do that. Probably I will. For now, however, I am going to sit back and enjoy the fact that all of the clerical work that I normally need to do in order to stay afloat is, for once, pretty much done.

These three giggle monsters - Gaby, Cindy, and Veronica - are a dream come true. They're off track, which for most kids means that they're bored to tears at home for 8 weeks. So instead, they've started to come to the library to help customers, shelve books (this they do poorly, but I give them credit for trying), answer the phone, clean, and giggle like I've never heard people giggle before. It's constant and only a little irritating. Today one of them brought ham sandwiches on white bread and mangoes to share for their lunch. They sat in the work room in the back and ate in silence, only giggling once in a while. They were silent because a teacher was in the work room to laminate posters, and it turns out that they felt their conversation should be suspended in the presence of said teacher. I think that's pretty funny, since they never stop talking when they're behind the counter working for me.

So maybe I'll get to write on this blog more often now that these ladies are running the library. Or maybe I'll tackle some of these big 'ol projects that have been haunting my To Do lists for ages. Not today, though. I'm going to just enjoy this for today.

Some Boys Are Really Nice

2008-08-27T15:00:00.001-07:00

I'm not feeling so hot today. I'm on cold medicine that's making me loopy, alternating between a stuffed and a runny nose, and my energy is zapped. It's the last period of the school day, and the class that was scheduled to come to the library canceled. So, my three eighth-grade student clerks (Alfonso, Jesus, and Khalil) have little to do. I've let them just chill together, and watching them has been enlightening. I knew this, of course, but these boys are really, really nice. Just a minute ago, I admitted to them that I was feeling tired and didn't want to do a whole heckuva lot of work.
Alfonso said, "Just rest, miss."
Khalil followed with, "We can handle it. We can handle everything here."
Jesus rounded it out with a humorous, "You really should get some Vapo Rub miss. You do sound quite congested."

When the main office called a few minutes ago to say there were two packages that needed to be picked up, they bickered over who would go get them! And how have they chosen to spend this rare free time (I don't normally believe in free time for students)? They are shopping for books online, visiting author websites to see when their next books are being released, watching movie previews for Twilight, the hottest new book-to-movie about vampires,making short movies on the computer, and reading. And these are not dorky kids. They're just soooo nice.
A girl, Iris, arrived not too long ago to join them. When she walked in she said, "It's a slow day today in the main office", which is where she has her service job. She fit right in with the pack, discussing the various vampire series each has read.
Mysteriously, Jesus came into my office to ask what accounting irregularities are. I explained. Not too long after, he returned to ask what Tarmac is. Again, I explained. When I asked him what he was doing, he said reading a book about cars. Ok. He also wanted to know why our computers had such an old version of Flash. I didn't know what to say to that. Jesus is cooler than I am, I think. Certainly more curious.

My point is, I think, that middle school boys have a bad reputation that many of them do not deserve. I don't remember too many boys being this nice when I was their age, I will admit. My dad, I have been told, was not this nice. Although maybe he was this nice to someone. Maybe these guys are just this nice to me? I don't think so. I think they're nice all the time. Right now, crazy as this seems, I hear what I believe is Mozart wafting across the library. I think they're listening to Mozart! And remember, not dorks. Not at all.

No one knows that there are boys like this in an overcrowded, low-performing school in South Central Los Angeles. People think that the boys here are violent, hard, mean, or maybe dumb. I listen to Alfonso, Jesus, and Khalil talk about what they're planning to read next. I watch Alfonso help Khalil print out, cut, and laminate bookmarks with images from Khalil's favorite new series of books. I watch Jesus and Iris work on this movie together with absolutely no awareness of the usual tension kids of these age feel towards members of the opposite sex.

By the way, Jesus just came over and exclaimed, "Funky! Disco night is back on!"
I don't really know why he did this.

Anyway. I need to start a campaign to project this image of urban boys. Anyone would like these three. And they have friends. Lots of friends who are just like them. It makes me happy in the midst of my head cold.

Failure to Launch

2008-08-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

In my role on the Technology Use Committee, I have worked hard to provide countless professional development workshops for teachers who would like to advance their basic technology skills. We've held sessions on Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint, Windows Movie Maker, Google, using Databases, creating web pages, using document projectors, using LCD projectors, using instructional videos, and the list goes on. At times, I feel we are making great progress. Many of our students are even mastering these skills, which makes me hopeful for their futures.

