Back to Basics January 19, 2008
Posted by timschlosser in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
If you came to my blog with questions such as “where do you teach?” and “what’s it like?” I realized it might be difficult to find an answer. Between the cadavers and the forest moons, I seem to have lost my grip on reality. So rather than indulging in my usual navel-gazing, this week I will try to provide a useful picture of the environment I work in.
The Job
I teach seventh and eighth grade Language Arts and journalism at Southeast Middle School. Southeast Middle School is technically located in South Gate, California, not Los Angeles, but L.A.’s Watts neighborhood is only two hundred feet away, across the railroad tracks. The school is new, opened in 2004, and serves 1,367 students (over 1600 when you count the on-site “Magnet” school). I was hired after teaching at Gompers Middle School in Watts during the summer of 2006, and I am in Teach for America, an Americorps program that places recent college graduates in low income schools.
The Building
It’s a like a big yellow pound cake—if pound cake were cooked in the sun, made of concrete, and constructed in strict accordance with 21st century California building code. Actually, it looks great, especially when compared with some of the recent monstrosities LAUSD has produced (no offense, Central New Middle #3). It’s not as impressive on the inside as it is on the outside–the hallways are way too narrow, so pushing through kids during passing period is like pushing peanut butter through a pinhole. Still, the school stands in hopeful contrast with its inner-city backdrop.
The City
South Gate, population 103,000, snakes along the 105 freeway, peppered with discount stores, smog stations, factories, tire shops, and Quick-E Marts that seem to specialize in providing the city’s youth with Hot Cheetoes. About twenty percent of South Gate lives at or below the federal poverty line. According to wikipedia, the city was developed in the 1920s and 30s as a blue-collar steel town. It gained a reputation as a fiercely segregationalist city during the 40s and 50s, when white street gangs roamed its borders, assaulting any blacks who dared cross over from Watts. After the Watts riots, however, the white population started heading for the suburbs, and by the 1990s, working class Latin-American families had completely filled the vacuum. The city, like my school, is almost entirely Latino—it’s very rare to meet a non-Spanish speaker. The Spanish-speaking culture is so dominant, in fact, that a few parents tell me they don’t want to learn English because there is no need—their churches, their jobs, their stores, and their media are all Spanish-speaking, so the only reason they would learn English would be to help their children with homework. I feel welcome enough in the neighborhood, but I’m definitely an outsider. There are two Native American students at my school, two Asian students, five black students, five white students, and 1,353 Latin-American students.
The Left Behind
Southeast is a Title 1 school, meaning that more than half of our students are low-income, so we receive a small and tightly-controlled stipend from the federal government. We are also on the No Child Left Behind hit list for failing to meet our API (Annual Performance Index)—which means that our school has test scores typical of all low-income areas and is therefore targeted as “low-performing.” We are now in what is called “Program Improvement Year 2,” which means that people from the district come to tell us what our school needs to do in order to avoid punishment. This year they gave us a laundry list topped with a requirement that we do more to meet the needs of English Language Learners (ESL Students). Each year we fail to make API, we enter another phase of the program, which theoretically ends after the 5th year with a take-over by the state, or even by a private company—though I have not heard of any school at which this has actually happened.
While Southeast is struggling on paper, it is by far the strongest of the five public middle schools in our local district (LAUSD 6). The other middle schools in the area have more discipline problems, older facilities, and are much farther down NCLB’s five-year Road to Perdition. With more than 90 percent of the adults in our area at an education level of 12th grade or less, it shouldn’t be surprising that our students’ test scores don’t stack up to those of kids in Pasadena and Beverly Hills, where parents buy their third graders laptops pre-packaged with Leap Frog software.
Most of the graduating students at Southeast High (next door) do not continue to higher education. In LAUSD as a whole, only 66% of students who begin high school ever finish (compared to 85% state-wide), but the graduation rate in our local district is even lower, closer to 50%. Furthermore, according to State tests, 78% of the students in our local district are below the “proficient” level in Language Arts, and 75% are below in math (statewide: 58% and 60%, respectively).
