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.

Why did this take 6 months?

Finally! They're ready. My freshmen are ready for 9th grade.

All year I have been working with the students on their writing. I am a firm believer in the power of writing, and the doors it can open for students regardless of what they eventually want to do. In the past, I have had tremendous success all by myself bringing student's scores up, and helping ELL students gain access to writing. Last year my students showed the most growth out of any other teacher.

My work with the students thus far has been very straightforward, but has been agonizingly slow. The students were apt to forget all progress one week after they had learned it.

First, their ability to organize a coherent thought and write it in a non-fiction paragraph using grade and content vocabulary started at about a 6th grade level. The English Department and I worked with the same organizer forcing students to write topic sentences, concrete details, and commentary. After the eighth one, the students only take one period to create an organizer. Still too long, but better than the two hours it took before.  I also have to be blatant with vocabulary, using "Use the following words: smart growth, infill, and spatial inequality"

Next came the sentence stems. Showing students what grade level writing looked like required basic starters, such as:
"For example_______________________"
"This is important because_________________"
"This shows_________ is _____________________"
"The evidence shows______________________"
"As compared to_________________, ____________ is ___________"

And finally, full quote outlines that show students how to introduce, use, and explain a quote from a primary source.

The last and most agonizing step was the annotated reading. The students just wanted to absentmindedly read, absorbing nothing. The annotation forced them to slow down, react to their reading, and then use a graphic organizer for the content, before the writing organizer.

On top of a bunch of other literacy supports and ELL strategies, using reading, writing, verbal, and getting the students to speak using grade level language the students are now ready. Do this for six months, and eventually the students learn how to go through the writing process without the structure and organizers. 

Most teachers would call this far too structured. According to some, students are not demonstrating what they know and can do when given that much support. I would say the opposite, that only with those supports are the students able to show their ability. Yes, it needs to come from them, but if the students can't do that by 9th grade, major intervention is necessary.

Most other Social Studies teachers would never do this because the amount of time devoted to content suffers. I don't care. I've realized some things about teaching hard to serve students. They don't care about content any more than normal students, and they are used to failure. When they can see and feel success at something, it motivates them. At that point the content takes care of itself. Plus, I would love it if my students left as historians, but what is most important is helping to open those doors where they have the ability to choose their destiny, instead of being limited by their abilities. Yes, I do half the work for them to start with, but by the end they are independent and near/at grade level.

I never wanted to teach middle school level English. It is maddening. Half of the battle of motivation and celebrating the small steps we take for granted. The students love it though, and are finally starting to come around. No longer am I just another teacher who keeps failing them. Hopefully the trend continues and the culture in the classroom and school continues to improve. Yeah, I'm barely in the rejuvenation stage, but it feels a lot better than disillusionment.

What's wrong with our schools part III

I havn't written about education for a long time. I've shot off the random bitch, or posted a link, but in terms of education policy, ideas, and battles, I havn't had the heart. After some introspection, I find myself very disillusioned, and the new job overly taxing. I knew what I was getting into, but perhaps I vastly over estimated my zeal, patience, and ability. Drunk on success from last year, I find myself wallowing in the hangover at my new surroundings. It seems as though I'm still attempting to process what the hell just happened and why my job now feels so different.

This oddly accurate and cheesy graph must have been created by some veteran teachers. It does feel like I've started my first year all over again

Between my years as a classroom aide, a quasi-teacher, and at my prior school that went from dysfunctional to moderately operational, and now into a black hole I feel I have seen, experienced, and can pontificate on what makes school's functional, and what makes them dysfunctional. I've been pondering many of the root causes of failing schools and have come up with a list of basics, which if in place, can get a school into mediocrity. I will expound on these in greater detail in the future, but here is the short and sweet.

1. Teacher morale

The number one affect on a teacher's ability to perform their job with zeal and passion, is morale. As with all careers, happy employees equal productive employees. The number one effector of teacher morale is whether a teacher feels successful, and supported by administration, instead of on an island, persecuted or under siege. There is a reason most people leave the profession within 5 years (Teach For America included). We are professionals, respect our judgement.

