Watermelons

Parents are the wild card in my career. Some are fantastic, some never believe the good or bad things you say about their children and some are just awful.

Sometimes you get great parents like Saul and Brent's mum whom I've now known for four years. She's always ready to back you up, she's active on the PTA but she's not in the classroom all time and so she's not in your face. I've known Matt's parents are just as long too and though Matt isn't always the easiest kid in the classroom to deal with, his parents are willing to discuss the problems in a rational how-can-we-help-each-other kind of way that I really appreciate.

Then there are those that make me really uncomfortable. Gilbert's family, whom I've also known since moving here is one. They are really really religious which in and of itself is not a problem. But they push religion into every part of their lives. The Christmas card from them had such a strong pro-life message that made me feel so icky that I tossed it in the trash when no one was looking almost immediately after it was handed to me. Also, when I was their daughter Loo Loo's teacher, she panicked after she head the girls from my class doing "Bloody Mary" in the bathroom. She decided that this was some sort of "spell." She went directly to the board meeting and tried to ban Harry Potter from my classroom. I did not let this occur. This post is another example.

Another mother, of whom I'm not going to say, for further anonymity is really hard to understand. When she speaks to us, Ms. Jenson and myself, she speaks in ebonics. Now, I have a lot of parents that speak exclusively in Spanish. I understand almost everything they say and am usually only about a half sentence behind in understanding. When I speak to this mum I'm usually around three sentences behind in understanding.

This is one thing. The other thing is the way she is dressed. It's embarrassing for us and I'm sure even more so for Sr. Callejo who has been in on many of these meetings with us. She is wears shirts that are so revealing. Shirts that show her underthings and doesn't seem to ever leave much to the imagination. That's not the worst of it. She stores her cell phone IN her cleavage. And when it vibrates/rings...need I say more?

So after one of these meetings, it somehow came up that some parents occasionally join their kids at lunch. That next week, in she came complete with three bags of food from McDonald's. Now whenever someone unexpected comes in all my students (eating separately from the third graders) turn to see who it is.

Fred, who seems to know a bit more about the world than is healthy for a boy of ten, turns to the boy sitting next to him and says, "You know what fruit I like best?" The other boy shook his head. Fred replies, "Watermelons." The other boy looked confused, but I wasn't.

It took all I had not to burst out laughing while I was telling him that I understood perfectly well what he was talking about and that he needed to knock it off this instant.

Not so depressed as before

So I think I'm coming to terms with teaching sixth grade next year. There were a few reasons I wasn't so comfortable with this idea.

The first is that I just love the fourth grade curriculum. The science and math curriculum is rich with hands on activities that are doable by the students. The stories in the reader are engaging, culturally relevant and the kids love them. I've taught both fifth and sixth grade and did not find them to be similar.

Fourth graders, you know the actual students are just the best. They are still engaged in school for the most part. They find new concepts exciting and they love the practice. Fifth graders have started to see the routine in school and its harder to keep them engaged in school and not the drama among their peer group. And sixth graders. Ug. I don't even know where to begin with them. Check out the beginning of my blog because I try not to revisit that particular part of my teaching career...it tends to bring on waves of panic.

As I was wrestling, fighting, cajoling, begging, helping the third graders to finish up the science fair group project, it came to me that these kids are actually going to be next year's fourth graders. (Well, except for those we are going to hold back.) Now, you might think this would have come to me much sooner. And perhaps it should have. But in years past, at the beginning of the year it's the third graders that I've the most problem with and fourth graders that I've loved. As the year comes to a close, the third graders start to become fourth graders and they become the most fun to work with and the fourth graders start to become fifth graders and I begin to become annoyed with their drama.

The other day I realized April was ending and I hadn't observed this particular change which I usually begin to see at the beginning of March. The third graders are still third graders, some are even still acting like second graders. The fourth graders are still fantastic. I'm grateful every time I get to send the third graders on and the fourth graders walk into my room.

So perhaps working with fifth and sixth graders next year will be a good thing. I'll have my fantastic fourth graders from this year and the sixth graders will be my fourth graders from the first half of last year and for the most part, I really enjoyed them.

I said as much to Sr. Callejo as the Science Fair was ending last night and he seemed excited about my change of heart. I know he loves the way I teach and likes the way I expect great things my students. He said, "That means you get to have my niece!" and he introduced me to Elma's mother, his sister.

So all and all, it's probably all sewn up and might even be for the best.

How's that for a positive note.

However, I'm definitely going to have to take home the sixth grade math curriculum and spend the summer with it.

18 Days left.

Well it's hit. The year is almost over and the kids know it. So the countdown begins.

Today was one of the those days. One of those days where you feel like you are nowhere, you have taught all those kids nothing and you just want to roll up in ball and cry.

Instead I chose to go home and loose myself in The Wire and pet my dog. Well. To be honest there was a little crying.

