Bad day

Today was just one of those days. It was a combination of me being really off and my kids being a little off. I came into the day already feeling like I didn’t want to be there, and I really wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be either.

I don’t know how I feel about this medication. It definitely keeps me from getting upset or anxious, but I also think it makes me let myself get away with doing stuff halfway. I’m also just a lot slower on it, so I think it might take me longer to get things done. That was part of the problem: yesterday I took a long time to do my planning, longer than normal, but overall it turned out being lower quality than normal too. There were just huge gaps and things I didn’t do. And I didn’t feel stressed out or pressured to do something about it. So I just let it be. And I kind of think that’s why I had such a terrible day today.

I’m just so exhausted too. Every layer of exhausted. I wouldn’t be sleep-deprived exhausted except that this stupid medication makes me so drowsy.

All I know is that I feel really miserable right now.

Things I don't understand

Interesting incident today. K----- said something about M------’s mother this morning, so M------ got up, walked all the way to the back of the room, and pulled K-----’s chair out from under him while he was sitting in it. Of course, K----- jumped up off the floor and got in M------’s face and the two started fighting, pushing and shoving up to the front of the room, I, meanwhile, alternating between demands that they stop what they are doing and commands to the rest of the class to stay seated in their chairs. Then, M------ slammed K----- into the wall at the front of the room, at which point I directed him to leave the room and go to the office. He responded by walking to the back of the room, picking up K-----’s backpack, walking back to the front, soundly shoving it into the trash can, and resolutely spitting on it as a last blow. I again asked him to leave, and he finally did, only to come back five minutes later, retrieve K-----’s backpack from where I had placed it next to K-----’s desk, and return it to its place in the trash can.

I don’t retell this merely to vent or even to enlighten you about what exactly goes on in inner city classrooms in Kansas City. Rather, I have the very particular purpose of asking the question: what is it, what combination of experiences, what sort of psychological make-up, causes a ten year-old to behave in such a way? Lack of attention, surely, but there are many other ways that children demand attention that are not so extreme or so odd. M------ has a very rough life. He is homeless. His father is in and out of the picture. He is considered a thief by the other children and a miscreant by the teachers. But how all this translates into the actions I saw today is beyond me. My background in psychology is far too limited.

If M------ were my only student who did things like this, and if this were the only time that he had done something like this, the questions would stop there. But many of my students do things that are equally bewildering, some of them on a daily basis. How did each of them become the way they are? How do their interactions play into these extreme actions? How does their common socio-cultural environment create the impetus for such behavior? I really don’t know. I'm working on it though.

Places

I’ve been reading this book lately, Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge 1990-2003. First of all, I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in any way in California. It is superbly written, totally fascinating, and extremely enlightening, especially for a born-and-raised Californian ex-pat such as myself.

            Reading it has brought up all kinds of interesting reflections along with bouts of nostalgia and homesickness. One of the most intriguing of these has been a new way of contextualizing my place here in a place like Kansas City, Missouri as well as this place’s place in my life. California really is a place of extremes and I do think that growing up there had a really affect on my psychological development.

Kansas City, on the other hand, is in the odd position of being in the “mid-west”, “west” in the American lexicon signifying the frontier, a place divergent from the norm, and “mid” at the same time implying that it is at the center, the core, of American life. Kansas City really embodies both of these. I recently took a trip to St. Louis and was struck by how distinctly “eastern” that city felt compared to KC. The prominence of more ornate old world-influenced architecture in St. Louis starkly contrasts with KC’s distinctly western eclectic mix of hyper-modern (P&L), faux-Spanish (the Plaza), and turn-of-the-century industrial (crossroads, west bottoms) buildings. Of course, KC can hardly be considered a frontier of any kind in modern times, when competing with SF or LA, but it does retain that hardier and more rough-and-tumble feel than many places to the east. At the same time, a look at the people crowding into the Shamrock gas station on 47^th and Mission for a taste of Okie Joe’s barbeque on a Saturday afternoon provides what every Californian would recognize as a typical slice of America’s heartland (though I always feel a little uncomfortable in the company). The same can be said for the numerous churches dotting the landscape, the party-goers packed into O’Dowd’s on a Friday night, or the fans in the field level seats of Chief’s stadium.

