Dirty Little Secret

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.

“You know how some kids act out a lot after a parent is killed?” said a good friend, former colleague and still practicing teacher to me last night on the phone.

“Mmmmhmmm,” I said, images of kids flashing through my head. I’d had a fair number of students with at least one dead parent – and most of those deaths had not been caused by diseases, either. Kids – at least the kids I’d taught – tended to become wild after such a thing, or incredibly quiet and hard-shelled. My friend continued to tell me about her extremely disturbed student, who had transferred in from the inner city district where we both used to teach.

As she continued with the girl’s story, I began to feel somewhat ill. With guilt.

When I hear about kids from my old district, and especially when I (very rarely) hear about kids that I taught, I instantly feel like a soldier that has gone AWOL. The euphoria over having escaped is mixed in with massive amounts of guilt.

The last year that I taught – while I was pregnant with Lovebug – I had a seriously crazy parent who may have wanted to beat the crap out of me. Or something else. The threats were unclear. Not that it was my first threat, but he was the only one who continually hung around the school and tried to get into my classroom. The school I taught at for the first three years of my career was in a neighborhood where nobody I knew would even drive into. I had a few scarily violent (and yes, that is possible when you’re dealing with mentally ill 7 year olds) over the years, too.

My supervisors tended to be idiots – people too dumb or cynical (or both) to get jobs anywhere else. I had one in particular who couldn’t pronounce words like “specific” and “individual”. And another – the one who really drove me out of teaching – later fired for embezzling funds. The pay was laughable – I never made more that $34,000 a year from teaching in that district. And all the promised perks were being slowly eroded.

And then there were my students. Students with dead parents. Students who had been (or, unfortunately were still being) abused. Students repeatedly hospitalized with sickle cell problems. Students who couldn’t get a good night’s sleep because of gunfire. Students born in prisons. Students with various untreated mental problems. Students who didn’t know what the sky was called. Students who didn’t know any English. Students who were autistic but got very little support.

So yeah, it felt like fighting in a losing war. A noble cause, to be sure. And there were some victories, for this or that student. But for every victory there was a failure. Or two.

I’m not saying what I did even comes close to what soldiers do every day. But I sure relate.

Sometimes I tell myself that I put in my time and it’s okay to never go back to teaching in an urban district. Actually, I don’t want to go back to teaching at all. Not that I really know what I’d like to do instead, of course.

But then I hear a story about my old district and the guilt washes over me.

Anybody got any advice?

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.