2. Behavioral consequences

When a student is chronically tardy, habitually disruptive, disrespectful, breaks teacher's noses, or any other behavior within the student's ability to control, there is a clear due process based, non-confrontational consequence. When there is no structure, students exploit, and the teachers end up being put in the role of mentor, and enforcer, two that do not go together. Often, the enforcement is nonexistent and empty due to no support or system.

3. Academic consequences

If a student cannot complete grade level work, do not pressure teachers to pass on students to the next grade level. When teachers are partially evaluated on their fail rate, it sends the wrong message. Some teachers fail students because they expect grade level work, not last minute assignments. Standards based grading does precisely this. When students are graded on their ability to fulfill vague "standards" of education, they no longer have to be productive, except on a test. Other gimmicks like "No Ds" cause grade inflation and contribute to the growing problem of college remediation courses.

4. Community support

Do neighborhood kids go to neighborhood schools? School "choice" is leading to wage based segregation. Schools for poor kids, and those for the lucky. When communities quit disparaging their public education, and instead play a role in it, rising tides float all boats.

5. Administrative support

Career administrators, with strong classroom backgrounds who want to move from teacher to administrator in the same school should be courted, compensated, and rewarded. Recruit the best and brightest. When a district sets up a system of yes men/women, who expect an advancement every two or three years up the ladder, their is no commitment, investment, or relationship with staff, community, or school. Or better yet, eliminate most administrative positions and let the teachers run the show!

6. Parental support and accountability

We are not your babysitter. Give your contact info to the school. Feed them! Ask about their day, even if you work the night shift and just got home. Ask about their homework. Come in and meet their teachers. We often see them more than you, and a completely different side of them that you should be aware of. Oh yeah, when they don't have passing grades, send them to summer school.

7. K-8 preparation

It's hard to point the blame at other teachers, but when whole classes of students arrive that are below grade level, I wonder what the previous teacher did. Don't inflate grades. Make a student pass basic skills tests to move on to the next grade, otherwise districts should provide mandatory summer schools to prevent students from falling behind. That costs more money, but if a student still reads at a 4th grade level by grade 9, something has gone terribly wrong.

8. High expectations

It never ceases to amaze me how low the expectations of rigor, effort, and skill the students are held to. Every year the students seem lower and lower. Systems should be put in place to correctly place teachers in their position of strength on a vertical alignment, so that freshman to senior teachers can communicate clearly, and share lessons and ideas, so that students are ready for each grade.

9. Teacher's contracts are honored

I am yet to work at a school where teacher contracts are honored, and the principal actively seeks counsel from teachers. When districts break our contract it tells us we don't matter, and that decision making will be top down, not with those who actually teach.

10. Monetary support

It took all semester to get the textbooks for my AP class. Enough said.

11. District interventions

This incorporates all that have been said above. Community and administrative support, accountability, summer schools, money, contracts, and ensuring students are prepared when entering a new level of K-12 education. If a student enters college and needs remediation, the school has not done an adequate job.

Although not perfect, this list does allow a school to move from dysfunctional to mediocrity. I plan to address each point in their own post. For the time being, it will allow my "disillusionment" stage to take more focus, and perhaps, some "rejuvenation."

AP and cultural bias

Around this time last year I wrote an entry detailing my dilemma about teaching half-truths, and having to give up the real value in history for basic content. Now, in a new school, and teaching AP(advanced placement) courses to students who are in no way prepared, I find myself hitting a similar wall. My new dilemma reminds me of my old district's attempt to get us to teach about jingoistic militarism from the Medal of Honor curriculum, which I also wrote about.

This time, I found myself in an AP Saturday institute, learning the ins and outs of the curriculum to be taught. It became very clear to me that the expectation was a watered down, worthless and uninspiring curriculum. It was rote memorization, learning test taking skills for the one AP test, and reactionary bias. I found myself sitting amongst a bunch of other well intentioned white teachers, discussing the validity of Andrew Jackson and his love of "democracy".

