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.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Some Serious Social Injustice
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....
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....
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Who needs good teachers? Not us!
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.
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.
Friday, February 6, 2009
The Problem with People
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
I'm Surrounded!
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Robert and Javier - Bloggers!
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.
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.
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