Journal of a Short-Timer

And This, Which is Prologue, I Pray Shall Not be Epilogue...

2008-04-12T23:34:00.005-07:00

It is the day after Valentine's Day, and the love is gone.

This is not a news flash, but I’ve never put it down on paper before. Writing it would make it more permanent, more real, more final. Even in pencil, which I rarely use, the thought would take on weight. Feelings, like thought balloons, should float just beyond our reach, even when the emotions are heavy. Like hate.

And those last four letters hurt as I watch them appear, one after the other, quickly on the computer screen. I've never been one to compose at the keyboard, preferring the feel of longhand--more writerly, more literary, less of that nasty clerkish inputting feel. But now, February 15, 1995, feels more like a clerical grunt moment anyway. And watching the words appear gives me a rather nice feeling of detachment, like it isn't really my life...like it's not really my career that's coming to an end.

I've just looked over the endings of the three paragraphs I've written: "...love is gone." "...hate." "...career that's coming to an end." That about sums it up. I used to love my job again. I used to see it as a calling. It's not that way anymore. I'm no longer having fun. But I want to. I want to love my job, I want to have more fun doing it than I’ve ever had before. And I'm hoping this journal will do the trick, a way of purging all the bad feelings and bad taste I have for what I see around me, a way of coming back into touch with what I loved about my job in the first place, a last chance at falling in love again. But I’m not sure if that's even possible now.

When I first came to this job, a return to the county of my adolescence, I was mentored by a former high school English teacher of mine. Noting and stoking my enthusiasm, she heaped upon me every possible opportunity she could (at the time, I saw them then as opportunities, not duties). She plumbed my idealism and fired my drive by asking me where I saw my career leading. I saw no end. I was young. I was a new breed. Cocky.

I told her, "When I stop loving what I'm doing, I'll quit. I don't see it happening, but if I ever become one of those burn-outs," I nodded my head toward her door, "when I just pick up a check, when I hate my job," I nearly spat out the phrase, naive then, "then I'll know I'm doing more damage than good. And I'm outta here. I'll quit."

She smiled and lit up a cigarette.

That was nearly nine years ago. She's dead now. And at this exact moment in time, I feel like a short-timer.

This is my journal.

I was a teacher.

Establishing the Setting

2008-04-12T23:34:00.003-07:00

Wednesday, February 15, 1995

I pull into the decaying parking lot at a few minutes before seven am. The union contract prescribes a teacher’s on-site hours as beginning thirty minutes before the start of the first class (or the prep--preparatory--period); and since first period begins with an ugly, dull bell at seven twenty-five, I'm arriving more or less on-time. And if I'm technically late, who's going to see it? The parking lot is fairly deserted. A few cars are there, and a half of them belong to students.

I remember watching Tom Snyder interviewing Ice-T once, when the rapper/rocker/provocateur said that inner-city kids would have a great deal more respect for teachers and education in general if they saw teachers driving to work in BMWs and Mercedes coupes. If the teachers' old junkers are what an education can get someone, then--his theory went--why bother? Why, indeed. My 1984 Tercel's driver door squawks horribly since I have not WD-40'ed the rust away from its hinge since before the rainy season began. Not that I'm listening to the door now: the car radio, which I have just repaired last week, is operational again, and sounds of NPR, cranked to 8 (what a aural image that is) are drowning it out. I hear it only as it screeches shut, but by then I'm already on my way across the lot.

Through the gate, unlocked by the morning janitor and to be locked again within the hour by the redcoats--campus supervisors-- I enter the open-air halls. I notice that last night we were hit again by taggers. A huge "WAK 722" scrawls across the triangular side of the building above the hall roofing. I continue on. The lights are not on, again turned off by the morning man, but the center lamp of three in this stretch of corridor, is not exactly fitting snugly to the wall. It hangs slightly, its screws loose. I look at the lockers, rustoleum’ed brown to cover three decades of use and abuse. There are few padlocks on selected lockers, forbidden by school rules but used regardless (and with impunity) by students who wish to keep their items safe from burglary. I cross another ceilingless section of hall, hang a quick left and head down the open hall to my classroom.

