A tough time to be a kid

It’s the end of the month in an economically disadvantaged area of town. It’s cold outside and poor homes are hard to heat. Parents are feeling stressed and they undoubtedly are taking their rage out on their kids. I see it at school. Kids are angry. They spout a litany of profanity at the least provocation. Students do not see the point of an education because they don’t see it in their own homes or neighborhoods. Going to class, doing schoolwork, obeying the teachers, is just not in their scope.

We are recruiting for next year’s classes and in doing so we see a variety of students. These are the better students who have their credits and won’t need much in the way of remedial classes. One young man I spoke with today doesn’t have a plan for his future except to think he is going to be a professional football player. “Did you play frosh football?” NO. “Are you playing club ball?” NO. “Did you sign up for soccer?” NO. How do you think you can play any kind of football if you aren’t working on it? No answer. Then when I suggested he needed to take our classes and get some skills so as to get a job, he was adamant that he didn’t need any help.

I only see a small number of the total students at our large inner city school so can only affect a few. Those who go through our academy say that our classes look and act so much differently than their nonacademy classes. It is our goal that students graduate on time with skills to continue their education as well as go to work. For 19 years we have had a high success rate, and again today I saw one of our graduates who is now a social worker who maintains a group home. She and I discussed the difficulties we are seeing with kids due to social and economic problems. So many children are being abandoned by their parents or neglected to the point they are raising themselves. These people do not see that this is a critical problem to our society. They also do not understand how much they are damaging their children.

Non pupil day, that means work without kids

Today was one of the three inservice days we have each year which the district lovingly calls, “buyback days.” Many years ago we got some extra pay and they decided for us to earn it, we would show up at school to work while the students stayed home. I have sat through many of these over the years, some more useful than others.

Today was a very good day.The staff was divided into four groups and each group went to four classes, just like our students do each morning. We moved every hour to a different room to learn about a different subject. Except for the pouring rain, it was a good experience. Also, I was with a very good “class” who behaved well and had fun doing it. It might have helped to have the principal in our class, but the individual teachers were all ones I am fond of.

Our first session was on how to check for understanding in our classroom after teaching new material. Three district consultants were brought in to direct the class, both getting suggestions from the group as well as showing us a few of their own tricks. There were some clever games that we all played and it gave me a few ideas.Next we went to a computer lab to learn how to use the new email system. It was pretty straight forward but some teachers got frustrated as the equipment didn’t work and the online connection wasn’t always as smooth as we would like. The presenter of this session was a retired teacher who easily loses her patience, and, I understand from my colleagues, that by the fourth period of presenting, she was pretty well fed up with the questions to which people wanted answers.In a downpour we moved across the parking lot to a classroom where a team of our own teachers presented methods with which to work with English language learners of which we all have some. They too had clever games with which to play with students and provided some good ideas.

Last stop was another computer lab to get directions on how to use the district’s research and evaluation site. At this site you can learn about each student you have as well as the entire class and how they compare to the rest of the school. There is lots of information about how each student did on previous standards tests so that you can refine your lessons to help them learn in the areas they are the weakest. Because I use the site quite often, I got to demonstrate.

After lunch we returned to our departments to work on accreditation materials as the visiting team for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges will be making a stop by our school sometime soon to make sure we are doing what we say we do. I like working with my department colleagues as they all have good ideas to share.At the end of the day, after spending some time downloading yearbook photos and designing an invitation, I was ready to come home much more relaxed than I do after a day of working and dealing with students and their multiple personalities. l like these non pupil days.

Be responsible for your child

I spoke with a parent today who was concerned that her daughter had missed her photo op for the yearbook. It seems that everyone thinks I can solve all yearbook problems because I am the adviser not realizing that the problems are actually caused by the person who is complaining.

Parents neglect to get their kid to the photographer during the summer for the ritual of senior portraits. Those pics are the first thing we put on the pages in the fall because they are color and should already be set to go in the book. That is, if people do what they are supposed to. Every year, I get a sorrowful call from a mother who wants her child, usually a son, in the yearbook, and it’s now March. The book is practically finished and I get the plea, “isn’t there anything you can do?”

Kids neglect to tell their parent they want to buy a yearbook during the time I sell the books. By January, the order has to be placed with the printer, and since we are very poor, I don’t have any leeway in ordering–I must order what I can pay for. “Can’t I buy a book now? My son was on the football team, in the school play, it’s his senior year, I have to have a yearbook for him.”

