Wednesdays

My week goes downhill faster than the Texas Giant after Wednesday. I know that I don't have a corporate job, and that people look at teachers as the bottom feeders of the professional pond. "You get summers off and a vacation at Christmas," is usually the rote response to any complaint about my job. Yea, that's because if I were to work two weeks longer in the winter that I would kill myself for feeling like a failure or kill a child because they were acting like one. But I digress. 

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I get to work at 7:30, (which means I leave home at 7 am or earlier), get situated, clean my room and then get ready for my first class when the bell rings at 8 am. Cut to 2:15 when I have my "planning period". I (and the other grade level teachers I work with) even eat lunch with the kids. We are so short help that this generally means that instead of eating, or while choking down a sandwich in 30 minutes, we're supervising rowdy hellions and doing crowd control; making sure the kids don't riot in front of the chicken strips. Then after a small break, when I get to breathe and pee, we tutor from 3 until 5. Awesome!! In case you have trouble doing the math this means that I have children for over 9 hours. Children whose parents haven't taught them how to behave and children I can't hit, because they're not biologically related to me.  I wish I had the sit at my desk kind of job.  We don't have to do this (tutoring) Thursday or Friday because our time after school is filled on these two days with 45 minutes of asinine information presented in some Kumbiya meeting that takes 45 minutes of guaranteed planning time instead of being sent out in a memo or  an email. But at least it's not 10 hours of kids, kids, kids!

You hear so much (too much) today about how education is broken. This is my third year in a classroom (in a Title I school) and I can assure you that education is broken, but it's a symptom of a greater problem rather than the root problem. Somewhere along the way US society has lowered its expectations. You no longer have to work for the American dream and the mediocre has become exceptional. This is even true in Higher Education, according to the NY Times. Don't act surprised or play crazy. We knew it was the end during the Election of 2000 when President Bush was campaigning that his education initiative would include character education. This is teaching students how to be good people. Example:

My every morning goes something like this post-bell ring: 

-Please here are the morning announcements

-Hello Principal Satan's Wife, Faculty, Staff, and Students; please stand for the Pledge, Texas Pledge... (are you bored already?).

Then after all that and the pure asinine bullshit that we have to pay attention to you hear:

-This weeks Character Counts trait is honesty. Honesty is not stealing from anyone and telling the truth

- "I'd like to remind the teachers that our goal here is quality bell to bell instruction."  Holy shit! I'm glad she cleared that up! However this begs the question of any reasonable educator as to when the children are actually supposed to "show what they know."

I mean are you effing kidding me?!?!?! When did school start having to explicitly teach values, instead of reinforcing what was learned at home? Maybe when people stopped spanking their kids because it became child abuse. Maybe teachers had to add character to the list of Required Teachings when students started assaulting them in the classroom or we started not being able to keep those students who didn't know how to behave out of the classroom. I know that the Constitution says that "All men are created equal," but that means that they have equal access if they work in the context of society, i.e., if they follow the laws and rules set forth by that society.

 Instead what we have in the US today is NCLB. This bill created in 2002 has mutilated the nation's already haggard educational system. Teachers no longer have power. Today it is the word of the student (whether they are here legally or not) is God. In addition to keeping the schedule above teachers now have to find time to document, write notes, specific quotes and exact information into a spiral that could save your job once you get called into the Principal's Office. This could be extreme at my school, which is medieval in its operation, my despotic Principal's own fiefdom.  There is no way to measure accountability nationwide other than a standardized test. If a school doesn't produce it's numbers it looses some of its Federal Education budget, ostensibly because the school failed to educate its students. What this fails to take into account is where that child was at the beginning of the year (at or below grade level) and what happens in the home. Even though all research points to the fact that education must be valued in the home to be valuable to the student, we keep seeing this responsibility taken off the parents and placed upon the already heavy shoulders of the educators. 

Another thing I've noticed is that when there is no distinction between the lunch that students must pay for and the one that students get for free, there is no want to do better. Why learn to read when someone else pays to feed your child?

