On Education, Juvenile Hall & Children: September 9th, 2014
Two quotes to start me off this evening:
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
― Frederick Douglass“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
― Frederick Douglass
Full disclosure: I am 24 years old (too often, I forget my age). I am in my 4th year of teaching. I received the first round of teaching training I ever got from the California Playwright's Project. I received my most formal teaching training from the oft controversial Teach for America. But truly, I have been training to be a teacher my entire life, from the gift of my both street and book educated immigrant parents. I am a girl, which is often associated with my admittedly insane (truly, I think "Am I crazy?") ability to feel what others are feeling, which is both a blessing and a curse.
The day.
7am: School
9:50am: Teach first period integrated English and History, Humanities, in my classroom. I have reverted to a lot more traditional teaching methods in my class, for reasons I will disclose in this note.
11:15am: Lunch. First, I meet with a group of students who I am taking to read at a book signing with a few teen fiction writers tomorrow. They will be reading poetry. I have a nice range of poets coming with me, with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, interests, genders, etc. I'm proud of the selection coming with me. Second, I meet with a student I am taking to the Presidential Library this Saturday to speak about Civic involvement. She has a conflict because of a job she has taken to support her family, despite the fact that she is only 15 years old. We discuss. Third, I freak out a little at the fact I have no other teachers near me. Did I miss an IEP meeting? I text, and find I have not. I sit and have a working lunch with the other teachers who share my kids anyway. At lunch, I find out that a girl I knew from a distance passed away this weekend. I can't find out details to how or why. All I know is how talented a dancer she was. I torture myself by searching for emails from her and I find a few about a show I directed once. I click the See Friendship tab on Facebook. I realize I hadn't told this girl explicitly how talented she was when I had the chance to tell her. My heart feels heavy.
12pm: Advisory class. I have a few interesting students in this mixed grade level class. One who was suspended for pot usage last year. One who was involved in the texting of naked pictures of girls last year. One who watched his father die last year and continued to say "I'm fine" when I asked (I never noticed signs of mourning). One girl who lives in a fantasy world. A few kids of single parents. Several kids with special needs. My TA is out, so I show a documentary while doing grade checks and one on one conferences about grades with kids. I choose the documentary Happy from Netflix. Several get into it and drop what they are doing to watch. Others do not.
12:40pm: Period 2, integrated English and History. Several IEPs in this class. I find myself teaching extremely traditionally, so that I can make sure everyone is getting something out of today's material. I continue to teach with the text as the center, and cut out work time that I had planned, as it did not go all to well in first period (good old "modify and adjust!").
2:10pm: Period 3, integrated English and History. Several IEPs in this class too, but a lot of high achievers too. I adjust so that I can give time to everyone I have in this room. In the shortened periods (last year, I had 2 hours with them), I feel myself spread thin. I wish that I could give more time to each kid, but there's an equity issue going on there. Who am I giving the MOST time to? I am terribly conscious about this, and I want to spread myself more evenly, but it is difficult. 3:30- school is dismissed and kids stream out of my room.
3:30pm: A text from my mother. My car was caught running a red light last week. "We got a ticket mailed to the house..."
3:45pm: I get in my car and head to graduate school in Point Loma.
4:57pm: I finally make it to graduate school, despite the ridiculous traffic. I talk about my classroom experiences with other graduate school students, many of whom are school leaders--many former or current principals trying to better their practice. I mention how stressed out I am that I have so many kids this year. I'm at 80 versus the 50 I had last year. They ask me why. I say, "Well, I don't know all of them yet. Last year, I knew all their names, first and last, and their parents' names, and I could probably name you their brothers and sisters." Two of them tear up. "My teachers would have said 'I can't get that many kids to pass the test.'" One says.
7:45pm: I get into my car. I head to a former professor's house to drop off some writing I had done that he has agreed to read and give me feedback on. On the way to my car:
8pm: A phone call from an unknown number. "Is this Ms. Carol Cabrera? This is Deputy ____ from San Marcos Police Department. We have your student here, and she was caught stealing from Walmart. We cannot contact her mother, and yours is the only other number of an adult she had on her. Can you come pick her up? Otherwise, we send her to juvenile hall for the night."
8:10pm: I shoot a text to the other teachers on my team and drive to San Marcos Police Department.
8:51pm: I find myself standing next to Kurt Schwartz (the physics teacher), while the police do the paperwork to release this 14 year old girl to us.