The brown leather satchel is heavy in my hand, filled with papers, my teaching life, and two apples and a bottle of water, my sustenance. Yesterday, it held a few new pictures of my son Kyle, in all his eight-month splendor, a different kind of sustenance, and now those pictures are up on my bulletin board over my desk. The desk is used only after my last class and during lunch, as I’m on my feet and in motion all during the class periods--it’s the only way to keep the students on task. I reach the door, its dark brown matching the lockers back in the outer hall. A turn of the key and I’m in. I step on the small black and blue doormat I purchased only last weekend to replace the old dirty, muddy white--now brown--one that I had taken from home to keep the kids from tracking in the wetness from the recent rains. WalMart, four bucks, and I have a new door mat; this afternoon, walking down the hall, I will see my old door mat just inside the jamb of another class. Paul, super-custodian, the god of our wing, has in his utilitarian wisdom rescued the ragmat from the trash and used it in the room on the corner, where the muddy traffic is even worse.

I wipe my feet and head over to the desk. I plop my satchel down on the nearest student desk to my own, open the leather and pull out what I need: the apples for lunch, my water bottle, and the papers from last night. I put all of this on the desktop, close the satchel and put it on the floor, next to the wall, behind the desk. I organize the new stuff on the desk. I record the scores onto the period three clipboard.

The scores belong to a set of "shotgun essays," essays done under duress, a time limitation, with no prior knowledge of the topic. I’m trying to prepare my English 4 and English 4 Honors students for this spring's Advanced Placement exam. The course started only last week. I have from now until May to get those who decide to take it ready for the A.P., and until June to prepare them for the rigors of college, though most will be lucky to see the local junior college, let alone a university. This means eighteen weeks for what is in reality a full year’s course work. The only plus to the insane pace is the fact that our campus has seen at least a foggy halo of the light of reform and restructuring; we work in a term system, where we have four 90-minute periods per day, and a term (nine or ten weeks) equals a semester’s worth of study. In this system, the students have fewer classes per day (and theoretically more time to devote to each class they do take), and the opportunity to take more classes throughout the year (eight classes rather than six in the old system). The teachers have fewer student contacts per day (down from around 175 in five class periods, to around 125 in three), and fewer "preps" or course preparations. The site administration wins out, too: they get to use teachers to teach six classes over the course of the year (rather than the typical five), and they pat themselves on the back for being innovative.

It is innovative, but could be so much more so. But right now, I’m trying to invent a way to get these students ready for college in eighteen weeks. The class was supposed to be a English 4 Honors class, but there were not enough sign-ups for an Honors course, so instead of creating a hard-core true A.P.-style class for ten to fifteen students, we now have a combination class of twenty to twenty-five (still my smallest class of the day). The reason for the lack of sign-ups is me. I was this year’s senior class’s English 3 Honors teacher last year. I was tough and demanding, and many of the students decided that they would rather take their senior English in a much less stressful context, either regular college prep here at the high school or at the local junior college.

I hold the proof of my sadism in my hands, the "shotgun essay." And if that’s the case, I’m recording the latest death toll due to self-inflicted shotgun wounds. It’s decidedly not pretty, nor easy, but those who stick it out will at least stand a chance of surviving at the university level. Most of the student answered only part of the essay prompt, some none at all. This term will not be pretty. I shake my head and look up to see my son smiling and waving back at me from the wall. I look at the clock. 7:10. Still no students, so I’ll head on down to the teacher’s lounge.

No. Wait. I reach back down into my satchel. There’s a bundle of computer disks wrapped in a rubber band. I pocket it and go to the Library instead.

