December12009
on coming back.
I had a really wonderful Thanksgiving. After spending a full day in the kitchen, the meal was a total success (23 lb. turkey, Parmesan mashed potatoes, roasted root vegetables, garlic cauliflower, apple sausage stuffing, sauteed kale, orange and pear cranberry sauce, glazed carrots…. and a chocolate pecan pie - I did not make this - with 18 year old aged scotch brought by one of the feast eaters) and in addition to spending time with all of the people at the dinner table, I got to see a number of other LA-ers that I get sporadic moments with. The weather was mostly sunny and beautiful, though sometimes I overestimated the “I live in New York so am impervious to California weather” bit. I took an extra day so in total, it was five days off. I did absolutely nothing related to school at all after working my ass off the week before to get it all done. For a moment, it felt like summer all over again.
Yes, and then I came home. Got back to Brooklyn around 10:30 last night. Was giving a test in one class today so that was covered and pulled together the rest so I could get to bed by 12. Reality comes fast and sleep is fleeting for teachers returning from any break.
And yes, then I went to school. After leaving early and feeling very good about my positive start to the month of December and all of the problems that we could collectively solve before the New Year, someone got sick on my train and they discontinued service on the entire 2/3 line…the only train that directly goes from my house to school. Four trains and a hike later, I made it to work barely on time. How quickly optimism gives way to anxiety and depression.
The second marking period ends today, and with it is coming a list of too many students with 55 next to their names (for those who don’t know… even if a student gets a 5% in the class, its a 55). We had a grade team meeting at lunch. During these weekly meetings, all the teachers of one grade get together, diagnose problems and try to solve them. Considering the lack of feedback on the administration level when we write EVERY WEEK please let there be a school wide attendance and late policy or some action on this issue, since it is crippling the 11th grade, the English teacher and I had been hashing out a new plan of our own. There are large posterboards tracking each student visibly and color coded levels and consequences and rewards. This probably doesnt mean anything to you if you’re not in education, but suffice it to say, we’re trying anything possible as lowly classroom teachers to make some kind of change in the patterns of failure that we’re seeing.
In response to some recent calls for change, the principal actually came to our meeting today. She promised administrative support for the rewards and consequences part and was impressed with the initiative that we are taking. Which was… nice. I’m feeling fairly jaded so I treat all of these things with…. tentative appreciation.
In other areas of the school, a student in the 9th grade came back to school today who had been at an out of school suspension site for the past couple of months for hitting a teacher. The Department of Education issues these long term suspensions less and less. The deans suspect its because there’s just too many of them across the city. This child, however, has had a history of hitting teachers, so she got the time. No teacher was given a heads up that she was coming back. By third period, she had attacked and spit on another student during a class. She was back in the classroom 4th period. The school is working right now to get her classified as needing a 12:1:1 setting. This means that she needs a classroom with twelve students, one teacher and one para-professional. I don’t know this student personally. What I know is what other teachers and students (my old students from the 8th grade class I taught last year) tell me: she’s a 9th grade holdover, consistently disruptive in class, lashes out at just about everybody, and is not passing again this year.
We learn about inclusion a lot in education courses. Inclusion is the idea that you don’t have to sequester away students who have some kind of disability. The school can work with them in a whole classroom to the benefit of every student - heterogeneous groups mean that students help each other learn and in the process, they themselves learn the material better in addition to gaining critical social skills about how to problem solve and collaborate with other people. There are some great examples of this. Cooperative Team Teaching (or CTT) allows two teachers to be in the room of an inclusion classroom, helping all students learn the material. Its all supposed to be seamless and interwoven and no one knows who is who. There are other instances, though, in the case of the aforementioned student, where learning for a group of 34 (because, yes, that’s how many are in this class) becomes impossible because of one student. Whether or not inclusion for all students would be the ideal, the classroom teachers that I see do not have nearly enough of the people and other support resources necessary to make that happen. And as a result, the student is failing, the teachers are not teaching as well as they can, and even the most motivated students are frustrated that they can’t learn either.
With everything else that has been going on in the school, one teacher told the assistant principal today that if there is not a solution figured out about this student - like not putting them back into class after they spit on a student - that’s she’s leaving at the end of this semester. Its not just about the student, but, as she said, “its the last straw.”
And so… in a day that started with optimism, and maybe even a little progress, I still left feeling like maybe our school was on the brink of another disaster.
Tags: /daily grind /discipline and consequences /inclusion /small reforms
