TattleTeaching

It’s been a while.  A new grade, a new curriculum, new standards, 33 beings each with his or her own concerns and quandaries, and not to mention my own in-house proto-teenager draped over the couch in poses of iPodded distress.  Not a lot of energy to write.  Complete sentences.  Even.

When there are that many kids in a class, no teacher can focus simultaneously on them all.  In any given moment  or arc of time, one or a few fall into the purview of my spotlight.  Last week it was Brandon C.

I’ve known Brandon C. for over three years.  I was his teacher in 2nd when his father punched his mother and broke her nose while they were seated in the car with the kids in the back.  I was his teacher in 3rd when he and his mom were living out of their truck after the dad had been jailed and then deported and they’d been through a succession of shelters and homes and relatives’ back bedrooms.  And now I’m his teacher in 5th when his mom has worked her butt off to go back to school and get an apartment and take care of her kids.  Just two weeks ago she told me Brandon now has his very own bedroom.

But somehow that’s when problems begin.

Brandon is Armando’s nephew.  Uncle and nephew in the same class.  It’s not as odd as it seems; at our school, every teacher has a similar tale.  The extended clans of Oaxacan villages have migrated to our neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Amando also has daddy issues and a mom who works her butt off to hold the family together.  Both these boys have been forced to become the men of the house before the age of ten.

Last year Armando went to the dark side. This year he’s shining.  Brandon seems to operate in reverse.

Armando is a math whiz; Brandon, a reading one.  I told the mothers last week: You guys have some great genes in your gene pool. If only we could get the boys to work together.

But instead, they compete.

And it seems the more Brandon sees Armando shining, the more Brandon chooses to get attention by going to the dark side: playing pranks that get ever more serious, being sarcastic in class, refusing to do his work.

I know that beneath their veneers of coolness both these boys run deep.  I know they both grapple with their fathers’ actions and their own relation to those dark deeds.  I just wish I could figure out a way to reach Brandon the way (I think ) I have Armando.

So often life is about the bad and the ugly.  Not today.

I’m helping three of my 5th graders apply to private schools for next year.

This is a private school in LA:

And this is a public one:

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

The application process is, as you might imagine, lengthy and complicated.  Not quite a college app, but definitely on that road.  We’ve been meeting after school to get the process going.

The first meeting was just to get their heads around the idea.  Private school?  Nosotros?  Maestra, estas loca?  How much do they cost, like $1,000?

Um. Not really.

$2,000?

Closer to $30,000…

For one year????!!!

Before they flee out the door, I reassure them.  We’re applying for scholarships, don’t worry!  Not that there’ll be a lot in this economy, but hey, it’s worth a try.  Your kids are exceptional, and this is just Plan A for middle school.  Our long shot!  Have a seat.  Let’s just discuss it. (Please!)

To help them envision this strange glittery thing called private school, I show them some pix.  The school above has a chapel.  A very beautiful chapel:

Armando: Wow!

Jasmine & Brittany: Oh!

The Parents: Ah!

Armando: Ms. B, can I ask you something?

Me: Of course.

Armando: But why do they have a church at school?  Don’t they go to church at…church?

Brittany’s Mom: Do you have to be Catholic to go there?  I try to enroll Brittany in a Catholico school in Lancaster, and they say me, no, you are not Catholic, you cannot come.

Me: No, no.  That’s not the case here.  Don’t worry about it.  I don’t know why they have a chapel, but you don’t have to be any particular religion to attend.  (Not going so well…)

I convince them all to call for the application.  Then we meet again.  And again.  I translate the questions for  them.  What do you enjoy the most about your child?  What qualities or skills would you like your child to acquire?  What cultural values would you bring to the school community–we value diversity?

I help them understand that obedience may not be the be all and end all of child virtues.  I explain how wishing your child did his homework better might not be the best sentence to put on an application.  I explain over and over what diversity means.

This last one is the hardest.  In Mexico, you hide your Indian blood.  You don’t call your language a language, you call it ‘dialect’ even though it is no way, shape, or form a dialect of any Indo-European linguistic family.  You don’t mention Zapotec or Mixtec or Aztec.  And here I am trying to explain that this beautifully lit school on a hill with a chapel wants you to talk about your heritage.  The real one, not the fake one.  We meet twice about this.  I repeat myself.  I think one of the only reasons they listen is because I’ve had their kids for three years.