9pm: Her mother calls. Their car is broken down, but she's doing her best to get to us. She's one exit away, can we come to her?
9:15pm: Schwartz driving, me in the passenger seat, student and mother in the back. Mother asks, "You have food stamps and money on the EBT card. Why would you steal a skateboard? What were you thinking?" She coughs, stifling a cry. Student answers, "We couldn't afford another bus pass. I thought if I had a skateboard, I could give mine to you so that you didn't have to walk everywhere."
9:25pm: Mom breaks down and begins sharing her story. Why they have lived in 3 different places in the 3 weeks her daughter has been my student. The history of drugs in the family. In her. In her daughter. The stints in rehab. How her daughter was called "nigger" at her middle school, and despite her 3.75 GPA, thought school was awful and a joke and hated it.
9:30pm: Mom- "This high school was the best thing that has happened to us for years."
9:45pm: Arrival at the hotel where they are staying. We get out of the car. I hug mom. Me to mom: "You have been dealt a hard hand in life. I will do my best to give your daughter every opportunity I can possibly give her." Me to daughter: "You have been dealt a shitty hand in life. And I curse because I want you to know I see you. Every part of you. The shitty, terrible past and all. The shitty conditions of what is happening now. But I also see more in you than you can see in yourself. And I won't let you be a stereotype. So stop playing into the stereotypes. I won't have it." Schwartz talks to mom and daughter separately too.
10pm: Me: "What were you doing before I texted you?" Schwartz: "About to get into bed...we don't get paid enough to do this."
10:15pm: I find myself at dinner, finally.
11:53pm: I find myself wide awake, writing this note.
This year, about 30% of my students have IEP or 504 plans. For those of you who teach, you will understand what this means. For those of you who don't, it means I have a lot of kids with different learning needs in my classroom, and it is my job to juggle, to understand what each child needs and to do my damn best to get them the education that he or she deserves. These are just the kids who are diagnosed with different things--ADHD, emotional disorders, OCD, etc. There are also the kids who need WAY more than where I have set the baseline as a teacher, and I want to challenge those kids too. There are also the kids who have home lives that I need to take into account somehow.
I have heard many people acknowledge that teachers don't get paid enough for what they do, and I appreciate this sentiment so very much. I don't think people know what we do, most of the time. That I am stressed out to my core because I don't know all my kids' last names three weeks into school. That I sat at a police station for the better part of my evening. That I sat in a graduate class about education because I'm trying to be a better teacher for these kids before that. It's a calling, and I'm glad to be one who answers it.
Did you know that there are no history standards in the Common Core? It is a disturbing fact, because as George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The history of slavery, the mind-boggling fact that one race was OWNED by another, is a history that affects things that are happening in the very real, very modern now. I'm not making excuses for anyone. I'm not trying to dismiss any criminal behavior as trivial or unimportant. But I see that history when I have interactions like the ones I had tonight. And I'm bothered that so many people might not.
I have conversations about race a lot, because I'm not afraid to talk about it, even though it's often uncomfortable. People always feel like they are walking on thin ice. I think it's a mistake to ignore that race exists. With things like the happenings in Ferguson, it is time now, more than ever to have conversations about privilege, race, stereotyping, etc. I have a friend who once told me, "What does it matter to you? You're Asian." The history of the model minority is one that I'm ready to have a conversation about too. We're all in this mess together--black, white, Asian, Hispanic, brown, black, yellow, blue. And I think it's time people stop ignoring that they hold a stake in this conversation. I'm not afraid to rile you up and say that race matters in modern day America. I'm sorry, Martin Luther King Jr., but we still don't live in a color blind America. And I think that we should start asking the questions that make us look for answers that perhaps we have not been working hard enough to find.
I am teaching an elective this year called "The Science and Psychology of Happiness". I'm hoping that a more conscious focus on happiness will bring more happiness to each of my students' lives. But I'm ever so curious:
Are there things that are simply beyond my control?
And how long can I keep up this kind of work before burning myself completely out?
When I saw my 14 year old girl in that police station, I was reminded of an article a good friend and fellow educator, Tami Philyaw shared. Others may have seen a criminal standing there. I saw a child.
"He who opens a school door, closes a prison." ~Victor Hugo
I'm tired, tonight. I'm so, so, so tired tonight. Too often, especially recently, I have felt my ability to love feel so, so tired. I try to tell myself that I live this particular life because I have a particular capacity to love that perhaps others may not have.
I don't have a whole lot of answers tonight. I only know this: I'm tired. And I should probably rest before I begin again tomorrow.
