Dirty Little Secret

Ironflower started Kindergarten yesterday. She loves it, not that this surprises me. I think she’s only disappointed that it’s half day. Between her starting public school and the research I just did about high schools, I sort of  got motivated to check up on  former students.

The very first class that was all mine, that didn’t involve student teaching or subbing, graduated from high school this year. I had them in first grade in a technology magnet school in a tough neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas. I loved that class just a bit more than any other class I ever had. I remember my little group of super-smart kids, four of whom graduated from a top-ranked high school this year (there is one in KCK, believe it or not). And then there was, well, let’s just call him VR. He drove me to distraction, it was so hard to get him to focus and keep his hands to himself. But in the end – after many visits to another teacher (who not only had taught VR’s parents, but still scared them) for time out – I managed to teach VR to read. He actually has a football scholarship now. Sadly, I can’t find the rest of my students. I can only hope it’s not only those 5 who managed to graduate. But that is a possibility.

What breaks my heart even more, though, is the realization that Ironflower could easily do all of the assignments I gave my former first graders the first few months of school. And she would do them better than half of the class. Not because I’m supermom, or because her preschool was highly intensive, or because she’s such a genius, but because most of those kids I had started out so far behind.

And what breaks my heart most of all is that I know some of my former students are parents themselves already, or in jail, or even dead. And that kind of puts into perspective all of my anxiety about Ironflower enjoying kindergarten and not getting her feelings hurt by any mean little kids.

Do you remember having chicken pox? I remember it well. I didn’t get until 8th grade, so when I got it, it was horrible. Oh, the pain in my throat. The fever. The ITCHING. The marks all over my face. The ITCHING.

When I began reading about vaccinations while I was pregnant with Ironflower, I was thrilled to find out that they now have a vaccine for chicken pox. My babies would never have to suffer through the ITCHING. Also, they would not die (yes, chicken pox can kill too).

Today, the day after I returned home after speaking at a social media conference for health care non-profits sponsored by Immunize.org, I received a note from the kids’ school. It seems another student has come down with chicken pox.

I recalled another speaker at the conference discussing why people can be against immunizing their children (I just spoke about using Facebook and Twitter and stuff like that, but it was fun to hear about the other stuff too, seeing as I have a personal interest in the health of children). She mentioned how these people do not trust experts like doctors and scientists, but instead the experiences of friends.

Apparently, some parent at my kids’ school is friends with Jenny McCarthy.

Jenny McCarthy blames her son’s autism on vaccines, in case you didn’t know. And because of one flawed and later disproved study, thousands of parents are not vaccinating their kids. So the conference was about how organizations like health departments could use social media to get people to immunize their kids.

(Side note: Let’s pretend Jenny’s right, for a second. Maybe there is a vast conspiracy poisoning children with vaccines. I’d much rather have a child with autism than one killed by polio. Just sayin’. )

I love it when my universe comes together. The awesome social media ninjas (healthcare and social media experts) at the conference put together an entire social media campaign in 24 hours. If I find out who’s got chicken pox I will be sending the links to them immediately. In the meantime, I suggest you check them out and follow Guysimmunize on Twitter. You can also hear about the conference at the Autism Science Foundation or like them on Facebook.

In addition to learning all sorts of neat stuff at the conference, I also discovered that people who work at health non-profits are a lot like teachers – predominantly female and liberal. But I think they might drink more. Did I mention what a great time I had?

But it’s nice to be home, though Hot Guy and my parents held the fort down admirably. But somehow being here helps me believe that I can hold back any stray chicken pox germs that might get past their vaccinations, especially with ChunkyMonkey’s being so new.

Not that I’d to worry about this at all if SOME people trusted scientists instead of former Playboy Bunnies.

I suppose you can blame it on the prospect of sending Ironflower to afternoon kindergarten. We were informed at the kindergarten orientation that “not every child can be in morning kindergarten” and that some parents had already sent letters – from their lawyers – requesting morning kindergarten. We don’t have a lawyer on retainer, so immediately I assumed that Ironflower would be an afternoon kid. My main reason for wanting Ironflower in morning kindergarten is that I would like to have both the older kids at school at the same time. Fortunately, the preschool MAY have afternoon pre-k next year. So I could get my wish. . . and have mornings to do fun things with my kids.

