Reasons to Post

I can't keep up with the posts. They were supposed to be a substitute for my personal journal, which I stopped writing in at the beginning of the summer. I'm not sure why.

The blog was/is supposed to be a place for me to record my thoughts on my pilot technology program (grant funded), which as I sort of said, was supposed to be done in my journal. I guess I just put in so much time and effort in at work—and I enjoy it—that I don't really feel like writing much when I get home. When things were more difficult, like during my second year, the journal was something I looked forward to (perhaps because I wrote in it sitting at the bar at Rocket to Venus).

Anyway it has been a while since my last (2nd) post and nothing technology-related has brought me here. But there was something I had to put on the record, although I doubt I will forget it.

My dad is sick. Although it is still not official, “technically”, all signs point to a recurrence of prostate cancer. I dealt with this already seven years ago. I really should say HE dealt with this because it wasn't difficult for me at all. I guess that is probably because it all happened so quickly—diagnosis then surgery—and he was never sick in the traditional sense. The day of the surgery I was nervous, but it was over quickly and everything was fine. My dad was fine. Five years past and he was fine. It was easy.

This time it is totally different. I'm having a hard time dealing with it. I've been trying to figure out why and I guess there are a few reasons.

One thing that being alone in a new city for a while teaches you is how important your family is. It has also shown me how similar my father and I are...or perhaps how similar I have become to my father lately. He is sort of like my hero. Really, most of the things that I think are important quite obviously came from growing up around him: intellect, critical thought, compassion, a need to serve others—especially those who really need it. I have been noticing this lately. For the last few years I have been calling my father regularly, at least once or twice a week, to discuss the latest development in the classroom, the newest, MOST interesting book, whatever.
"I'm 32 years old and I’m still calling my dad this much?" I sometimes think. But there aren't that many people who really "get it". There aren't that many people with which I can talk freely without worrying if I will be understood, or worrying if they will have enough background understanding on a given topic to give me a decent response or word of advice. With my dad, I never have to think about these things. So these are some of the reasons he is so important to me, and it is over the last few years that I have began to really actualize this.

So it's difficult often. But these things happen. I could go into more detail but anyone who might read this already understands. It is hard in a lot of ways.

So what prompted me to post? A phone conversation that I had with my father. More specifically it was kind of like a scream. It was a scream that I have never heard before. It was kind of like a long drawn out "Yeeaaah!"

Now, I have seen and heard my father get excited about a lot of things, both good and bad, but last night’s exclamation was different. It was less joking than others. It was less self-conscious. By that I mean that many times when we shout out about something that makes us excited, we are also conscious of the fact that we are breaking character—at least if we are typically somewhat reserved.

My father and Judy made plans to come out to Pittsburgh a week or so before Christmas and stay with my sister and her husband. Airfare was super expensive and my mother's family still hadn't made up their minds. Of course, the news that we all got from my dad recently definitely put a sense of urgency in the back of our minds. Anyway, I have to work here in Baltimore for three of the six days that they will be in Pittsburgh, and I think that my father was worried that I might only make it down for a night or two. Anyway, as I said earlier, this whole thing has effected me and it really has made me reassess what is and what is not important—actually there was never any assessment involved, I just knew, and know. So, I booked a flight for the middle of the week, and I am coming back on the following Monday.

When my dad asked about the visit, I told him my flight dates and that is when he said "Yeah!" in that strange new way I had never heard before. It was almost kid-like, totally innocent and uninhibited.

I am reminded of a Christmas from my childhood, 10th grade year, 1992. I was supposed to be getting a Macintosh computer. I had never had a computer at that point, and I remember studying the flyer for the computer I wanted (the LC) for hours on end—just looking at the pictures and features over and over and imagining what it would be like when I could explore it! Unfortunately, as the days leading up to Christmas came and went, my father continued to report that it had not shown up at his office yet.