On the school site map, the building is called the Media Center because, as our Librarian states in her orientation to freshman students, "We have so much more than just books." Right. This is the public line, and we toe it every day. But she will be the first to tell anyone willing to listen that the Library’s budget has been slashed year after year, last summer she jettisoned more than 5000 books from the library’s 25,000 in circulation because they were so out-of-date as to be useless, and that our campus is woefully behind the times technologically. The library a few scattered computer workstations, mostly IBMs, a few Macs, none networked, though the wire has been laid (our administration consistent proclamation). Our software library is dismal, and now I’m sneaking in a personal copy of a desktop publishing program onto a "media center" Mac (since I’m one of the few faculty members to come in and use the machines, I figure it’s all right to load up my own copy of the software onto the machine). I drop it off on Teddi’s desk, leaving a note that I’ll install it later.

Back outside, I look across the quad area at the influx of students. Brown faces over black jackets abound. We have over two-thirds Latino population, and one-third of the total population is Limited English Proficient. Our Bilingual department grows larger every year, so it’s no surprise that last November saw huge student walkouts in protest over Proposition 187. It’s not what it was like when I went to school here--God--fifteen years ago. Forty percent white back then, demographically changed now, and yet most of the teaching done here is the same "drill and kill" as it was a decade and a half ago. The morning janitor scrubs more tagging off the water fountain as I walk by. "Hi" and "Hi" and I’m off to the teacher’s lounge.

Another dark brown door, this one with a light tannish gray streak signifying a recent tag that has been rubbed off with some toxic fluid, opens into a small room. A handful of teachers, some retrieving mail from their boxes (which line one wall), one micro waving a cup of coffee, another pulling caffeine from the soda vending machine, one in line for the only teacher phone on this end of campus, while another teacher tries to talk discreetly into the receiver on the outskirts of this hubbub. I nod hello to a few, smile hello to a couple, say good morning to one or two. I check my box. The computer scantron roll sheets are there, as is the bulletin. Nothing new, and I them back into my box.

Into the men’s room I go. One huge stall dominates. This is a recent addition: handicapped seating is mandatory, so one urinal was taken out so the stall could be widened. Because the stall couldn’t be shortened, a sink also had to be taken out. Thus, we’re left with only one urinal, one sink, and one stall for fifty-three male teachers. But we do have two mirrors, one of which has a wonderfully telling piece of duct tape holding the bottom of it against the tile wall. I do my business in this most professional of rooms, take a fleeting glance at myself in the mirror--zipper up, shirt tucked in, tie straight, pants a little wrinkled (I’ve got to do a better job of ironing, but who has time?)--and I’m out the door. As if my appearance mattered.

As if. My peers in the lounge are a motley crew. Coaches in school team sweat suits; stylish, but they still teach in the classroom, too. Levi’s and button-downs. The room's only other man in a tie now smiles and asks what I think of the Oscar nominations, and--before I can answer--lambastes Pulp Fiction again as degenerate trash. I nod and keep my opinion, degenerated garbage he already knows, to myself. Another English teacher, still standing in line for the phone, hears the warning bell ring: seven minutes to class.

"Shit," she mutters, and when I ask what’s wrong she gives me the litany: baby sick, baby-sitter cancelled, husband took the baby to his school, new baby-sitter has to pick him up there, needs to call mother-in-law to fly in for the next week (baby-sitter? it’s not quite clear), her rear left tire’s hissing, so she’s got to call the Auto Club. She’s usually quite charming and she does smile, so I smile back, wish her luck, thinking I’ve got to get to class.

I grab the roll sheets from my box and head out the door. More late arriving teachers are heading in, one even in a suit. I turn toward my class, and a huge single drip drop of water falls from the hallway ceiling onto my roll sheet. When did it stop raining? Two days ago? I can’t stop to think. The hallway’s crowded with students. I try to dodge both dripping old rain and stalled students talking in packs, as I accelerate to my hall.

