Lumps of clay, 2010

Monday!

It makes me very happy to see the happy swarm of kids buzzing around the new playground equipment in front of the school like a colony of bees in a bustling hive.

It makes me a little annoyed and kinda creeped out when I get holla'd and whistled at by neighborhood men on my way to the train, knowing that I could very easily be teaching or have taught or one day teach their little nieces or nephews or their cousins' kids or maybe even their own children. But I'm sure they're not thinking about that.

***

I do get to teach Social Studies once a week, which is great. We started out by making passports to recognize them as citizens of 5-315, and discussed what it means to be a member of a community. My theme for the class (or at least, for the door) is Citizens of the World, so I have world maps displayed and the tables are named after the continents. (Last year they were NYC boros. Next year maybe endangered species? If I'm still around?)

As promised, starting out my (almost) fourth year of teaching, things are not quite so trying as they once seemed. (Praise be!) Having attempted to do various things in any number of extremely ineffectual, crazy-making, backwards ways, I am now able to pre-empt all of the various ways that definitely don't work, and just cut straight to a version that probably will work. That's all this "experience" really is -- knowing in advance all the different ways your plan is likely to go wrong, and choosing the least problematic variant. A hard-won prize, but invaluable.

Every tiny detail of "ritual and routine" whittles down the logjam of wasted time in a day... how many pencils to have out at a time; a system for sharpening pencils; a system for handing out and collecting papers; where to put collected papers; how to keep track of papers that have and have not been collected; what to do if they finish something before everyone else; what to do if something is forgotten in a backpack or at home or in the cafeteria or just disappears without a trace; a system for cleaning up after projects that involve scissors and/or glue; for organizing notebooks and workbooks and folders; for sitting down and lining up; when to check homework and how and how often. A system for hanging up backpacks and displaying work and sending kids to the bathroom, systems for arrival and dismissal. Systems for distributing shared materials. Systems for getting their attention and keeping it and letting go of it... Every mundane detail must be planned for and prescribed and streamlined. It's like being a puppeteer with 33 marionette lines that mustn't get crossed.

I think the teacher that figures out how to waste the least amount of time is the one who ultimately wins the race. Whichever race that is.

So my big reward after all this time, my 27-months-in-counting of blood, sweat and tears as an active-duty public school teacher is that things feel pretty...regular. Second day of school: a lot of shuffling around of people and desks and chairs and books and papers. But I am confident now that the dust will settle and we will take off at a good clip once we've established ourselves.

What I'd forgotten was how physically exhausting it is. I came home today and couldn't figure out why my muscles were aching... and then realized that I'd essentially been walking in slow but deliberate circles for 1o hours straight, zigzagging back and forth across the classroom and up and down the Escher-like staircases throughout the cavernous school.

Another thing that feels strange, after getting to know my kids last year so well, is how blank and anonymous the kids are at this point. They are still a little awed, perhaps. Afraid of making the wrong move, wanting so badly to get it right, and not to stand out too much. Still so little, compared to my remembered images of last year's graduating fifth graders, hulking over the desks they'd outgrown while I wasn't looking. This year's kids seem tiny and foreign, almost out of place. They don't know me yet, and I hardly know them. We're strangers still.

The skinny on M-- last year was that he was kind of a rebel without a cause, but I am sneakily trying to win him over with the old 'kill him with kindness' tack. Certain kids almost seem surprised when you make an effort to listen to them.

B-- is probably going to be a trip. He's new to the school, but very smart and loves Legos or rather, some kind of new-fangled, highly-technological version of Legos. Loves to touch things, prone to calling out. I guess in other worlds it would be called curiosity, and engagement with learning...

N-- is the daughter of one of our own ESL teachers, bubbly and outgoing, and slow at finishing things.

H-- is new to the country last year from Colombia. She seems withdrawn and reserved, I suspect she might be having a hard time following what's going around her. (She will flourish, by gum, I will it!)

A--, on the other hand, was also new last year, but slightly less recent, and is already acting as translator for H--, and volunteered to be table captain on the very first day. Quite brave!

And P-- also came in from another school and was the picture of calm, good-natured cheerfulness when she first had no desk on the first day since I hadn't been expecting her, then was taken to be put into another class (until admin realized that ALL the classes were full, not just mine, and gave her back to me). I was surprised how quickly I had taken ownership of her, and was glad to have her back.