At other times, I worry that I/we are failing our students miserably....and in this case, the students I'm talking about are the teachers. After years of technology workshops (which include very specific advice about how to frame an assignment for the children), the teacher I will highlight today has managed to create what I feel is an extremely confusing and incomplete sheet of instructions for his students who are to make a Power Point slideshow about Ancient Egypt.

A few details about this assignment...
These are 11-year-old kids in the 6th grade. This is their first time using Power Point (probably) and for many of them, their first time using any Microsoft product. This teacher has asked them to make a 15-slide presentation about Ancient Egypt. That's a lot of slides. A whole lot. A real lot, as they say in Decatur. As an added bonus, these students have not actually started studying Ancient Egypt yet. When they first visited the library to use the computers, they were asked to simply "set up" their slides. I don't even know what that is supposed to mean, and I've made a hundred Power Points.

Ok, so, on a plain, white half-sheet of paper is written the following:

How to do a PowerPoint/Slide Show

Start by going to start and left click (L C.) on the mouse.

Then go to bottom left and lick on All Programs

Then go to list and click (L.C.) on Microsoft Office

Then slide mouse over to Microsoft Office Power point and (L.C.)

Now, I suppose these directions could be followed well enough by someone who knows what they're doing. I do find the (L.C.) instruction bewildering in all of its forms. First of all, who calls it Left Click? It's just Click, dammit! Also, the first time it appears, the words "left click" are followed by the acronym in parentheses. Fair enough. The next time, however, the acronym for Left Click follows just the word Click. And finally, the words Left Click are left out entirely, but the acronym is still in parentheses. The words Left Click were shed one by one, until there were none.
Another problem I have with this is that this is not, in fact, the instructions needed to "do" a Power Point. To open the application, yes. To use the application? Not in a million years.

I would like to be the kind of person who is brave and cruel enough to directly address these problems with the teacher, but I am not. After all, I am not an administrator. I do not have true supervisory powers. Also, I am a yellow, clucking chicken.
As I prepare for today's Technology Use Committee meeting, I am reminded that being a teacher is a lot like being Sisyphus. That stone just keeps on rolling back down the hill, and I/we keep charging down to get it and to start over again. Maybe we know more about the hill we're climbing up; we can avoid divots and gravel. But that stone doesn't seem to get easier to push just because we recognize the terrain. What does it say about me, about the other teachers, that we choose to do this? Are we unrelenting optimists who believe in the promise of all people? Or are we just quirky, foggy-brained, and strange?

In the end, I have to give this teacher credit for attempting to do a Power Point with his students for the first time, right? I do. I really, really, really do. Really. I do. Right?

I Have Finally Found It, After a Lifetime of Searching

2008-08-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

This is the name. The best, strangest, most difficult to wrap my head around name that I have ever heard. It belongs to a young girl who likes to read fashion and gossip magazines in the library while sucking her fingers, like a small child would suck her thumb. She is very sweet, but her eyes always seem a little glazed over when I tell her that lunch is over, it's time to go to class. My guess is that she spends a lot of time in front of a TV. Her name makes me think of ducks. It is a wonderful name to say aloud, and I find myself adding an extra U as the next to last letter to make the name sound just a bit more rolling, a little more like it came from some long-ago language spoken by sun-baked ancestors. The name is...

Tommaniquecka

Yes, Tommaniqueck(u)a, the goddess of harvest and light.
Or, Tommaniqueck(u)a, a warrior princess riding a great, tamed beast.
Tommaniqueck(u)a, who betrayed her people and brought down a curse upon them.
Tommaniqueck(u)a, who lives with her grandmother near a solitary pond and can communicate with the geese and swans who live among them.
Tommaniquek(u)a, a fierce and vengeful sorceress, dressed in animal skins and a crown of sharp teeth.

I could go on and on like this for hours. Say her name again and again and I think you'll know what I mean. The added U is necessary for me, since the harsh ending sound of the true spelling (Tom-an-eek-eck-a) does not inspire such glorious possibilities. It does however, better fit the small, fragile, dazed girl in the corner, sucking her fingers and reading about glitz and glamor.

The years go by and the names get more elaborate, more challenging for the unsuspecting teacher reading the roll for the first time, more filled with apostrophes (Arie'L, for example), and more exotic. Eight years ago, Tanjalay Lovelady crossed my classroom threshold and I thought that no name would ever be better than hers. It was so satisfying to say. One couldn't help but grin at the thought of the parent who lovingly chose it, declared it, and had it written in stone. But honestly, Tommaniquecka brings things to an entirely new level. I cannot wait for the name that I will someday find that will make Tommaniquecka sound like Mary or Beth. Just imagine the possibilities. It makes me giddy.