Because afternoons? Well, ChunkyMonkey has to nap. And usually, after a busy morning at school, so does Lovebug. Even Ironflower needs to decompress on school days. In the afternoon, my kids are kind of done with structure. They just want to chill. Which is fine. . .except that the teacher in me really wants to teach them things.

But if we had mornings together when they’re all fresh and cheerful and haven’t been beaten down by the man yet. . .er, I mean participated in quality educational programs. . .we could do so many fun things. And then I had this vision of homeschooling them.

Right now, all my former colleagues – with whom I used to teach public school – are probably staring open-mouthed at the screen. My mother is probably dialing my number, ready to say, “Oh, Jenny” just like she did when I told her I got a tattoo. And my husband is probably hoping that he’s going to wake up from this bad dream.

I think I know one person who homeschools, maybe 3 people if you count bloggy friends. In every case, the parent made the choice because of her child’s health issues. That, of course, has nothing to do with my choice. Nor does Christianity, because I’m about as far away from an Evangelical Christian as you can get without actually practicing Santeria. It has do to with me. And what I want for my kids. And my desire to be authentic.

I’m not saying I’m going to homeschool. I’m not even saying that I necessarily want to homeschool. I’m just saying that as a former public school teacher, I do understand the limitations of our current school system and the whole testing culture that has invaded. I understand how nasty kids can be (sure, there are nasty adults out there, but the percentage of nasty kids is far higher. . ..check out your high school classmates on Facebook and see if I’m right). I understand that even at the best high schools there is a lot of time wasted on busy work.

We live in an amazing school district – one that is a huge strain financially. And one in which I think people may focus on the wrong things.  If we were a homeschooling family, we wouldn’t need to worry about school districts. We would have so much more freedom in choosing where to live. . .and when to vacation. . .and when to take a trip to the zoo. . .and yes, what our children learn. And the teacher in me is filled with joy at that prospect.

What do you think? Would you homeschool?

Last night I watched the commercial for “Teach Your Baby To Read!”, a product that teaches babies and toddlers to memorize the shapes on flashcards read. The urge I had to smack all those parents upside the head, well, it reminded me of my urges when I watch the kiddie pageant spectacle, Toddlers and Tiaras.

It’s the same damn thing.

Poise, the ability to walk in high heels, reading. . .those are all great skills to have. Reading’s obviously more important, but still. In our looks-obsessed society, the ability to wear lip gloss without it going all over your teeth can’t be denied. But why the rush?

Four year olds don’t need to look polished to do well at preschool.

And babies don’t need to be able to read. And, in fact, they aren’t actually reading. Sure, I saw them say the words on the cards, or gesture to indicate that they knew what the word was. But that’s not actually reading. They didn’t decode (aka “sound out”) the word and they sure as hell didn’t comprehend its meaning from the surrounding text.

I’ve taught lots of kids to read and I guarantee that none of them would have read for real any more quickly had they memorized the words for body parts as babies. If their parents had talked to them more, read them more stories and/or not let them spend all night watching horror movies, that might have helped. But this stupid program? Not so much.

A colleague once referred to me as “The Reading Bitch”, that’s how into teaching reading I was. I might have been a little militant. I might have distributed timelines and scopes and sequences and lesson plans to my elementary school teacher colleagues a little obsessively.

And yet my baby has no idea what letters even are. But I have gotten him to sit still long enough to finish listening to “Touch and Feel Farm”. I’m kinda proud of that. Because it’s age-appropriate.

I suppose in a world where first graders have cell phones and grandmothers attend Botox parties, age-appropriate isn’t a very popular concept. Sure, everyone clucks over the pageant kids, made up and hairsprayed like teenage prom queens, but they still have their own shows. And I’ve yet to hear anyone talk about, much less criticize, “Teach Your Baby To Read”.

