Too bad you can no longer employ this effective device.
Posted on 09/04/2007 6:11:12 PM PDT by A_perfect_lady
Perhaps I'm just not that good at it. It's only my fourth year. They say it takes practice.
I am standing at the door of my classroom. It is 7:24am in Los Angeles, and my homeroom students are trickling in listlessly.
"Good morning. Please get your book out." I say to each group as they wander in. "Good morning, please get your book out. Good morning, please get your book out."
I say it about 10 times. It is school policy to use the 20 minutes of homeroom for silent reading, to set the right tone for a day of schoolwork, and add to the amount of time they spend during a day reading rather than watching YouTube, listening to iPods, playing with Gameboys, etc.
They stand for the Pledge, only because I went off on them like a bomb when they failed to do so at the beginning of the year. Even then it was a three week struggle to teach them not to flop back into their seats with a contemptuous sneer even before the "and justice for all."
Now that they are seated again, they are talking to each other, ignoring my directive to please begin reading. Only 8 of 32 students actually have their book out. I go around urging each one by name, and thanking those who have done so, also by name. I have found that barking orders at the group avails nothing. They do not recognize that anything I say is directed at them unless I stare them in the eye and say their name.
Here is where, already, those who do not teach in LAUSD have suggestions.
Keep them after school if they don't listen to you.
I can't without written parent permission given 24 hours in advance. If the child fails to bring back the signed note, I am stymied. I try calling them. The number is disconnected, or there is no one home. I send home another notice. The child fails to bring it back, explaining that mom works and no one is home and she doesn't speak English anyway and besides, he lost the note.
Send them to the counselor.
Counselor sends them back with a note saying that they have been "counselled." Child smirks as he hands it to me.
Send them to the Dean.
Dean sends them back with a note saying "This is a matter for the counselor."
There are byzantine paths I can trudge down to finally get children to pay 20 minutes of their lives to me for failing to get out their book for homeroom, but I don't have the energy for that because this is nothing compared to the resistance and apathy I'll face in actual classes. I'm saving my powder. I nag and urge them to get out their books until finally they do, and silence falls.
Now I can take attendance. The minute my eyes are off them the whispering and giggling starts. I stare them down a few times and eventually they dissolve into sullen silence. Books in their hands, they stare defiantly off into space. Never mind I let them pick out whatever book they wanted, provided by the tax-payer, at the library. Could be Harry Potter. Could be WWF. Could be Goosebumps. Only four of the students read. The others mark time, prefering to waste 20 minutes rather than read for pleasure. They'll do anything to avoid reading. They hate the written word with a passion. By the time homeroom is over, I am depressed, because they are our Nation's future.
Now comes my 8th grade English class. We are reading Bud, Not Buddy because it's one of the few books earmarked for 8th graders. It's about an orphan boy in Depression-era Michigan searching for his real father. At one point Bud meets a Union organizer. He is the good guy. The cops harass him because they are bad people who want to make sure the poor stay poor, we learn. That's what anti-union people are like, you see. I hate this book but they've already read Freak the Mighty, Jade Green, and The Outsiders, so I'm pretty much down to this.
Most of them read at the 4th grade level. For this district, that's pretty good. My ESL classes are at the 2nd grade level.
I say, "Before we begin reading today, let's review what we've read so far. Please take out your notes from yesterday." Four children take out their notes. Three children take out iPods and try to sneak them on. They thread the earphones up under their shirts, sneak in one earpod, and hide it with their hand as if resting their heads on their hands. The girls cover the pods with their hair. I wonder how they can afford iPods when they are all on subsidized lunch. Then I realize, oh, that is why they can afford iPods.
I catch them and ask them to put the iPods away. I would confiscate them, but the administration has warned us that if we do and we lose it or it's stolen, we have to pay the child's parents to replace the iPod. It's happened once already to a first year teacher, so I don't risk it.
Again, the children seem only vaguely aware that I am speaking to them when I say "Take out your notes from yesterday." So I walk around the room. "Thank you, Wendy. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Jose." Then what I call the second-tier students come awake and take out their notes. I thank them too. Finally I am down to the last six who flatly refuse to do anything until I look them in the eye and say, "Aron, can you take out your notes from yesterday? Are you sure you lost them? Can you open up your backpack? Open it up. Unzip it. Good. Now look in there. What about that folder? Pull it out. Let's see. There they are! Good!"
Finally we are ready to read about the innate goodness of union organizers.
Second period is Intermediate ESL. There are Asian students in this class. One Korean girl, two Thai, one Vietnamese, as well as an Indian girl, a boy from Sri Lanka, and a girl from Cambodia. There are also four Armenians. "Please open your books to page 146," I say. The Asians and Armenians open their books to page 146. The rest of the students, who are Hispanic, ignore me, turn to their friends, and begin chattering. I repeat my usual performance, "Thank you Min Sun, thank you Nafisa, thank you Narek, thank you Ruzanna..."
After much struggle, the Hispanic students finally open their books. A few of the Hispanic girls show signs of making an attempt to do their work. They are rare, and have a tendency to sit alone. Other students tease them.
We are reading about how racist whites victimized African-Americans during the Great Migration. Then we'll read more about slavery and segregation.
Now it is time to do our worksheets. The Asian and Armenian students listen attentively to the directions, ask questions, and then get to work. They are almost competitive in their desire to do well. One Armenian boy and the boy from Sri Lanka fall over themselves in their haste to beat the other and bring me their paper for inspection.
Most of the Hispanic students return to their gossip, except for the few ostracized girls who struggle to figure out how to fill in the blanks.
These scenes are repeated throughout the day. After school, we have an administrative meeting to find out how our API scores for 2007 were. I think it stands for Annual Proficiency Index. I'm half-dead from six hours of struggling with the inertia that is most of my students, but I look at the data they present.