So what if most of them are still amorphous, personality-less blobs to me.... they are now MY amorphous, personality-less blobs! Mine to mold and shape, mwahahahaha, and knowing what's happened every other year, it won't be long at all until they come to life.

Unity, not uniformity

So I wrote this last night, right before my computer died. Having left my charger in camp this summer, I have been experiencing some difficulty, well, keeping my computer charged. But anyway...

I went to an inter-faith rally yesterday in support of the mosque they want to build near ground zero (or perhaps, in opposition of the opposition) and was inspired in several ways. Of course the first and most obvious was the confluence of people of many different creeds coming together to support a cause whose voice echoes so many people's struggles in America, trying to find freedom -- the struggles (and triumphs) that I am reminded of daily by my students, in broader or narrower ways.

In the inspirational speeches, someone brought up JFK, and how before he was elected he was questioned about his Catholicism, (and then went on to be one of the most popular presidents ever) and how somewhere out there, maybe even in Queens, maybe even in PS OO, a little Mohammed or a little Fatima is waiting to grow up to be president. And maybe in 40 years, being Muslim will be as much of a non-issue as being a Catholic now is. And maybe we will have by then figured out how to deal with our natural predilection towards xenophobia, and realized that every new wave of immigrants, be they from Ireland or Italy or China or Mexico or Pakistan or Bangladesh or Ecuador, seems to undergo the same sort of hazing and mistrust from the Americans that were here first - (even though, of course, really very few of our families were here "first," and those that really were here were sent to Oklahoma by Andrew Jackson and his ilk.) And their scandalous new religions and ways of doing things are so shocking and controversial for a generation or two and then... we get over it.

The pithiest take-home message was "Unity, not uniformity." I spend so much time trying to teach the kids about tolerance, and, as the speakers today were saying, at least how to co-exist but at best how to embrace and welcome and be enriched and inspired by each others' existence. It bothers me that the opposite message is so easy to come by. That it is so easy to write off others as unwanted and not belonging, and that it is so easy not to distinguish between a violent, wrong-headed few among an entire group of peaceful, life-loving people.

Last spring I had an interesting conversation with one of my colleagues in grad school who is Muslim and has school-age children, wondering what she tells them about their "Western" teachers... I mean, I try to keep it professional, and take some pains not to dress like a ho. But I wear skirts without stockings, and tank tops when it's hot, and I certainly don't cover up my head or my hair, and I always wondered what the Muslim kids and their parents think of that. And my colleague explained that she tells her children, simply, "They have their way and we have ours."

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could be okay with that?

hope v. heartbreak

There's this new advertising campaign around the city for the Red Cross, "Turn Heartbreak into Hope." At first I didn't totally understand what they meant, but I guess they are referring to all the disaster relief stuff they do.

As I was on my way to meet up with Henrietta to go to the teacher store, I got to thinking about this thing we call hope. What is it exactly?

It's a very human concept. A fundamental instinct of self-preservation. We believe in hope because to cease to believe in it would equal certain annihilation.

A cynic would say that hope is often delusion. Then again, I have also heard that nothing good has ever happened that didn't start with a dream.

Hope is not naive, but necessary. It is the beacon, the green light across the water, the improbable bloom in the darkened window sill.

If we can seek out and find just one particle of this hope, then we can keep going. Despite everything against us, we can keep going if we believe that one day, we could get it right. One day it might all be the way it was supposed to be.

Now I'm all paranoid that I've given you the wrong impression, starting the year off with a sad song and a crazy rant... I feel great. Uniformly, unequivocally happy! Already jumped in, no looking back. I think it's going to be a great year. I don't think, I know! Sandra is absolutely fantastic, light years ahead of where any other new teacher would be right now. Smart, organized, outgoing, enthusiastic and quickly becoming a friend as well as a colleague. I am her designated "buddy" but I would've been unofficially anyway because having a fifth grade team is so amazing. And this year is going to be amazing. I feel incredibly positive about it all. The field of education still has problems and it most likely always will. But bring it on, NYC public schools! Do your worst, because I am prepared to counter it with my best!

Try try again

First day back... It came and went. And that's huge.

Sure, I was sweating bullets. Sure, it was hectic. But again, I wasn't a maniac. I didn't feel as if my head were about to start spinning around exorcist-style. I didn't feel as if my mind was going to explode. I actually slept the night before, I even made it out to dismissal on time. The lack of that panicked franticness is another significant absence.