The truth is, kids who memorize easily (or very early), often have a hard time reading more difficult text when they hit second or third grade. And forget about developing their thinking skills. Memorization does jack for those. But all those parents can now brag that their one year olds can read, which I guess is more imporant than age-appropriate or thinking.

Score another one for the assholes.

So the latest uproar in NYC is about the Arabic language school set to open tomorrow. Nevermind that public schools embracing French, Spanish, Italian, German and African cultures and languages have existed for years. Because the school will teach Arabic, some idiots claim that it will be a religious school. I wonder how they confuse a language with a religion? And if they do, why don’t they complain about all those French immersion public schools being religious? Because if Arabic automatically means Islam, doesn’t French automatically mean Catholic? Oh right, Catholics have never blown up innocent people or anything.

These people fussing about the Arabic immersion school, I just don’t understand. If you read any reports about the war on terror, you read about the desperate need for more Arabic speakers and translators. If you’re really afraid of Islamic terrorists, wouldn’t it be better to have more American citizens trained to understand them?

There are so many problems in the world today – hunger, disease, human trafficking, global warming, war, why fight a public school? Do they really expect it to become a terrorist breeding ground while under the auspices of the New York City schools, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the standards of No Child Left Behind? Have they ever actually been in a modern American secondary school?

Teacher guilt is like survivor guilt. At least it is for me. I am relieved every day that I’m no longer teaching in KCK (that’s Kansas City, Kansas to you uninitiated), but I sure feel guilty about it. Even though I live 1200 miles away, I know there are districts around here (Newark and NYC come to mind) where I could do a similar amount of good. But I don’t want to anymore.

It’s not just that I want to be home with my children. It’s not just that I think No Child Left Behind is making teaching hellish. It’s that I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to teach anymore.

I drank a lot during my last years of teaching. Not at work or anything like that, but I spent a lot of evenings in bars drinking and smoking like a chimney, using dark humor to make others laugh about my job. I think the very worst day was the day I found out that I had one student at the hospital, near death because of her sickle cell and that another student had been put in foster care because her stepfather had been molesting her (Super Guilt, I knew she seemed down but I didn’t know what was wrong) and another student broke down and just sobbed in my arms about everything in her life. All three girls are okay now, as far as I know. But that’s not the point, is it?

When I was pregnant with Lovebug I had a challenging student with a scary parent. The man threatened to harm me on the school answering machine, though he was nothing but polite to me in person. Actually, he was a bit too polite – he asked too many personal questions, stood too close and breathed alcoholic fumes on me way too often. I was afraid of him and I didn’t get much help from the school district, the police or Child Protective Services. It was the other teachers and the custodian who made sure I was never alone with this man.

I’m a mommy now. I can’t drown my sorrows in alcohol or ignore the pain eating away at me. God bless the people who can handle it. But I can’t anymore. I’m sorry.

So Newsweek published its “Top 100 High Schools” issue this week. Their editorial slant was about the importance of principals. I’ve never taught high school, but it wasn’t news to me. Principals set the tone at every school, for good or ill.

If you are researching schools for your child, talk to principals – and see if you can get staff members to talk about the principals. A great staff can be driven away by a bad principal and there go the test scores.

Principals are the arbiters of discipline, tone and academic standards at a school. They hire the staff. They collect the data for No Child Left Behind. They deal with the problem students (and the problem parents). Their jobs demand brains, organization, kindness and an ability to bring out the best in people. They need to be amazing people.

The first time I got a bad feeling about my former principal was when I met the woman he hired to teach fourth grade. She was the only new hire, as the just-retired principal had made our school a happy place and no staff members had wanted to leave (uncommon in my old district) except for the one who had moved thirty miles away. Anyway, Mr. Jones chose Miss Waite.

