Month: April 2013

Gang Awareness and Common Core State Standards Trainings

I wrote this piece almost two months ago after a February 23 day of training. That day I was working, but I didn’t see any students. Two trainings, nine hours. Today I attended the second session of this four day Common Core professional development. Enjoy the read. Remember, I love my job. I love the challenge. I hope you find the humor in my writing because I really enjoy sharing. I also hope you find something to think about and discuss in your circles. Share away.

When I enrolled at Salisbury University, I figured to graduate with a degree in secondary education and history. Just like I had told everyone in high school. Just like my picture assumed next to the yearbook caption: “Most Likely to Become a High School Teacher.” Sadly, I felt the sails wrinkle and deflate with my student teaching experience. The department head at Wicomico Middle School had one piece of advice for a promising young pupil. Don’t go into teaching. The testing requirements are handcuffs and the students are, increasingly, a mess. Today, ten years later, dude was right. And no matter how much he deserves me hunting him down and telling him he forgot his asshole card at his retirement party, I think of him too often. Especially during a cold February Monday when completely removed from the classroom, I am drowning in professional development to meet the challenges of both student and assessment.

It’s impossible. The embryonic stage of Standardized Testing as curriculum is over. The gargantuan love child of education capitalists and distant politicians is teething and learning how to walk. Unlike my experiences within the Expeditionary Learning network, Profession Development is always a bit of a passive process for most educators led by state employees who have been trained by curriculum hucksters. Common Core State Standards seems like an effort to stimulate the economy with tech support, bureaucratic positions, testing coordinators, textbook salespeople, evaluators, brainstormers, legalese consultants, analysts, and unicorn breeders (anything but more teachers) as much as it seems a genuine effort to help American children close the achievement gap.

This day, I learned how to invest in these Common Core paradigm shifts. The quantifiable gains (of which, if implemented in perfect harmony with unprecedented rises in student motivation, caloric intake at breakfast, and reading levels) may be seen in five years. The average teacher, by this time, will either be pursuing a more lucrative career or perhaps grasping for the placebo of merit based pay tied directly to the impending dip of test scores due to the increasing rigor of CCSS tests. Further reading: http://www.teacherintherye.com/the-common-core-state-standards-are-setting-schools-up-to-fail/

Yet there I sat, learning of the intended increase of challenging texts my students will be forced to grapple with. I do accept this as a challenge. I will motivate my students to beat the man, as we say at VGHS. But this training does not help me grapple with students who are at risk of alcoholism as 14 year olds. Children born of the cauldron of domestic abuse. Children of rape. Children of the addicted, or mentally disabled. Children of IQs below the median temperature of a Santa Fe summer day. Children of no glasses, no showers, no fathers. The majority of my students come to me comprehending below Middle School reading levels. We are talking about 16 year old freshmen who are more adept with wielding a spray can, a blunt or hand gun than a pencil.

Eventually the training ended. Now equipped with new tools to help my students achieve their academic horizons, I headed not home, but to VGHS to attend a training about Gang Violence and our ‘population’. I hate that term. When I say it, I fear my participation in the school to prison pipeline. I am desensitizing myself to the lives and personalities I pledge to honor. I fear I am ready to become a bureaucrat pencil pusher who used to teach. I fear I have cemented my path to head the Wicomico MS History Dept.

But our population is threatened. 20% of our school is gang affiliated or intrigued by the lifestyle. Every year we have had members of Brew Town, Surreno, Northside, whatever, come to Vista. And in the past these students, despite strength in numbers, have weeded themselves out (again, I hate my way of naming). They drop out or go away. This year, each neighborhood gang is well represented and, somehow, getting along swimmingly. Everyone is happy together talking about Red parties, Blue parties, fights, drugs, and how life would be easier for us teachers if we politely, collectively, decided to fuck off and leave them alone.

Every day is a battle of wills. How far do our rules stretch? How many times will that teacher ask me to do work before I don’t have to ever be asked again? How many people can I intimidate into submission, silence, or respect? How brazenly can I defy gravity with my pressed khakis below my hips? What is the perfect balance of absenteeism and passivity one can strike before a truancy report is made?

This is learned behavior. The families are dealers. Getting ranked in can be a birth right. Perhaps some of these youngsters are the products of overmatched parents or grandparents. The cultures of violence, bigotry, misogyny, class struggle, identity, and addiction are well rooted in Taos.

The fact of the matter, in order to address the burgeoning gang influence in our student body, we need to recognize we are up against a familial structure that is a pillar of the town and Taos culture. No matter how shambled the edifice upheld by this pillar. And quite, luckily, the kids are getting along. They enjoy each other’s company. They enjoy wreaking havoc on our school culture. Knocking back a few airline bottles of liquor at lunch. We are simply seeing a generational decay of drug use, affiliation and addiction play out in a handful of students.