Today’s conversation was a bit different. Every time I think I’ve heard it all, something new pops up. Today’s mom wanted to know why her daughter couldn’t have a picture just of herself in the book. I started asking questions like, does she play a sport? NO; is she in the band? NO; drama? NO; any clubs? NO? “Can’t you just take a picture of her and put her in the book?” Well, mam, we’ve done a lot of group pages already like rallies, homecoming, games, siblings, first day of school, cars, as well as most of the clubs. I did have an idea because the daughter loves her fashion class…join the club sponsored by that teacher or join Future Homemakers of America and compete in the fashion area. We still have those pages to do. “NO, she doesn’t want to join a club.” Oh, I know, tomorrow night is the winter formal…if she goes we’ll make sure and get a photo of her because we still have that spread to do. “NO, she won’t want to go to the dance.” There isn’t much I can do for a girl who doesn’t want to be involved in school activities. Twenty minutes of my life, gone. Gone on a conversation that went no where, got nothing accomplished, and only left me wondering why parents don’t/can’t get their kids to do anything.

I decided it was a Friday night that deserved dinner and a drink. There in the restaurant was a small boy about the age of 8, who spoke loudly, overturned a chair, spilled the water, and his parents just sat there, doing nothing. Finally, when he hit his dad in the face, his father spoke sharply to the boy who immediately put his head down and pouted for awhile. After his pouting got him little attention, he got up from his chair, walked over to his mother and climbed into her lap and she petted him. Nothing was accomplished and before I knew it, the boy was talking loudly again. Some day that boy will be in a high school classroom and his teacher will wonder why he behaves the way he does. Someday I will get another phone call, and I will recall these events.

Mid winter and the deadlines are here; care to dance?

It’s the time of year when everything needs to be done.  Yearbook deadlines are looming and my students are not getting pages done as quickly as needed.  Registration for next year’s classes is right around the corner so I am hurrying to recruit new students for our program.  For two days now my partner in crime, uh, education, and I have done a song and dance to entice freshmen to sign up for classes they will take the next three years.  Receipts for taxes are arriving almost daily and I know I will soon have to put it all together for our wonderful tax accountant.  The Winter Formal is on Saturday.  Do I wear an old outfit or try to find something new?  With all I have to do, and the forecast for rain that night, I think I’ll pull an old outfit out of the closet and dance my way into the evening.

A visitor

Today, at lunch, one of my graduates came to visit.  Although Estrella had only graduated in June, she came to say she missed high school and to fill me in on how she is doing at college.  After the first semester, getting good grades, she’s now ensconced in a new semester with a full load.

She told me how the instructors will start a lesson and she realizes she’s already heard it from me.  She put off writing her first paper only to realize that was not the way to go because, just as I had told her, there were no reminders, no ideas for assistance.  The due date is given at the beginning of the semester and the paper is due when the date arrives. Just like  I had told her, and for that matter, all the students who have come before Estrella.

It’s nice to know that my lessons are heard and remembered, especially when they come home to roost at college.  It’s also nice to have these visits from the graduates.

Doing something else

For four days last week I headed to a different school in the city than my usual inner city institution.  I was part of a group learning how to teach entrepreneurship and we met at the state university, where long ago, in another time, I did my undergrad work.  The building in which this workshop was held didn’t exist until about a year ago, and it houses a state of the art (I guess from my limited knowledge of such things) recreation center.  All I saw every day upon entering was all these “machines.”   A number of the young people in our group oohed and aahed each day and wished they could go and exercise, but the setup is only for registered students which makes sense because there are over 22,000 students at this learning institution.  When I was there, maybe 13,000, and we were not interested in exercise.  Just walking across campus was enough for most of us.  Now, students want to park as close to class as possible, or take a shuttle, but they are willing to spend hours in a gym (ok, recreation center) where it is noisy and sweaty.  I think this may be the new place to meet the opposite sex, but I digress.

Where I’m really going with this is that I was out of the classroom for four days last week.   I was with adults, no kids.  I was not in charge, fewer responsibilities.  I started later each day than our usual 7:50 a.m. bell so was able to spend more time at home each morning.  The one drawback, we didn’t leave campus until 5 p.m. each day so I had to deal with commuter traffic, something I never worry about unless I’m stuck in a meeting at a district office until 5, and that is a rare case.  I am almost always home by 5 p.m.

At the end of the four days, I realized how relaxed and recharged I felt.  Although we did a lot of learning and we also worked on projects, it was different to work solely with adults again.  Also, these were very intelligent, focused adults who all had pleasant personalities and enjoyed being there.   I didn’t miss the tyranny of the moment, the rush to get everything done before the bell rings.  I didn’t miss dealing with 20 different sets of problems every hour as I juggle the lives of my students and their various needs.  I went home in the evening and told my husband pleasant stories of the day, not horror stories.  He was pleased too.