Then we get to part the kids have to fill out.  It’s extensive.  And this is where the kids blow me away.

App: What do you like to do in your spare time?

Armando: I like to bake Mexican sweet breads.

Me: No, come on.  Really, Armando.  Be honest!

Armando: No, really.  I cook a lot.

Me: You help your mom with her business?  (She sells sweet breads outside the school everyday from the back of her car.)

Armando: Yeah.  And I’ll cook and make dinner and take it to her in bed cause she’s so tired.

Me: Can my son hang out with you for a few days?!  But really, for fun, what do you do?

Armando: I really like to make the breads because I like making different shapes and forms.

Armando is a math whiz.  He gets numbers.  They’re his friends.  This makes sense.  But he’s also the kid who was the mastermind behind the PSP porn-downloading ring last year. I know he’s a gamer.

I glance over at his mom.  She’s nodding yes.  Suddenly something under her elbow catches my eye. On the table where it’s resting, there’s a large glossy magazine of blond women in black lingerie.  Huh?  I pick it up and turn it over.  Same on the other side.  I flip through it.  Lots of sexy underwear.  Lots of sexy cleavage. I look at her quizzically.

Mi otro negocio, she says.  My other business.

This woman hustles.  And suddenly, there’s more context to last year’s incident.

Still, I push a little harder: No really, Armando.  I know you love video games.  What video games do you like?

Armando:  There’s this one where you build your own real world and you can start your own business and make it grow and stuff.  That’s my favorite.

Again, it makes sense.  He’s not playing me.

In a later question, he’s asked what he’d like to be when he grows up.  His answer: I want to be a famous chef who makes new dishes or I want to be a technologist who creates new things.

What’s a technologist, I ask.

Someone who invents new things by combining things and making new uses for things, he answers without hesitation.

Sounds like the boy knows what he’s talking about.  For a moment, I feel like a detective looking for internal consistency across a lot of different answers to a lot of different questions.  And with all three of these kids, it’s there.  It’s amazing how creative they are.  They just need access to a broader world.  And some guidance on how to get there.

Today a mother came to visit after school, four children in tow.  Her son Efrain was a 2nd grader with me last year, and her son Elijah is a fifth grader with me this year.  They are both behind grade-level in all subjects.  They are both small, sweet boys with broad, white smiles and a shock of slicked-back, black hair.  They look like twins.  I often call Elijah Efrain because they look so similar.  They make similar mistakes, mostly with spelling and attention to detail.  Detail escapes them. They play with their fingers, their erasers, the air molecules floating before their faces.  They have the attention span of fleas.  They are profound daydreamers.

The mother was full of energy, intense, focused.  Everything her two older boys were not.  She shared their broad smiles.  She wanted me to listen to her frustration. Here’s rough English translation of our talk:

Mom:  He doesn’t do his work.

Me: I know.  I’ve called you five times already.

Mom:  I don’t know what to do.  He sits in front of his work but then doesn’t do it.  He takes his books and–

She picks up a book and slams it down.

Me: I understand.

Mom: Or else he–

She floats her fingers in the air before her.

Me: He wants to succeed but he doesn’t want to put the effort in.  He wants fairies magically to transform him. He wants to daydream his work into being.

Mom: Exactly!  But he wants me to be the fairy.

Me: I’m so glad you don’t do his work for him.

Mom: I sit with him and sit with him, but–

She gestures broadly towards the other three.

Me: He has to be willing to put the effort in himself.

Mom: At least Efrain tries!

Me: Efrain worked so hard last year. He’d get distracted, but then he’d do twice the work to make up for it.  Maybe they could work together?

Mom: His dad bought him a Nintendo DS last year, and he didn’t buy any fancy games for it.  He bought math games to help him.  But does he touch it?  NO!  A brand new Nintendo DS.  Just sitting there.

Me: Maybe he needs some time to grow.  Maybe he ought to stay in 5th another year…

Mom: He spent two years in K and two years in 1st!  NO!