On Christmas day, the morning present-opening ceremony came and went, but no computer showed up. I was suspicious and, according to my parents, pretty damn clever—the only child ever to discover that there was actually a bunch of people (college students) behind the big mirrors at the Carnegie Mellon Campus Kindergarten: there was something strange about those windows—they seemed to serve no real purpose in any sense that I knew at the time. I couldn’t see through them and their was just another playroom on the other side. I found a door and opened it, only to find a bunch of strangers looking at me nervously, some laughing and some looking around as if to say "Uh, is this OK?"

That Christmas morning, I remember thinking that maybe, just maybe, dad was pulling some kind of prank, just messing with me. So I mentioned that I knew he had it hidden somewhere because I had called the company the other day and they had verified that it had been delivered. I thought for sure I had called his bluff. His response will be burned in my memory, verbatim, for the rest of my life:

"Are you serious?! If you’re telling the truth I'm going to be really ticked off because they told me that package would be delivered by yesterday!" I could tell that he was serious and getting irritated, and I felt really bad having just lied to him.

And then everyone just went about their business...for a long time. We did the typical Christmas stuff: My mother and sister played scrabble, I played with whatever sub-par toy I had. At some point my mother mentioned that were out of cream and my father said he would get it. I really didn't think anything of it. A while later I saw someone coming up the sidewalk through a light snowfall. It was my dad, and he was carrying a huge white box with a big colorful Apple printed on the side of it.

"YEAHH!!!"

Better? Better than what?

Today was a little better, although as soon as I get on the train in the mornings, I start to think about imbalance in children and I start to get angry. What is the imbalance you might ask. Walking through the other end of the seventh grade hallway, I kept noticing that one or another of the teachers would be classless. After questioning one of the teachers, he told me that they had so few kids, they were able to combine two classes!

This news was so hard to hear because for the last two weeks, I have been watching my technology pilot teachers struggle with the group of kids that they were given: all the repeaters (kids who failed last year), and all of the lowest performing students. Why is this? Well, part of the problem was that no one did any scheduling last summer. Seriously, many of the students and teachers did not have a schedule or class list the first week of school. Crazy huh? It gets crazier. Myself and another teacher went to great lengths to survey ALL of the students in the building on their preferences for their electives for the following year. At the beginning of the second week, I find out that the principal has ordered all of the elective teachers to survey the kids again? Why? I don't get it. It was no secret that we did this already last year. We had the data in a spreadsheet. Honestly, I just don't think they understand what we did well enough for it to make a lasting impression. If we had brought in a huge plate of food, or maybe some nice trinkets form corporate express they might have remembered, but when you start talking about online...survey...spreadsheet...data...preferences...modalities....stuff like that...the people in charge at my school seem to tune out.

I think this new blog is just turning into a place for me to bitch. Maybe I had better change my name so I don't lose my job. Maybe, unconsciously that is WHAT I'm TRYING to do!

In fact, it was in that same survey that we polled the students learning styles and modalities so that we could better place them onto the technology team. We were attempting to make one class of students whose learning styles might lend themselves to technology. This was one of the premises that I was given the grant on. At the time, the principal said this would be no problem. So this brings me back to the scheduling.

I gave all of this information to multiple administrators and explained to them what they needed to do as far as scheduling, and as I said, nothing got done. I have no idea what they did up in that building all summer. I have a feeling that there was a lot joking, fun and food...there always is...while the place goes to shit.

So, this morning after I did my daily technology deliveries, I went around and did an informal survey. I already new that that my team had some difficult kids and a lot of them. But I needed to see what was going on in the rest of the school. Wouldn't you know, there was only one other team of teachers in the school that had four classes total. ALL THE REST HAD THREE. I couldn't believe this. I feel like my team has been set up for failure. And the other team that does have four, they have all of the top performing kids: 701, 702, 703, 704. I can't believe it.

This weekend I am going to look at the MSA data as well as the IEP information and see how my team compares to the rest of the school and I don't believe it will look any better.

So, the bottom line is this. I got this grant to give these teachers great teaching tools as well as solid training in how to use it and how to infuse technology into their curricula. We are hoping to show some solid academic gains, but at this point, I am not confident that this will happen. Sometimes when I go down there things are just nutty. Maybe I have lost faith to early. Maybe I need to go down and help out more. I don't know.