Miss Waite, even though she was a brand new teacher, didn’t want any help from the veteran staff or from the instructional coach. She was offended by suggestions on how to deal with her more challenging students. She struggled with the fourth grade curriculum (no, really, the math was beyond her). But she especially struggled with classroom management. She had a hard time keeping track of materials, assignments and students. When a student misbehaved, that student was sent to the (unsupervised) hallway. Despite repeated offers from the rest of the staff, she refused to send anyone to our rooms for a time-out. When she was forbidden to use her hallway method any more, she put the troublemakers in the back of the classroom. Because she didn’t understand the curriculum, the group of troublemakers grew (they were all bored and frustrated). Eventually, some of them started eating chalk so that they could throw up and be sent home. And home was no picnic for them.

When Miss Waite was informed that her students were so unhappy that they were making themselves throw up, she stopped letting them go to the office after throwing up. She made them clean it up themselves. Now, some of the kids were very challenging kids, but not one of them was violent or hateful. They were just very, very, unhappy. When all of this came to light, the instructional coach began spending every day, all day, with Miss Waite. She was forced to send misbehaving kids to other classrooms (and let me say that every one of them who came to my room was well-behaved, diligent and sweet the whole time). The principal and the district bent over backwards to show Miss Waite how to be a teacher.

It didn’t work, and she resigned at Christmas. I’m not saying that Mr.Jones could have foreseen just how incompetent she was, but he did choose her. By the following school year, Mr. Jones had dissolved all committees except the one required by the district and phased out many of the things that had made our students happy and successful. He began undermining staff members in front of students. He created problems between staff members and resentment between teachers and his superiors. He, and he alone, ruined that school.

So, yes Newsweek, principals are everything.

It would take way too much time to explain why I’ve been thinking about dating, seeing as I haven’t done it in quite a while. Suffice to say, I’ve been thinking about it and I thought I’d write some advice down for my daughter (and the person who inspired my thoughts) before I forget what it took ten years to learn. It’s mostly geared towards straight women, but I’m sure with a few pronoun adjustments it could help anyone.

First off, dating needs to be its own reward. Ideally dating is a process of learning about yourself and what you want out of life, not the answer to all of your problems. In fact, if you cannot be content by yourself then having a happy, healthy relationship will be a very difficult challenge for you.

Secondly, being in a relationship does not make you cooler, smarter, hipper, better or thinner than anyone else. Nor does it mean you will have more fun at weddings and parties.

Knowing those fundamental truths preps you for MY rules:

1. Don’t play hard to get, be hard to get. That means have a life of your own that you won’t drop just because HE called.

2. There’s no lying in dating. Conniving, exaggerating, lying and manipulating might snag someone for a little while, but unless you are going to your high school reunion or the wedding of an arch-rival, why bother? It’s not going last and you’re going to feel insecure and sleazy the whole time anyway.

3. Not every guy is going to be “The One”, or even the one you want to bring to the office Christmas party. It doesn’t mean that he can’t have a place in your life as a friend or whatever. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, you know?

4. Real life is the best way to meet people. I tried online dating and speed dating, once upon a time. I made some friends that way, so I would never put them down. But I think expanding your own social network, participating in hobbies and just being open-minded bring more romantic success than match.com does.

5. Trust your gut. If someone gives you the heebie jeebies, even if everything seems great, run. Figuratively or literally. Your well-being is more important than anyone else’s feelings.

And that’s it. It is that easy, especially after you realize that being alone is just as good as being a part of a couple.

relationships

dating

Why do I care about this story? In fact, why does everyone care about this story?

Apparently, a female teacher had naughty pictures of herself. That is enough to offend some people who believe that teachers should be held to higher moral standards than those in other underpaid professions. But the fact that these pictures were on her cell phone, which she brought into the hallowed, virtuous halls of the American high school, makes it more offensive. And then, she lent her phone to a student. Who found the pictures. And then had a female friend get the pictures from the phone for distribution.

Let’s clear up one simple fact: This woman is obviously an idiot. I taught first graders and never left them alone with my cell phone. So maybe she should lose her teaching job for being stupid – I’m pretty sure American education would become great if all of the stupid teachers and administrators (and Presidents) were fired. Oh wait, that’s another blog.