At this point, frustration bubbling over, she turns to him with a barrage of Spanish, the gist of which is: This is IT!  This is your last chance.  If you don’t try now, if you don’t put in the effort, if you don’t pay attention, if you don’t do your homework, next year I’m sending you back to Mexico TO TAKE CARE OF THE GOATS!

Elijah and I sit stunned.  We look at each other, look away.  It’s a life neither of us can imagine, me perhaps less than him.

I considered the starkness of the choice.  Exponents, variables, the digestive system, five paragraph narratives, the Civil War, persuasive essays, podcasts, computer lab– in the US, or

– goats in a remote village in Mexico.

I turn to Elijah.  I ask, is that what you want?

He shakes his head.  He cannot bring himself to speak.  I see tears brimming in his eyes, but they don’t spill over.  Beneath his soft, sweet exterior, there’s a toughness I haven’t seen before.

He wants to learn, I know that.  In his writing journal he has written: I am so exited about lern sow meny knew thing.  i whant to lern bout siense and writting ever day is knew stuf.

But he and Efrain are both like Etch-a-Sketches.  Here today, and tomorrow, shake shake, it’s gone.  Like a blank slate.  With barely a trace.

I’m not sure what to do.

Are some kids/people just dreamers?  In another time and and another place would they be shamans or river guides or herbalists?

Or is there a shared learning disability?  Something that hinders long-term retention of spelling and grammar and math.  But the boys have difficulty with concepts as well, so it’s not just symbolic manipulation issues.

They remind me of much milder versions of Brianna, who, when I referred her for testing last year, was found to have more learning disabilities than the psychologist had ever seen in one child.  Brianna was also small for her age…

Over the years, I’ve seen several children with this Etch-a-Sketch syndrome, all from Oaxaca (but then most of my school’s population is from Oaxaca…).  We teachers have noted this syndrome is particularly common in families with a certain last name, though neither these boys nor Brianna had that last name (though they still could be related…).

But why would there be such a concentration of learning disabilities?  Is it something genetic in this particular Oaxacan population?  Is there some environmental factor (or factors)?   Are the factors located here or there?

So many of these families are interrelated and come from the same areas.  I have to gather more data and find patterns, consult with special ed and resource. What I really want to do is consult with an anthropologist and linguist familiar with the region.  Over the years as I and other teachers slowly have gathered anecdotal data, it’s all been very remote and abstract and academic at some level.

But suddenly I know exactly how much is at stake.  Figure something out or else it’s off to the goats!

I’ve been on a calling spree.  Didn’t do your homework?  Here’s my cell.  Call your mom–or, preferably, your dad.  First you talk, then I talk.  Sometimes I make six or seven calls a day.  The parents seem to be happy about it, but some kids continue to be repeat offenders.

The downside for me: parents have saved my number.  On Sundays, in the evenings, during my lunch, I get calls from unknown numbers: What was the homework?  Can I bring my son’s homework in to school–he forgot it?  I wanted to talk to you about how my child is adjusting to your class.

Hmm.  For now I don’t mind, but I’d prefer no weekend calling.  Let your child be responsible.  Everyday s/he has ten minutes to write the homework into his/her daily planner.  If s/he doesn’t, then shouldn’t s/he face the consequences?

But the consequences are being benched and getting the phone call home, so I guess we’re trapped in a vicious circle: parents call me in order not to get called themselves!

Or maybe it’s just because they care.  But then why didn’t David do the homework three times this week?

I’m not sure about this strategy of mine.  All I know is I’m very glad I upped my minutes in August.

What do you think?  Do you want your child’s teacher calling you when s/he doesn’t do the homework?

Driving home from school today, I waited at an interminable red light tapping my fingers and half-listening to Scott Simon interviewing some expert about some new type of robot-armed eco soda machine of the future. Blah blah blah blah. I knew it was important, something about fluorocarbons and the ozone layer and blah blah blah blah.  It was too much detail, and I was pissed and this light was taking forever and I didn’t really care about soda machine fluorocarbons, dammit, and and was I ever going to get home.

A cholo on his banana bike meandered across my line of sight.  He was wearing the usual dark baggy shorts, pulled-up white socks, and a white t-shirt.  The t was decorated with messages and signatures, the most prominent of which read, in 3-inch letters, ‘F* THE WORLD’.  I glanced from the letters to his face which also basically said F* THE WORLD.  He must have been in his late teens.  Kid clothing and a kid bike and an adult’s body.  Half in two worlds.