Fear of Rejection

2008-07-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

Below is the trancript of a note I found today in the library. It is written on a mint green index card. There is no way to know exactly when one girl stops writing and the other starts, so I will simply transcribe what is on the card, true to the girls' punctuation, spelling, etc.

U shuld not have 2 say that I sed it...Heez gunna stop talkin 2 me fine then I tell him that I was just kidding! Do you feel much better !? no dont tell him tat....Jus tell em 2 not stop talkin 2 me lyk utha guys okay I will -----> So u n yvette tell Daniel that jus becauze I like him to no stop talkin to me MAN ULISES DOESN'T STOP SHARING dumb of Jimmy N.

So, my best guess at interpreting this is that Girl A likes a boy and maybe she actually said so to her friends, which is pretty much the kiss of death in middle school. Girl B and Yvette told the boy what Girl A said. For some reason Girl A often finds herself in these situations; her honestly about her affection towards boys does not appeal to them. Are they too shy? Do they dislike her? Whatever it is, she can't take the rejection this time. Girl B doesn't seem to concerned about all of this, if you ask me. Some friend.

Student Homepage dot com

2008-07-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

During nutrition and lunch (nutrition being a morning snack break), the library gets crazy. I should probably put a stop to it, to tell the truth. It's so crowded in here that I cannot control what's going on. Things go missing, it's hard to get kids to leave at the bell, the checkout line stretches for miles. It's been suggested that I should begin to treat library like a night club. X number of people allowed, you come in when someone comes out, red ropes, all of that. That's the most reasonable thing to do, but I just can't bring myself to limit access to the library, especially for those kids who see it as a refuge.

Anyway, today there was a very sweet, shy, timid, space cadet of a girl sitting at a computer with her hand raised. That's my first clue that she doesn't know what's going on. Her hand is raised during nutrition? How the heck am I going to see that? Well, I did, and she asked her question.

"How do I get to the student homepage?"

Oh boy. The what? "Do you mean the library's homepage on our school's website?" I ask gently.

"The what?" she says.

"The school's website. Perhaps that's what you're looking for. Go ahead and open up Internet Explorer and I'll show you."

She stares blankly at the desktop. I point to the icon. She double-clicks.

"Is this what you meant?" I ask, as the school's page opens.

"The other day, I was here, and I went to this place. I typed something in at the top. But I don't remember. I think it was 'homepage'."

I sigh inside. I close my eyes to gather my patience and love for children. I point out the school's computer use rules taped to the monitor (school website and assignments only). I tell her that I'm not aware of a website called "Homepage", but perhaps she could show me sometime. The entire interaction takes less than five minutes but feels like a lifetime. All the while, hordes of students are spilling though the entrance, through the exit, through the skylight it seems, all with questions like these. I need coffee.

Bad Decision Making

2008-07-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

At the end of lunch yesterday, I hear a ruckus in the stairwell that leads to the library exit. This happens a lot; kids hang out there and must be kicked out so they're not late for class. So I went to do the kicking out. On the landing between floors, I saw Noe (the lisping boy who believes we are made of dirt) being shoved around by a surly group of at least five. I made my presence known, they fled, I followed. Outside, the harassment continued. Noe's collar was tugged, he was elbowed, he almost lost his balance. At first I assumed that this was your average bullying, that these were your average bullies, and that I would need to make an average intervention. Noe is, after all, a kid that most people would not be surprised to see bullied. I am sorry to say that anyone is bullied, but it is a solid fact of middle-school life.
I intervened to find a complicated story that took some time to unweave. It goes something like this. Boy 1 (let's call him Miguel) brought twenty dollars to school. Why, no one knows. That's a lot of candy, even in today's market. After PE, he put his things in his locker and went to take a shower (again, why? Ew, those showers cannot be nice), but he left his locker open. This is his second Bad Decision by my count. The money fell out, or so we think. To think otherwise is to assume Noe is devious and criminal, which I choose not to think. Noe walks by Miguel's locker and picks up the money, keeps it. Bad Decision three. Someone sees this happen and at lunch in the library, Miguel's gaggle of followers attempts to retrieve the money through the art of intimidation. Noe sticks to his story, claiming finders keepers.
Enter Boy 3 (let's call him Juan). Noe tells us that Juan reached into his pocket and took the money back. Juan says no. Juan says he did, but then he put it back. Juan says Noe is a liar. Juan says he took the money and gave it to someone else. Juan says a lot of things.
Suddenly, Miguel's gaggle is suspicious, but no longer of Noe. Now they are looking to Juan and saying things like, "Man, where's the money?", "Man, you better tell where the money is!", and "Man, you spent it, didn't you?". Juan stammers. Noe looks hopeful. Miguel just hangs his head in total disappointment.
Noe is redeemed, Juan confesses, they all go to the dean to record statements. You see, Juan only has seven dollars in his pocket. He must have treated all his buddies to snacks at lunch, because that money is gone.
You would think that all of this would cause some lasting tension among this group of boys. Maybe Miguel would hold a grudge against Juan for lying. Or Noe would be angry with the rest of them. Twenty minutes later, I see Noe, Juan, and Miguel crossing campus together, returning from the dean's office. I say, "Is everything ok with you boys?" Smiling and laughing, practically linking arms and skipping, they tell me yes. Miguel says, "He'll bring me twenty dollars tomorrow and that'll be the end of it". All is forgiven. Perhaps the final Bad Decision, at least on Miguel's part.