All of this provides a very interesting backdrop for me as a Californian. On the one hand, the things that make the west coast so different from the rest of the country never have seemed so stark. At the same time, I feel a deep, guttural connection to elements of this place, especially after my first bite into a Z-Man sandwich or after hearing the anthems of a rock band from Joplin blasted through their Fender amps. I have never felt so homesick in my life, but at the same time I know that there will be things that I sorely miss about Kansas City.

To close I want to make note of the fact that I am referring in this post to white Kansas City. Black Kansas City is another world entirely, and one which I have a much different and even more complicated relationship with. Of course, the two are closely tied, but I would argue that they truly are two different realms.

Ideals and reality

I think maybe that's what this whole ordeal will end up being about: finding the intersection, the functional relationship, between ideals and reality. My belief in social justice, through my daily interactions with my students, is transformed by my love for them as people. Which is prior to the other? Of course the ideal was the motivating factor in my positioning myself thus in the first place, but from whence were these ideals born if not from my love of humanity, that love which now manifests itself in my relationships with my students.

What is a teacher? This exchange begs the question. On the surface, a giver of knowledge and an organizer of daily life for children. A layer deeper he is a moral guide and a role model, a sculptor of character and behavior. But there is a deeper, more human layer. This layer is borne in deeply personal exchanges of hatred and love, in screams of anger and proclamations of joy and pride. It is something akin to the relationship of parent-to-child, but it has yet a different character. It is deeply personal, perhaps the deepest non-familial, non-romantic relationship I have encountered.

Given this it is no surprise that such a genteel, sheltered person as myself would be absolutely destroyed by engaging in such a relationship with a group of children that harbor so much anger and frustration as my students. In this dichotomy we begin again to run into the relation of ideal-to-reality. The difference in our identity, and its presumed sources, is a reification of those motivating ideals of social justice.

How then does one conceive of the struggles of the classroom in this context? I have to find something in my own peaceful, reflective, intellectual (bourgeois?) soul that is stronger than their anger and frustration. It is an unknown enemy to me though. Or maybe conceiving of it as a battle or a struggle is wrong outright. Perhaps the quelling of that anger will come through recognizing it, accommodating it, and ultimately redirecting it.

All of this is complicated by the social structure of my school context, where I am the clear outsider.

10/27

I feel like vomiting as I try to swallow the incoherent breadth of my life.

A microcosmic example: sitting behind my teacher’s desk on parent-teacher conference day, whiling away the empty hours (were they empty at my Sumner Elementary?) reading about Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, aching with a desire to immerse myself in his imagined worlds and retreat from this one. Then a conversation about my most frustrating student, an adoptee and guessed “crack baby” by other teachers, an internal cry over what I can do to help him. And then a look at myself in the bathroom mirror and a wandering thought “maybe I could be a writer, maybe I should go study comparative literature and spend my days delving into the details of Oe and pondering the popularity of Murakami”. And then wondering how to connect this with my now long-held aspirations to live an unselfish life. How does the ghetto relate to literary theories and how do both relate to me? I don’t know, and my head sure feels fuzzy. 

Sick Day

10/12/11

I’m taking a sick day today to recuperate. I came home after school yesterday, laid myself down on the couch, and couldn’t get up until around 9, at which time I immediately went to bed. I woke up at 3am intending to plan for the day, but I again couldn’t rouse myself, so I hit snooze until 4:15. Then I went downstairs and poured myself a bowl of cereal, but I couldn’t bring myself to start planning. I started telling my housemate, Adam, about what happened yesterday.