I looked at that cholo and thought about my 5th graders.  He was one of their possible futures.

I’ve been struggling these past ten days with the vast range of knowledge of the 34 kids in my classroom.  From kids who read 235 words per minute and devour Reptiles of the Southwest for fun to kids who really are more at home with Dr. Seuss, the early years.  Kids who can write me eight paragraphs including a proper usage of ‘exhuberance’ to kids who struggle with forming two coherent sentences. And then there’s my newcomer from Egypt who knows about thirty words of English.

The range in Math is vastly broader.  Montanan almost.  Wide and open.  Seemingly unbridgeable.

My daily challenge is to find the desks and minutes to work with the 34 in smaller groups that narrow the range so that I can help them try to bridge it without–and this is so important–losing either the lowest or highest ends.

Meanwhile the district keeps hurling dodgeballs my way.  Here’s a new math program with twelve cd-roms to try out.  Here’s a new health book the kids should work with.  Here’s a new arts program that semi-duplicates the one we already have.  Here’s a new inspection coming through this morning.  Here are logs that you have to sign off on every morning after letting the water run so that the yellow stuff gets flushed from the pipes.  Here’s a new version of a test that 14 of the kids should take, part of it one-on-one.  Here’s a new assembly.  Chorus tryouts.  Smartboard.  Tech lab.  New computers.  Blah blah blah blah.

STOP!  I want to shout.  F* THE WORLD.  Just let me have a little time and space to integrate things, find a way to make it all work.  Get the big picture before I stick endless pieces in.

It’s like doing a 1,000 piece puzzle without having seen the picture on the box.  Come on, you gotta know how all the pieces will eventually fit together.

Sitting at that red light watching the anger seep out of that boy-man, I understood one part of where the system had failed him.  We’re so busy with the piecemeal, we don’t offer the kids the big picture. We barely have ten seconds to try to grasp it for ourselves.

We can’t just hurl detail upon detail at these kids.

They need to know:  Why do they need to know all these things?  How do the years fit together?  How does what I’m teaching them now build on what they learned last year and the year before that.  How will it lead to next year?

Sometimes we’re like the bad parents we never wanted to be.  Our daily lives are just one crisis or latest fad or brief pleasure after another.  And we make learning this way for the children.  Pieces.  Unconnected.

No wonder we all ride around in anger.

Not just a couple of weeks, but a couple of months.  I needed to get FAR away from the wild things, and I did.   I roamed all over.

But now tomorrow’s the first day of the new year, and today was wrap-up of last year.

We got our scores today, both last year’s class’s results and this year’s incoming class’s.  I was surprised to see how wildly well the 19 wild things left standing did: 8 advanced(!) in Language Arts + 4 proficient; 7 advanced in Math + 8 proficient.  That’s 63% and 79%!  Not that test scores measure valuable things like creativity and flexibility and insight and writing ability, but they do measure something, so the creatures did learn something.  Hurrah for them!  Bless them and let them go their merry ways, for I have moved on.

To 5th grade, to be precise. Picking up the remnants of the cohort I had in 2nd and 3rd: a straggly 15 of them, plus an additional 20 thanks to class-size increases.  I’ve spent the last week (unpaid, thank you again State of California–can you imagine the Governator deciding not to pay prison guards for working?) arranging and rearranging tables trying to fit 18 double desks plus conference tables, teacher table, computer tables, lcd projector table, and science experiment tables plus 35 5th graders into a room the same size as the one inhabited last year by 19 tiny 2nd grade bodies.

Have you looked at any 5th graders recently?  They’re huge!  And they’re hormonal or verging on hormonal.   And we’re in the midst of a heat wave.  In 2nd grade we had to deal with odor issues for children who weren’t properly cared for and bathed regularly.  But with these guys & girls, it’s not something in their control.  Their bodies are morphing on a daily basis.  I’m thinking I should sprinkle them with lavender from my garden.   Lavender water, perhaps?  Water fight, guys!

My son, who is about to become a 7th grader, was helping me set up the classroom today, and when asked for an aesthetic consultation, he squinted around the room and declared, “It’s too kiddy in here, Mom.”