And I take a right, and I see the beginning of a mob forming, waiting for me at my door. First period’s about to begin.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part One

2008-04-12T23:34:00.001-07:00

WASC is the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. This is the organization that awards accreditation to schools in the western United States, and it allows for that school’s grades and records to be recognized by the education establishment, for purposes like college admissions.

Every few years, the length of which dependent upon the last WASC visiting committee’s report on the school, a school must submit a report on how it is doing its job of educating its clientele. Following on the heels of this report is the visitation by the "Committee" of four to six high school teachers and administrators who spend three days on the campus, meeting with staff, students and parents, reviewing aspects of the report, and observing the operation of the school. At the end of the third day of the visit, the Committee reports to the staff at large, giving its impressions of the campus. This lecture--for it is not a question and answer session--can give the staff a good idea as to what their new accreditation will be. A school is then left with a number of recommendations which it must address before the next WASC committee visits. A school can be accredited for six years, three years, one year, or it may lose its accreditation.

WASC, as a term, can also refer to the report itself. Or the event. Even a time of year, like a season. It is a word met with fear and loathing.

WASC is a four-letter word.

Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?

2008-04-12T23:33:00.004-07:00

Thursday, February 16, 1995

Two days ago, I had the opportunity to guest-teach in a colleague's Creative Writing class. She called upon my "expertise"--or at least experience--in Drama and film to discuss the writing of plays and screenplays. I was thrilled to be asked and it was a thrill to do it.

To be before students who made the choice to be there, rocking and rolling through a lesson while I held them transfixed, asking questions, taking notes, learning...It was a heady experience, exhausting but wildly intense. Even though it took a few minutes to get used to that feeling again, and it took about an hour to wind down afterward, I realized that I missed It. While I have had moments here and there in English 9 (standard, non-college-bound freshman), a few more in last year's English 3 Honors class, and an occasional burst of the high in Drama classes over the past three years, a few moments that have come close to that sense of freedom, it's been a long time since I felt an entire period like that.

And it was for those Drama classes that I had returned to the school of my own high school experience, after teaching English for five years at the cross-town rival school, the school my father attended (quit, actually, after the tenth grade...to join the army. Another story, another time). And it was at this other high school where I began my teaching career--my first year under the tutelage of three teachers: my own former yearbook advisor (the chain-smoking assistant principal of the school), another former English teacher from the old high school (who had subsequently transferred schools and pulled political strings to have me, whom he must have considered a kind of protégé, placed at "his" school), and an aging English and History teacher (who was to be teaching some of the same courses as I in my first year).

In that first year, in my first week, I had half of an overcrowded English 2--college-bound sophomores--pulled from me, every other student down the roll sheet (on the roll, to make it easier on teachers' eyes, the names on the sheet are printed on alternating tan and green lines...they took my green students). With the intention of easing my student load and balancing sections of the course, they ripped apart any positive class dynamic I had going as well as my self-confidence as a first-year teacher.

Welcome to teaching.

Later in the year, one of the students who remained in that class committed suicide. By the end of the year, the long-term relationship I was in had broken up, ending a short engagement.

And yet I wouldn't have traded that year for anything. The first year is supposed to be grueling. This was. And every day was a wild ride. It was my first year teaching, my first year teaching these courses (sophomore English to both college-bound and remedial students); it was a year of experimentation, of testing new ideas. Armed with what I had endured in education courses at UCLA (mostly worthless) and what I had learned from my master-teachers at Millikan Junior High in the Valley and Venice High School (which was everything to me), I winged it through my first year.

Not that it was easy. It wasn’t. It was exhausting. Working from seven, when I arrived at school, through lunch at nearly one, past the end of school at two-fifty to the end of my day, around four, wiped me out. I would return home, where I lived with my parents for that first year. Fed, rested, and bolstered by their respect for education and love of learning, I was revitalized every night after every exhausting day. And I loved it.

