Settle in. It's a long one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, duh.

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

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

Mrs. Cook: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

Poor Mrs. Cook: Yes, that is correct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scenario One – What Dewey Teach, Anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TL: That is correct.

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

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

Gasps from the audience. What does this even mean?

UTLA: Objection. Vague.

Judge: Sustained.

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

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

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

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

Judge: Sustained. Move on.

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

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

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

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

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

TL: Do you mean the standards?

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

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

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

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

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

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

TL: Yes, I do.

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

TL: I would.

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

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

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

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

Here are some examples of the first grade PE standards:

· Kick a rolled ball from a stationary position

· Identify the right and left sides of the body

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

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

Scenario Three – Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

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

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

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

LAUSD: So, you taught them research skills?

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

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

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

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

TL: Yes, briefly, I did.

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

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

LAUSD: Please, if you wouldn’t mind.

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

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

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

Scenario Four – Gotcha!

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

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

TL: I teach all day long.

LAUSD: You teach all day?

TL: Yes.

LAUSD: Do you ever catalog books?

TL: Yes.

LAUSD: Are you teaching while you are cataloging books?

TL: (pause) No.

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

TL: Yes.

LAUSD: Are you teaching while writing these purchase orders?

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

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

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

The lawyers returned to their tables.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Prediction in Ten Simple Steps:

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

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

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

Flirting with Disaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Lame-Ass teaching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Failure to Launch

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

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

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

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

How to do a PowerPoint/Slide Show

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

Then go to bottom left and lick on All Programs

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

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

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

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

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

the Writer Lady's challenge

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

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

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

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

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

What's in a Name?

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

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

For Staff Use only

We have a serious problem with bathrooms at this school.

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

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

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

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