Really?

2008-07-17T16:25:00.001-07:00

A sixth grade girl just asked in all seriousness, "What city are we in?"
That is all I have to say about that.

The First Few Weeks

2008-07-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

Well, so much for writing every day. These last few weeks have been some of the most hectic I've seen at this school. Hectic in a good way, because our school seems to be breeding nerds, which means that the library (their kingdom) is getting more play than ever before. This is wonderful of course, but exhausting. How and why is this school breeding nerds, you ask? I don't know for sure, but I suspect a few specific changes over the last couple of years are at the heart of this transformation. One is that we are now heavily recruiting students in gifted programs at their elementary schools, and our gifted program is growing in size and prowess. Another is that we have full blown electives now, so drama kids, art kids,and tech kids have a place to thrive. The third is that were are pushing reading pretty hard, the staff is visibly reading, and books are now a little more cool than they were. The nerds are establishing their space, their superiority, and their right to exist. More and more of them are maintaining their nerd personas all the way through 8th grade, or if they shed the nerd skin, they only do so in favor of becoming intellectually cool, meaning they wear black, listen to rock 'n roll, smear on eyeliner, and talk of living downtown, or in Hollywood, or somewhere that is not here.

It's the 6th graders who are really funny though. One recently came to me and said "Ms. Murphy, I would like to discuss with you the possibility of starting a Young Authors club". He has since returned several times, once to show me a book he has written (incomprehensible), and another time to write out plans for the establishment of this club. Another boy recently told his teacher that evolution has been disproven, and that there are those who now believe that we are all made of dirt. Two others orbit me like satellites or moons during lunchtime. I could hold my arms out straight and smack either one of them in the head at any time. Yet another recently passed me a note during a busy time. He was recommending that I post a sign on the door of the library about the rules for borrowing chess boards.

I am so pleased that these little smarty-pants kids are here. I am worn out by them, by their questions, their ideas, their need for my attention and perhaps my approval. The line to check out books exceeds thirty people most days during lunch, and stays that long even though we are checking out books at a rate I find astounding. I have to turn them away at the bell for class. They look so sad that they aren't going to get to take their dinosaur, solar system, baseball, dragon, horse, puppy, ghost, and UFO books with them. It's all I can do not to laugh.

the Writer Lady's challenge

2008-07-01T12:52:00.001-07:00

I've been absent from my blog for too, too long, but today I received a little kick in the rump from one of my favorite YA writers, who is encouraging the readers of her blog to write for 15 minutes a day about anything at all. I'm going to give it a shot, although I have a feeling that on a few days I'll be my usual slacker self, sorry to say.

Today was the first day of the official '08-'09 school year. Students on the year-round calendar hear in Los Angeles had one day off (yesterday) between x grade and y grade. Elementary school Friday, middle school today. Not much in terms of a transition period. I needed way more than a full summer to get used to the idea of going to 9th grade, and the poor, withering, blubbering, teary-eyed, terrified freshman out there on LA's B-track got a whole three days.