And it seemed the powers that were loved me, too. During the spring of my first year, I was being groomed to take over the English 2 Honors course from another teacher on staff. This was, as far as I knew, without precedent. The teacher whom I was replacing was receiving mixed reviews from teachers, administrators, parents, and students alike; I had heard the reviews. Being a first-year teacher, I could never even think of asking that I be given a shot at that class. But with all three mentors in my corner, I received the course. Honors it would be (though without my first mentor, who had just been named principal of my--our—once-and-future school).

And I took it as just that, an Honor. It was an honor to teach the course, and it was, in my mind, an honor to be in such a class. I created a new curriculum, working with my two teaching mentors, who also happened to be the Honors English teachers for the junior and senior classes. It was a tough curriculum, based on English and European literature, with heavy doses of vocabulary and Cultural Literacy, as gleaned from E.D Hirsch’s tome. We covered it all, from Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales through two doses of Shakespeare (the CoreLit[erature] selection, Julius Caesar, and another tragedy, different every year), up through the Romantics, which became the basis for our Promethean unit (Frankenstein, Prometheus Unbound, and Byron’s poem, plus another personal work of the student’s choice), into the World War One poets (coupled with All Quiet on the Western Front), and finally 1984 (though this last work changed from year to year).

The students didn’t know what to make of me. Here I was, just seven or eight years older than they, wearing a tie (because I hated being asked for a hall pass when I didn’t), fresh out of college, a place where they desperately wanted to be. Some questioned, some argued, some complained, but they all did. As hard as they worked, I worked even harder. Home around four to my new apartment, I would instantly crash on the couch for at least two hours; after a dinner (usually chips and salsa), I would grade papers and design lessons until past midnight (I played hard, too, dating and engaging and then marrying another young lady; again, another story). I worked like a man possessed. But my reputation was made. I had arrived. But not satisfied.

By the next year, I had sold students on a semester-long Shakespeare class, to be taught back to back with a Modern Literature class. It would never fly, counselors and teachers said; today’s kids don’t want Shakespeare. Thirty-nine signed up. And we put on student-directed and -acted scenes from the plays our first year (and for every year after until the second year after I left the campus). We created our own Xeroxed Modern Lit text with the profits from our "A Night with the Bard" sellout. This success, too, was heady. It was wonderful.

But nothing gold can last.

Remembrance of History Past: More Setting

2008-04-12T23:33:00.003-07:00

Pleasant Valley is a mostly agricultural, though quickly urbanizing, community, located roughly one hour’s drive north of Los Angeles. Its climate is mostly coastal overcast, perfect for growing strawberries and discontent in teachers who crave sunlight. It is relatively uncrowded, at least by Los Angeles measurement.

Chumash High School is one of five main campuses of the Pleasant Valley Union High School District, which serves over twelve thousand students. The other four campuses are Pleasant Valley, Mission Oaks, Bard, and Academy. There is also a sixth, a continuation school, Gateway, to which many students who cannot seem to succeed at the main campuses are sent.

It’s been my experience--at two of the campuses, PeeVee (read: Pleasant Valley) and Chumash--that each school feels that it is the ugly step-daughter of the district, perpetually and alternately put upon and ignored. All schools in the district feel this way, save possibly Academy, the most anglo of the campuses, and to where (as they used to say about the elephants that go to the mountain to die) the burned-out go to retire. Quietly. Easily.

Pleasant Valley High had felt this ugly step-daughter complex because it was the oldest campus, run-down, in ill repair, and in the flight path of the local airport. But now it is being torn down (due to the airport) and replaced with a "state of the art" school across town. M.O. had felt the syndrome because it had been the most recently built campus, constructed in the early seventies; so after the early glow of the spotlight, it had been ignored as other, more pressing, problems were addressed. But it has received a huge influx of technology money. Bard had felt the complex because of its location--out in the agricultural fields of north Pleasant Valley. But a superintendent who ruled the roost during the eighties had a son who attended Bard, so--surprise--it was the first campus to receive the technology funds. Chumash still is with out tech-funds, continues to watch its thirty year-old site decay, and feels like the black sheep.

