Success!

I started algebraic equations today with my students.  I started off with a balance scale, and used it to demonstrate how if I added weight to one side of the balance, in order to keep it balanced I needed to add weight to the other side as well. 

After 5 months of practicing integer operations, simple things like addition and subtraction, in the form of one-step algebraic equations, my students finally demonstrated that they knew what to do.  When I have Tamiya and Amari, two of my most challenged students, sitting in the front row, shouting out answers and correcting other students, that was the epitome of elation. 

On the other side, I have two cameras that we use for the newspaper and yearbook.  I had all the students sign release forms saying they'd be responsible for any damage while the camera was under their possession, but then today the inevitable happened.  One of my students was pushed to the ground while she was taking a picture, and it damaged the camera.  I'm going to take it home tonight and put my ME skills to use, but if I can't repair it, what should I do?  Do I charge her for a new camera?  I'm a little stuck with this right now...

What else?

I have about half of my students for the first two periods of the day.  Then they go to Science, where they have a different substitute every day, and then English and ELA support, where their teacher is out on indefinite medical leave and there is another substitute/administrator covering the class every day.  Following that, they go to their Social Studies class, which is being taught by a veteran teacher who just happens to be teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Social Studies by himself.  He has three different curriculum preps, in a school with very little support and very little structure, while there are other teachers at our school who have 3 personal prep periods.  Go figure.  He voiced his concern for being overwhelmed today, and I can hardly blame him.  I can't even imagine trying to teach math to all three grades - there's no way I would have made it this far.

THEN after social studies, they go to PE, where you would think PE is PE, except their teacher has been out on medical leave since October.  So they haven't gotten a physical education at all, and that time has turned in to recreational-time-to-do-whatever-we-want.  Plus, since we have a different teacher there on a daily basis, there isn't a set ritual, and the gym has turned in to the official class-skipping ground.  Any time a student doesn't want to go to class, they can just run to the gym and hang out there, since the sub has absolutely no idea who is actually in the class and who isn't.  In a day with 7 periods, my students spend less than half of them with full time teachers.  Sound like the basis for a solid education?  I'm just getting started.

Following Christmas break, there was an adjustment class schedule at our school.  I personally kind of enjoy the change, which made it so there were four classes before lunch instead of three, but the side effect of this was the bells.  The district had to come out to make a change to the bell schedule, and they encountered some problems.  Since then, the bells haven't worked at all, and the district has basically told us that since the school is getting torn down in a few months they aren't going to fix it.

If you combine this with the fact that there isn't a single functioning clock in the entire school (besides the ones that individual teachers have brought) and the fact that over half the staff on any given day is transient and unfamiliar with our students, the schedule, or the entire broken system, students are rarely where they are supposed to be, when they're supposed to be there. 

But what's to encourage them to get there?  Our counselors?  The ones who are completely swamped with a stack of referrals nearly a foot thick, and constant phone calls from the poor substitutes pathetically attempting to maintain some semblance of order in their classroom, or dealing with the police as they come to profile the student who brought a 10 inch switch blade to school?  The security gaurds?  The ones who are running (sometimes literally) from classroom to classroom, gathering attendance, escorting students to in-school suspension, chasing down students who are randomly running amok in the hallway, and putting out fights?  The administration?  The one administrator we have who spends the day doing heaven knows what?  Or the alleged assistant administrator who was assigned to us by the district and is supposedly working at our school, who I know only by name but couldn't identify out of a line-up of one?  

So the students run through the hallways.  For the 30 minutes after the tardy bell should have rung, as I sit in my room working on my lesson plans, I hear kids screaming bloody murder as they chase each other up and down the ramp.  Who even knows what class they're supposed to be in - odds are they probably don't even know.  The bells haven't run, so there's no way for them to keep track of things or constant factors to gauge their wanderings.

10 minutes into class on a daily basis, I have kids stopping by my room wanting to come in and get some water from my cooler.  Mind you, I'm already teaching new material, so all they're doing is interrupting some of the little learning that I'm hoping is actually taking place at school.  Of course, if our school had non-toxic water fountains, this wouldn't be an issue.  But I suppose for as far as things go in my school, this is minor.