Other fun and funny things that happen on the first day of school in LA -
1. The computer system responsible for maintaing class rosters doesn't work. It's too much, I can hardly stand it. Teachers were not given accurate lists of the students that should appear in each class period, nor could they use the computer system to take attendance for the kids who did miraculously show up. I can only imaging how many 6th graders wanted to cry today, how many teachers are counting the minutes until their first cocktail (teachers are huge drinkers, you know), and how many parents will be shocked and awed by the stories of wonder that their kids bring home this evening.
2. Countless students were put on tracks without their parents knowing before today which track that would be. If you aren't familiar with this system, we have A, B, and C tracks (each about 900 kids), and they are staggered to accommodate overcrowding. So today, B and C tracks begin. C track will be in school for the next 4 months. B track will be in school for 2 months, have a two month break, and come back for 2 more months to complete their first semester before christmans (the worst one by far). A track is on vacation until B track goes off, at which time A track will be here for 4 months straight until Christmas. Sooooooo, today lots of kids showed up for the first day of school only to be told that they have been placed on A track and should come back at the end of August. Really cool for a kid, but maybe not so cool for a parent.

The library isn't open today or tomorrow or the next day, largely because the school district won't be updating out computer records for a while, so we can't check out books to kids yet. So I have been hauling books today, shifting them two cases to the right to make space on the shelves. I bought $200,000 in books in the last two years and I am running out of SPACE! It's a daily struggle to find room to squeeze in all of these new novels.

Ok, that was just 13 minutes, but I've now been interrupted by two history teachers and an english teacher. One history teacher wants to give me hundreds of tattered books he found in a cabinet (NO!), the other is ready and waiting to laminate, the other needs help with his web page. Gotta go, gotta go.

You're hired!

2008-04-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

It's the end of C-track's school year, and I've been collecting job applications from 6th and 7th graders who want to work in the library next year (for their electives). It's a pretty thorough application, and my favorite reponses to read are the ones for the only two open ended questions. Here are some of the answers I've gotten.

To the question "Please list any special skills here":
- speak a little french
- studied water color drawing, only graphite drawings, primary, secondary colors
- using math and algera
- good on flying thing and on cars
- i like to have everything really organized
- drawing flowers
- taking orders
- writing and signing things
- sport
- speack spanish
- types of books, authors [i'm not sure what this skill is supposed to be]
- spelling, grammer
- smart, playing drums
- I know my numbers
- By lingual
- My writing is nice
- could carry books and put them on the shelf
and (this one is my favorite)
- I can sing the national anthem

To the question "Please writie a brief explanation of your reasons for wanting to work in the library. Be sure to include the reasons you think you would make a good member of the library staff":

- because I want to earn more grades
- I would make good staff because I'm good at a lot of stuff
- I know how to communicate
- because I live read books
- because i want to achieve my goals
- i know a lot of art
- I will like to clean the library
- I simply want something to work on that interest me
- because i am a person who likes to do fun stuff
- i'm good on ordering books in order
- I want to know how many authors
- because i feel like working there, the computers and things
- so my mom can be prood of me
- I want to work because I like to help people I do not care because I do not help people out for money [Huh?]
- great rememberence skills
- well, if you guys pick me, i'm going to try my best. I will demonstrated, too.
- I like to be around with book and i like to put stuff back in there place
- because I wanna be Doing. something to keep me buissy and to keep me out of troubal. Thanks for your time
- I have a feeling that its going to be fun

Who to hire? Who to hire?
There are more gems, but I'll save them for another day.

What's in a Name?

2008-04-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

Today another one came across my desk. This name is less outrageously flamboyant than many of the others, to be sure, but it does point out a subtle issue in naming conventions that will result one of two things. 1 - We will, as a society, begin to accept bizarre, invented names and their spellings as commonplace, therefore never again being able to count on the ability to spell or make an educated guess at a person's origin, religion, heritage, etc. Or 2 - this child, and other children like her, will be forced to change her name if she wants to escape not only ridicule (in her younger days) but the assumption that she is uneducated (in her middle years). If #1 happens, #2 will not. Probably. My guess is that #2 will happen first, and has already happened to countless kids and professionals.

This child's name is Beronica. Like Veronica, but not. Because of the fact that many Spanish speakers pronounce v's as b's, her parents clearly did not hear or know the standard spelling of this name. Not that Beronica is such a bad name really, but it does probably indicate a lack of knowledge on her parents part, which she may or may not ever realize. I could be wrong. This could be intentional. Yet there are other names that lead me to believe that these are mistakes, not acts of creativity. Yonatan, is my next best example. Jonathan, but not. It is pronounced just like it is spelled, which is how someone with a heavy accent might pronounce Jonathan, after all. Y for J, hard T for TH. It makes perfect sense. I have nothing against the namers of these children, but I do wonder if Beronica could be a bank president if she keeps that name, that spelling. Maybe. Maybe by the time she's old enough, there will be enough Bictorias and Baleries that Beronica won't stand out. I do hope so.