In reality, what all students need, and especially mine, is a history curriculum that promotes activism, assertiveness, and social awareness. I know for a fact, that the curriculum last year, which was heavy in social history and activism, gave my students the confidence to protest my principal, stand up to power, and catapult them into a life of social activism. That is what all social studies teachers strive for. With AP, the opposite seems to happen. The chart above should be alarming. The problem with AP is that it is supported, created, and perpetuated by those who go through the program. The curriculum, though unintentional, become self-serving.

For example, the suggested curriculum being pandered by the College Board requires US History to be covered from "Pre-Columbian Societies" for one week, to Jacksonian Democracy and "The Early Republic" for two weeks, and all the way to "The United States in the Post-Cold War World" for two weeks. Realistically, you cannot cover the depth of US History in such sweeping breadth. The curriculum is sanitized by its immense scope.

The curriculum is further sanitized by those who create and perpetuate the test questions and course syllabus'. An attached model syllabus from AP includes:

Jacksonian America (2 weeks)

In order to understand the development of evolution of democratic institutions in
the United States, the student will be able to:
A. Characterize the rise to political prominence of Andrew Jackson
B. Evaluate Jackson's domestic and foreign policies
C. Analyze the issues involved in the elections of 1836 and 1840
D. Explain the causes and results of reform movements in the United States during the early to mid-nineteenth century

While on the other hand:

Manifest Destiny and Sectionalism (1 week) (emphasis mine)
To recognize the importance of westward expansion and the looming issue of slavery in the United States, the student will be able to
A. Identify the causes and results of American settlers' moving west
B. Discuss the causes and results of the Mexican-American War
C. Analyze the issues involving slavery and potential disunion during the late 1840s and through the decade of the 1850s

As in life, all decisions come with an opportunity cost. When you choose one action, another possible scenario is never realized. To teach about Jackson, but neglect the trail of tears. To spend double the amount of time on the facade of emerging democracy (read: now includes white dudes without property) than on the most undemocratic institutions in our history, imperialism and slavery, where one in ten Americans was owned by another American is not only negligent, but is downright white-washing (pun intended). Is the data to the left at all surprising?

Students in AP not only have to deal with a fast paced, uninspiring curriculum, but at the end of the year the cultural bias of the curriculum is transferred into the test. The test has 80 multiple choice questions. For example:

Alexander Hamilton's economic program was designed primarily to
A. prepare the United States for war in the event Britain failed to vacate its posts in the Northwest
B. provide a platform for the fledgling Federalist Party's 1792 campaign
C. establish the financial stability and credit of the new government
D. ensure northern dominance over the southern states in order to abolish slavery
E. win broad political support for his own candidacy for the presidency in 1792.

I made bold all of the words and phrases that my students would not understand. Not only is the curriculum rather irrelevant in the lives of everyday Americans then, as now, but the nature of the question favors the business and economic minded well read students with high vocabulary. Guess where they go to school? The test is designed for students with privilege to get a discounted college education, while the opportunity cost for poorer students is high.

Last year, my students were unable to think independently or critically. By the end of the year they were the highest scorers on district tests and politically active. This year, I have this to start with this.

The AP test does this student no favors. Although unintentional, the AP test is culturally biased and does nothing to help out students who have not had the privilege of a stable home, middle class income, and other opportunities people like myself have been fortunate to have. To change this, we need to stop pandering poor curriculum choices for our students.

I am under pressure to make sure that the student who's work you see above gets a passing score in the AP test. It won't happen. When you read at a 6th grade reading level, write at a 5th grade level, and when the entire test is set up for a 12th+ level with culturally irrelevant information, how on earth can I lie to that student and say that they can do it. I'm a decent teacher, but I'm no messiah.

It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.

If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive movements of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.
-Howard Zinn

That is what inspired my students last year. It inspires all students. Why destroy that? I am struggling again this year. How can I inspire and teach such a culturally repressive history?

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

-Howard Zinn

That is what I need to teach, but I don't know if I can keep my job and do my job at the same time.

Parting shot

My former colleagues this week leaked an email to me that went around my old school. Our state assessment results came back. In a celebration email, the Assistant Principal made a conscious decision to leave my name in the results.