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
― Frederick Douglass“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
― Frederick Douglass
Full disclosure: I am 24 years old (too often, I forget my age). I am in my 4th year of teaching. I received the first round of teaching training I ever got from the California Playwright's Project. I received my most formal teaching training from the oft controversial Teach for America. But truly, I have been training to be a teacher my entire life, from the gift of my both street and book educated immigrant parents. I am a girl, which is often associated with my admittedly insane (truly, I think "Am I crazy?") ability to feel what others are feeling, which is both a blessing and a curse.
The day.
7am: School
9:50am: Teach first period integrated English and History, Humanities, in my classroom. I have reverted to a lot more traditional teaching methods in my class, for reasons I will disclose in this note.
11:15am: Lunch. First, I meet with a group of students who I am taking to read at a book signing with a few teen fiction writers tomorrow. They will be reading poetry. I have a nice range of poets coming with me, with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, interests, genders, etc. I'm proud of the selection coming with me. Second, I meet with a student I am taking to the Presidential Library this Saturday to speak about Civic involvement. She has a conflict because of a job she has taken to support her family, despite the fact that she is only 15 years old. We discuss. Third, I freak out a little at the fact I have no other teachers near me. Did I miss an IEP meeting? I text, and find I have not. I sit and have a working lunch with the other teachers who share my kids anyway. At lunch, I find out that a girl I knew from a distance passed away this weekend. I can't find out details to how or why. All I know is how talented a dancer she was. I torture myself by searching for emails from her and I find a few about a show I directed once. I click the See Friendship tab on Facebook. I realize I hadn't told this girl explicitly how talented she was when I had the chance to tell her. My heart feels heavy.
12pm: Advisory class. I have a few interesting students in this mixed grade level class. One who was suspended for pot usage last year. One who was involved in the texting of naked pictures of girls last year. One who watched his father die last year and continued to say "I'm fine" when I asked (I never noticed signs of mourning). One girl who lives in a fantasy world. A few kids of single parents. Several kids with special needs. My TA is out, so I show a documentary while doing grade checks and one on one conferences about grades with kids. I choose the documentary Happy from Netflix. Several get into it and drop what they are doing to watch. Others do not.
12:40pm: Period 2, integrated English and History. Several IEPs in this class. I find myself teaching extremely traditionally, so that I can make sure everyone is getting something out of today's material. I continue to teach with the text as the center, and cut out work time that I had planned, as it did not go all to well in first period (good old "modify and adjust!").
2:10pm: Period 3, integrated English and History. Several IEPs in this class too, but a lot of high achievers too. I adjust so that I can give time to everyone I have in this room. In the shortened periods (last year, I had 2 hours with them), I feel myself spread thin. I wish that I could give more time to each kid, but there's an equity issue going on there. Who am I giving the MOST time to? I am terribly conscious about this, and I want to spread myself more evenly, but it is difficult. 3:30- school is dismissed and kids stream out of my room.
3:30pm: A text from my mother. My car was caught running a red light last week. "We got a ticket mailed to the house..."
3:45pm: I get in my car and head to graduate school in Point Loma.
4:57pm: I finally make it to graduate school, despite the ridiculous traffic. I talk about my classroom experiences with other graduate school students, many of whom are school leaders--many former or current principals trying to better their practice. I mention how stressed out I am that I have so many kids this year. I'm at 80 versus the 50 I had last year. They ask me why. I say, "Well, I don't know all of them yet. Last year, I knew all their names, first and last, and their parents' names, and I could probably name you their brothers and sisters." Two of them tear up. "My teachers would have said 'I can't get that many kids to pass the test.'" One says.
7:45pm: I get into my car. I head to a former professor's house to drop off some writing I had done that he has agreed to read and give me feedback on. On the way to my car:
8pm: A phone call from an unknown number. "Is this Ms. Carol Cabrera? This is Deputy ____ from San Marcos Police Department. We have your student here, and she was caught stealing from Walmart. We cannot contact her mother, and yours is the only other number of an adult she had on her. Can you come pick her up? Otherwise, we send her to juvenile hall for the night."
8:10pm: I shoot a text to the other teachers on my team and drive to San Marcos Police Department.
8:51pm: I find myself standing next to Kurt Schwartz (the physics teacher), while the police do the paperwork to release this 14 year old girl to us.
9pm: Her mother calls. Their car is broken down, but she's doing her best to get to us. She's one exit away, can we come to her?