English 9 and the Past, Present, and Future

2008-04-12T23:33:00.001-07:00

Friday, February 17, 1995

It is seven-twenty and I am standing outside my class, welcoming students into my room. I have been doing this for the last minute or so, after rising from my desk, from my pre-school preparations: putting the roll sheet scantrons on my period-by-period clipboards, reviewing the bulletin for any news to pass along to students, putting work to be returned to students with the clipboard so I won’t forget to pass it back. I looked up to survey the room, its thirty-eight desks set up in a odd configuration--twenty-eight of them chevron’ed diagonally facing the long whiteboard (the "front" of the class facing away from the windows, now draped because of glare) in two sets of fourteen, and ten desks facing the same direction from back near the window, and some roaming space between.

Since today is a holiday in the local elementary school district, I’m expecting lower than usual attendance and I’m getting it. The first period class roll states thirty-eight students enrolled (down from the term’s opening day of thirty-nine [union contract decrees the class capacity for English is thirty-nine; second period started at forty but is now down to thirty-eight as well]). But that tells only part of the story. It is now nine days into the new term, and five students have still yet to check in to class. On an average day, yesterday for example, I record five additional absences on top of the five no-shows; today, it’s closer to ten.

Last term was even worse. My third period English 9 class averaged nine absences per day. Of course, that had repercussions on grades. Fifteen students failed...fifty-four percent of the class. There were forty-one teaching days during the term: nine of my failing students missed ten or more days, an additional four missed between six and nine. Thus, of the fails, all but two had missed over ten percent of the class. When it comes to missing assignments, however, the numbers explode. With forty assignments during the term, five of the fails were missing thirty or more assignments, one was missing twenty-six, and the other nine had between eleven and nineteen missing assignments.

(At this point, a digression... in my English 9 classes, it is my belief that all students can achieve an A or a B. On weekly assignments, if the work does not reach A or B quality, I mark the errors, return the paper with the words "Do Over" across the top, and it is the student’s responsibility to bring it up to at least B quality. If the student refuses to do so, I refuse to give it a grade. If the work is turned in late, it is penalized ten percent for the first week late, and additional ten percent for the second week late, and I do not accept any work that is more than two weeks late [keeping a gradebook is hard enough without having to enter scores from a month before]. On the helpful side, however, ninety percent and above earns an A, and seventy-five percent earns a B; in most classes, seventy-five would earn a C. At the end of the term, I will award C grades to those students earning between seventy and seventy-five percent. I award no D’s because I refuse to reward Dissatisfactory work. Digression over.)

Now questions could be asked: What kind of assignments was I giving? Couldn’t I have done something--ANYthing--to raise the number of assignments students were submitting?

And the answer for the first one is simple: On an average week, students would turn in sentences for the week’s ten vocabulary words (an assignment on which we worked in class), they would take a quiz on that list, they would complete a Cultural Literacy worksheet (for which there were weekly note-taking exercises--so that any student taking notes in class, or willing to do library research for [mon dieu!] homework, could pass the assignment), and they would also complete Daily Oral Language assignments (in which they would correctly edit sentences given and discussed in class). There were also four long-term writing projects, for which we used a modification of Atwell’s Writer’s Workshop process (done at least three of the five class periods per week). Thus, most of the work for the assignments was done in class, but the finalizing of the assignments was meant for homework. This I will not change since it is my goal to instill in the students some sense of responsibility.

As for the second question, the answer is a bit more complex. For the first six weeks of the term, I held "Academic Detentions" every Wednesday afternoon, mandatory sessions for every student who had missing assignments over the previous two weeks. "AD" as I call it would begin at two-thirty-five and I would stay as long as it takes for the students to get caught up; individual detainees did not leave until their work is complete, corrected, and of A or B quality. Once I stayed until six o’clock. Following winter break, however, I stopped academic detentions. It was an experiment. And what I learned was interesting. The number of Fails did NOT noticeably increase, but many A’s dropped to B’s.