I put together this great probability unit back during my Master's year. Every year I take a piece of it and use it in my classroom. This year, I decided to do the entire thing. It's all hands on games. It was reviewed by a mathematician back in 2006. It's a damn good unit plan if I do say so myself. I weave fractions, games of chance and games of probability together so well, the kids don't realize until the game is over that they learned something. Sr. Callejo was so excited when I told him all about it. He said that my plan was exactly what he wanted teachers doing at our school all the time.

I came into school Monday so excited. I had spent a lot of the weekend thinking about it, working it through in my head and double checking to make sure I had everything. I start with the third graders. I get nothing. They throw around my manipluatives, refuse to think about the questions, all they want to do is fool around. My fourth graders did a little better but they fell apart today. I'm getting nothing from either class. It's so frustrating.

I know it's almost summer. (Hence the countdown) But I keep stressing to them that it's not over yet. It's just not.

Then at the end of the day I have a conversation with Sr. Callejo that leads me to believe I'm going to be teaching fifth (which is great, because I'll have my fourth graders that I usually love again) and the SIXTH GRADERS.

Oh to put the cherry on my sundae.

I guess my job doesn't have to make me happy yet.

There would be more choice for me with grade levels if I had my bilingual endorsement, but that's a really expensive thing to get and there is no help from the school or the state because they were in a terrible state even before the economy fell.

I'm stuck.

Jamie Escalante

If you were ever a teacher, knew a teacher, took a clase de espanol, had a substitute in math or loved math you know about Jamie Escalante and have seen Stand and Deliver.

Just today Sr. Callejo and I were doing the finger man tricks with the third graders and talking about how you need ganas to succeed in school.

"To be a teacher you need to believe in the potential of people." Jamie Escalante

Second Day of Testing or The Day I Got Thrown Up On.

Yesterday, ALDR started our New Mexico Standards Based Assessment (NMSBA), the state test that the children are required to take according to No Child Left Behind (NLCB) in order to access whether or not we've made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Whew...that was way too many acronyms! AYP is a powerful number. At best, if we have good numbers, we'll get some monies from the state to continue improving and at worst we'll be closed down because our numbers are so bad.

Thankfully the latter can't happen to us just yet as we haven't been open long enough. This year is our last “free pass” so to speak. Last year, we did alright. We passed in reading and came close in math. Our math scores did double, which was great and gave me some much needed confidence in our mathematics curriculum.

The kids have three weeks of testing. 12 days of awfulness. It starts at 8:30 and should only last until 10:00, but there are days, like yesterday that it can last until 11:00. It's hard because all the kids can be be done except one and the others can't move or talk until everyone is finished. So some kids can be sitting (reading if they choose) for up to an hour and forty five minutes. They have three days of reading, three days of math, two days of writing and three days of science.

It's a lot of work for them. And it's tiring. So after the testing, the rest of the day is sort of shot. Their eyes are glazed over. They can't focus. They are exhausted. This year, I have the fourth graders after the test until 1:00 and the third graders from 1:00 – 3:00. I have each group do some math, usually something fun and hands on and then let them watch an episode of Planet Earth or Seas of Life for some brain rest time.

I have nine fourth graders to test. What about the other four you ask? Well, two are severe special ed and so need one on one testing and two are mild special ed and so need small group testing. Because I only have nine students in my room, it was decided that I didn't need a proctor. This at first was fine with me, because all my proctors have done in the past is sit there and read a book while I do all the work. This did however mean, that if anything went wrong I was going to be in a tough spot as children are not to be left alone while testing.

As I mentioned earlier, my classroom is in an interesting spot in the school. This makes it very difficult to begin testing because there are so many people going back and forth between the rooms that it's hard to tell when everyone is where they are supposed to be for the next two to three hours. The other two classrooms also have outside access so you'd think that people (Mr. Rama a.k.a. my least favorite person at school) would realize that they don't have to interrupt testing to get from place to place. To deter errant people walking through my room during testing (which according to the test directions is expressly forbidden) I began locking two out of the four doors in my room.

Yesterday, as it was the first day there were the first day kinks to get out. ALL of the directions had to be read aloud to the students and two sample questions had to be worked through before the students could even begin. There were 26 questions in first session of the reading test. I think the students really struggled with it and put a lot of time and effort into what they wrote and how they answered. They asked questions that I wasn't allowed to answer, but that showed me they were really thinking. They weren't getting all the questions right, but I was impressed with how hard they were trying.

Today was an entirely different experience. We were able to get started on time for the most part, which was nice. There were only 16 questions. (Now, why they didn't let the kids get their feet wet with less questions on the first day is beyond me.) About five minutes after I had set them to begin, Jamie raised his hand. This child is so quite and so shy, I was surprised. I walked over and he told me he didn't feel good. I asked him what he wanted to do about it, my usual response to that question. He couldn't even get the answer out before he began to throw up. So I rushed him to the door. Which was locked. Just as I got it unlocked, vomit sprayed over my back and left arm. Lovely.