Before NCLB schools were generally held accountable by their community, by interaction (cooperation) between teachers and the parents of the children sitting in their classrooms. In many cases this created disparate standards in schools. You have higher standards (and test scores) in white-bread, suburban communities like Round Rock, TX than you do in poorer, darker (yes I said it) New Orleans, LA. Many critics and conspiracy theorists used this evidence to say that minority students were being purposefully undereducated to create a permanent working class beholden to The Man. Never mind that these children in New Orleans (or many other poor areas, even white rural ones) came from less-than-literate families, who didn't value education in the first place because doing well in school didn't put food on the table immediately. It's hard to be poor. I come from poor stock who realized that being educated was the best way out of poverty for good. 

The hope was that the creation of federal legislation would increase accountability while also making standards uniform, thus erasing disparity. It was also thought that those students who had been previously excluded from the general classroom environment (the special ed., kids and chronic, emotionally disturbed behavior problems) would now be included and want to work to attain what the other students worked hard for. This has not been the case. Now these gen-ed kids see those inclusion children getting help, which has in turn created wide spread learned helplessness. 

Obviously the authors of this bill didn't take into account that even in the pre-NCLB classroom there were already 20 or more children on different learning levels with different learning styles. Teachers were already overwhelmed. The boys in DC also neglected to realize that the students who had been taken out of the classroom had been taken out for a reason. The fact that they had been taken out of the general classroom did not mean that they were not getting serviced. They were being serviced by teachers who had been trained to deal with their unique set of issues. 

Is it any surprise that with an uneducated populace we have more people who are not able to afford the American Dream but still feel that they are entitled to it. Is it any reason that the country is in post-sub prime mess because you were lending too much money to people who were never equipped to spend it in the first place? Even in the fall out we have people who want a bailout for something they didn't rightfully earn because they failed to work for it, and it started in school. 

Even media has jumped on the bandwagon. While there is much to change and much to work on, we must start at the root of the problem. There is no shortage of dedicated educators or idealistic dreamers who want to become one. There are those that are disenchanted, fighting in the trenches, trying to do their job even while working for a system they do not like or respect. Maybe education in the US would see a turn around if we got back to basics: teaching values like honesty and hard work at home. Reading to your children before bed time so that they know about words and how to use their imagination. Going to the book store as a reward instead of a heading to GameStop. Maybe once we see education (true thinking) and not just getting an A being valued in homes across America will we see the US regain her footing as a superpower with an educated population.

Mardi Gras

When I was in college I dreamed of going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Really anytime I could sin and get away with it, I was so gung ho about it. Tonight, my plan is to finish this blog, get ready for work tomorrow, and make banana bread. I live such an amoral life. Mardi Gras is that one day of excess before the deprivation. This may not be news (or perhaps it is) but tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, is the beginning of the most important time period of the Christian calendar. For the 40 days leading up to Easter, Christians search for something to sacrifice. Maybe coffee, or candy, or meat, but either way we look to give up something that has or is becoming a vice. 

I have no idea what to give up. I don't drink a lot of coke, I don't eat fast food, I'd be a raging, psychotic (more psychotic) bitch if I gave up coffee, and giving up sweets just seems cruel. Ideally I'd give up sweets, since lately I've been having them way too much. I mean isn't that the point? Or is the point to be more Christ-like? What is Christ-like?  

To tread on quicksand, I think that Lent could make us less Christ-like. What people tend to forget is that Jesus himself was human. He had to be, to be able to understand the human experience. He had to know love, joy, sadness, regret and sin. This was necessary so that he could become the scapegoat for Man's sins. 

Is Lent just an excuse to practice temporary self-control? All you have to do is give something up for a little over a month, and then Wam! We totally understand what Jesus went through. Shouldn't the goal be to practice more regular self-control? Instead of giving something up for 40 days and then forgetting about it, this year I may just tally how often I have sweets and should have no more than 5 days. I need to get back to eating the sweets just once a week. This Lent will be more about reform and less about sacrifice. 

PPPPrrrrraaaaaiiiisssse JJJJeeeeesssssusss! (Sexul Choc-late)

As a WASP, educated American, and someone deaned "social degenerate," but most religions in the world including Christianity I tend to stay away from the church house. However, earlier this week, in the rush of having so many of my little (petty) prayers answered (namely that my pseudo-power bitch boss would be smite-ted by a raging case of stomach virus for a 3rd day in the row) I decided that I would go to church. Really I broke a cardinal rule of the Faithful and shot something like this up to Heaven: "If she's out one more day, I swear I'll go to church!". Lo and behold, Wednesday was "miraculous". 