So to the questions, I believe I can answer that: a) the assignments are not so difficult as to be out-of-line; and b) the academic detentions were only moderately effective--i.e. if the student is determined to fail, then s/he will.

However, since no policy in my classes is set in stone, and since I, too, am disturbed by the number of fails in my English 9’s, I have instituted a number changes for this term. First, I will be sending home bi-weekly progress reports to parents, telling them of missing assignments and academic detentions. Second, I will be reinstating academic detentions, to assist those students who need that extra push to succeed. Finally, I will lower my end-of-term cut-off for a C; now any student with a percentage above sixty-six will earn a passing grade. This last is my most painful compromise...it feels like "dumbing down" to me. And I despise that. But I figure it might keep the administration off my back.

I say this because at both campuses, I had and have been called on the carpet for excessive fails. At my first school, a principal (no longer there) tried to insinuate that I gave too many fails. I let him talk, then I told him of every measure I took in bringing achievement up. He backed off. Last year, I had a similar conversation here with the present principal. I told her of my institution of academic detentions, and all seemed fine. But with last term’s numbers, I feel I’ll be feeling the heat again. Also, a English department colleague told me yesterday that she was approached by the assistant principal who--in as non-threatening and relaxed manner as possible--told her that she may want to "keep an eye on (her) F’s." The golden ax is coming. I can feel it.

All of this, or at least a very quick Reader’s Digest version, raced through my head as I looked at the partially filled classroom five minutes before first period. I shook my head and walked across the room toward the door, smiling and saying my good mornings to any student who wasn’t already working on something or talking to a friend. I stood at the door, welcoming more students in, saying hello across the grassy area to the two male teachers in the other wing. The administration likes its teachers at the door during passing periods. They claim it makes for less tardies, but most of us know that it’s better for security: teachers can break up any fights that start, or at least they can take action before any aging red-coats decide that the fight’s gone too far and they must make an appearance.

I usher a few more students in, when I see the assistant principal--my colleague’s hatchet man--heading my way. A week ago, he was handing out candy to us staffers who were outside toeing the administration line and standing by our doors. His face is more sheepish today, and I know why he’s here.

As he approaches, his two-way radio buzzes from his back pocket and we can both hear his name mentioned, something to do with parents waiting in the office. "Aw, shit. Not those parents from yesterday," he says, but I’m not sure it’s to me he’s saying this.

I smile anyway. "Don’t you just hate it when you hear your name behind your back."

"Yeah." He smiles uneasy. "Uh, Bill," he begins.

I smile wide. "Good Morning." I can see it coming.

"I’m not even sure why I need to tell you this..." He pauses, I think, hoping that I’ll help him out by asking what it is all about. I don’t. Let him squirm. "It’s just that I’ve been asked... The grades from last term have come in. And your Fails are up. And I know that--"

I cut him off. "Almost every F is accountable to attendance." Still smiling.

He tries to smile. This is tough on him. He’s the hatchet man, and he doesn’t want the job. He knows that the grades are mostly bullshit and that attendance is a quagmire on this campus. He’s been put up to this. He would rather be principal and put others up to bad-message delivery, but he’s not; and at one year away from retirement (so the rumor mill grinds), he doesn’t want any part of this. It’s a little pitiful, but I’m not going to help him out...if the administration is going to play its little games, it doesn’t mean I have to play. "I’m sure they are, Bill. And I’m sure that with all the WASC stuff this year, it can’t have been easy keeping track of the nines." He brings up the major accreditation project I’ve been working on this year--too many hours spent with too many hardworking teachers on a report that many of us are afraid will just be so much whitewashing when the visitation/accreditation committee visits our campus next month. But it sounds like I can’t juggle extra-curricular stress with my class load. This I find bordering on the insulting, but I let it pass, waiting to see how this is going to play out. "So that you know, we all support what you’re doing in the classroom... We’re just trying to lower the number of Fails on campus." He looks at me like he doesn’t know what to say next.