Me: Why is it kiddy?

Him (vaguely flailing his hand to indicate the room): There are. . colors.

Me: Is this a bad thing, this thing we call color?

Him (with weary patience):  Mom.  Look at me.  What color do you see me wearing?

Me: Black.  Dark green.

Him:  What colors do I usually wear?

Me: Black.  White.  Dark green…

Him (with slight condescension–note to self: don’t use that tone of voice with students, EVER):  Exactly.  Do you notice a pattern?

Me: Um.  Dark?  Solid? Distinct lack of floral prints?

Him:  People like…me…us…at our age, we don’t like color.

He’s 11.  I don’t remember saying ‘at our age’ at 11.

I looked around the room.  It felt quite muted to me.  Just a bit of color on the science board, and it belonged to Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, and really, I couldn’t take responsibility for that.  A little bit of red newsprint trim on an otherwise black writing board.  The hell if I was going to unstaple all that again. Where was this so-called color?

He put his earbuds back in and went back to the computer screen.  I discreetly consulted with two other colleagues who had taught 5th for several years.  They did not think the room was too colorful.

I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

New challenges.  Dealing with kids who have personalities and opinions.  Just like I have at home.

I’m looking forward to it.  Really.

As long as I have lavender for my bath.

And chamomile.  And eucalyptus.  Soothing.

And who knows, if I like it up here, maybe in two years, the wild things and I will cross paths again.

The marathon is over.  The Wild Things have gone home (or what passes as home).  All that’s left is bits of ratty paper and crumbly memories strewn through my room, through me.  A school year.  Nine-ish months of intense proximity.  Just like a pregnancy, only with 20: viginitituplets?  Puts Octomom to shame.

As I look back on this year, I realize maybe I was partly to blame.  Granted the Wild Things came from a different land, a classroom where they were allowed to play legos and airplane erasers instead of learning how to read and write and understand that math (at their level) is about taking numbers apart and putting them back together (parts and wholes).  Granted this crew had a vast number of family issues (just last week fuzzy wuzzy Jose’s mom walked out on her two boys, Evan’s dad got a new girlfriend with her own set of kids, Roberto was taken back to Mexico to stay with his mom who left two months ago, Griselda moved, and Avery, who arrived three months ago after moving to Arizona after having left our school a year earlier unable to read and write and therefore repeated 2nd and still barely reads, though his parents say he reads perfectly at home, didn’t show up for a week).  Granted many things.   But.

I look back and see that, though I loved them, I didn’t love them the way I loved previous classes.  Maybe it was that I was still attached to my last batch.  Maybe, as my child grows older, I relate better to students who are older.  Lots of maybes.  But.

I do know this.  Or rather, I did learn this, this year.  There is a tipping point in classes.  I have a bond with almost all of the kids in this class (one of my colleagues watched us together for half an hour, and she said, “There so much cariño (affection) between you all!”  But.

When 8/19 misbehave on a regular basis, the class and the teacher focus on discipline rather than love of learning.  The dominant mode of the class is not academic.  Children infect one another with goofing off rather than wanting to learn.  The classroom is overcome by a negative epidemic rather than a positive one.

There was a day last winter, perhaps back in March.  I don’t remember if I wrote about it.  We were having a virulent bout of Won’t-Do-My-Homework-or-Classwork-itis.  Despite being told that this would have consequences, namely no computer lab or art or music, the infection persisted and spread.

Finally, one day, I’d had enough.  I didn’t think it fair to keep punishing the kids who did do their work just because a large number of kids weren’t doing their work.  I decided that I’d show the episode of the amazing BBC, Kenneth Branagh-narrated Walking With Dinosaurs I’d planned to show during our fossils unit.  But I’d only show it to the kids who had done their work.  I’d escort the others to another 2nd grade class whose teacher agreed to house them for 50 minutes.

I thought more than half the class would be leaving.  I warned the other teacher (and thanked him profusely).  But when I checked the work, I saw that it was only 8 kids out of 19 who hadn’t fulfilled their educational responsibilities.

I walked them to the other room and returned to find my remaining 11 busy at work.  They were studiously filling out workbook pages on regular and irregular verbs.
“OK guys,” I said.  “We can start the video now.”

