WASC is Coming

Wednesday, March 15, 1995

Today was another site-based in-service day... no kids, just meetings. The morning was divided between a workshop on Attention Deficiency Disorder and one on special programs and budgeting. Real fascinating. The afternoon was dedicated to Focus Group meetings in preparation for the coming WASC.

In just a week, they’ll be giving us their impressions of what they found on our campus. This may or may not give us an inkling on what their recommendation will be as to the length of our accreditation (six, three or one year). Regardless, there is not much time left.

During the morning introductory staff meeting, when principal Grey was outlining the coming week’s activities, a question was raised by the foreign language department chair (who happens to be the site’s union representative). Aimee and this woman have been butting heads all year long, and her mere hand in the air makes Aimee twitch. She asked if the Action Plans have been distributed to the staff. Aimee was at a loss for words, and her pause made her look inept. But she paused because the question was ludicrous. The Action Plans had been given out to the department chairs back in January, and the chairs were told to either copy the plans for their department members or spend some time going over it at the January department meetings. This woman, of all people, should have knows the answer. But of course, the answer was not her goal. Getting under Aimee’s skin was. And it worked. The number of times that Aimee made mention of this during the rest of the day were more than I care to remember or recount.

Of course, before all this, the morning started out even scarier. I had to talk to Vince, the video production teacher. Now I had taught video production my first year here at C.H.S., so I have had to work under Vince. With Vince, it’s his way or no way. Now, Aimee, as far back as November, had thought it would be a great idea to have a kind of PR video ready to use as a kind of welcome for the WASC committee. But she wanted to put it together. Of course, she has no idea how hard it is to edit video, so I suggested that she talk to Vince. Vince said his kids could whip one out in a matter of days.

That was two weeks ago. This morning, I drop by his video studio, a two-room, low-budget affair that not only is the home of our site’s video production staff but also is the center for the local cable system’s educational channel. Vince is heading out as I’m coming in. In his hand is a videotape.

I smile. "Is this the tape?"

"Who wants to know?" Smartass.

"Her hiney, the WASC woman."

He hands over the tape. "Well, yeah, this is it. Part of it."

I begin to walk with His Rotundity toward the faculty cafeteria, where rolls and coffee are waiting. "Part?"

"This is part one. This is the stuff on the teachers. I figured this is what you’d want for today." Today? Oh, yeah, we could show some of this to the faculty. Good idea (Was it Aimee’s?). "Part two will be about the students. Part three activities and programs. And part four will be on the community."

It sounds rather involved and big. Time-consuming. And I don’t know what to say.

"All the music is legal." He makes this reference to copyrights for the music used on the video soundtrack. He knows Aimee and I wanted to use something popular. And he goes into specifics of the animation used, the graphics, and other low-budget computer/video-related minutiae.

By this time, we are nearing the cafeteria, and I figure it’s time to pop the big question. "So, when do you think the rest will be done?"

"Well, I could drop it by, in someone’s box, on Saturday." shit. Aimee is gonna shit. "The committee arrives on Sunday, right? I could even drop it off Sunday morning... it would give me more time to edit. That way we’re more sure that we have all four parts rather than three and a half." It’s a joke but there is the ring of truth there.

"Cool," I say, since I don’t know what else to say. It will be fun to tell Aimee this.

I do just that in the late morning, while half the staff is at the ADD workshop (Aimee and I have been excused for WASC-work, including re-doing the pagination on the department narratives, the third time I’ve done this for the secretary in whose hands the report was dropped). Aimee, upon hearing the news of the possible late delivery, goes apoplectic.

"Fuck! You know, I told the guy, ‘You shoot the video, Bill and I’ll do the rest.’ Oh, no. He could do it all. I told him I was worried about time. He said he could get it done. And now I have one-fourth a video. Shit. Well, you know what we’re doing for the rest of the week..."

I calm and sit her down. I pop in the cassette. I’m hoping the video will be so good that she relaxes. It works. The video is very good. Vince has outdone himself. And she relents. She’s not happy--how could she be after what "that bitch" had said during the morning meeting--but at least she’s no longer ballistic.

We link up with Lori, a focus group leader, and we head off to lunch... there is a need for alcohol, so we head for Yolanda’s, a local Mexican resturant. The ladies take one look at the menus and order margaritas and I ask for what I always ask for: a Long Island Iced Tea. Fun conversational gossip (nothing like hot teacher affairs on campus) and another round of drinks later, we are heading back to campus for the afternoon focus groups.

There, I introduce the faculty portion of the video to the staff, giving Vince and his student producers the well-deserved credit (now if they can only deliver a final product in the next three days). After the staff breaks off into the their groups, Aimee tells me that I will need to be on campus for all of the leadership team stuff (old leadership team, not to-be-elected leadership team). This includes Sunday afternoon, Monday morning at six-fifty, and Tuesday morning at six-thirty. I’m not overly enthusiastic--this weekend is Lisa’s birthday, and I really wanted to make it a quiet one--but I relent and consent. I draw the line, though, at missing third period on Wednesday, when the leadership team meets with the visiting committee to go over the final report. I’m missing enough time with the Honors class already, what with all the in-service days, a minimum day, and my substitutes; I can’t afford another day off...I need the time for Hamlet. Aimee understands. But I bet I’ll end up being there anyway.