In elementary school, assemblies meant something awesome - a school play, rainy day movie, a presentation - something exciting.  Since winter break, we've had two assemblies.  Both have been to ream the students about their awful behavior, their terrible actions, negative attitudes, lack of uniforms, and disrespect towards the adults in the school.  I figure since the first assembly was so effective, last Friday was an appropriate time to have another one.  Maybe if we have enough of these assemblies, the message will finally sink in that it's their (the student's) fault.

Oh, and did I mention that our school was broken in to over the weekend?  They got in through the cafeteria, and then proceeded to break the windows in the doors to the principal's office and the main office, and gain access to those rooms.  It's still not quite clear what they were after, because even though they went through a bunch of the cupboards, cabinets, and drawers, all the things of value (so far as we can tell) were left alone.  It shouldn't be a problem though, we have security cameras all over the school so I'm sure the police can go through the footage and find the perpetrators. 

Eeeeeeeeexcept for one minor detail.  There are about 10 functional security cameras around the school, but they don't actually record anything.  So as awesome and perfect as security footage would have been to figure out who defaced the interior of our school, I'm highly skeptical of ascertaining the identity of the perpetrators.

Sometimes I have to wonder what else could possibly go wrong at my school - but then something always happens.  Maybe I should stop wondering...

Now that I think about it...

I hadn't really considered the details of this year, but my co-worker, Ms. Bayse has.  She threw up some numbers about our school on her blog, which after reading, made me want to throw up.  No wonder our school is in the state it is in.

Education and Entrepreneurship

Something happened to me a few months back.  I haven't spent the time reflecting on the exact source of the change, but I have become absolutely fascinated with the issues of public education and the future of where it is headed.  I'm looking at my browser window right now, and across the top there are 19 tabs that contain web pages of content regarding education that I have earmarked as content that I want to read about and investigate further once I finish my many applications.  And given that I finished my last application today, I guess the time to start working through them is now.  I'm posting a link to the most recent video that captured my attention - it's nearly 90 minutes long, so I honestly don't expect too many people to watch it, but if you do, I found it absolutely fascinating.

The video is a panel of some very influential people in education (Ted Mitchell, President of the California Board of Education and the New Schools Venture Fund, Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone, Richard Barth, CEO of KIPP schools, and Craig Nevill-Manning of Google.org) discussing a number of issues in public education, the challenges and future ventures necessary to transform the US public education system to competitive levels with the rest of the world.  Essentially, they're discussing public education 2.0.

Updates

I realize that I've been MIA for about a month.   It's been a very eventful month, with so many different things that I'd like to talk about, I have no idea where to even start.  So instead of trying to figure it out, I'm going to give an explanation of why I've been MIA, and then share one of the best things that happened in the last month.

My life has been consumed by graduate school applications for about the last 8 weeks of my life - pretty much since the week before Thanksgiving - but particularly during the last 2 weeks.  I did some quick mental estimations yesterday about how much time I had spent working on applications and essays, and just during the last 2 weeks alone, my total was around 150 hours.  If you include the previous 6 weeks, I bet it comes in closer to 300 hours.  300 hours of drafting, revising, editing, brainstorming, researching, reading, and studying graduate school applications.  It's been unreal, and with only one more school left, I feel like I've had an enormous burden taken off my shoulders.  I'll keep you updated on the results when I get any.

The week before Christmas, I had something happen I never would have expected.  I had a couple students who gave me Christmas gifts/cards, and I was really touched by their thoughtfulness.  I mean, it's one thing when you get a gift that was really well wrapped up, and obviously a product of their parent being thoughtful.  But, to get a card that was hand drawn, decorated, and written like what I have posted below - I about cried.  I might feel like strangling the majority of my students on a daily basis, and question the value of my teaching them and if I'm actually getting through to them, but then when something like this happens - it's validation.

Stay tuned for amazing posts to update you on the beautiful happenings of my school.  To give you a preview, it's like a slowly sinking ship where everyone who possibly can abandon the ship is doing so, and those of us who are constrained to stick to our posts are commanded to direct and keep order of the passengers as they're panicking and reeling out of control.  And it's such a unique experience that the observers can't manage to look away.  Just wait.