Going in for the kill

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

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?

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

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:

1. 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).
2. Or, I could have the principal from that school write a statement of my assignment. Sorry! She's retired.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.)
7. 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.
8. The principal on maternity leave verifies my assignment and faxes me a statement.
9. 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.

I am the Decider

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.

Chuck Norris knows no boundaries.

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.

I Am a Nerd Magnet

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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.