More 8th grade ideas

2008-03-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

15 out of 25 students have a myspace page, all of them with fake birthdates to pass the age limit. These students spend more than one hour per day on the Internet, primarily on myspace and youtube.

Games enjoyed by these students include:
Gears of War
Halo 3
Maplestory
Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2
Final Fantasy 10
Devil May Cry 4
Prince of Persia 3
Resident Evil 4
Need for Speed Most Wanted
Smackdown 08
Smackdown vs. Raw
FIFA 08
Mortal Kombat Armageddon

So, this class seems more like a TV and Internet class, although there are about 6 boys who say that they play games for more than 5-6 hours per day. So, what are they watching on tv? I gave them one minute to discuss it at their tables. Let's see what they had to say.

South Park, Simpsons, One Tree Hill, the Hillz, House, Drake and Josh, Americ'as Next Top Model, Futurama, I carly, Cesar and Chuy, Making the Band 4, Oprah's Big Give, Gossip Girl, That 70s Show, Spongebob, Failry Odd Parents, George Lopez, Family Guy, American Dad, Wild and Out, Boiling Points, MTV Cribs, Naruto, El Chavo del Ocho, Mexican League Football, Married with Children, Bones, Bleach, Scrubs, Death Note, Tyra Banks Show, Divorce Court, Arthur, Curious George, Spiderman, Batman, Sesame Street, Science NOVA Now, Animal Planet.

How did it come to this? I have more incommon with these students when it comes to video games than television! Who would have thought?

Suggestion Box

2008-03-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

I recently surveyed 241 kids (10% of the student population) about their use of the library and their gaming habits. This is part of an effort to determine how to go about launching a video/computer gaming program that both supports the school's educational efforts and appeals to the recreational needs of the kids. At the end of the survey (32 multiple choice questions), I provided space for students to make comments or ask questions. I assumed they would keep their thoughts focused on the topics at hand, but some of them had other ideas. Although many of these comments were relevant to gaming in libraries, several were just plain funny. Give a kid the opportunity to open his/her mouth, and what spews forth is golden. Here are some highlights (I will remain faithful to the students' spelling):

"I hope we play war games not just learning games"
"I think this is a good idea for the school"
"I like video games and computers games"
"The kind of games that I like is violence, blood, Adult lauange "
"Add Maplestory as an suggestions as a game"
"I hate Ms. L class because she sucks"
"will you have wii and xbox in the library to play wit if not plez bring them plez"
"NO JUST PLAY VIDEO GAMES ONLY!!"
"VIDEO RULES!!"
"Are you or are you not gonna let students play computer games on the internet?"
"Does the games have to be educational?"
"would be a good game for school is thing thing 2 or 1, or 3 and also clear vision 1, or 2, and Max bike and we could get if free at www.addictinggames.com"
"Whoo! Hoo!"
"Thanks Bye"
"No Thanks"
"on #30 [this was a question about what they would like to learn about from games] it depends because in science its already fun so i don't know"
"could we come only some days?"
"I would like to work in the school library for the gaming systems"
"how long do I have to participate in the library?"
"if there going to put games then they try not too make it really, really educational because then it starts to get a little boring"
"whats this for and are u going to make a gaming event after school?"
"I love videogames"
"I want to learn about every subject and learn by being in library services"
"why after school if we cannot stay after school?"
"I would like to be chosen. I like games and to read. I would like to parcipate in events"
"I don't enjoy writing alot in Ms. L class makes you take notes"
"I don't like science class, neather Mr. T. He is my teachers for science. I don't like him, and I think he dosen't like me neather. Well I don't care if he dosen't like me."

So, there you have it folks. The hearts and minds of our future leaders unveiled. Not many of these are helpful to me, but still.... some things just need to be said.

