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 Let's say I get a hearing and my RIF is rescinded.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Still, I shall try to get a hearing and I will try to get my RIF rescinded. Perhaps Governor Brown will make good on that $3 billion dollar IOU and we'll all get rescinded.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.

Cut Off One Head, See What You Get?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Root Cause

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Student Homepage dot com

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

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

"How do I get to the student homepage?"

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

"The what?" she says.

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

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

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

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

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

Charitable Giving

It takes a while to get a new book into a school library. Let's say, for example, that I see a need for a certain title and decide to add it to the collection. To do this through the proper channels, I would need to secure funding, order from a district approved vendor, wait about a month for the vendor and the district to communicate about payment, wait about another month for the vendor to process the book (add bar codes, etc) and mail it out, upload the record for the book into the library's circulation software (if the system hasn't crashed and the record isn't corrupted), stamp the book, add the school's labels to the book, and only then can I put the book out for circulation.
This doesn't really sound that bad, except that securing funding can take months, and usually that comes in a lump sum. So what happens when a student says, "Miss! Did you you hear that the new volume in the ____series is coming out this week? Are you going to get it?" Or what about when I go to a bookstore for my own reasons and see that a fabulous YA writer has a new novel?
What happens is... I buy the book. I can't help it. My students NEED it. I know how it feels to wait on pins and needles for the next book in a series or by my favorite author; I do it all the time. The process for acquiring library books just doesn't allow for small purchases at random intervals. If I just by the dang book, all I have to do is stamp it, print out a bar code for it, and add it to the circulation system myself (too easy!), and VOILA! Someone is reading it immediately.
So today I added up the receipts I've kept throughout 2007. The sum total of this compulsion of mine turns out to be $749.93. Pretty steep when you think about the fact that this is not really an accurate representation of what I've purchased, (I'm not great at record-keeping).
Here's what the students were so desperate to read:
The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray (I am dying to read this as well)
The Bellmaker by Brian Jacques
The Pearls of Lutra by Brian Jacques
It's a Girl Thing: How to stay healthy, safe, and in charge
Sisters of Isis: Divine One by Lynne Ewing
Sons of the Dark: Night Sun by Lynne Ewing
Gilda Joyce: the Ghost Sonata by Jennifer Allison
A Girl's Life Online by Katherine Tarbox
Bec by Darren Shan
New Moon and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (this was me too)
Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
Grand & Humble by Brent Hartinger
The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
Harry Potter 7 (well, duh)
Hit and Run by Lurlene McDaniel
The End of Forever by Lurlene McDaniel
about 10 others by Lurlene McDaniel

There's more, of course, but this is a pretty clear picture. All but 2 of these are either part of a series or are by authors who churn out amazing numbers of books with similar themes and stories (hence the addiction). I can't keep up. It's really fun to try, though.

High School Scares Me

On Friday, I spent the day at a very large high school just south of downtown Los Angeles. I will spend 9 days there this semester as part of the field work that is required for my graduate studies. To tell the truth, I thought that I would be immediately intoxicated by the maturity, the independence, the intellectual freedom a high school would surely have to offer. I assumed that I would be coming back to the first tug towards a life in education that I experienced thanks to my 11th grade English Lit teacher. It would be like spending time with my middle school kids, only they would be smarter and more well-spoken. I would be WOWed by the difference a few years can make.

I was WOWed all right. High school was not what I remembered or expected. Was it just this high school? Perhaps. I hope. Oh, please. Or is it just that I am now a lover of middle school personalities, booger-humor, petty arguments, and cracking voices? That might also be true. To begin to explain my reaction to high school, here are a few of my observations:
- Almost all of the students in the library were using some sort of electronic device that is technically outlawed by the school district, like iPods, cell phones, hand-held video game systems. Although I cannot fault anyone for wanting to listen to music while they browse, research, or read, it was simply a shock to see it happening.
- When those students were asked to put their electronics away, they did not. Or they did, but then they took them back out less than one minute later.
- Very few students checked out books compared to what I am used to. Maybe 5-10% of what I would have thought.
- Of an entire 12th grade economics class, not one single student was sophisticated enough at using the Internet to successfully conduct research on a given topic. The best any of them could do was to google a vague term and shuffle through results without really taking in any information.
- One of these 12th graders was very, very pregnant. A group of girls came in later that day to ask if the library carried baby names books. It did not.
- The student workers in the library were very smart, hospitable, and articulate.
- After the lunch period, there were at least 150 students milling around campus, looking as if they had no intention of finding their classes. I took a walk at this time and noticed: a group of hulking, intimidating boys in a stairwell; a couple making out in a stairwell; a pair of cigarette-panted, thin, mod boys darting out of a stairwell when they heard me coming (smoking? lovers?); a group of couples (girls on laps, of course) lingering at the cafeteria tables; four teachers walking right past this as if nothing was wrong; zero adults working to get these kids to class.
- They have a POOL!
- A young man came to the library to ask for books that would help him learn how to read. He said that he only knows how to read a little bit. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to buy him a gift for being to brave. I wanted to shake each and every one of his previous teachers (he was in at least 11th grade) for not helping him sooner.
- There is a great college and career center at the school. Each time I walked by (3 times) it was empty except for the hopeful adult stationed there.
- Some of the students have completed all the coursework available to them at a certain grade level, and so have nothing to do for 2 periods a day. Even though there is a community college two blocks away, the solution to this problem is to have these kids sit in the library. Doing.....

