allow me to stand up for my flawed little institution

After RT3 yesterday, I was inspired to catch up on the blogs of panelists that I either had never read or only scanned briefly a long time ago.

Still trying to process a lot of this Dirty South Bureau post, especially the references to TAP and Algiers. But my brain is snotted up and it's way too early for a Sunday so pardon me if I'm incoherent and too brief.

First of all TAP and the incentive-based pay. I can't speak for the pay, as last year was my school's "practice" year with TAP. This year it really kicks in. While there are things about TAP I find annoying, my master teacher was a huge help to me. It has been hard to find help with my content (math - and now science) but when it comes to teaching more effectively and managing my kids more effectively TAP, at least for me, did a helluva lot of good. I was a crap teacher at the beginning of last year but I was lucky to have good advice. Am I a fluke? Am I being duped?

I've been feeling uncomfortable about this sort of attitude I got yesterday that bringing these new teachers in is bad and all our old, experienced teachers must be good. There will always be new teachers, a need for new blood. And, yeah, they will probably always suck in the beginning. I did. I'm still a work in progress. And I hardly want to insinuate that all the old New Orleans public school teachers who got fired were horrible and needed to go, however, in my experience with some of the "old guard" I've seen a resistance to change, a resistance to learning and continued education, that I find disturbing. When given the opportunity (multiple times) to go to conferences, expand their knowledge, participate in meaningful professional development, there were many of our more experienced teachers who resisted. They didn't care to go. I can't see passing that opportunity up.

I'm seeing experienced teachers who are opposed to the nationwide movement toward inclusion in the classroom. Special Education is something that should happen in an isolated environment as far as some people are concerned, because that's the way they've done it for decades. Because children with special needs are a hassle, a problem to be pushed aside. And I'm getting their kids and finding out how poorly socialized they are, ill-prepared to function in a classroom, and lulled into this idea that because they have been labeled "special ed" that they don't have to work to pass because they're too dumb to do what they other kids do. Because teachers don't want these kids. It's fucking appalling.

Yes, there are some long-term vets I know who I look up to as great teachers. But there are also some veteran teachers that make my skin crawl, that make me fear for the kids they teach. And it's because of those teachers that I don't have a problem with my lack of job security, my one-year contract. If I'm not doing my job well, they should damn well find somebody else who can. Because we can't afford to have mediocre teachers for our kids. We can't afford to have teachers who sit back and believe that just getting by is good enough. We have something to fucking prove and we have classrooms full of kids who have a shit future if we don't. Am I crazy to believe that teaching should be high-stakes and competitive because if its not then we're doing our kids a disservice?

I'm actually surprised that the fellow second-year teacher on the panel didn't stand up to defend his position as one of us TFA/alternative certification/fast-track smartass-kids-who-want-to-change-the-world better. I found that I spent a lot of the panel yesterday actually feeling vaguely offended (maybe I'm more conservative/neoliberal/reactionary/whatever than I know) and the more I read and the more I write the more that feeling solidifies.

I need to shower and ruminate on this some more.

get real, folks

Who decided that having professional development days on a Tuesday was a good idea? I personally don't mind getting a break from the kids in the middle of the week every time they do this. But professionally it drives me up the wall and screws up the flow of the educational week. Also, doing lots of feel-good blah blah blah activities that talk about empathy and "teaching everyone in the world to love each other" and "the power of teaching" really makes my brain bleed. Certainly, there are a few tidbits of information or useful activities I can pull out of the seven hours I spent trying not to vomit on my copy of the power point presentation. For the most part, however, I really don't want to spend my day in a chair listening to some Canadian woman tell me squishy stories about "troubled kids" in cushy school school systems and how good teaching changed them, yada yada yada.

I don't need a pep talk, lady. I need some damn tools to deal with an entire classroom of kids living in crap-ass situations who don't know how to divide. It's really irritating to be told these inspirational stories about kids (who honestly did have it rough) bonding with babies to learn social skills. I need some examples of how the hell I'm supposed to motivate a bunch of myspace junkies with no parental supervision to learn their times tables.

I don't really mean for this to become a rant, but I'm really getting sick of hearing how things work at these great schools dominated by the white middle class suburbanites whose kids are on grade level. I have black, poverty-line urban kids who need to get their lives turned around while there is still time. What good is your complicated note-taking system if they can't even form a coherent sentence and have never truly been held accountable for their own learning in their life?

UGH.

So yeah, that's what I did today. Now I am at the coffee shop trying to finish a lesson plan for my observation tomorrow morning and my brain is totally fried. With the imminent doom of iLeap on the horizon, all I can think about is how my students are entirely unprepared and there's just no time, no time.