It is only after an experience like the one last week that I realize the toll I pay to do the work I do.  It is hard work, necessary work for society, but I wonder how much longer I can keep doing it.  I try to encourage younger teachers so they will stay in an inner city school and do the hard work.  Two of last week’s attendees were from an inner city school in Los Angeles, and in talking to them, they both said they didn’t see themselves doing this for more than four years.  It’s too hard.  The young man, who I could tell is a fantastic role model for students as well as a good teacher, said he was being priced out of the LA lifestyle that he sees his friends enjoying and in which he wants to take part.  He was born and raised in LA and does not want to leave to work in a less costly part of the state.  The young lady is a math genius and after she finishes her master’s degree will probably leave to work elsewhere or continue to get a doctorate and eventually work in a university setting.  Teaching ninth graders about algebra is draining her soul.

What would I do if I didn’t drive to the inner city school each day?  With whom would I like to work and what would the work look like?  Where do I want to live?  Can I make the money to afford the lifestyle I would like?  For although it is hard work that I do, I get paid pretty well to do it, especially since I have been doing it for 19 years and I have the top amount of education for the payscale.   All questions I am contemplating.

King Holiday

On this weekend, when we stop to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I attempt to help my students look at a time when the liberties they know were not so.  I want them to understand that their place in the world might not be what it is were it not for those who came before them and whose shoulders they stand on.  I tell them a story I remember from my childhood when it was very much a different time and a different place.

I grew up here in California, in the heart of the state where agriculture is king.  We grow the fiber and food for the world, and although it is done by large conglomerates now, when I was a child growing up, it was done by small farmers, farmers like my father and his friend, Mr. Price.  Farmers who made a living on small plots of land and fed and clothed the world.

My dad met Mr. Price and his wife when they came to chop cotton on our farm.  They hit it off because, although handicapped, Mr. Price worked harder than any man my father knew.  My dad was always looking for hard workers because he believed that is how you make a way for yourself in the world, by the sweat of your brow.  Race, politics, religious convictions, they meant nothing to my dad, only how hard did one work.   That was his measure of a man, and Mr. Price filled it well.

Our farm had excellent soil, and my father, being an excellent farmer, worked it sun up to sundown,  growing high quality cotton on it each year.  Mr. Price owned a small piece of land not too far from our farm, and he too was trying to make a living by farming this hardscrabble land.   My father was sympathetic to his plight as the soil was highly alkali and so harder to coax a good crop from it.   He offered to help Mr. Price with his farming, especially since Mr. Price only had one arm and one tractor that was on its last leg.  My dad knew it was hard to farm with good soil, good equipment, and all digits.

Because my dad had an open account at the local seed and fertilizer store, he took Mr. Price there too so he could buy his yearly supplies and pay after harvest.  It’s the way farmers make their living, paying their accounts after they’ve been paid for their crop.  However, the fertilizer store refused to open an account for Mr. Price.   This was a store for the white farmer, and Mr. Price was black, or as we said in those days, Negro.  My dad, who had a fierce temper, was furious but not thwarted.  “Ok, then put Mr. Price’s seed and fertilizer on my account,” thinking that would solve the problem.  Alright, but all materials had to be delivered to the address on the account.  Every delivery that was made was dropped in the front yard of our home where Mr. Price and my dad would then reload the bags into the back of Daddy’s pickup and haul them another 3 miles to Mr. Price’s plot of land.  I would watch from the living room window as the two men, one with only one arm, would lift those bags from the pallets where they had been dropped into the bed of the pickup.  I learned the lesson, you do what you have to do to get the job done, and it’s stuck with me ever since.

My students get upset to learn that a store wouldn’t sell to a black man, but I point out it wasn’t that the store wouldn’t sell, it was that it would not sell on credit to a man who was a different color.  There was the perception that Negroes would not be good for the money when it came time to pay up.  Mr. Price always paid Daddy, by the way.   I also point out that this was only a few decades ago, and it was right here in California, not the deep south where we think of racism.  I remind my students of what people like Dr. King have done for all of society and that we should remember what it was like then and look for how we can continue to improve the lives of all people.  As my father would say, “hard work never killed anyone,” and sometimes the hardest work is just to change people’s attitudes.

Please & thank you

Manners.  Who teaches those now?  Where do kids learn to say “please” and “thank you”?  Where do people learn to greet one another, look one another in the eye?  It doesn’t just happen and I know this because I see poor manners all the time out there in the world.  Let the other person go ahead of you.  Be willing to take your turn.  Smile and be cordial.  There’s a word you don’t hear much any more, cordial.  It was a spelling word a few weeks back, and my students had a hard time with its meaning.  Of course, when you’re not, it’s hard to know what it is.