9:15pm: Schwartz driving, me in the passenger seat, student and mother in the back. Mother asks, "You have food stamps and money on the EBT card. Why would you steal a skateboard? What were you thinking?" She coughs, stifling a cry. Student answers, "We couldn't afford another bus pass. I thought if I had a skateboard, I could give mine to you so that you didn't have to walk everywhere."
9:25pm: Mom breaks down and begins sharing her story. Why they have lived in 3 different places in the 3 weeks her daughter has been my student. The history of drugs in the family. In her. In her daughter. The stints in rehab. How her daughter was called "nigger" at her middle school, and despite her 3.75 GPA, thought school was awful and a joke and hated it.
9:30pm: Mom- "This high school was the best thing that has happened to us for years."
9:45pm: Arrival at the hotel where they are staying. We get out of the car. I hug mom. Me to mom: "You have been dealt a hard hand in life. I will do my best to give your daughter every opportunity I can possibly give her." Me to daughter: "You have been dealt a shitty hand in life. And I curse because I want you to know I see you. Every part of you. The shitty, terrible past and all. The shitty conditions of what is happening now. But I also see more in you than you can see in yourself. And I won't let you be a stereotype. So stop playing into the stereotypes. I won't have it." Schwartz talks to mom and daughter separately too.
10pm: Me: "What were you doing before I texted you?" Schwartz: "About to get into bed...we don't get paid enough to do this."
10:15pm: I find myself at dinner, finally.
11:53pm: I find myself wide awake, writing this note.
This year, about 30% of my students have IEP or 504 plans. For those of you who teach, you will understand what this means. For those of you who don't, it means I have a lot of kids with different learning needs in my classroom, and it is my job to juggle, to understand what each child needs and to do my damn best to get them the education that he or she deserves. These are just the kids who are diagnosed with different things--ADHD, emotional disorders, OCD, etc. There are also the kids who need WAY more than where I have set the baseline as a teacher, and I want to challenge those kids too. There are also the kids who have home lives that I need to take into account somehow.
I have heard many people acknowledge that teachers don't get paid enough for what they do, and I appreciate this sentiment so very much. I don't think people know what we do, most of the time. That I am stressed out to my core because I don't know all my kids' last names three weeks into school. That I sat at a police station for the better part of my evening. That I sat in a graduate class about education because I'm trying to be a better teacher for these kids before that. It's a calling, and I'm glad to be one who answers it.
Did you know that there are no history standards in the Common Core? It is a disturbing fact, because as George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The history of slavery, the mind-boggling fact that one race was OWNED by another, is a history that affects things that are happening in the very real, very modern now. I'm not making excuses for anyone. I'm not trying to dismiss any criminal behavior as trivial or unimportant. But I see that history when I have interactions like the ones I had tonight. And I'm bothered that so many people might not.
I have conversations about race a lot, because I'm not afraid to talk about it, even though it's often uncomfortable. People always feel like they are walking on thin ice. I think it's a mistake to ignore that race exists. With things like the happenings in Ferguson, it is time now, more than ever to have conversations about privilege, race, stereotyping, etc. I have a friend who once told me, "What does it matter to you? You're Asian." The history of the model minority is one that I'm ready to have a conversation about too. We're all in this mess together--black, white, Asian, Hispanic, brown, black, yellow, blue. And I think it's time people stop ignoring that they hold a stake in this conversation. I'm not afraid to rile you up and say that race matters in modern day America. I'm sorry, Martin Luther King Jr., but we still don't live in a color blind America. And I think that we should start asking the questions that make us look for answers that perhaps we have not been working hard enough to find.
I am teaching an elective this year called "The Science and Psychology of Happiness". I'm hoping that a more conscious focus on happiness will bring more happiness to each of my students' lives. But I'm ever so curious:
Are there things that are simply beyond my control?
And how long can I keep up this kind of work before burning myself completely out?
When I saw my 14 year old girl in that police station, I was reminded of an article a good friend and fellow educator, Tami Philyaw shared. Others may have seen a criminal standing there. I saw a child.
"He who opens a school door, closes a prison." ~Victor Hugo
I'm tired, tonight. I'm so, so, so tired tonight. Too often, especially recently, I have felt my ability to love feel so, so tired. I try to tell myself that I live this particular life because I have a particular capacity to love that perhaps others may not have.
I don't have a whole lot of answers tonight. I only know this: I'm tired. And I should probably rest before I begin again tomorrow.