Budget Woes

I love a good kid-free day, I must admit. Today was another 'professional development' day and I got to spend most of it catching up on grades and trying to plot better ways to get my act together and keep the kids organized. Today was also lots of leadership meetings and faculty meetings. I ended up at the leadership meeting, something I should really go to more often, mostly because I had volunteered to help with the school budget. The school budget which is due next week. The school budget which is not anywhere near ready. I sat down with the principal once everyone had left today to look at the books and realized what a huge task lays ahead.

The good news is that I get a break from the kids to work on it and I think I really need that break. Tomorrow I will be trying to make some sense of all the receipts that got handed off to me. Then there is the larger budget to tackle and that is just...whoa. It's a fraction of the budgets I used to work with but it is possibly more of a headache. I have got to get us tracking expenses monthly and keeping better projections.

My class is taking a break from the mind-bending world of equivalent fractions and decimals to work on place value and writing numbers in word form. I thought it would be something simple for them to work on while taking a break from exams but then I forgot that most of my kids can't spell for shit. So I'm trying to put together enough stuff to help them out with that and keep them working while I have a sub in my room. I'm also hoping that maybe they'll appreciate me a little more for my absence. I just need some room to breathe, some time to collect my brain and come back with a better view of the situation.

Grades are due soon and I have the largest 6th grade homework to compile. God, but the grades are depressing.

teacher in-service days

Ah, professional development. We kicked all the kids out of school for a day to let the teachers play student with teachers from another school. I ended up in the back of the cafeteria (or as it is called here, the cafetorium) with the librarian, one of the 1st grade teachers, a 7th/8th grade teacher, and a couple others. We doodled the whole time, didn't do our assignments, cracked jokes, and were generally the type of students that we do not want our kids to be. It was awesome.

Our principal is such a rock star too. He is simultaneously all business and all charm, both hard-working and a huge goof. It's a brilliant combination. While all the teachers do what they do he runs around school giving out kudos, giving hell to problem kids, making announcements, playing with the little kids, enthralling the older kids, or (as today) serving lunch. You can't help but like him. You also can't help but wonder what magic pill he takes every morning to be so damn cheerful and energetic all the time. I needs me one of those. The principal alone makes it worth coming to work in the mornings especially on a really rough day. He always says thank you, great work, keep it up. He pops into class and sits at a desk in the back and starts asking questions. Then he'll turn around and pull a kid out of class for being disrespectful to a teacher.

For various reasons, I have chosen not to disclose my school's name (though I suppose anybody who really tried could figure it out eventually). Mostly because I don't want to get into any trouble or have some creep stalking my kids because I drew the X on the map in giant red marker. Sometimes, though, it is tempting because I want people to see what's going on at this school. It's far from perfect. But people are working hard and turning a school that last year was a catastrophe into a place where people want to bring their kids. It's slow and it's tough but already there are kids saying that this is their favorite school, parents who are pleased.

It is a sharp contrast, even with all the difficulties, to the crap I am seeing come out of the RSD. Which isn't to say that there aren't some good things going on at some RSD schools. But the shear magnitude of the bureaucracy and the lack of autonomy my peers have in RSD schools compared to what I have is ridiculous. I need something done I deal with my principal. I have colleagues who will be in the classroom next week who don't know what grade or what subject they will be teaching and are not allowed into their classrooms yet. Their schedules are being dictated by the central office, not their individual school administration. Chemistry teachers are teaching biology and biology teachers are teaching chemistry - in the same school. Their school or their assigned courses change constantly. I personally find it outrageous that this is how our school system at large is being run.

The 1st grade teacher and I had a conversation about the Louisiana Comprehensive Curriculum today, mainly about whether to follow it. Apparently, we're supposed to whether we like it or not. I think that's crap and I'm not doing it. My math book corresponds to state standards and Grade Level Expectations but does not correspond the the state mandated curriculum. Frankly, I think the book is better organized and the LCC is only useful as a reference for activities. Even then, I'm not following the book from Chapter 1 on. My kids would riot if I made them do half the stuff the LCC wants me to do - they may not be doing well on state tests but that is partly because state tests do not speak their language. Even though they have huge gaps in their education, they still know more than the tests tell. So I'm trying to do what I should be doing: teaching to their needs and appealing to their interests. Not to some cookie-cutter crap curriculum (hooray for alliteration). The state of Louisiana doesn't know my kids and does not take into account the environment they come from. I can't, in good conscience as a teacher, just follow blindly.

Which is not to say that I'm brilliant and perfect. I'm making a million mistakes everyday. That's a pitfall of a new teacher: I'm learning as a go and I stumble often. But I'm still smart enough to call bullshit when I see it.