Sweet Pea attends PDD's awards assembly

PDD received a total of 5 awards at the assembly: Honor Roll, Citizenship (her first time receiving this one!), Reading Achievement (for reading more than 25 chapter books this year – WAY more!), Fast Math (a computer math skills program), and one for bringing her homework back each week for the whole quarter (that was a REAL achievement!)

PDD makes Honor Roll, plus 4 other awards!

(That’s her, 4th to the left of Mr. D., her teacher.)

Way to go, PDD!

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PDD’s Awards Assembly

Whatever.

I will be the first to admit that a degree does not ensure or guarantee a great teacher. In fact, some of the most gifted teachers I’ve been exposed to in my life have not had college degrees, much less teaching degrees. But I also know some complete, blooming idiots who managed to make their way through high school, but that’s about it, and I wouldn’t want them in any of my children’s classrooms.

It does strike me as yet another example of ass-backward-ness in our society, though. I mean, we as a society obviously don’t value education the most, because we spend more of our monies elsewhere.

But every time I turn around, someone’s squawking about the lack of good teachers for our classrooms. Well, of course! If you can make more money in almost any other profession other than teaching, you probably won’t be a teacher, unless you are independently wealthy, have a spouse with a great income, or have such a strong, altruistic streak running through you that you put up with personal poverty, lack of appreciation from students, parents, administration, community…ugh…let me switch gears… I’m getting pissed off again…

So, ok – anyway – what I really want to say is there are as many ways to support quality education for our youth as there are those of us willing to support it. You don’t have to be a teacher to make a difference. Our schools are starving – literally starving – for resources. If you have time, volunteer. Go read to an elementary class, tutor a student, be a lunch buddy – be a visible presence in your school system, whether you have children in it, or not. Every little bit helps. Adopt a teacher – help him or her purchase supplies needed for their classroom that the school district’s budget doesn’t provide. If you do have children in the school system – get involved! Nothing sends a clearer message to your child that education is important than your active involvement in theirs.

I don’t mean to get preachy on you, but I’d really like my own mistakes in this area to serve as a wakeup call to more people than just me. I was way less involved in Oldest Son’s education, and I know it played a part in his giving up on it and dropping out. By the time I did get actively involved, it was too little, too late. My talk was always ‘education is important’ but my walk said other things were more important. I don’t remember the name of a single one of his teachers, but I can tell you the names of all of Second Son’s teachers in the last 5 years and all of PDD’s teachers. Not only can I name them, they can name me. I’m here to tell you, it makes a difference.

So, I’m going to click ‘publish’ and go celebrate the beautiful weather we’re enjoying here today and get outside with my kids and revive a little of that childhood glee I felt on the last day of school. This summer is going to be a busy one, but it’s not here yet. Right now, all that matters is it’s Friday, there’s no school tomorrow and it’s gorgeous outside. Time to go play!

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Last Day of School For Me!

“Here’s the real deal, folks. Getting a high school diploma today does not show the world you have received a basic education. It simply means you’ve proven you can put up with the BS of an outdated system for 4 years and get that required piece of paper. It tells the world that you can ‘work within whatever system you find yourself’, that you are able to delay gratification, that you can be reliable and show up. All very valuable abilities to possess, true enough. BUT – it does not guarantee you’ve been educated. That is YOUR job, and only YOU can guarantee that.”

This starts some great discussions and the kids usually leave saying they wish I was their regular teacher. I know better – I’m in exactly the right teaching position for me: substitute.

Having had a child drop out of high school myself, I have a front-row seat to the frustration and limits imposed on his choices now as he approaches his 21st birthday. Without the diploma, he has to prove himself at every turn, more so than he would have had to with one. Watching him try to get through school was another “peel a band-aid off the hairy part of your arm – REAL SLOW” experience, and I did my best with what I knew at the time to help him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much or nearly enough.

I know more today, and I still have two more kids to get through our educational system. I’m much more available to them than I was with my oldest because I work from home, and now I’m in a much better position to advocate for them…and I do. I know that I can’t fix the problems of our public education system single-handedly, but I can do what I can do.

I can put myself in a position to reach students who might be struggling with the decision to drop out or not and empower them by telling them that ultimately their education (or lack thereof) is up to them. You’d think that would just piss them off and make them decide to quit, but so far, it hasn’t. It seems to have the effect of making them stop and think, at least in my presence. I tell them it’s their job to wring every last drop of value out of the time they spend in the schools, since they have to be there, anyway. If they want to ‘get one over on the establishment’, then I advise them to show up those who have written them off and say they won’t make it – and make it. Take all that rebellion and rebel in a way that will serve them in the long run.

