blogging

i talked with my grandma yesterday (hi grandma!!!!) and one thing we chatted about is blogging. she mentioned that i had written a bit but i haven't been blogging as much lately as i have been in the past. i know from personal experience that it's so much more fun to go to a blog when there's a new post up...and eventually, you stop visiting blogs that rarely or never get new posts. you just forget about them, right? so anyways--i'm here.

Anyways—I’m in San Diego now, staying with some friends of Jesse’s from college. I know them too—they are awesome! It’s great to see them and spend some time together. Most remarkable, though, is the feeling of being on vacation. I mean, we have already been off school for ten days. But yesterday truly felt like a day of vacation. We arrived and sat around and hung out. Jesse and his friend (the husband of the couple) went to his friend’s lab at UCSD and I stayed at home with the wife. We watched TV (Project Runway and Wife Swap—don’t ask!) and commented on the TV shows and chatted about the holidays and just hung out. It was so much more relaxing than anything I had done so far on vacation. I mean, there have been great parts of this break but truly, I so know the benefit of not being at home. Because at home, there is always laundry to do and there are always places to go, dishes to wash, schoolwork to deal with. I can’t sit still at home—I sort of have a reputation for that, actually. Being somewhere else just removes the option of doing a million things—it’s so needed! I mean, of course I am still working, but it’s just not the same. I’m at an unfamiliar café doing some planning for January and February. But I don’t feel stress or pressure. It’s just great, that’s all. And I am appreciating vacations and remembering why I love vacation. It doesn’t hurt that I’m looking out a huge picture window with a view of the ocean. I got a great spot—we are in La Jolla and I chose just the right seat.

school attendance

hmmmm. weird. yesterday I posted a blog entry at about 12:15 pm from school. less than 24 hours later I’m at school again and the website is now blocked. that’s annoying and kind of surprising. but I’ve got to get this down so I’ll write it here. I’m supposed to be grading….that’s why I am at school on a Saturday morning.

yesterday one of my black female students wasn’t in school all day. her family is homeless—in the past, they’ve lived in a shelter and now they’re moving around between friends’ houses—which has caused her to miss school in the past. she’s bright and can focus when she comes to school, but it’s not good when she misses school.

her interpretation of why she didn’t come to school is that our assistant principal told her that she had to get her hair done (braids or curls or something) before she could come back to school. apparently what he told her is that if she came to school wearing a hat again (which I guess she had worn the day before but it hadn’t registered with me) he would send her home. so she interpreted it as ‘stay home for a whole entire day and get your hair done before you come back to school.’ it’s certainly not the first time a kid has stayed home from school to get their hair done, but the fact that the message, in whatever form, came from an administrator (who happens to also be black) is really disturbing. I want my kids in school. yes, they need to follow the dress code and keep their heads uncovered in class. but the biggest reason for that is so I can see their eyes—and know they’re paying attention—and so I can see their ears to know they aren’t listening to headphones. apparently her hat didn’t phase me because I could see her eyes and ears without any problem. baseball hats and hoods are really the thing that I notice.

I’m thinking of emailing my principal about this because it just really rubbed me the wrong way. an administrator, especially a black administrator with women in his life, should know well enough that a black girl who won’t come to school without a hat on a day that her hair isn’t done isn’t going to come back til her hair is done. middle school girls are self conscious and she’s especially a beauty queen. plus, add the fact that she’s homeless to the mix and you’ll find that she doesn’t want any reason to be teased. duh! she’s gonna stay home til her hair gets done, which is a big production.

grrrr. and you wonder what’s wrong with urban education.

the messy art of teaching

i do actually think teaching is part art, even though TFA thinks it's pure science. the art part of it gets me through the day, though.

but really, i am thinking of the messy art of a colleague. we are teaching the same story. it is from the textbook, but it has a video that accompanies it. that's the fun part, the buy in, for the kids. so i got the video from the video store and told her she could borrow it. she sends a kid over during the class she's planning to show it in (i didn't need it until way later in the day and she totally could have asked me for it earlier). the following period (we have the same free period) she came in to return the video to me and tell me that her LCD projector wasn't working so she couldn't play it on her computer, and her TV was facing the wrong way so she tried to have kids gather around it (out of their desks). she said she spent a good deal of the period trying to make the media work as well as disciplining/referrals. (apparently she sent 5 kids to the office. to put it in perspective, i think i've written maybe 6 referrals so far this year.)

okay, i forgot to say that she's a new teacher and i'm really trying to support her in a helpful but not critical way. when she came in and told me this stuff about her media not working, i thought "oh geez. she should have checked it before school began." then i thought, "how can you suggest that she check her media in a non-negative/scolding way?" so i said, "oh man. i've totally been there before. i guess you learned to check your media before your lesson begins. i learned that lesson the hard way too." maybe it was rude what i said, maybe not helpful, but she totally glossed over it and just kept complaining.

i'm trying to help. really i am. there are a few first year teachers at our school who are acting like the only people this has ever happened to--the only people who have ever gone through something like this. maybe they're confiding in me for some reason because i did TFA, also, i dunno, but really....there's this other girl who can be really rude when she's in a bad mood and i just think that acting that way towards your co-workers is innapropriate.

it's weird, too, because i'm almost finished reading this book called "relentless pursuit" about TFA's organization, selection process, and the first year of teaching for 4 kids at locke high school in los angeles. it talks all about how they use data and this really specific process of rating to select TFA teachers. they make profiles of successful teachers and then try to select new corps members who fit that profile. they make profiles of teachers who quit and try to avoid selecting new corps members who fit that profile. and yet two people from my school have quit and one is miserable. go figure--see, i told you that it's an art, not a science. i don't know, i really have a lot of faith in TFA but this book and all its data is pretty weird and amazing.

so yeah. things are going well for me. i have a new system where kids get up to 10 minutes of "game/free" time on fridays. it's really really fun. so far i have gotten to do a puzzle and play apples to apples with my kids. they definitely earned it--the idea is that if they don't waste those ten minutes of time during class, they get them at the end of the week.