The Classroom
The question “how’s teaching going?” frustrates me. It’s a little like asking “what’s your general impression of human history?” (Good? Bad? Medium?) Of course I don’t think that teaching is the only job too complex for simple characterization, and I’m sure many people feel the same way about the question “how’s work?” There are just too many shades of gray to give a definitive answer. I have problems in the classroom. My sixth period class is rambunctious and weeks behind. I haven’t adequately prepared my students for the upcoming state test. I feel isolated. Two of the school’s laptops disappeared under my watch last Thursday. Every teaching day is still pretty exhausting. But there are a lot of things going well, too. I gave an anonymous “Mid-Year Survey” last week in which I asked the students to answer questions about how the class is going for them: what helps them learn, what kinds of projects they would like to do, and so on. Almost unanimously, students like me and my class, and a few even mentioned that it was their favorite period. One kid said I was a “fun and generous man”—which provided a nice contrast to the one who said “The teacher is too serious. Always work, work, work.” You win some you lose some. But I was optimistic last week. I had the students giving oral presentations, and as my second period eighth grade class was leaving, I overheard one of my punk/rocker girls talking to her friend. She had just finished giving her presentation and, despite a few stumbles, did an excellent job. “That was fun,” she said. Her friend said that she had seemed nervous. “I know,” she said, “but it was fun.” This meant a lot to me because she is a student who had been quietly critical of me and my class during the early (fascist) months, but who now seems completely invested.
So there are ups and downs. It’s much better than last year, and the students are learning a lot more, but the stress of teaching on top of Teach for America and Loyola Marymount requirements leaves me wondering how much longer I can sustain this lifestyle. I’m not a person who feeds on the very act of teaching, who can throw his entire being into his lessons and his students. I’ve met people like this, people who seem “called” to teach, who can’t imagine themselves doing anything else—and I know I’m not one of them. I’m too introverted and drifty. But I can still imagine myself becoming a great teacher. I am already doing an acceptable job, and I think that by next year I could be doing an excellent job. But is it what I want to do with the rest of my life? That question resurfaces in my mind every single day, and I still can’t seem to answer it.
Statistics from Los Angeles Unified School District. Photo-Journalism Courtesy of The Eagle News Staff (i.e. journalism kids who needed something to do).
The Hobgoblin of Small Minds January 12, 2008
Posted by timschlosser in Uncategorized.2 comments
A student I haven’t mentioned before: I’ll call her Maria Rodriguez. 8th Grader. Shy. Overweight. Bad handwriting. And I made her cry in the first week of school.
In September of 2007, I was determined that classroom management would not be an issue this year, that even the most minor infractions would be punished with merciless consistency. I introduced my strict policies and procedures in a six-page packet and quizzed the students on it afterwards. Here is a brief selection:
From the “Rules” section:
1. Raise your hand and ask permission to speak.
2. Be seated quietly and have your materials ready when the bell rings.
3. Follow all directions the first time they are given.
4. No cursing, teasing, or put-downs.
5. Keep your hands, feet, and objects to yourself.
From the “Procedures” section:
Addressing the teacher: Please call me “Mr. Schlosser.” It is pronounced “SHLAW–SUR”. “Mr. S.” is also fine.
When the call bell rings three times: Please stop your conversation immediately and pay attention to Mr. Schlosser.
When the school bell rings: Make sure your table is clean: books neatly stacked, all garbage picked up, chairs pushed in. Stand behind your pushed-in chair with your backpack on and wait for Mr. Schlosser to dismiss your table.
And so on for six pages, covering everything from pencil sharpening (don’t do it—bring pens) to using the restroom (once per semester, emergencies only, and never without your agenda). You get the idea: specific and uncompromising, a massive dike of stern teacher edicts to hold back the floodwaters of teenage misbehavior (floodwaters that almost drowned me once).
In a booming voice, I expounded upon these policies to six periods-worth of slack-jawed seventh and eighth graders, stabbing my laminated “Rules” poster with the tip of my index finger when appropriate. The general message was: “I know your kind. I know what you’re capable of. So before you even think about getting that little glimmer of mischief in your eye, you had best gouge it out. For it is better one part of thee should perish than thy whole body cast into hell. This is the word of the Lord.”
But I knew I was still supposed to “build classroom culture,” so I threw in a ten minute “ice-breaker” at the end of each period. I asked students to share personal facts about themselves in exchange for M&Ms. Needless to say, the “ice breaker” failed miserably, with students too scared to look me in the eye, let alone tell about their first pet. Yet in my own mind the first day was a success: Terror and obedience at my sole command! (wild laughter echoes among dagger-shaped cliffs).
Among my first-day mandates was that the students bring a three-ring binder with five organizational tabs by the following Monday. “If you come without your materials,” I said, “I will call your parents. On the spot. Guaranteed.”
And this is where Maria comes in. She and a student named Oscar were the only students who came without the materials that Monday. During class, I asked them to see me at my desk. The entire room fell to the absolute dead-hush that is so rare in teaching. I get the studious quiet regularly—during a test, when the room is quiet but papers are still shuffled, pens clicked, chairs squeaked. This time, though, students wouldn’t even swallow their spit. They stared at their knuckles, and the classroom throbbed with silence.