The depressing part of our battle for minds is the fact these people are cool enough to garner admiration from almost anyone in the school. The lifestyle choice of illiteracy over education and any general sense of citizenship is winning. That says as much about our school as it does the town, the age group, the economy, the media, the country. The challenge waits daily for our faculty, most at wit’s end and ready to let it all go (read it as: the profession, the calling, the youth). Yet our students, show up. They receive as much positive reinforcement of their potential as we can muster. They are supported as young people. Our school is more the symptom of a greater affliction. But we are the organization faced with the consequences. Watch these kids. Ride them into the ground. Raise the test scores. Get them to graduate.

And in leaving school for the day, I was reminded that every color of the rainbow is affiliated with some street gang. Mexican Mafiosos are now in Taos. Everybody has a nickname, tag, tat, gat, shoelace and swag. And I am responsible for the clowns graduating from circus school. Appendages, credits, test scores and all. Good luck!

Tightroping Motivation

I have been toying with writing about my life as a teacher for some time. Prior to the censored poetry issue, I was already on my way penning drafts of essays and poems. I am ready to release them into the ether. Here’s one about purpose, motivation and leading with the heart.

People need to find and understand the purpose of what they are trying to accomplish. And students today have, arguably, lost their purpose. What’s next after high school? Anything reliable? Anything definite? No? Well, then what is the point?

As a teacher you have to find ways of motivating your students. You can be sincere and thoughtful. Matter of fact. Prodding and pleading with Jeremiads. Heartfelt and empathetic. Or you can be blunt and borderline mean. But your personality and approach far outweighs the message sometimes. So how do we create students who are on fire about education?

Thankfully there is a boatload of purpose embedded in our Expeditionary Learning curriculum. We study Border Issues and interview members of Taos about cultural divides lingering in our town since colonialism, both Spanish and American. We ask ourselves of community needs and argue publicly for those needs with editorials. We learn of the heroic journey, and Plato’s account of Socrates’ reasoning for his life, and write our own apologies. This is stake in our studies. There is purpose. Once that line is blurred or forgotten, the students are remiss in the duty of learning. As if there needed to be something more than the simple act of learning.

For many, the topic of our Expedition is a moot point. Students may never buy in. They may never do an ounce of work outside the building. But with Expeditionary Learning there must be a need to know. More than desire. A burning, on a Maslovian level. My future depends, somehow, on this learning. I need to know how to build soil, how to introspect, how to spend my money as a consumer, what messages or affirmations or cries for help I can embed in my art. The skills of citizenship.

Pubescent teenagers rarely demonstrate this level of internal drive or pride in their work. For most teenagers, this is a time of fumbling around love, social awkwardness and acne. Dealing with off base parents. Scoring the next high. Few truly want to do good or make change. And so purpose is the push they need. Addressing community issues. Or building something bigger than themselves.

And as a young idealist, this was enough for me. If my students could achieve  within the context of my high stakes project experience, this accomplishment, often measured beyond the constructs of English class and the drudgery of school, was enough for me to deem them ready-for-life-after-high-school. I didn’t give work based upon rigorous reading comprehension or traditional assessments. Old school skill sets. My philosophical standpoint and world-view regarded these as antiquated, misinformed data points. I had of my students, and their world, more holistic views. More heart based. More human oriented.

But I was limiting them. I am not sure I bumped one student from not passing to proficient on the state tests with this approach. I would argue that most students who passed these tests could have done so with or without me as their teacher. Those students, in my first years, who couldn’t pass as a 9th grader, likely wouldn’t pass as an 11th grader. What I was teaching, although engaging, practical and important, was not in the traditional metrics of success. And whether Common Core State Standards is here to stay is not important. The tests open or close the doors. If they cannot pass the state tests, they are not passing the ACT. If they are not passing the ACT, I am not helping them entertain success in college, let alone enrollment.

But my practice was not being questioned. I am looked at as a senior member of our faculty. I am an Instructional Guide. I am sought after by my peers. I have been accepted as a Master Class presenter for Expeditionary Learning’s National Conference three times. I have been invited to share my curricular work with a national audience through Fund For Teachers and my two traveling Fellowships. But my kids don’t do homework. In fact, I rarely assign homework. I intend for rigorous in-class experiences and assignments. They very well may be. But my students are not making gains. Of course, I am not alone. Despite my accolades and the esteem my colleagues may hold for me, I am churning our students much like the rest of the state’s educators. Those students are unable to enter a college class beyond the remedial level. And students who enter college in remedial classes rarely have the wherewithal, motivation or support to graduate. Those who I am unleashing into the world with dreams may be rudely awakened without apology.