Stand up straight, don’t slouch, shoulders back.  Don’t shout, use your “indoor” voice.  Say “good morning, how are you?” and act like you care.  Hold the door for the person behind you, move to the side to let someone pass, give up your seat on mass transit.  All those manners.  Who teaches that stuff?  How do we keep society cultured and refined?

Dress nicely for an event.  Don’t go out in your pajamas or sweats unless you’re going to bed or running down the street.  Dark socks with dress shoes, tie tied correctly, shirt tucked in.    Turn off the cell phone, don’t look at your watch, take the earphones out.  Sit still, don’t chew gum, cover your mouth when you yawn.

Put your napkin on your lap as soon as you sit down.  Beverages on the right, solids on the left.  Pass the salt and pepper together and don’t use it first if asked to pass it.  Two sugar packets, max.  Use the bread and butter plate for that and break off one piece of bread at a time to butter.  Don’t whine about the food, eat what’s put before you, be grateful. Thank your host.  And when you are thanked, don’t say, “no problem,” say “you’re welcome.”

If you work with customers, make their day.  Make them glad to be in your store.  Greet them, smile at them, look them in the eye.  Ask a question, make a comment, notice them.  How hard is this?   I think you are being paid by someone to do these things, and if you don’t do them, well, you may not have any customers.

All of these niceties make our life better.  Practice them, use them, pass them along to your children and their children.  We need to return to a more genteel time.  Ah, another word few people know.

Beyond six blocks

Field trips are an important part of my curriculum because of where my students live. Although we are a fairly large city, so many of my students never go anywhere beyond their neighborhood. They are unaware of the life that is out there, the adventures they can have, the people with whom they can interact, the opportunities they may never have expected. I call their culture a 6-block mentality. They seldom go beyond a 6-block radius from their home to their school. Even the local community college sits within this 6-block area, and most of them say they’re going there if asked about attending college.

So, where all do we go? In town we visit a major department store in a regional mall, the same department store’s corporate office, a soda bottling plant, the zoo, the state university, the local team’s baseball stadium, a local printing plant, a private university, a manufacturing plant, and the waste water treatment plant. We go out of town to see the company that prints our yearbook, a nearby University of California, the state capitol, an aquarium, a literary museum, a planned city, and San Francisco for all the students with 3.0 g.p.a. Another teacher in the department takes her students on trips for trade fairs that tie in with her curriculum. She goes to Bakersfield, Oakland, and New York City.

Next week I was to take my senior marketing students to the Grizzly baseball stadium for a behind the scenes look as well as an informative talk from the vice president of marketing for the team. Afterwards we would be stopping at a small printing plant that does a lot of jobs for our local university’s sports teams. Sports marketing is big business. We aren’t going. The students failed to turn their paperwork in on time, and they didn’t seem all that interested in going on the trip. When we called the baseball stadium to tell them we were rescheduling so as to take the juniors at a later time, they could not believe that kids would really be so uninterested in a field trip.

Maybe we go on so many trips the kids become jaded. I don’t think that’s it. Some of them are very excited and ready to go, others more ho hum. I grew up in the middle of a cotton farm with no friends close by. My mother didn’t drive and my dad farmed all of the time. I got to go no where. So, when it was time for a field trip, I was the first one ready to go, at the door of the bus, excited to know I was going to see some place different from the fields I looked out on every day. That’s the feeling I want my students to have.

Color me red

My hairdresser This is Denise, the lady who makes me look good.  Every four weeks or so I go in and she paints my hair red.  It is an astonishing color, and I get stopped everywhere I go by people telling me how great it is and wanting to know what color it is.  I have to give all the praise  to Denise and tell people it’s her own special recipe.  She mixes up some numbers, and this is what she gets.  It certainly isn’t a color for just any timid soul.  My students like it.   I took my students on a fieldtrip and we were joined by students from another school who also liked my hair color and wanted to know what it was called.  I not only told them about my hairdresser, but also showed them my gray roots that were to be touched up the next day. My students became very jealous and said I wasn’t to talk to those other kids, especially about my hair and its roots.  Denise and I have a great time, laughing and talking, every time I go in.  One time, while both of us were talking, and she was cutting my hair, I zigged when she zagged, and she cut my ear.  We both fell over laughing at the whole thing while she wiped up the blood.  Just another goofy day at the hairdresser’s.  Denise had to be out of commission for a few weeks when she had some back problems and she had a substitute fill in for her.  I liked the sub ok, but she wasn’t Denise.  Sure enough, when Denise was back to work, she said that her sub told her that all of Denise’s clients were nuts!  We’ve decided that hairdressers attract their own kind.