Saturday, April 21, 2012

Teaching on 4/20

There are a few days a year that teachers dread "teaching" on. Among the most hated are Halloween, Valentines Day, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day, and 4/20. Each day provides the opportunity for students to misbehave or ask inappropriate questions with an illegitimate but mistakenly accepted excuse.

Shockingly, many parents and people in the schools accept what happens as normal and to be expected. Especially in an inner city school with no systems set up for discipline or consequence kids get away with what would have gotten me expelled when I was in high school, which was not long ago.

On Halloween students showing up dressed as pimps and prostitutes, gang bangers (real), and various masked villains in obvious flagrant breach of dress code. You should not have students coming in their gang colors pretending it is a costume. Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick's Day brings horrid attendance, and drunk students escorted back to your class by security after vomiting in their last class, and given a sobering meal in the office. Valentines Day can be sweet, but with no consequence, takes over your class.



I am not a fascist enforcer of policy, but I do know that consistent enforcement of basic expectations is necessary to maintain an academic culture in a high school. Also, when teachers are expected to enforce those basic expectations, and are held accountable to the achievement scores, it is criminal to undermine their authority by relaxing rules and allowing an "anything-goes" atmosphere because it would be too difficult to enforce rules on holidays. Support staff exist to support teachers, not teachers to support policies of support staff.

For 4-20, attendance was probably near 65% in the morning, and 50% in the afternoon. I started each class by sarcastically thanking students for understanding how clocks work, that 4:20 is a time that occurs after the school day. My stoned students would giggle wildly, thus giving me the opportunity to speak with them independently later during class, reminding them of expectations. I did mess with a few.

The students that ditched and went to the park were rounded up with bullhorn wielding AmeriCorps volunteers and brought back to class. The leader gleefully told me how great it was they were bringing kids back. I responded with a simple "Oh, so now I have classes full of stoners?" Enforcing rules is tough. Why do it? Teaching is tough, fuck it, movie day.


I know the justice system is not the answer to what occurred yesterday, but there must be standards. If a kid ditches or is stoned, detentions, Saturday schools, no prom, parent meetings, behavior contracts could all be used. It is unfair for me to be held accountable for my results, but cannot control the culture, reading level, or sobriety of my school.

Students in each class asked me what I thought about 4/20. I replied by telling them that it could be a legitimate day of protest over drug policy, but that too many people use it as an excuse to act like an idiot. The 50% of students who were still in class nodded their heads in agreement.