I was the top performing teacher. My ELL classes and honors classes combined to place my students in the 75th percentile, meaning they outperformed 75% of the state's students on non-fiction writing and reading. The closest other teachers were 67% and 63%.

I still give no respect to the state test, but I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall when my former principal opened that email.

Hitting the reset button

With summer break quickly dwindling away I found myself in a new and wonderful position: entertaining multiple job offers. As it turned out, a few districts had buyers remorse with their candidates. As the seemingly perennial second place, I got the nod.

I had three choices. The first is an exurban school that was predominantly white and wealthy where I would teach Economics, Sociology, and a US History. One semester contract, with assurance of it becoming full year.

The second was a suburban middle class school that had wide diversity with an IB program in the most respected district in the state. What I would teach is TBD. One year contract, with likelihood of it becoming continuing once older teachers retire.

The third is a homogeneously Latino poor urban school with a one million dollar turnaround grant from the government, which has an all new administration. I would teach AP US History, Honors Geography, and Geography. Full year, continuing contract.

I chose the urban school. Out of the three options, it is there where I can make the most difference with a very high-needs population. Also, being on the ground level of a school-wide rebuild can be immensely rewarding. One of my references will be my Assistant Principal and evaluator. Good hook-up. Also, my schedule was tailor-made for me, and I got a third floor room overlooking downtown.

The feeling is phenomenal. I'm desired instead of shunned. My new school is exactly where I want to be. I welcome the challenge and look forward to the success I know is coming. A totally new district with a lot of room for advancement. Now I can quit writing about my mental states and get back to writing about education.


Last weekend a group of friends and I went on a canoe trip through some canyons in Utah. The water was cool and fast, with the consistency of chocolate milk. When I jumped into the water and floated along the canoes the trauma of the non-renewal, board process, and administrative leave from my last school melted away. The feelings of betrayal, helplessness, and anger are gone. I feel ready. My mind is reset. I wouldn't be anywhere else. Well, almost.

We took this shot from our cliff palace campsite. "Find a happy place"

Summer has begun

With all the drama going on with finding a job, I am finding myself decompressing, finally.

While I was out of town, my car was flooded by a massive rainstorm. In the back seat floor of my car was all my documents from the kids. I had my stack of anonymous student surveys, student letters to me, stacks of student essays, performance reviews, and copies of the student petitions.


Although reeking of mildew, and unable to be used again in interviews, I have been drying them on my floor for the past week. Drying, reading, and preserving each one has been a reminder. An orange mouse of sorts.

Those reminders have been continually cropping up over the past weeks as I withdrew from the job hunt. The students asked me to lead them on more Outdoor Club hikes. Unaffiliated with school of course. I happily obliged with parental consent and participation. You can never be too careful in situations such as that. I have another outing with the kiddos in a few weeks.

Tomorrow, I am heading to my former school to join the Environmental Club students in a barbecue, next to the garden I helped them get. I abandoned the club after last year due to my percieved apathy of the students, and the mounting responsibilities of being a Department Chair. My co-sponsor more than came through with the club, and got the garden put in the ground. I decided to create a gift for her.


It says, "Never loose focus of whom you advocate for," and is all native plants. I created it from a toolbox I found in my basement. The person I made it for has recently run afoul of administration, as is their nature. The quote is meant to inspire her to remember she works for the kids, not the directive commandments from the Oz that is administration. She knows that well, and I'm hoping that garden proves motivational. I am going to give this to her tomorrow morning at the barbecue.

I also created it for myself. I want one too, but I promised myself that I would give it away. I have continued my drawn out epiphany that I wouldn't change anything that happened to me, kind of. What happened reaffirmed my career/life choice. Now that stability is on the horizon, I can stop letting the anxiety take over, and really double down on what I've accomplished. After three years, a $10,000 federal grant for a community garden, an active outdoor club, politically active youth in school and out, and beating the system, albeit for a week only, I feel accomplished and proud. Teachers can be the most powerful force in a kid's life and can influence far beyond their classroom. Or, they can fill a space. The former is not me. My need to teach is driven by more than intrinsic value, it is activism. It was the students and community that gave that feeling to me. It is a feeling I will never forget.