For the first time, I kinda knew what to expect on the first day. I knew I'd need space for their giant tri-fold, shoebox, poster-board summer projects. I knew the closets would have to be cleared to make space for the reams of paper and legal pads and pens. I knew enough to have name labels prepared, with some blanks for kids that register day-of or get shuffled around into my class. I knew enough to have over-planned, but to be flexible about what does or does not get done that day.

As always, it was a haze of collecting and distributing supplies and taking attendance and gazing out over a sea of brown faces, thirty-three of them at last count, that's one more than the legal limit. I wasn't especially differentiating among them, just kind of talking at them, narrating the minute-by-minute play-by-play of the school day. It's weird how quiet and wide-eyed they are on the first day. Scared, unsure. They don't have personalities yet. They will.

***

I never heard back about last year's test scores. A few kids had to go to summer school, so I guess they failed? To be honest, I don't really care. If there is one idea my parents instilled in me it's that grades don't matter. Learning matters. Education matters. Being secure in yourself and your attitude towards school matters. Being a good person and staying happy and healthy matters. But the grades themselves, they don't matter. They are air; ink on a page; pixels on a screen. Nothing more.

So you'll forgive me if I kind of tuned out when we did our annual review of all the cumulative test scores during the faculty conference. But one thing caught my attention, confirmed by the NY Times...

So apparently, according to the chancellor and his cronies, here in New York City the "bar" is "set too low." So the solution from the district's data monkeys, (whom I can't help imagining clicking away on their computers in their hermetically sealed air conditioned offices with no child around for miles and miles) is to make the grading scale tougher. Therefore a percentage of the students that last year were "on grade level" are now, with a wave of the magic data wand and the exact same answers on the page, "below grade level." And a percentage of schools that would have met their standards for No Child Left Behind all of a sudden, ummm, don't anymore. Sorry. Psych! You were doing fine, but now you're not.

Basically, the big solution, the big raising of the bar, is to mess with "the curve," manipulate the numbers... We need results? We need smarter kids? We need to make it look like we give a damn? Hear this, news media, look at us! We're adding "more topics" and making the test "less predictable!" See how TOUGH we're being? We're taking a stand in education!

It seems as if they are assuming that by making the tests harder the teachers will just start teaching better. Maybe they just weren't teaching hard enough. Maybe now they'll really kick it into overdrive and stop holding out on everybody.

And you know what? I bet scores will improve. Teachers will work their magic, they will train their students even more closely to the test and drill them on their testing strategies and sacrifice a little more art and a little more music and and a little more social studies time, and a few more of their hairs will turn from gray to white. And the kids will walk away with slightly higher scores, just as ill-equipped to function in the world as they always were. And the politicians will claim the credit for having "raised the bar" in education and increased test scores by such and such margin, and wouldn't we all just love to contribute to their campaign?

I can't help wondering if they realize how empty and hollow that type of change is. Dressing up like a pilot doesn't mean you know how to fly a plane. Holding a scalpel doesn't make you a surgeon. Scoring the tests tougher, making it harder... won't have any impact on what the students actually know. It won't make the kids smarter. It won't help them learn more. Because neither the test nor the score defines the student, they never have and they never will.

If politicians really wanted to raise the bar in education, I wouldn't have 33 kids in my class this year. (It's beens said, that's not teaching, that's crowd control.) The school would have money to buy new book baggies for the students. There would be enough special ed classes in the school to accommodate the demand for them. There would be enough money to hire the (government mandated!) correct amount of ESL teachers. Guidance counselors and reading and math and speech teachers wouldn't have their offices in broom closets. Assessments wouldn't happen in hallways and stairwells. Even the "old wing" would be able to turn on some AC when it gets above 95 degrees. There wouldn't be defenseless, under-trained, unprepared, bargain-bin novice teachers staring a classroom of trouble in the face all on their own, waiting to err and try try again. I can say that because I was one, and I shouldn't have been where I was.

So that's my rant, for now. The truth is, I'm proud of my school. We do what we can, sometimes it seems like more than that. It is trying to improve despite cards stacked against it. When the neighborhood kids show up for their constitutionally promised free and public education, we do not turn them away. We find them an extra chair and a desk somewhere, and we let them join the fray.

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

Heard the song, had to wonder... did this guy ever teach public school?