Anyway, it’s the reactions of the outraged parents and citizens that get me. Let’s take a poll and see who doesn’t have any adults only pictures, texts, e-mails or websites on their phones and work computers. Oh, but teachers shouldn’t have thoughts like that, right? Teachers are supposed to serve and protect. . .oh, that’s cops. Well, I’m sure nothing dirty ever happens at police stations. Teachers are supposed to aid the sick. . oh, that’s doctors. Well, I’m sure nothing dirty ever enters a hospital, either. Teachers are supposed to develop young minds, that’s it (while serving their emotional needs, protecting them from each other and aiding them when they’re sick). I guess that means that teachers aren’t supposed to do the things that other adults do.

Hmmm. . .I guess that leaves us the nuns and the priests to teach our children. What a great success that has been!

Post-script: I sure found some interesting sites when I googled “Teacher’s Dirty Pictures on Cell Phone”. But this one is my favorite (and I promise that it’s not porn).

teacher’s dirty cell phone pictures
teacher’s nude pictures

WAW is a school in an urban area that used to be a shining example of success. Then came No Child Left Behind, and lots of problem students from other schools poured into our classrooms (mixing politics and education is almost as bad as mixing religion with poltics, but I digress). Our class sizes grew and the percentage of children we had with serious behavior problems grew exponentially. But we kept trying. We managed to continute to improve our test scores.

Then we got a new principal. A principal whose only experience was with middle school students in another (recently unaccredited) school district. The first year, our fabulous instructional coach (that’s a teacher who’s primary job is to help the rest of the staff become better teachers) covered for him. A lot. She also stood up to him a lot. She was transferred.

Our new instructional coach pronounced the word “specific” as pacific. She wrote e-mails referring to the “liberrian”. She refused to create testing handbooks like the other instructional coaches do. She refused to lead staff development meetings (and would often ask me to do it for her). She was not capable of covering for our principal. In fact, she was not even capable of spell-checking his atrocious memos and newsletters.

Deadlines for test scores and staff observations were missed and/or ignored. Discipline became contigent upon whose class you were in and whether our principal thought your parents would complain. Those teachers who were less experienced and/or less competent grew worse – parents requested that their students be transferred (and that’s pretty rare in an urban district) to another class. Behavior problems grew worse. Certain classes were falling way, way behind.

As those of us who knew what we were doing began to speak up, began to point out problems before they turned into catastrophes, both the principal and the instructional coach began to hate us. We tried to be respectful when we reminded them or assessment due dates or procedures, tried not to insult anyone when we brought up concerns (like a teacher who called her students “morons”). But it didn’t help. Not even talking to their superiors helped – we were told to mind our own business.

So we didn’t mention the things that confused us about the school budget. The principal took over, committees be damned. We didn’t mention various other unprofessional behaviors. We gave up.

Fast forward to March, 2006:
The five most vocal teachers at our school received letters warning us that we would be placed on “administrative assistance” if we chose to remain in the district for the following school year. The reasons cited included a list of the days we had been absent (listed as “too many absences” even though none of us had gone over our allotted limit), the days we had not filled out our online attendance (coincidentally also the days the computer system was down) and the days we had forgotten to sign in and/or out. Magically, the fact that we were the teachers that were most requested by parents did not matter. Suprisingly, the fact that all of our students’ test scores were way above the district average did not matter. It didn’t matter that we headed every committee.

My principal claimed it was his boss, who is close friends with clueless instructional coach, that forced him to write the letters. We don’t know. Because the five of us resigned. Then the music teacher requested a transfer. And then the art teacher resigned. And then the kindergarten teacher, a fourth grade teacher and PE teacher decided to retire sooner rather than later.
I’m not saying all these decisions were due to our resignations. I know some of them were due to the fact that certain teachers had spent the year quietly resenting our principal and instructional coach and not saying anything when they turned state tests in late.

October, 2006:

We are banned from visiting the school and seeing our former students. In fact, the principal (who, we have learned, has said many vicious things about us to the new staff) says that he will send campus police after us if we enter the building.

Fast Forward to February, 2007:

The principal was forced to resign over misappropriation of funds. The district has been all over the school’s academic problems as well, since all the test scores have fallen.

But I’m not holding my breath for an apology.