So I can encourage, plead, bargain, bend backward, massage, and finesse earning high marks, but I cannot ensure participation. Nor desire. And certainly not purpose. And in the past, this would be fine. Students could skirt by in high school towards a diploma and take a couple classes at UNM Taos without much consequence. But in this climate of testing, New Mexico is upping the ante for potential graduates. Trying to keep up nationally, if one cannot pass the tests as a Junior, the student may never earn a full high school diploma. Or they can demonstrate mastery on an End of Course Exam created at the state level. Essentially, can’t pass the test? Well, make sure you pass the highly correlative Final.  The access to a full high school diploma is all but fantasy for some students, if you were to ask them. The likelihood this will only result in more post secondary confusion and dropouts is certain. Oh, I cannot earn a diploma, and you have evidence of this by the time I am a freshman, but I can study for a few months and possibly earn a GED? Perfect. Bye!

Sometimes a teacher needs to be real. Too often we are not. The harsh realities of these tests, and the students’ disbelief in both their aptitude and the tests’ efficacy result in a complete malaise that becomes infectious. The culture of education is demeaned and learning loses value. School becomes a social event solely. Students’ negative view of world and self are reinforced. The teachers are left on lonely islands without purpose or meaningful appreciation. A life alone with only your shaky nerves and graying hair. Isn’t that the movies? Isn’t that the state of our education unions? Tenured and safe, but downtrodden? Too few exceptions.

So I tell my students about stereotypes. I tell them that the average reading level of an incoming VGHS student is the fifth grade. Those ill-equipped readers are likely to drop out. 80% of our student body qualifies for free and reduced lunches. They’re poor. Those students usually do not graduate. Hispanic males, Native American women, children from broken homes are not meant to go on and succeed in college. 4.0 for a student like you? Out of the question. Academic scholarships? Forget it. Likelihood of a job with benefits, paid vacation, retirement plan? Not on the horizon without your high school diploma. The numbers never lie. You aren’t going to do this and you most certainly aren’t going to do that. You aren’t smart enough for this school, you aren’t educated enough for this job.

All the stereotypes about my students are being fulfilled. The correlation between teen alcohol abuse and literacy. Check. The relation between skin color and graduation rates. Check. My students are smoking pot more often, I’d say three to four times as much, than they touch a book. My students are so hungover Monday morning my classroom’s florescent bulbs are still a bother Tuesday afternoon.

And so I say: You tell me how unfair it is to misjudge you. How many people limit your with their preconceived notions. Might you know why there are college in the Southwest with free tuition for college bound Native Americans? Or why UNM offers a lottery scholarship for graduating high school with a 3.0 pulse? No one thinks you’ll go! No one expects you to follow through and educate yourself! No one expects you to be anything more than a 20 year old mother. A deadbeat dad. Another drunk Indian. Another domestic abuser. Another statistic fulfilled. Another stereotype met to justify correlating literacy levels and available beds in prison. You are cementing the same stereotypes for your younger brothers and cousins. Your children. You are not besting or outsmarting the cruel world you perceive with your strategy of avoidance. You are succumbing! The only person establishing your future is yourself. But a statistic, or a stereotype, cannot make decisions.

And then there is either applause or awkward shifts in desks. Followed by sheepish questions trying to convince themselves, and more importantly me, that they are ready to get after it and give their best effort. For at least today’s lesson. I’ll do it for the Gipper this once.

But I would have to deliver this sermon weekly to keep the students lit. I cannot say mush. I must only show up. Ready to drop knowledge at any moment. But these speeches, or diatribes, or moments of sheer panic, depending on the audience, day, or mood, cannot be overused. I never get angry at a student publicly. I never raise my voice save once a year. These moments need to be unpredictable, unscripted and highly emotional. I find my voice quivering by the end. And I never know how a teenager will react when I tell them to prepare for a life of alcoholism. I believe this scenario could be an alternate future of the phrase don’t kill the messenger.

Bottom line. Motivating students in this day and age, in this town, is a tall order. I am happy to facilitate cool and innovative project models and bring opportunity into the classroom. I am also happy to not assign homework both for the rigor of my class time and the advocates it creates of my students. I don’t think anyone has told them before how hard it is going to be to defy stereotypes. I am not sure they know that anything intellectually grueling is worth a moment of their time. Few witness this at school. Fewer see this demonstrated at home.

Maybe it is all about setting a new purpose. A fresh target. Something they can all aim for. Something written in student-friendly language. An I can statement. Something to build self-efficacy:

I can defy my stereotype.

OK, class. Who can tell me what it means to defy.