Statistically, there is a 41% drop-out rate at Second Son’s high school as of the 2006-2007 school year. Last year’s student population was just over 1,000 students. I don’t know the size of last year’s freshman class, but this year it is over 500, alone. So, statistically, only 300 of them will graduate. I point that out in the classes, too. I have them all stand up and I send 40% of them to one side of the room and 60% of them to the other side. Then, I point at the 40% group and I say, “Statistically, you guys aren’t going to graduate.” I tell the students that, at the end of the day, only they have the power to change that number.

Then I ask the 40% group if they’re ok with not graduating, and almost always, all of them yell, “No!” So, I tell them to flip the bird at me and that statistic and cross over to the other side of the room…and whenever they feel like giving up, to remember how good it felt to flip the bird at someone telling them they can’t do something like graduate.

This might be a little unorthodox, but I believe you have to reach them before you can teach them. This reaches them…where they’re at. (And yes, I tell them don’t be flipping the bird outside of my classroom…lol)

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The Value of a High School Diploma

We’re in the last month of school, and the kids are interested in anything and everything but school. So substituting for an English teacher who’s in the middle of reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” was not fun. The not fun part was watching the kids blow this classic off.

Of course, it didn’t help that the teacher has the kids listen to it on CD while following along in their books. Yeah – like that was happening today. Even the most diligent students’ minds were wandering.

I had Second Son in 6th hour, and he, at least, didn’t act up and talk the whole way through class. But he wasn’t listening or reading, either. To him, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is just a stupid book he has to muddle through to get a passing grade. He told me just now, “I’ll just watch the movie and take the test.”

AAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!

My frustration with public education knows no bounds today.

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Like Peeling a Band-Aid Off the Hairy Part of Your Arm…REAL SLOW

Despite the fact that it was 11pm, I decided to watch The Freedom Writers, a movie I’d been wanting to see forever, and which NetFlix so kindly delivered in the mail earlier that day.

I. Was. Blown. Away.

(Not only do I strongly recommend watching this movie, go visit the Freedom Writers Foundation website, too.)

Both the middle school and the high school where I teach are considered ‘at-risk’ schools, not quite as violence-prone as the high school in the movie, but then Tulsa is not nearly as big as L.A., either. It’s really not that much different, as I found out Thursday.

I was at the middle school again Thursday and yesterday, teaching 7th grade geography. During 2nd hour, one of the boys started feeling sick and asked to go to the bathroom. He looked all washed out and had broken out in a sweat, so I let him go. The boys bathroom was right next door to my class, so I stood out in the hallway waiting on him. I didn’t hear anything and poked my head in the door and called to him. A faint little voice answered back, but I couldn’t understand what he said. So I got another boy out of my classroom to go find me an adult male to send in the bathroom. The security guard comes back with him and goes in to find the first boy sprawled out on the bathroom floor. He scooped him up and took him to the nurse.

The bell rang and my 3rd hour class arrived. The first thing we do with 3rd hour is line them up and take them to the cafeteria for lunch, and in doing that, I turned around to find one of my girls had fallen in the hallway at the back of the line. I went back to see what was going on – I thought they were goofing around. No, she was dizzy and unable to stand on her own. She fell again, and this time I scooped her up and put her arm around my shoulder and was trying to help her walk, when she started to fall again and almost took me to the floor with her. The vice principal just happened to come out of his office and ran over and scooped her up on the other side and told me to go get the wheelchair from the nurse. We sent the rest of the class to lunch.

When I wheeled her to the nurse’s office, I made the comment, “Something is getting to my kids – this is the second one with the same symptoms in under 30 minutes.” The nurse asked me to go get some orange juice for them, so I went to the cafeteria and returned with the juice. The first boy’s mom had been called and was on her way. I asked what she thought was wrong with them, and she said that the boy’s vitals were fine, but that the girl’s blood pressure was really low.

I had about 10 minutes of my lunch break left, so I went out to my car and sat listening to NPR for a few minutes, still puzzled about what was going on with my kids.