It really wasn’t any worse than a lot of other days I’ve had. It started out ok; my homeroom group is always really uncooperative and disrespectful and they were at just about their average level. I got a new student during homeroom, which did add a psychological element of wanting to make sure I was doing everything perfectly so she would get a good impression of the kind of teacher I am. The transition to Comm. Arts was ok. I gave them each their 200 Scholar Dollars that they earn daily. A lot of my students came in, sat down, and got to work on the DOL as usual and a few of them came in playing around as usual.

Somehow, though, the DOL ended up taking our entire hour until support. Ah, I remember now: Benny said something to Anna while she was correcting her DOL, she snapped back, he blew up and started yelling at her, so I tried to send him out, which he refused, which gave Tim or Montarrious the space to throw something across the room, which meant I had to first get the whole class under control, and then get Benny under control, and then call the office to get him out of the room, but they didn’t respond, and so in this manner we struggled through correcting our Daily Oral Language. And Markesha and China were doing something crazy too. I think Markesha called someone “dusty”. I don’t know if the details are right, but I do remember clearly pointing at the board at the end and saying “this is ALL we could get done in AN HOUR!”

I called 5 parents while the rest of the class was in the computer lab, which wasted more than half of my planning time.

When we came back in from the bathroom, there was a picture of my mother, grandfather, aunt, and uncle projected on the board. We were starting a writing project about people who are important to us. The class was fairly focused (or at least not loud) while I read a short essay I wrote about my mom. Then we moved on to read a story about a little girl whose elderly uncle saves her life. During the story, one of the para-professional assistants came in, Montarrious ran up to him and told him that Leon had stolen a stack of white paper from me, an accusation I had heard early but ignored for the sake of progressing with our lesson. The paper materialized, the para told me to write up the student, and 5 or 6 students took up the chant of “Thief! Thief! Thief!”, which made poor Leon sprint out of the room and required me to yell a lecture about respecting others. It took us a few minutes to refocus back on the story.

Things continued in a similar vein through our work on using a graphic organizer to begin thinking about how to write the descriptions of people we care about, all the way until lunch.

After lunch was when I started to lose my game. They had done a terrible job lining up after recess the day before, so I forced them to march up and down the hallways instead of going outside. I had done this before, but I had let the ones who had been good go out. Today I couldn’t quite do that because two of the Kindergarten teachers had subs and they normally help keep track of the ones who I send out. As such, I marched them for about 20 minutes, then took them inside and had them all silent read except for two who had been “perfect” (meaning they didn’t even ask if the good ones could go outside since they are supposed to be silent in the hallway). The teachers among you can see why this might not have been the best call.

Benny was in the closet for all of silent reading, crumpling up papers and throwing them. My new student started to cry because I had told her she was going to get recess much earlier, though she had been a bit out of line after lunch. Everyone else was fairly cooperative and I gave tootsie rolls to those who were focused on their reading out of guilt (another mistake?). The room was largely quiet though. There was an air of sadness about it. I, on the other hand, was busily running around doing things. I don’t remember exactly what I was doing, but it was enough so that the quiet gradually deteriorated and I would have to use some force to bring it back. I did this several times. One thing I was doing was filling out their daily behavior reports, I remember that.

The transition to math went as poorly as ever, and even after I made them do it over three times (line up outside, walk in quietly, find your seat quietly, do your Number of the Day quietly, hang up your backpack when it is your table’s turn quietly), they still sat down chatting or just running their mouths off to themselves or throwing paper balls into the trash can.

I don’t remember if we went to the bathroom before or after the fire alarm went off, or at all. In any case, they were all in their seats and relatively quiet when the buzzers in the hallway sounded and the girls started screaming and everyone tried to bolt for the door. Fortunately, I have a loud voice and there is no alarm in our room, so I was able to get them in something of a line and away from the door. Once the other classes passed, we filed out into the hallway, at which point the line became a clump until it had to stretch out again to fit through the doors to get outside.