I opened the door, stood in the door way (you know, because I didn't have a proctor and couldn't leave the room) and grabbed the nearest garbage can. Jamie continued to throw up. The Kindergarten kids came by on their way to morning water break. I asked their teacher, Ms. Betty to run to the admin office and get someone to come help because I couldn't leave the room while the kids were testing. The office person came and said she was going to get the custodian. Which left me still standing in my doorway with vomit all over my back. Custodian came cleaned up and we sent Jamie to the office. The office person was able to give me a shirt, luckily Jamie missed my pants. (It was really nice of him.) She stood in the doorway of my room while I ran to the bathroom to clean my arm and change.

The students had 16 questions and three passages to read today and they were finished in about 30 minutes in. They did not spend any where near the amount of time on the questions today that they did yesterday. We aren't even allowed to point out to students if they've missed one. I was so upset as I walked around and realized that some students weren't even writing complete sentences for most of the short answer questions. They know how to do that. We've worked on it all year. They just want to be done with the test. (Frankly, I don't blame them.) I walked back upstairs to talk to return the tests to Sr. Callejo and mentioned how discouraged I was. You know what he said? “Encourage them to write more.” Ok. Seriously. Duh. I did that. But that was all the advice he had for me.

I heard an awful story yesterday from the current second grade teacher that was assigned to test the seventh graders. Ms. Billings is a lovely teacher, she does a great job and she's always willing to go the extra mile even though her life outside of school isn't easy. She was telling me that the seventh graders basically refused to take the test. They found it too difficult and threw their test booklets and answer documents on the floor. They told her that if they didn't pass it didn't really matter because it was her fault because she didn't teach them right. (She's the second grade teacher...she hasn't even spent a single day with them. Haha, lucky woman.) She was horrified at their lack of disrespect and their inability to do anything without complaining about it first. I wasn't at all surprised. They were awful to me last year as I've written about on many occasions.

I put that sentence in bold for two reasons. The first because she isn't their teacher and hasn't spent anytime with them and it shows the amount of maturity these kids lack, the second is the sentiment itself. More and more it is becoming apparent to me that my job is going to start depending on these scores. What with the firing of an entire staff at a Rhode Island school, the firing of an entire staff in Georgia and the idea flooding public schools across the country that students and parents should be more in control of what happens at a school than teachers. This really worries me and makes me wish that I was trained for something other than teaching, you know so that when all the shit hits the fan, I would at least have a back up.

It seems 100 percent unfair to me that my job should depend on these scores. Maybe in middle class suburban neighborhoods and others that are more affluent. Maybe. The odds that are stacked against my students (and therefore me) are tremendous. Lack of English Language proficiency, poverty, parents that work 24 – 7, students that come to school but decide not to learn no matter what we do, parents that take their students out of school early ALL the time, parents that don't bother helping us with disciplinary issues, parents that bring their children an hour late EVERY day and the school not having enough money to provide us with what we need to teach these children all play into how well the students learn.

And it's not only these everyday things. There's also the children that come to use a month before testing is to begin, like Eliza in the third grade, from a different school, already behind. We are still responsible for that child's scores. You know why she moved schools so late in the year? Her father passed away suddenly. Guess who found him at the bottom of their hot tub. Eliza. Tell me how can we expect her to be able to do her best? Or what about the pair the sisters (both of whom I've taught, but have in the classroom this year) that lost their father suddenly over the past weekend. We are held responsible for those scores as well. And yet these children should not even expected to perform under these conditions.

How can it 100 percent my fault when the students don't test well even when the kids have been here all year? Today alone, Jamie threw up at the beginning of the test. He's going to have to go back and re-do it. Fred, after missing all last week, (when we did review and prep for these tests) (not that was the only prep and review, but still) didn't get home from El Paso until after midnight last night. He was half asleep as he was working on the test and he won't be able to go back and look at it again. How is that my fault?

Now don't get me wrong. I think teachers should be held to a very high standard. I work to meet that standard every single day. I think teachers should be educated in what we teach, I think we should constantly reflect on how well we are doing, I think principals should be in classrooms observing, checking on student learning and giving the teacher feedback weekly. I also think teachers should be paid as if they are professionals and that schools should be castles.

Lots of things get in the way of this ideal. Principals (not mine, though today he didn't have very good advice), the government, teachers' unions (my opinions on that are definitely a whole other post) bad teachers and of course students and parents. We ALL need to do better. I'm doing my part and I know there are other fantastic teachers out there that are doing their part. At some point all that has to add up to something.

Nice moment of the day: I got a quick note from one of the girls that did the same Masters' program that I did in Bennington. She ran into one of the students, Kim from the class that I student taught in back in 2005 – 2006 year who wanted to know what I was up to. Which really warmed my heart. Exactly what I needed to bring my spirits up a few hours after being thrown up on.