I pulled out my cell phone.
“Phone number,” I said to Oscar. He’s a creative kid with lots of style and plenty of friends. He seemed contrite and obedient, but not necessarily terrified. I called his parents’ number, but there was no answer, so I left a message. He returned to his seat, expressionless.
“Phone number,” I said to Maria. She gave it to me as I dialed.
“Bueno?” said a woman’s voice.
“Hi, my name is Tim Schlosser, and I’m a teacher at Southeast Middle School. Is this the parent or guardian of Maria Rodriguez?”
“Yes?” she said.
“Hi, I’m her English teacher, and I’m just calling to let you know that she didn’t bring some of her required materials to class.”
“Yes?”
For the millionth time, I regretted having studied German in high school instead of Spanish. I held the phone out to Maria. “Could you tell your mom what’s going on?”
The class listened as Maria explained the situation to her mother in Spanish. It was only then, as I watched her face and let the environment of the classroom soak in, that I started to feel uncomfortable with the situation. Somehow, my insistence on rules and consistency was degenerating into a kind of public crucifixion.
Maria handed me the phone, and I was already beginning to feel guilty, so I just said “thank you.” Her face looked like it had been painted on a plastic bag that was now being stretched sideways. She returned to her desk with tears of humiliation streaming down her cheeks.
After the bell rang, I called Oscar and Maria to my desk. I said I was “sorry I had to do that,” but also told them that I had just been following through with the consequence I had promised. I gave them their points for having the materials, since I figured that they had already been punished enough.
This gesture may have softened whatever hard-edged impression of me they had formed, but the episode still sat in my stomach like wet gravel. Was I finally learning to manage a classroom, or had teaching just turned me into a heartless fascist? When I was in middle school myself, I had been shy, quiet, and unpopular. I felt that making Maria cry had been some kind of betrayal of a kindred spirit, and I knew this was something she would always remember.
As the weeks slipped by, I saw that I hadn’t damaged our relationship irreparably—she did not think I was a monster, and she did bring her materials eventually. But I had learned that consistency, even in the realm of discipline, is overrated. Sometimes you have to gauge a situation and respond in the manner most appropriate to the particular student you are dealing with. Oscar could handle the phone call home in front of the class. But even in the moment, some part of me knew that Maria couldn’t. Still, I had to be fair, I thought. I had to be consistent.
Wrong.
Teaching is rife with these little moral conundrums, these treacherous ethical rapids. I sometimes feel like I’m bouncing downriver, rock to rock to rock.
Los Angeles with Continuing Service to Endor January 5, 2008
Posted by timschlosser in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
I’m sitting in the Alaska Airlines terminal at Sea-Tac, waiting for my flight back to L.A. Across from me, a seven- or eight-year-old kid is playing his Game Boy and having obscene amounts of fun.
He narrates the action on his screen in a low voice. “Zzzzzwoosh. Down here. Down here! Booosh. Booosh. Blam!” He tilts the Game Boy from side to side is if it’s the control stick for an X-Wing. “Errrrrr, Errrrrrrrrr, BOOM!”
I watch him from behind the Pulitzer-winning short story collection I’m reading, but I don’t raise an eyebrow in judgment (“Shouldn’t you be reading A Wrinkle in Time?”). The snooty under-aged English teacher is nowhere to be found. Instead, I just feel intense, unabashed jealousy. Not a philosophical “where have the joys of youth gone?” jealousy. This is primal, schoolyard jealousy: I want to take his Game Boy and play it myself. I want to hurl my literary fiction to the ground, kick it behind the ticket counter, and then play until I can’t see straight. I want multi-colored missiles, pixel-powered explosions, and sensational secret missions that decide the fate of forest moons in galaxies far, far away.
In other words, I’m not excited to start teaching again this Monday.
I should be. But the daily grind of papers to grade, lessons to plan, and students to discipline does not look appealing right now. I want to backpedal through time until I get to December 17, 2007. That was a good day. So much freedom still on the horizon. I wouldn’t be working again until next year!
But I guess it’s time to stop whining and start planning. I’ve been spoiled back at home. Food just appears in the fridge, I can sleep as long as I want, and the only thing I have to do is put my dirty dishes in the dishwasher. But it’s teaching time now. Time to study the structure of the next seventh grade unit. Or the structure of the Imperial shield generator. One of the two.