A few of my great ones headed my plea for them to get in a straight line, but several others were off doing backflips in the middle of the field. At the same time, I noticed several tootsie roll wrappers in the hands of Lyzala, of whom I will surely have many tales to tell by the end of the year. I pulled her out of line and told her I was going to write her up for stealing. She protested, saying it was not she who stole them but Leon, whose backpack Lyzala then tore open. Sure enough, an almost empty bag of tootsie rolls was found inside. Leon darted across the field to the Principal to tell him God knows what story about how Lyzala planted the stolen candy in his bag.

Meanwhile, my line was getting worse while the other classes were starting to walk in. I told them that we were not going inside until the line was straight and quiet. That did not happen. So, we waited outside about 10 minutes until those doing flips finally got in a line. And we marched back in. I was handing out $50 notes like crazy to those who were doing the right thing, desperate to not let morale dip so low as to have a mutiny.

We marched around the entire building and back in through the front door in a still far-less-than-perfect line. By the time they were back in the classroom sitting in their seats, it was already 2:45, less than 45 minutes left in the day. I tried tell them to take out their homework so we could correct it. They didn’t because they were still talking and not listening.

I lost it. I threw my clipboard down on the table and screamed at them: “You learned NOTHING today. Not a single one of you learned ANYTHING about math today. And it is YOUR FAULT. Unless you are one of the two or three people (I named them) who were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing the entire time, IT IS YOUR FAULT.” It was quiet for a second. “Now, take out your homework so we can go over it and make something of today”. The talking started again instantly.

I called down to the principal’s office (he was supposed to come in around the time of the fire alarm anyway). He said he would come as soon as he could. I passed out a worksheet for them to work on and told them to do it silently. One of my girls came up and asked if I could help the people who want to learn at the front table. I said yes and a group of about 6 gathered around me and I helped them with the worksheet.

My principal came in about 20 minutes later and everyone finally got to work. He began walking around, helping students. 10 minutes after than I walked over to him and told him what had been happening earlier and asked him what we are going to do about it. “Get some parents down here” he said.

He left, and soon it was time to line up. I told them to stand on their numbers. A few did. I couldn’t bring myself to yell. I sent a student to go over and get the long-term sub for the computer teacher. She is an older black woman who is very intense and very concerned about the behavior of the kids at Satchel Paige. She yelled, got them in line, and we finally walked out to the buses.

I cleaned up my room in a stupor, gathered my things, and looked up directions to a Chipotle between my school and home.

It happened to be located in a bourgeois business complex next to the posh Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library. I sat and ate by myself and let my thoughts run together: what would my students feel if they came here? Or the other teachers at my school for that matter? These people have no idea what the world I just came from is like. They reduce the problems there to simple formulations about race and poverty. They don’t understand the depth of it. I thought about the beautiful school on the edge of the countryside I visited with my instructional coach last week. The kids there are of color too, they are poor too, but the school is set up to make them feel happy and safe and cared for. Not that the staff at Paige aren’t trying…

I went home, sat down on the couch, and watched a couple of episodes of 30 Rock with my roommate. I had every intention of buckling down and preparing for the next day at 8pm, after the last episode.

I tried to get up and couldn’t. I tried to think about what I needed to do and couldn’t. I felt beyond weak, just completely shut down. I half-slept on the couch until 9 then dragged myself into bed.

I woke up at 2:50am in sort of a happy daze. As I dozed off again, the feelings from yesterday began to rise. I got up at 4:15 when Adam knocked on my door (he knew I was going to try to get up early). While I was eating breakfast in a silent rage I told Adam about how I had lost control of my class, lost the battle. He asked whether that hadn’t happened before. I then told him how I felt like I couldn’t get a handle on my emotions, I was till angry, irrationally, and that that was scary. I never lose control of my emotions. If anything I control them too much. I couldn’t get myself to do anything to get ready for the day, so I went back to bed and lay there until 6:15.