I know there's more, but I am overwhelmed just remembering this much. I am sure that there are wonderful things happening in high schools, but I felt such disappointment and sadness at the end of my time on this very first day. The adults seems resigned. The students (that I saw) seemed blissfully uninterested. That's not entirely true - I did meet a few girls who were filling out college applications. I liked that. How do you run a school when some of the students there are legal adults? How do you tell a legal adult to spit out his gum? How do you promote reading for pleasure and the use of the library during lunchtime when the school is so populated that some kids don't even get through the lunch line before the bell rings for the next class? Why haven't 12th graders learned anything more about online research than what we are teaching them in 8th grade?

I hope that I am speaking to soon. Maybe the next time I am there, I will discover some of the romanticized high school life in the movies, the life that I superimpose on my own memories to make it seem like high school was fun. After all, no one at this high school (at least that I saw) poked anyone else with a pencil, was a tattletale, crawled on the ground under a desk just for fun, or ran through the aisles chasing the object of their affection. Of course, what's so wrong with those sorts of middle-grade, impulsive, uninhibited behaviors? For all that I moan and groan about the immaturity of middle school kids, I think this experience will make me love them all the more. Those poor, poor 9th graders. How did any of us get through it?

The Cat is So Wise, It's No Wonder

The priorities of middle school readers are quite clear. It's comics and horror that they want. Give them slime! Give them boogers! Give them fangs and drool and mutant growths and funny cats and they are happy forever. Here is a list of the most-borrowed-books from this middle school library since July of this year, in order of popularity. How many have you read?

Goosebumps: Don't Go to Sleep
The 4th Garfield Treasury
Double Trouble (a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen book, if you can believe that)
Garfiled Eats His Heart Out
Garfielf Weighs In
Garfield at Large
The Simpsons Holiday Humdinger
Face to Face with the Lizard
Duel with Daredevil
Spiderman and Captain America
Garfield Makes it Big
Scream School
Scooby Doo: Surf's Up!
Krusty Krab Adventures (a Spongebob Squarepants book)
The Amazing Spiderman
Among the Imposters (the only real novel on this list, this book is the 2nd in a fantastic dystopian fiction series)
Cuckoo Clock of Doom
Stay Out of the Basement
Welcome to Camp Nightmare
Say Cheese and Die - Again!
Sonrie y muerte - otra vez!
Attack of the Jack-o-Lanterns
Killers of the Dawn (ok, this is a real novel too, part of the Cirque du Freak vampire series)
Night of the Living Dummy III
Junie B Jones is Almost a Flower Girl
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (why this one?)
Draw 50 Aliens, UFOs, and Galazy Ghouls

There you have it. Middle school in a nutshell. What more can I say?

Out of the Blue (Which Happens to Be One of Our School Colors)

In a faculty meeting today, my bristly principal announced that our school was the only one in the local district (meaning in a very large area that is already larger than any respectable school district should be, but is only a small portion of LAUSD) to meet its annual goals for raising test scores for the '06-'07 school year. Huh.

She then told us that all of the subgroups (yes, that's what we call them) met their goals as well. This means African-American students, English Language Learners, and Students with Disabilities all improved. Huh.

She then thanked "all of the people who come into contact with the students each day" for making this happen. She never said teachers. The clerical staff looked nervous.