Eleven heads ignored me.

I decided to give them a bit more time.  The room was quiet except for a few whispering consultations about verbs.

Ten minutes passed.  It was the end of the day.  If we didn’t begin the video now, we wouldn’t finish it.

“Ready, guys?” I urged.

Again eleven heads ignored me.

“Guys?” I pleaded.  “It’s a really terrific video and you all deserve it for how hard you’ve been working?!”

No response.

Finally, Isabel raised her head.  “Ms. B?” she asked.  “Is it okay if we just keep working instead?  It’s so nice and quiet right now.  I like this.”

I was flabbergasted.  This is what the class could have been if the eight didn’t tip it the other way.   Could have.  Would have.  Should have.  We never got to the video.

The tipping point.  What could I have done?

I have a summer to think about it.

They came to cart our couches away today.  One month after declaring them a fire hazard.

Our Very Nice Custodian:  We’re here for the couch.

Kids: No!!!

Me: Now guys.  You know it has to go…

Kids:  Why?

Me:  It’s veryveryvery dangerous.

Kids: Why?

Me: Don’t you know, couches have a disease.  It’s called random spontaneous combustion.  Can you repeat that?

Kids:  Random.  Spon.  Who-ha?

Luke: Random spontaneous combustion.

Me: Does anyone know what that means?

Kids: Who what?

Luke: It means when something combusts for no reason.

Me: Excellent, Luke.  Class, repeat after me, ran-dom spon-ta-ne-ous com-bus-tion.

Kids: Random spontus coostum.

Luke: Random spontaneous combustion.

Me: Excellent.  We’ll keep working on that.

Our Very Nice Custodian: Um.  Mizz B?

Me: Sorry!

Randy: But Mizz B, why do they have to take the couch away.

Me: Excellent question, Randy.  Because couches are very dangerous.

Kids: What? Who-ha!

Me: Veryveryvery dangerous.

19 bodies collectively back away from the couch.

Me: Raise your hand if you have a couch in your apartment.

19 hands shoot up.

Me: Raise your hand you snuggle up on your couch and read books with your mom–

A smattering of hands.

Me: –or watch tv with your dad?

Alert, eager hands.

Me: Excellent.  Now raise your hands if your couch has ever caught fire while you were reading or watching tv or snuggling.

19 hands yank down.

Me: Exactly.  You know how I explain that grown-ups can sometimes be silly?

Kids: Yes?

Me: This is a veryveryvery silly silliness.  Some grownups who work in a faraway and very expensive skyscraper downtown with nothing else to do but make silly rules think that couches are veryveryvery dangerous.  But we know better, right?

A chorus of rights.  Even from Luke.

Randy: But Mizz B.

Me: Yes, Randy?

Randy: Our couch at home is right next to the heater and when we turn the heater on for a long time, the couch gets hot.

Me: And has it ever caught fire?

Randy: N-n-no.

Me: Good.  Then I don’t think you need to worry about it.  Of if you feel better, ask your mom to move it.  But don’t tell her to throw it away!

Our Very Nice Custodian: Now can I take the couch?

Really I am ready for the school year to end.  As are the kids.  Just had to say it.  More later.

Actual California Standards Test Release Questions

We finished Day 2 of testing today.  Day 2 was much better than Day 1 when my well prepared students seemed like they’d been sucker-punched, even though we’d spent the whole year covering the material (antonyms, synonyms, word usage, phonics, syllabification, reading comprehension, etc.).  And we’d spent the whole year doing a bit of test prep everyday to accustom the students to the format of the questions.  AND we’d spent the past week in a sort of test prep boot camp churning through all the state release questions (like the ones above).

What is it about tests?  Is it the pressure of high-stakes testing that makes these able students forget how to break ‘computer’ into syllables?

(DISCLAIMER: This is not an actual test question.  Were it an actual test question I could be prosecuted because I, like every teacher in California, signed an affidavit affirming that I would not discuss, disseminate, or display any actual test questions in any way, shape, or form).

How could Sebastian, Anna, and even–LUKE!!–my brightest three students syllabify it com-puter?  Kids who, like most of the class, ACED the practice exam and the release questions JUST LAST WEEK!

What’s the explanation for this?!!!!

Help!  I honestly don’t know.