"Set the sails I feel the winds a'stirring
Towards the bright horizon set the way
Cast your reckless dreams upon our Mayflower
Haven from the world and her decay

Who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
Fighting for a system built to fail
Spooning water from the broken vessels
As far as I can see there is no land

Oh my God, the water's all around us
Oh my God, it's all around

Who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
Lords of war just profit from decay
And trade the children's promise for the jingle
The way we trade our hard earned time for pay

Oh my God, the water's cold and shapeless
Oh my God, it's all around
Oh my God, life is cold and formless
Oh my God, it's all around"

A very important note, because Oscar got the wrong impression... The first day of school was great! The song doesn't represent my current state of mind, just the way that it has felt in the past. I just thought he said it eloquently. I feel great! Right now I am floating at the very top of my bucket full of holes.

The day before the first day of school.

Something I realized, or perhaps reconfirmed, from the reunion-like wedding I attended this weekend, is that people never stay the same, and yet they never really change.

The same is true of my commute this morning - a construction project here, a new storefront there, a fresh coat of smooth black pavement on Roosevelt Avenue... but mostly it was just very familiar: The sun in my eyes as I crossed the Greenpoint Avenue bridge, the bouncing through potholes on my aged bike, the restless intrusion of the of the 7 train clattering hurriedly above my head. And the parade of smells, city smells, smells you don't get from inside a car... the early morning cloying sweetness that drifts around the spice factory, like sticking your head in with the cookies in the oven; earthy produce from the corner stores; fresh coffee bakery smell; rancid garbage juice from the back of the garbage truck; spicy tamales from the re-purposed grocery-cum-tamale-cart; bus exhaust; a whiff of after-shave from the early shift waiting at the bus stop.

And back at school, the same cast of characters awaits, almost the same, yet not totally unchanged. Trixie, our vivacious payroll secretary, always ready with a smile and a vibrant animal print outfit... the cluster of ancient tenured "cluster teachers" populating the plush sofas of teachers' lounge...Good old Principal Peeves, talking up a snooze-worthy storm at the faculty conference about standards and percentage point improvements and test scores and data graphs... MoLo, my favorite administrator, who came trotting down the hallway calling after me the first time she spotted me this year and embraced me warmly and gushed about how excited she was about the school year... Ronnie, the literacy coach, dressed all in purple with purple eyeshadow and purple accessories as always, in accordance with her long-standing purple fetish...

All of these characters, more or less just as I left them two months ago. Of course, with the significant absence of Corky, plus the new addition of Sunny, Corky's replacement, whose credentials and capabilities I am more and more impressed with every day.

There are also some noticeable positive changes at school. The playgrounds are (finally) finished and their completion has transformed what was the pathetically barren tumbleweed asphalt schoolyard wasteland into a real playground, like for real children! With a gazebo, a jungle gym, brightly colored maps and patterns painted on the ground, vegetation, pachysandra, even a bike rack, and a coat of paint that makes the tall fence seem decidedly less prison-like. Plus the air conditioners are working again (for those of us lucky enough to have them) for the first time probably since February or so. And the best, most positive change? Drumroll please.........

RECESS!

One period per week per class... but still. Way way way more than nothing.

At the end of the year we do "focus groups" and Rosie and I spent some time making sure that our suggestions were fairly and adequately represented... and you know what? They listened. They listened! They ordered an extra book that we had asked for. They incorporated grammar instruction into the curriculum. They got us some recess. They are getting teachers (including yours truly!) involved in leading Professional Development... if they keep making changes like this, they're going to end up making me want to stay at this school, or in teaching!

And you know what I think is the most significant difference? The change I notice in myself! Somehow, surprisingly, shockingly, I don't feel nervous, really at all. Excited, sure. But not panicked. And today was busy, of course, but not frantic. And what I really really enjoyed was helping Sunny and Henrietta get their classrooms ready for the first time, and trying to walk them through the first day because this time, I actually know what that first day will look like and feel like! It feels great not to be the most clueless person on the floor anymore, to have at least some of the answers and be able to share them, to offer my opinion and have it be listened to. What a great feeling! And to know what MUST be done for tomorrow, and what can continue to wait and be done on one of the other 179 days of school, or which things might end up being pipe dreams, or which things I should just wait and see about...

Now the other big change will be training myself to go to sleep on time and wake up early. But again, without grad school in the picture... just doesn't seem that hard! None of it, as impossible as it once was, seems quite so out of reach.