So what does this means? 15% of our students are performing at a proficient level, according to state tests. This is up from 12% last year, and it was even lower in years before. For this accomplishment, we were given cake (2 kinds!). And lemonade. Pink lemonade.

It is true that there is momentum building at our school, and that library circulation is up 1,000 books a month from just one year ago, and that we had elective classes for the first time in 8 years last year, and that our teachers are forming effective teams for the first time, and that we had math contests, reading contests, and other incentives for the first time....maybe ever! These things should most certainly help raise test scores, and I believe they should be credited. We may be experiencing a revolution at this school. This may be the beginning of an unprecedented upswing. They may make a movie about us called "It Took a Village", "Criminally Intelligent", or "Up from the Streets".

As I watched the PowerPoint slides that stylishly listed our achievements, a horrible part of me couldn't help thinking that this was somehow staged. Could someone have tampered with our scores? Why now? Why had we never improved before? Doesn't it seem convenient that this happened right before the state takes drastic measures, like firing the administration and taking over the school itself?

But then I looked around at all the happy and befuddled teachers eating cake and I thought, nah. Things might actually be looking up. This is a real crack team and we're on the case. Huh.

PS - no word from Ralph's.

Testing Schmesting

This week students all over Los Angeles are hunkering down for the state tests that have plagued us all for eons. Well, maybe not eons. And maybe not plagued. I, for one, loved taking these tests as a child. Knowing the right answer pleased me, and puzzling out the more difficult ones pleased me more. When I took standardized tests, I felt that I was proving something, showing what I was made of, bringing it all together at the end of the year.
I am afraid that this is not the case for the most of ths students I teach today. For many students in urban school districts, the tests are nearly punishment. "Do well or our school will get less money." "Try hard or next year you might not have art class!" These are the messages sent to sweet sixth, seventh, and eight grade souls who are struggling to keep their heads above water on a normal school day, let alone one packed with such cruel consequences.
As library media teacher I no longer have a class to test, so I was assigned to assist in a 6th-grade classroom. When I asked how many of the students had remembered to prepare for the test by eating breakfast, six kids raised their hands. Six children had eaten breakfast. This is no good. Something else that is not good is the fact that it was six out of thirty-seven! 37 students were crammed into a classroom to take a test that holds the school's fate in its hands. One was sitting at a table that was piled with textbooks, only a small clear space in front of him in which to spread out his testing materials. Another sat at a computer table, shoving the keyboard and mouse to the side to make room. No distractions there! The rest of the kids were sitting at group tables, facing each other. FACING EACH OTHER. Not good. Did I mention that the air-conditioning was not working? It was sweltering inside that room. 37 kids x 98.6 degrees + hooded sweatshirts to cover up ugly uniforms + no breakfast = disasterous results. I believe this is what is called a stacked deck.
This will go on all week. It is torture for all involved. Will the results tell us what these students have learned in a year? Will they tell us that the school has recently added art, drama, anthropology, digital imaging, and computer classes after a seven-year drought of no elective classes? Will they tell us that the assistant principal plays jazz and world music over speakers at lunchtime? Can the test possibly show that these students are begging to take home one of the library's praying mantises, or that they want to do well so badly they could cry?
As I left the testing room to wander back to my oasis, I saw a hand-drawn sign adorning a science class door that read "We Will Do Are Best On The Test." I nearly wept.

Thievery Update

The crime is more vast that could have imagined. For those of you who read my post "The Fine Art of Thievery", I have an important update. I also have some words that I must reluctantly eat.
Today I found out the THE LITTLE RASCAL HAS GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT BEFORE! I am struck dumb. I thought I was soooooo clever, writing about how good I am at busting young criminal masterminds. Well, I have been challenged. I now know that my skills need some honing.
The perp's sister came into the library this morning, to return some books that her brother had "checked out" (yeah, right). She knew what happened yesterday, and when she got home from school and saw him reading library books, she decided to do a good deed (knowing he was banned for the moment) and return them for him. OR, the two siblings thought it would be a good laugh to flaunt their skills and prove me inferior. Either way, the sister unzipped her backpack and produced.....two more pro-wrestling books from the same series. I kid you not. My face fell. At that moment I knew that I had been duped.
I told the sister that these were similar to the book her brother had been trying to smuggle the day before. She looked appopriately shocked. I looked up the computer's record of their checkout history, and guess what I found? That's right. He had never checked them out.

Well, security system be damned. This kid was better than I thought. My only consolation is that this recidivist is now on my radar.