I went back to collect my kids from lunch, and by the time we got back to the classroom, I was missing another boy. He was in the line, but now he wasn’t in the classroom. Before I could investigate where he went, another girl told me she was feeling sick and needed to go to the nurse. She asked if I would walk with her because she felt dizzy.

We got to the nurse’s office and there was my missing boy! Now this makes 4 students from my class in less than an hour. The nurse and I just looked at each other, puzzled, and I told her I had to get back to my class because I’d left a student in charge. I told her to call the classroom if she found out anything.

When I got back to the classroom, I walked in on an animated conversation/debate and all I caught of what was said was, “…they are so stupid. This is what they get…”

I shut the door behind me and said, “Ok, guys…cough it up. What’s going on? This is not the time to be worrying about being considered a snitch – you could be saving 4 lives – tell me what they did.”

They all took pills that another kid had brought to school. Some of them, more than one.

I went back to the nurse’s office and told her, and she called the vice principal and we told him and I went back to my class.

Within 5 minutes, security had locked me and the rest of my kids in our room, searched the room, removed our trash and by the time 3rd hour was over, had removed 6 of my students to the principal’s office.

By the end of the day, two students were in the hospital, one was in juvenile detention, and another 6-7 had been brought to the nurse’s office from other classes and sent home. In total, about a dozen 7th graders had had adverse reactions to the pills they’d taken, and we still don’t know how many more kids took pills that day but didn’t get sick.

What I realized is that I have had every one of the stories from Freedom Writers in a classroom at one point or another, and our public education system is ill-equipped to deal with the realities of these kids’ lives. I have students in my classrooms who are beaten at home. I have students who sell drugs to put food on the table. I have students who carry weapons to make it to school unharmed. And to tell these kids, “Call 911″ or “Selling drugs isn’t the way” or “We’re sending you to juvie for coming to school with a weapon” is to miss the entire point.

Then I get home to find Adopted Son has been suspended for 5 days for not telling a teacher his name. I thought there must be more to the story than that…but no, there’s not. A teacher he doesn’t have demanded he tell him his name and his response was, “Why?”

So, instead of kicking him out of here and sending him back to mom, I told him he would be going to work for my neighbor on the days I’m teaching. There’d be no laying around enjoying not having to be at school. And I told him he’d lost his phone privileges (except for talking to his mom and his little brother) until he was back in school. That, alone, will probably kill him. And yes, we’ve had the conversation about how he could have responded to avoid getting suspended. We also talked about the perceptions of people at school about him and how most of the people don’t look past what they see in his file or the mean-mug look on his face that he wears to protect himself.

Something is going on in my life. Something that I can’t put my finger on. And the song from Sunday School is playing loudly in my head….

“…this little Light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…”

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Life Imitates Art, or the Other Way Around?

Today, when I walked in, I was greeted with, “Hey! We missed you!” in every class.

But then, this was the 8th grade, many of whom are good friends with Second Son. This year’s 7th grade class is the bunch that took my keys last time I subbed, and this year’s 6th grade class? Zoo animals, I tell you…the whole lot of them. But the 8th grade class I can deal with. I know them, they (most of them) know me and I enjoy my days with them.

All of which further cements for me that:

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Back to School

1. Back when I still believed life turns out the way you plan if you take the time to plan, I wanted to be a teacher.

2. No daycare issues.

3. I am not one of those glorified babysitter subs…I prefer to actually teach!

4. I get to do something I love enough that I’d do it for free, which works out well, because as bad as teacher salaries are, they pay subs even less.

5. I choose the days I work. I choose the schools and even the classes.

6. I get to make a difference every now and then.

7. No spending all hours nights and weekends grading papers.

8. I can do anything for 50 minutes that might make me suicidal to contemplate doing every day. Meaning, if I had to be there everyday, sooner or later I’d want to strangle a few of the little suckers…for real.

9. When the students walk in the room and see me, their general reaction is, “Yes! A sub! And a cool one, at that!” Pretty awesome on the days your own kids won’t claim you.

10. When the teacher leaves behind no lesson plan (which happens more often than not), I get to wing it. Particularly in the high school, this is a LOT of fun. I’ve had some really great discussions with students about personal accountability, what it means to be a leader no matter who or where you are, strategic quitting, the real meaning of a high school diploma these days, how to be who you really are in the face of peer pressure, how to make decisions based on more than what feels good right now, and a whole lot of other “interesting” topics.

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10 Things I Like About Being a Substitute Teacher