8th Grade Games

2008-03-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

I'm standing here with an 8th grade class of students, many of whom like to play video/computer games.Three of them already played a game this morning before school. 14 of them played a game this weekend. Here are the games they play:
Mortal Kombat
Madden NFL '08
Smackdown vs. Raw 2008
Guitar Hero 1, 2, 3
NBA Live 2008
Dance Dance Revolution
Super Smash Brothers Melee
Mario Kart Double Dash
Mario Party 5,6,7
Flat Out
007 in Russia
FIFA 06, 07, 08
Grand Theft Auto
Thirteen
Frogger
Daxter
Zelda - Windwaker
True Crime
Gods of War
Def Jam Fight for NY
Def Jam Vendetta
Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Halo 2
Dragon Ball Z 1, 2, 3, 4
Naruto Ultimate Ninja 1, 2
Sonic Heroes

So, these are the games my middle schoolers are playing. Where to they do this? With whom?
- at home with cousin
- hospital lobbies with strangers (children's hospital)
- GameStop with other kids
- apartment lobbies with children
- in the car

8 own a PSP
9 own a Nintendo DS
10 own other portables - GameBoy, Sidekick, cell phone

16 out of 22 say they would want to be part of a library gaming event or tournament.
12 out of 22 would want to play games for school

What's Your Favorite Subject?

2008-03-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

I recently surveyed 242 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students at my school about their feelings about school, the library, and video games. This is part of a study I'm doing to look at how the introduction of video and computer games to the library impacts student behavior, engagement, and performance. I have only just begun the tedious work of compiling the data, but curiosity overwhelmed me this afternoon, so I took a premature look at a few of the results. So far, I've only tabulated data for forty-eight 8th-grade boys. Take a look at their favorite and least favorite classes.

Favorite Class
Math 19%
Science 15%
PE 35%
Drama 0%
Digital Art 4%
English 10%
Social Studies 0%
Art 2%
Computers 13%
Service (Office helper) 2%
Dance 0%

Least Favorite Class
Math 31%
Science 2%
PE 2%
Drama 10%
Digital Art 0%
English 15%
Social Studies 13%
Art 2%
Computers 0%
Service 0%
Dance 1%

I wonder how this will pan out when all 242 surveys have been counted, and how boys will differ from girls. Where are our actors? Our Broadway dancers? Our Picassos? When do those talents begin to flourish? And what's wrong with Social Studies? Am I crazy, or are these boys saying that they don't really like maps?!? What's wrong with them? And aren't boys supposed to love math? Why do 31% of them hate it at this school?

I don't remember my favorite subjects in middle school. Because I got to attend a wacky magnet, my favorites might have been yoga, cross-stitch, or music video production. I know that 6th grade was a not a year for loving English class, since my teacher took points off of spelling tests when I didn't make my lowercase cursive 'b' properly (so unfair), not to mention the fact that she owned the exact same pair of ballet-style shoes with bows in about 14 different colors. And she made me read Jane Eyre. In 7th grade, the Art teacher taught science, but I can't remember if that made it my favorite or least favorite class. In PE, we got to roller-skate and square-dance. Who wouldn't like that? They did, however, make us do the dreaded "flexed arm hang" once a year for the presidential fitness test, which is enough to make anyone hate anything.

I'm eager to see the rest of my survey results, and will post them here as they come in.

For Staff Use only

2008-02-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

We have a serious problem with bathrooms at this school.

Our school is organized into several free-standing buildings (the California way) that the students roam between throughout the day for their classes - the gym, the office building, 5 classroom buildings.... Four of the classroom buildings are grouped together in a spoke-like arrangement around a small, round, cement courtyard. They are numbered the 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 buildings. Only the 1000 and 3000 buildings (which face each other, sort of) have bathrooms, and only those bathrooms on the first floor are kept unlocked. During class time. Before school, after school, and Nutrition, and at Lunch, these bathrooms are closed and the bathrooms in the 6000 building (way on the other side of campus) are opened for students. Do you find this difficult to keep straight? Let's throw this into the mix - students are not supposed to leave their classes for the first and last 15 minutes of class time for any reason (to prevent hooliganism, I believe), and during these times ALL of the bathrooms are closed and locked. Do you have it now? Will you remember this easily, after having been given the rundown? Would your 11-year-old self with bladder control issues remember it? Or be able to abide by these clear, sensible, reasonable urination guidelines?

Neither can the students at my school.
The library, of course, has its own single-sex bathroom. It's a gift, a treasure, a hot commodity. That is, until the students begin to find out it's there. They do find out, and pretty quickly, because who am I to deny a wiggling, red-faced youth who will probably not make it down the stairs much less across campus before ruining his life and his day by having an accident? So I let the emergencies sneak back to the Staff Only bathroom, because I am a kind person who is concerned with the prevention of urinary tract infections and all other varieties of torture inflicted by our school's riot-proof setup. Once in a while, though, I cruelly turn on the poor dears, put my foot down, and scream, "No more!". No more will I find paper towels stuffed into the bowl of the toilet (why? really. why?) No more will there be shredded toilet paper trailing out into the library's comfortable sofa and magazine area! No more will a droplet belonging to someone else find its way onto the back of my leg! Enough!