I got up still in the same funk. I had been thinking the entire time about all of the little things that if I just got them right every time things would go fine. If I had just been quicker getting my math class started working on something after I yelled at them it would have been ok. If I had given Benny some incentive to behave well it would have been ok. If I had been more consistent giving out my dollars it would have been ok. If I had gotten Leon or Lyzala out of the room more quickly it would have been ok. And bigger things too: if my students had gotten more assignments back and knew how they were doing, if I had been consistent with management all the time from the beginning, if my lessons were more planned out, if I had talked to parents earlier. My mind reeled and I was still in the same angry stupor. I snapped at Adam while he was trying to tell me to get help from people in TFA.

I’m not angry now, although I still don't totally have a handle on myself and that scares me. Writing this has helped a ton. I’m going to go in tomorrow, and it might not be better, but it will be fine. I just need to find some ways to get rid of these feeling in the evenings after school.

(All of the names in this post are fictitious except for Adam’s)

Conversation about education with a friend from Berkeley

I haven't had time to post in a while, but I've been having some excellent conversations with friends about my experiences and what I have been learning here. I thought I'd post one in lieu of writing so i can make sure to keep you up to date.

 me:  sorry, transitioning from phone to computer

but yeah, essential

 Mohit:  no problem

 me:  lly

it all comes down to money

well and cultural valuation of education

especially education of poor, black children

 Sent at 4:29 PM on Sunday

 me:  it is definitely NOT because we have "bad" teachers

you have to be crazy to teach in an urban school and not care deeply about the well-being of children

otherwise you would leave

 Sent at 4:31 PM on Sunday

 Mohit:  yeah, that makes a lot of sense

 Sent at 4:33 PM on Sunday

 Mohit:  but

i'm trying to reconcile the two views

 Sent at 4:34 PM on Sunday

 Mohit:  i mean

obviously there are stories floating around of teachers doing nothing

and i understand that stories are just that

stories

but i've had unmotivated teachers in the past who do the minimal required

and i can't imagine they're the only ones

so

what gives?

(i'm intentionally playing devil's advocate to a certain extent.)

 Sent at 4:36 PM on Sunday

 me:  for one thing, as things are now, even the motivated teachers in KC can't do a good job because the administration is in flux because of the superintendent quitting

there's this huge reform push to change the whole system of education at at 10 KC elementary schools (mine being one of them) and we as teachers were hardly trained at all on how to work under the new system

like literally it was a week of optional training (that about a third of the teachers at my school attended) and 2 days of mandatory training

and the training was dismal at that

we teachers rely on our principals and our instructional coach, but they are only barely supported by the administration above

 Mohit:  wow

 me:  The district does almost nothing to provide opportunities for teachers to learn how to teach, but threatens everything they can when they feel teachers aren't doing their job

administrators only show up in our rooms or anywhere else to monitor

and in this case, it's to monitor for things that they are making us do, that are completely new this year, and they only spent 2 days trying to train us how to do

basically i think teachers should be paid more but also work an extra few weeks or a month on professional development every year

 Mohit:  yeah, that makes a lot of sense

i know that

when discussing the topic of teacher pay with people who are not berkeley students

the summer vacation gets mentioned a lot

it'd be interesting to repurpose that

 me:  yeah

i mean, i still think the per hour wage for teachers is too low

but, even you kept that constant and just added mandatory hours over the summer, it could be really effective

but that's a lot of money

that states don't have

 Sent at 4:46 PM on Sunday

 me:  also, our kids here need more help than we can give, so if we could have counselors and caseworkers and psychologists for every kid

everything would be a lot better

but they would have to be competent in the culture here

 Mohit:  it sounds to me like what's messed up is not the educational system, but the educational support system

 Sent at 4:49 PM on Sunday

 me:  well, i think they're one in the same, in theory

no, in practice too

 Mohit:  haha

 me:  but yeah, it is the support that is lacking, not the skill or dedication of the teachers

for the most part

there are some very bad teachers at my school

AND KC, unlike other places, has been able to purge some of its bad apples

 Sent at 4:51 PM on Sunday

 Mohit:  i guess that's both good and bad

good because there is quality

bad because we can't keep it good

anyway, i'm sure that you have to have this conversation every time you talk with somebody from berkeley

we'll continue it another time

tell me more about KC!