Having made my deal with God, out of bed and off to church I carried myself this morning. While I tend to shy from religion these days I was raised in a church and I find comfort in going to a church like the one I grew up in. I must have somehow triggered an alarm because not two minutes after I walked in the Sanctuary (God's Living Room, for the in-savvy) I was greeted by the Pastor's wife (I only learned this later). 

All in all I liked this church. They take Communion every Sunday, they were kind, and I was the only one wearing jeans. This is a faux pas that I only condone in church if you have nothing else. Like the giant sinner I am, I stayed at Chaz's and didn't think to go home to put on clean pants.  I took notes during the sermon (something else I totally like) and here are a few. Just so that you won't be totally lost the point had to do with the "Healing Hands of Christ" and reconciling that with life's messiness. 

Leprosy= disease --> sin

Jesus cures this leper and cures him--> sinner is redeemed

Am I a leper? -->I am a leper, to a degree this is of my own choosing

Naaman wanted to see. Miracles are a show of faith--> proof that obedience is needed. Faith requires obedience and that is why it was scary. 

We are healed by obeying. Healing comes in all shapes and sizes, all faces. We are healed by many (thanks friends and You Know Who). 

Do I humble myself enough to ask God's help to be a healer? 

Any way, there you are pieces of my mind. Don't read too much into it. 

Stand and Deliver

There are two worlds in Dallas, Texas. Usually they run North to South, the frontier being the Trinity River that ravaged and then shaped the city at the onset of the 20th Century. The modern city has been stitched together by the thread of longitude and latitude, the Seamstress History. Today the land north of the river sparkles in the sun. This is the solid, touchable limb of the American dream. The modern day Miracle Mile. 

South of the river is a township, annexed by its north-lying big sister. This is a land that on first glance has been left in the 1950's, the only pieces of modernity being Shell stations and medium size high rises, perhaps a McDonald's that was planted in that organization's quest at world domination. This land has also been left behind not only chronologically, but also economically. There are not glittering glass buildings that claw at the sky, no sparkling European imports. Here in this land there are only modest bungalows built using money from a GI Bill that now house those coming from a land even more foreign in search of that which has brought many before them; prosperity and hope. 

I teach in this foreign land south of where I live. This is the true face of the American Promise, not the one dipped in gold but rather the promise that calls to the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,". In the span of two generations this part of the city, that still bears the name of the town it once was, has seen first whites, then blacks and now immigrants from Mexico teeming in its streets. 

Oak Cliff is a mix of all these things. My children (and the world around them) the products of the winds of change. They are part Mexico, part America, a healthy dose of poverty and not enough hope to fill a teaspoon, but they are mine. This is the first in a series of entries to come weekly about some of these children in particular and all of them. Faces that draw my complaints, my frustration and most of all (though they know it not) my care. 

Frankly My Dear

Everyone knows that scene in "Gone With The Wind, " Scarlett comes home from Ashley Wilkes' birthday party (after being caught in his arms, I'll try not to re-tell the whole movie), and in the end she gets carried up the stairs by a hulking Rhett Butler who "isn't going to be put out of your bed tonight." Never mind that today this would be rape, and that the Rhett Butlers of Atlanta had  a dysfunctional marriage. The scene that always surprises me is the next one, Scarlett sitting in bed, humming, content like a cat whose gotten her fill. Tonight, that's me. Before you go on imagining me in bed humming, having gotten my fill, and being fanned by my Mammy, let me explain. 

Tonight, in fact at this very moment, I'm laying in bed typing this and thanking my lucky stars that I have someone next to me to share it with. I'll be the first to admit that I hate acknowledging my feelings, unless they're angry, aggressive, or impatient, and maybe it's the fact that Saturday is Valentine's Day (which I love regardless of whether or not I'm seeing someone), "or maybe it's true his heart grew three sizes that day," but for whatever the reason I'm glad I'm next to someone who doesn't need or want me to the tough all the time.

What is it about American society today that inspires us to be this way? No one ever wants to be "That Girl" or "That Guy" or that anybody who lets any emotion (weakness) leak out through the cracks of an otherwise polished surface. It's so draining to be strong all the time don't you think? It's constantly keeping your head above water, not being able to swim so you just keep treading never getting any farther to shore. I always thought that you had to be the strong one, that otherwise people would take advantage of you (and I still believe this to a certain degree) once you let them in and cull you from the herd. Then an epiphany! Using your emotions is like floating. If you take a deep breath, stay calm and let the water carry you, everything will be fine. After so many years of building my own Jericho,  like Scarlett I realize that letting people in is so much more enjoyable than locking them out. 