The information is broken down by ethnicity. The White students are 50% proficient. The Filipinos are 51%. The Asians, despite the fact that most of them have only been in the country for a couple years, are at 61%. Blacks and Latinos are at 22%.
"What are we doing wrong," we are urged to ask ourselves, in looking at the scores for the Blacks and Latinos. "What should we give them, how do we help them access the material?"
All around me, teachers suggest programs, graphic organizers, smaller class sizes, etc, etc, until finally, an older woman points out quite brusquely that certain subgroups are doing fine and are being given all the same things that the non-achievers are given, and no more.
Immediately, the principal seeks to lead us away from this kernel of truth. "Research shows," she says insistently, "that effective classroom teaching overcomes cultural habits that aren't conducive--" She says it again "Research shows it."
What research, I wonder. Whose research? Research funded by whom? Conducted by whom? Greenpeace? Hampton-Brown employees ready to sell us another set of Highpoint books?
My Advanced ESL students must spend three weeks learning how Roosevelt saved America from the Great Depression using the New Deal. Then they have to write a paper about it. Are those the folks conducting this research?
Well, perhaps she's right. If I were just a better teacher, my Hispanic students would not bring the iPods the taxpayer bought them to school. And they'd be more interested in all those stories about unions, segregation, slavery, and the New Deal. It's all about how much better a teacher I could be, and should be. That is what we are here to discuss, that is the only acceptable way of looking at this data. So that is what we do until 3:20pm, when we are finally free to hear from our union organizer, and then return to our rooms and plan for tomorrow. Let's see, let me look at the materials I have been given to teach from. Maya Angelou, Gary Soto, Langston Hughes... in the hallway, one teacher opines loudly that if selfish taxpayers would give more, we'd have the materials we need to reach these students.
Ah yes, I think. That's what the students need. 40 gameboys and a cellphone. And an iPod in every backpack.
I was all set to think you were an arrogant snot. Very good article. Thanks for sharing.
Just damnnn I going send this to my San Diego school teacher aunt
The problem is clear. As a teacher you have no authority and no one supporting you. The parents don’t care and the administrators will not discipline the trouble makers. I think my friend sank into a feeling of hopelessness. The kids were so far behind academically that his lesson plans were not applicable. Try teaching a physics class when most of the kids can’t even add or subtract.
If you are looking for another job, you certainly write well enough to be paid for it.
That needs to be some kind on must read! Sends that to Rush! This one needs to live forever in cyberspace!
I am keeping that and sending it to everyone I know. Thank you!
Close all public schools immediately. Give all the money (every penny) to Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, Baptist, Coptic, Zoroastrian and secular private schools that can prove they can graduate well-adjusted, well-educated and polite American citizens. Fire every teacher and principal and make them apply at the new schools. Fire every school board member and other “administrators” and let them find jobs elsewhere.
Things will only change when we stop funding the madness that is the public school system.
Good solution, but there’s an ACLU type waiting to sue you for infringing on the student’s right to listen to anything they want whenever they want.
Vent more often. That was excellent!
Too bad you can no longer employ this effective device.
... they are our Nation's future....
I taught in LA for one year. Then I got married and moved to a suburban school, and it was so much nicer. They had a copy machine that worked half the time, instead of never!
The reason the kids are so horrible there is because the principals do not discipline. They didn’t really discipline in my suburban school, either, but it was better than LA, and most of the parents backed me up. I wondered why the schools were so bad until I had a principal who actually did her job.
I escaped California and fled to the Midwest, where I taught in an inner-city school. What a difference! Our black students actually do better than our white students. Hispanics are doing in the middle, even though most of them are very recent immigrants (or maybe because of it). You know why? My principal put the fear of God into those kids if they got sent to her. Yeah, sometimes she took it too far, which was a shame, but at least the kids learned something. Because the discipline is there, teachers stay and have careers at that school, instead of leaving after a year or two like in LA. When I taught in LA a teacher who had five years of experience was a VETERAN. That’s nuts. Other schools have principals who do not keep discipline here, too, and they don’t have good scores. Or teachers who stay very long.
Anyway, it’s better teaching somewhere else, in my experience. I’m getting out anyway, I decided to go to law school at night and I’m in my last year.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Huge bttt. This is why our (eventual!) children will not be enrolled in LAUSD, even though we currently live within its borders. Even if we were in a better/affluent area with smarter kids from smarter parents, STILL the curriculum would be poisonous, something approaching what one might expect in Kim’s North Korea or Ceaucescu’s Romania.
I admire you, however, for fighting it out.
Not bad; I had a teacher with a perfect first day delivery as a freshman in my first semester majoring in G.I. Bill.
It was a 5-unit Algebra class and about 35 students showed up.
He stood at the front of the room and counted noses while pointing to each in turn, introduced himself and said that in two weeks exactly half of the class would be gone.
When he had our attention he described the class.
There would be three hours in each class of which two and one half would be lecture and practice; the last half hour would be a test on which we would be graded at the rate of one half the final score or grade.
Starting with the second class two days later the test would be the first half hour repeating this way except for the two days needed for the semi-final exam and the final which would count one fourth each.
Any absence would receive a failure for the test missed “F” marks the spot.
Two weeks later his prophecy proved to be optimistic; we were down to 13 students and all 13 passed the course.
The ACLU loses most of the lawsuits they file, that would simply be yet another one. Interestingly enough, not only is there no right to privacy for data on electronic devices brought onto school campuses, there is even specific indemnity for educators in case that data is compromised or lost, even through direct malicious action, in California.
That being said, the law means nothing to the ACLU, and you're right, they'd probably file a lawsuit, then file a lawsuit because not enough money is being spent on kids.
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