I am in one of these I've-had-it phases now thanks to one particular young man whose name I do not even know. This boy, this insane little boy, has come to the library every day near the end of lunch for 2 weeks. I am always happy to meet a new student and we have become friendly, discussing the video games secret codes book he has been saving up to buy from the Scholastic book orders I provide. Once or twice he has started to leave, realized he blew his chance at an unlocked bathroom, and asked to use mine. Once or twice I have allowed him to do so. He's a little out of it, pretty sweet, and I was just doing a good turn. Then one day I told him it was the last time. He needed to get a grip on the school's bell schedule, on his own time, on the bathroom situation - tomorrow I would not allow it. He agreed.

The next day, young no-name reappears, and when he's told that it's time to go, he leaves with the parade of students storming out...or so it seems. A few minutes later, there's a rustle coming from back by the magazines. No big deal. Another few minutes later a definite clank can be heard from the teacher work room where the bathroom is located. I figure there is, what else, a teacher back there making copies or laminating. Several long minutes later, a flush. Not out of the ordinary at all, until my new nemesis comes slinking out of the room, hoping he will not be seen. A renegade bathroom user! Enough. No more. Staff only. Don't even ask. Don't even think about asking. Learn to hold it, that's my motto. I am done.
I used my best librarian finger-waggle as I shooed him out the door, and I haven't seen him since. Oh wait, that's a lie, he came back again today. I think I might scream.

The Aforementioned Shark

2008-01-30T13:54:00.000-08:00

It is so gross, I can hardly look at it. A hundred times a day, I am forced to answer these questions:
Miss, is this a real shark?
Miss, is it alive? or Miss, is it dead?
Miss, Why does it look like that?
Miss, where did you get it?
Miss, what kind of shark is that?
Miss, what's wrong with it?

Each of these questions is answered (yes, no/yes, because it's dead, from my sadistic clerk Mrs. Rodriguez, I have no idea, it's dead) and then followed by a murmured agreement from the students that "That's cool!" or "That's tight!"

Sadly, all of the preying manti(ses) in my menagerie have died. So now we are a wild kingdom of leftover crickets and a dead baby shark. It has been a seamless transition.

Hats Galore

2008-01-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

Halfway to work this morning, I realized I forgot my laptop at home. Normally this would not be a big deal, but I thought today would be deadsville in the library. late in the day yesterday, all of the teachers who were scheduled to bring in their classes had to cancel. They were sent to a last minute training (thanks for the notice LAUSD) and I don't really do subs. So I thought it would be quiet, even boring, and that I would spend some time on grad school work I've been putting off. It's funny how things turn out. I had a frantically busy day (actually, I'm still having it; this half hour is the first to reflect the tomb-like prediction I made last night). Here is what I have done (in no particular order):
- partially prepared a professional development workshop on effective web-based research techniques
- worked with the 50+ kids who came in before school to check out books
- worked with the 6th grade team to plan their book for the Black History Month fair
- starting planning a bookmobile for the Black History Fair
- checked my email a million times
- made coffee
- supervised 3 student volunteers who are working to pay for a lost book
- supervised 3 student volunteers who are working while off-track
- helped the 100+ kids who vidited the library at Nutrition (morning break)
- ate pastry that my clerk brought in
- taught the advanced chess elective to use chess clocks
- helped the 100+ kids that visited the library at lunch (it's raining, big numbers)
- kicked a kid out for gum and asked him why he didn't by pink gum instead of blue gum since it's easier to hide
- cleaned up something that looked like Corn Pops from the stairwell
- posted photos of chess games on our class chess blog
- watched my 19-year-old assistant avoid work, waste time, and surf the net (I cannot bring myself to be a harsh boss; i want her to have a relazed first job)
- prepared for a technology committee meeting
- checked my email a million times, writing back and forth with my 18 students and my boyfriend
- at a lean cuisine while standing and walking around during the crowded lunch period
- registered for a professional conference
- waited too long to go to the bathroom
- explained to students that, yes, that is a real shark fetus in a jar
- confirmed that, yes, the shark fetus is dead

The day is not over. This list is not complete. I love the variety of my job.