All Work and No Play

I have no idea why I'm so tired this week. You would think that this would have been the best week ever. As you all already know I don't hate my job, but I do hate my work place, so Sunday I was dreading Monday and procrastinating doing anything for this week. Not to mention that my plan to review TAKS for the next couple weeks and build fluency was all torn to hell since our copy machine is broken. Then the most amazing thing happened (drum roll): My boss called out for 3 days!!! I imagine that this must be what a sinner's reprieve from hell must be like. We even had a few low-key days, I have no reason to be about to hit the keyboard while I type. 

It must be the fact that I've worked six days a week for the past month. I've been at school teaching and re-teaching from 7:30 until 5 3 days a week. On the days we don't have to tutor, we're in a meeting or worse just having to sit and listen to a tirade about what we aren't doing to make learning important to the kids. Never mind that when you don't have to feed yourself because you're on what we used to call "assistance", you really don't need to learn. That is another soap box. I'm hoping that this weekend can be a break. I'm doing nothing, I'm even going to get my plans done Friday so that I take no work home. Maybe we should do it like the French, they have four weeks of vacation a year.

Never Believe Everything You Read

So it turns out that readership is expanding. For some time now I have been dropping this little bug in my parents' ear, not quite sure what the result would be. My folks know I'm dark and twisted but I'm not always sure they're ready to acknowledge it. But, since their reading, and since I have written a few things that makes them come off as less than doting. Ok, maybe ultra-conservative homophobes, whatever. 

What I think it all boils down to is that you (anyone and their parents) have to learn to reconcile seeing the other as an adult, an individual. You love your parents and your parents love you, but it's hard to realize that when you don't always agree on some fundamental issues. Just as an example I'm far more liberal now than when I was raised. I also know that it the picture that comes into focus more quickly is the one that bothers you the most. You always see what you don't like as opposed to what you do. 

I assume that only a handful of people (yes literally 5 people, all friends and acquaintances) read this because I harass them into doing it every few days. At the same time I'm not foolish enough to think that no one else will ever find this, in fact I'm hoping they do. My major and rather naked ambition for this little electronic diary is that it will someday serve as a record that I can write and will want to make some major publication come a-callin'. This along with the fact that I tend to be overly private, what some would call secretive even with my close friends has led me to publish very little about my personal life, after all everyone can identify with feelings, but individuals who talk about their feelings all the time are whiners. 

So in a major step for me this post (yes, FINALLY!) will be far more personal than I really like. Not only will this be a good 'n for Ma and Pa Kettle...err I mean Bitner, but you'll also get to hear a bit more about the beau. After this I refuse to speak of my feelings again ;) . One of my best friends from college, just so happens to be a lesbian. She also happens to have been one of the most comfortable people I have ever known and as far as I ever saw, I envied her for having such a painless coming out process since it took anorexia to kick my ass out of the closet. In any case any time I take a step further into the Gayborhood, especially concerning my parents she likes to say, "You never give your parents enough credit." "I probably don't!" I shoot back, which really means "Yeah, bitch but I didn't ask you,"...  We had a conversation like this in early January when I was toying with the idea of taking Chaz home to Meet The Parents. We had been dating a little over five months and, well it was just looking like that time. In real life I had mentioned I was dating someone and threw a fit, accusing my parents of just wanting to brush my painfully identified sexual orientation under the rug. I'm sure I'd said something along the lines of "What the fuck was the point of coming out if we never talk about it!" And then the reply "But that's all we ever talk about,". Again it's that reconciliation between loving your loved ones and not always agreeing with them. 

Long story short I must give credit where credit is due. As much as I'm sure Mom and Dad were in a bit of shock, I do know (and will now tell the world) my parents are great. Had they read farther back than January they would have read that I am always thankful for the fact that they are not like most of the parents I know who do disown their same-sex loving progeny. My parents have disowned any of their progeny for whatever choice for that matter. Even when I didn't have a face for the person I was walking toward on the other end of the isle, my parents were always in the picture. 

What I hope my friend realizes when she plays devil's advocate for my parents is that no matter how harshly I judge them, I judge myself just as, if not more, harshly.