Ms. G took her classes to the computer lab today. I found a CPU heat sink and fan smashed in the corner--It didn't come out of a working computer, but it did fly through the air during class time....Baltimore City Public Schools....

Perhaps the Lowest Point...

It's funny...well, it really isn't something to laugh about...but the very day after my last post, Ms. G., the Filipino teacher on my technology team, had such a difficult morning with the kids that she had to leave early to compose herself. Like I said, before, it is difficult for me to see this because of how much I want the program to work.

Today, I decided to jump in and and try to help out with some of her classes. She was heading to the computer lab to do a web quest, so I used it as an opportunity get involved. It was a tiring day. I think part of the problem was that the students were given work that was beyond their abilities, but beyond that, many of the students' behaviors were out of control.

The final class of the day was the worst, I ended up just holding about ten of the kids upstairs in Ms. G's room while she took the rest to the lab. Honestly, I tried every trick up my sleeve to hook these kids, who were among the most difficult in the school, to no avail. Finally, when the grade level administrator decided to sit in the back of the room, I was able to make a little headway at breaking down the information and teaching them a little something.

These past days have been trying. I have seen some difficult situations in my last four years at Lemmel, but I have never been so pessimistic as I am tonight. Teaching in Baltimore is often times like trying to force a baby to eat food that it doesn't want--you try every trick in the book to get them to open their mouth and eat. But the fact is that many of our students just don't want to learn. But we live in America, where everything is fair, and fair means that the teachers in these schools are held accountable for teaching these students, whether the students want it or not. So, in these situations teachers don't really teach much, they spend their time poking and proding children into doing soemthing...the students have the power, they choose whether to comply or not. Many do, but it only takes two or three in a class who don't to significanly decrease the ammount of information conveyed on a give day.

I am surrounded by bright, dedicated individuals who are driving themselves insane because they want to succeed so badly in a situation that is hopeless. Yes, that it how it seemed to me today: hopeless.

So today I looked at the situation a little differently and asked myself, what is it exactly that separates these poor children from the children that Ms. G used to teach Physics and Algebra to in the Filipenes, or the Children that Dr. N. used to teach back in Nigeria. And, in spite of all of the books on teaching African-American children, and in spite of all of the journal articles about teaching children in poverty, I think maybe it might all come down to one thing: these children already have everything they need (except maybe a mom or a dad). They have food, they have nice clothes, they and their familie seem to be content with they way things are. So, why do urban teachers have to FORCE them to learn? Why must we play this losing game?

I have never seen children go to such lengths to get out of doing a simple task. I have seen children exert so much energy, find every loophole, every discraction, to get out of answering a question or reading a sentence or just thinking about something new..........

Culture Clash

I went down to the technology team's classrooms today during their planning period. We were scheduled to have a meeting on Friday and I wanted to ask them what they might be interested in discussing. I also had some more software to install on a few computers.

Speaking candidly with Ms. R, I mentioned that, honestly, I have felt a little bit of anxiety lately because it seems like the kids are a bit off the hook. I understand that this is just the way things get in a school like this, but when you put so much work into something, you want it to turn out perfect, no matter where you implement it. It has been hard for me to remember that things won't go perfectly all the time.

We also talked about the fact that Ms. G has been having a lot of difficulties with the children. I mentioned that it is also frustrating for me to see that, it is not only Ms. G, but all of the Filipino teachers that are having problems. This year, because I am moving from classroom to classroom all the time, I have a perspective that I have not had, and I absolutely see a pattern. Perhaps it is the accent, perhaps it is that they look different, whatever the case, it is frustrating.

Yesterday I was just finishing up a meeting with two Filipino teachers who co-teach together when a parent came into the room with his son who has been acting up lately. I watched as one of the teachers explained all of the things that had been happening in the classroom and it was as if the father wasn't hearing a word of it. At one point, the teacher was describing how the student grabbed her arm in the cafeteria, and the father did not react at all.

Today during my conversation with Ms. R, she mentioned that in a team parent meeting, a parent had complained that it was Ms. G's fault that the child was acting up because she was not able to control her class.

Is that the teachers job to control a class, or more specifically this parents child? Frustrating.