As I pack up my stuff to head home, Cindy Daniels comes by my room to chat. She has informed our principal that she wants to be considered for the French position now that Jane’s leaving. She has been informed that she needs to talk it over with the foreign language department chair. Oh, joy. We talk about the chair’s complete and utter lack of people skills and the questionable state of the department. I say that with some teachers, no matter how far out they seem--she mentions a certain bilingual math teacher, and I know she gets my point--have the best intentions of the students, of the school, at heart. You simply cannot question their sincerity or their integrity. But others, no matter how straight and "correct" they appear, like the aforementioned chair, have other agendas, more personal, less altruistic. Daniels mentions the "optional" faculty meeting in February and the chair’s attendance of it after she had made such a fuss over the union’s position of not attending. Daniels states she was sure that the chair was there to take roll. When I smile and state that I had the same view, but that others, including Bruce, my department chair, and Aimee, had told me that I was just being paranoid, Daniels laughs out loud and says, "Paranoid? No way. She was taking roll. We’re on her list now, Bill!"

"But it’s such a long list."

"Of people who have it here..." and she pounds her breast. "You either have it here, or you don’t. And that’s all that matters." I nod and agree. She goes on. "I don’t know. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this lately. About what it means to be a teacher now. How much you must devote of your life. If you can even have a life..."

This touches a chord. And I tell her of my own feelings. That when I was at PeeVee, I had a life, but every aspect of that life knew where it stood in relation to teaching... a distant second. Teaching was first and foremost. Grading three hours a night and at least eight hours on weekends just seemed like part of the duty, of the call. And if I was willing to do that, then I would assign enough work to generate that amount of grading. And the Honors students there responded and achieved. Here, however, the students are not even coming close--not even as seniors--to what my kids had achieved at PeeVee as sophomores.

Apples and oranges, Daniels says. And then she becomes brutally honest. She tells me of what her son Brian had told her. He was a member of my first Honors class, a bright young man, strong-willed, articulate. She says she lived through that year vicariously because he gave her a blow-by-blow every night. She says that though I had pushed them to achieve at levels no one thought possible, she thought then and still thinks I had gone too far. I pushed too hard, motivated too much through intimidation and fear. And she says that she knew in that year that I would, at some point, have to pull back, not push so hard, but in not pushing get the same results. Or I would burn out.

I appreciate her honesty. I know of only a few teachers who would have told me this. Yosh. Frankie, if she was still around. Maybe George Hernandez, one of my year-one mentors at PeeVee (though probably not, since he ruled through the same kind of autocratic dictatorship). Maybe Aimee. Maybe Nicole. But now I know, Daniels definitely would. I’ve always been a fan, but now my respect grows even deeper.

If she is going to be this honest, then so am I. I say that I’ve been pondering lately though if it was really a case of apples and oranges. I pushed hard at PeeVee, I got results; I push not so hard (in comparison) here at Chumash, I get little. Though in the eyes of the students, I still push too hard...

And I tell her of two of my former 3H’s talking with Maria Angelo, a former 2H student from PeeVee and a present teacher credential candidate (three students from that class are now becoming teachers, Maria, her best friend Joyce, and... Brian Daniels). When the 3H’s started to bemoan all the work I was having them do, Maria had them tell her what was assigned. When their list was complete, she only shook her head at me and stated I had gone soft, then she went off on them... a CultLit worksheet? He used to just hand out a list, and we had to write out paragraphs on the fifteen items. Vocabulary for eighteen weeks? Try a whole year. Three book report essays? Try eight. And you guys didn’t even have the dreaded analogy program. Tough!

When one of them made the fatal mistake of saying, "Yeah, but you were a senior..." Maria only laughed louder. "Senior? I was a sophomore. Mr. Walters, you’ve gone soft in your old age!"

Story over, Daniels re-defends her apples and oranges theory. Different clienteles, different educational backgrounds, different parental support (and she points out to me my earlier statement to her that I had no Honors parents show up at Open House). She states that if I was still at PeeVee--where she had been last night at their Open House and was told that many of the staff miss me (that feels nice)--I would still be reaping the same academic benefits, using the new work guidelines, without asking for my old amounts of work. Maybe she’s right. I don’t know.

I tell her that I have been flirting with the idea of going to the private school in Santa Monica, the one at which Lisa’s former principal works. But then I tell her my philosophical quandry. If I go to work there, I would feel that my decision is a selfish one, purely personal, not one that a true disciple, the monkish teacher would make. A truly altruistic teacher would stay at Chumash, where the need is greater. She smiles and says that certain decisions have to be made to keep the family happy.

She let that hang in the air. If I am happy, it could be interpreted, then my family will be happy. It could also be interpreted that a hour’s commute would be detrimental on my family life. She doesn’t explain what she means before she leaves with a smile. The statement is a question and an answer. Like I need both.

Tonight, when Lisa calls Linda, the English Department chair position at Westwind has been filled.