condoning the violence

Even if a kid is an asshole, it doesn't make witnessing his mamma knock him upside the head any less shitty.

But hey, the other kid whose mamma beats him? Well, we don't want to refer him to child services because "there's a backlog" and it won't do any good. So if we won't do anything but watch it happen and keep punishing the kid...well, I'm noticing that many of the people I work with have no problem with kids getting the crap kicked out of them by their parents. That's good for 'em, right? There's no such thing as a cycle of violence, right?

Great. Just fucking great.

two steps back?

So horribly frustrated with my kids right now. I just don't know what to do. I feel like I'm reliving last year. I don't know why they act this way, I don't know why I can't get them to stop taunting each other, I don't know why I can't get them to pay attention, I don't know why things seem to be getting worse instead of better and I don't know why the things I do to make it better just never seem to work. I hate that I snap at the stupidest things. I hate that I put up with the things I put up with, that I feel helpless to stop the kids from poking, teasing, throwing, yelling, etc. I hate that other people seem to get a response from my kids but I can't.

What is it about ME? What's wrong with ME?

There was this great segment on This American Life on Sunday about a program in Harlem and Baby College for low-income parents. Everyone should go listen to it. It reminded me of my kids and their parents and now it's kind of making me feel helpless and angry.

I don't know what the sudden burst of pessimism is about. Just tired, I guess. Worn down and trying not to show it, trying not to crack. Tired of being treated like I don't exist by bunch of punkass little adolescents. Tired of the show. Tired of being the one who has to put on a front in the face of all the whining and pushing and shoving and picking and picking and picking. Tired of feeling like I'm repeating some of this crap from last year.

I'm tired of my help and my support not being very helpful or supportive. I'm tired of not having the special ed teacher when I'm supposed to be working with the special ed teacher. I'm tired of having paraprofessionals that don't know my content and correcting the mistakes that they tell my children are correct, tired of paras who won't help my kids because they can't look past the behaviors, of feeling like I'm in this madhouse of a classroom trying to pull a miracle out of my ass.

Really, this is the most frustrating thing that I run into over and over and over: the adults who are supposed to help my kids academically who are hurting my kids because they don't know the content! It makes me want to scream. If you won't help with the behaviors and the accommodations that my students are supposed to receive, at least you could not confuse the shit out of my students who don't need as much help.

Fuck this shit.

open house - year two

So exhausted. Twelve and half hours at school today to stay for Open House. Kids acting up this afternoon. Hell only knows what I'm going to do about it. But there were lots of mamas and grandmas and aunties and one father at school tonight and that is a very good sign. Makes my work harder in a good way.

But right now, too exhausted. No time for, you, Gustav - I've got kids to teach, motherfucker. Get the hell out of my way.

more rising tide mental purging

Rising Tide III was worth skipping derby, if only to give me things to chew on in my blog. While everything else was interesting in its own right, I'm still mentally stuck on all the things said during the education panel because that's really the only area under discussion where I feel like I can have any sort of informed opinion (and even then, huge gaps in my knowledge). As I said before, this really needed a whole other conference to really get at the heart of the matter and cover everything that ought to be covered. I was physically shaking half-way through just through sheer frustration/inspiration/information overload.

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around a thought that hasn't quite made all its connections yet. All sorts of information that I have just been too busy or sheltered to stumble across yet, new perspectives. But let me say that Cliff was a valuable addition to the panel and I wanted to hear more from him. After a lot of discussion today about those who are working to undermine and privatize public schools and some pretty direct negativity about the state of charters in the city, what I felt was lacking was a sense of what's going right (if anything) and what parents want for their kids. Cliff brought that, I think, but we need more.

When I was at the CEC conference in Boston this spring, I attended a presentation about a program that was aimed at helping families who had to deal with multiple government agencies (schools, social workers, probation officers, etc), consolidating their needs. And what the organizers found to be the most effective way to get the parents to "buy in" was not to try and tell them what to do or dictate what they should have to run their families or their kids' lives. It was simply to ask them what they needed and then to provide that. It made the biggest difference in the long run as far as improvement for students with special needs in inner city schools and their acheivement levels.

This comes to mind now because of what was brought up in the panel about charters being created or schools being converted without community imput. It is desparately needed, however, I don't believe that New Orleans has the mechanism to really reach out to the parents. And, as great as the blogger community is here, I don't know that this is even an effective medium to really get to some of the most isolated and marginalized people in the city. The people who really need someone to just ask them what they need. Not to tell them what help they are going to get (which is what our school systems are doing in large part) but to really get out there and ask people what help they really want.

More is brewing in the synapses, but I'll take an interwebs breather for now.

report cards

Today was report card conferences. Two parents from my homeroom class came to collect their child's report card. One of those volunteers/works at school. Other parents from other homerooms came in but most didn't stop to talk. Just took their kid's failed test and left. I want to cry just looking at the math grades in comparison to most students' other grades. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong to give out all those Fs.

Today I feel like shit. Just personally, I felt like shit about today. The kids were little bastards all day. And the parents, by their absence, proved to me why this is the case.

Also, kids call each other 'white' as an insult. In front of me. This really, really fucking upsets me.

D is back in my class from his suspension - the effect was immediate and immediately bad. I waver from hour to hour. For one moment I know that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, for the next I think I've made the biggest mistake ever. This teaching stuff, it's an emotional backflip for me. Cool and collected and stern and unfazed and as motherly/teacherly as I know how to be on the outside. Just shattered and frustrated on the inside. Simultaneously energized and exhausted.

Education, you will make a wreck of me yet.

parent or guardian?

This is probably because I grew up in the typical nuclear family, but making the parent phone calls today is totally awkward and weird. Am I looking for a mom? A dad? A grandmother? The mom isn't home and the dad is there but he doesn't actually live there. Another mom (I think...?) really doesn't sound like she gives a rat's ass what time school starts. More than a few of the numbers I have are disconnected or just plain wrong. I'm about half way through my calls and the thought of finishing is very discouraging.