Neither do I. Luckily, another assistant principal walks up, holding his radio. When he interrupts our silence, the golden hatchet man almost looks relieved: "Remember those parents I told you about yesterday..."

"Yeah..." He turns to me. "Bill..." He lets it hang in the air.

I don’t want to be outside when the bell rings--it sets a bad precedent for the students--so I smile. "No problem. Have a good one."

I see him retreating as I close the door. "Thanks, Bill."

When the door is closed, I look at a class that will be filling academic detention next Wednesday.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Two

2008-04-12T23:32:00.007-07:00

In the past, the oncoming WASC meant the reviewing of the previous committee’s recommendations, and the writing of narratives outlining the school’s response to them. Then each department on campus created a report discussing what it had done to improve its service of the school’s clientele. Then the whole package was wrapped in a big bow. It was a public relations creation of mammoth proportions.

This year, all that changed. While the old reports were called "Performing Excellence," the new program was called "Focus on Learning." The concept was changed from product--the old WASC report itself--to process--how the school views itself and what it is going to do to improve. This is a monumental shift. And a welcome one to all reform-minded teachers. It also necessitates a huge attitude adjustment. Staffs can no longer just bullshit and bear it; they have to examine what they are doing, find the warts--as well as the beauty marks--and come up with a plan to improve the areas which needed improving. This, of course, entails more work. Not a welcome concept.

Plus, old habits die hard. It’s tough for a teacher used to writing a PR release, trumpeting the greatness of his class, his department, his school, to then turn a keen eye on the faults and inadequacies of his class, his department, his school, and THEN come up with a plan to better said class, department, school.

This year, we found out how hard that shift would be.

A Change in Direction

2008-04-12T23:32:00.005-07:00

Monday, February 20, 1995

Eight-thirteen, evening. The three-day weekend has ended, not that it felt very restful. Between a visit by one of my wife Lisa’s college friends (a young woman who went through teacher-training with Lisa at UCLA, only she never went into the classroom), a call from Lisa’s old principal (from a private school teaching position in Los Angeles), news that Lisa’s grandfather may have cancer, Kyle’s first big "boo-boo"--a fall that opened up a small cut to the outside of his eye, and no, I never thought I’d actually use the term "boo-boo"--and horrendous ninety-degree heat (to which I respond very poorly, especially in February), my eyes feel hot yet rusted open like old battleship portholes. From what deserted corner of my psyche that last image came I have no clue, except possibly that Long Beach, which used to have a naval shipyard, will be my destination on Wednesday. But my mind wanders.

Does it ever...that opening paragraph is a meandering mess. But it stays unedited as a testament to my mental state right now.

Point of Information. In November of the past year, 1994, when I was becoming more and more disillusioned with my present position at Chumash High School, I began to think of other possible employment opportunities. Since I have always wanted to make money doing what I love, I took an inventory of my loves: the arts, writing, film, technology, teaching. And I began to think of avenues of employment. I sent off cover letters and résumés to the local newspapers and the local television station, calling for the creation of a local arts reporter (a position that could be filled by me, of course). I also e-mailed the same type of information to Entertainment Weekly, who when they failed to receive all of my transmission asked me to re-send it, then subsequently never contacted me again.

By the end of the year, I was sending off résumés and cover letters at the pace of one per week, contacts mostly gleaned from the Sunday L.A. Times classifieds. And as with all other queries (save the local television station, the owner of which wrote to tell me that he liked the idea and that he was passing it along to the news director, who--he assured me--after creating a northern bureau station in Santa Maria would be looking into the idea, and to whom the owner was going to give my name; then the station went bankrupt), no response was received. The lack of response, while not exactly ego-building, was not the end of the world, either. The whole exercise was an experiment, meant to help me discover how difficult it would be to find a new job, if it become necessary. I was--and am--not desperate.

So there had been no response. Until this weekend.

First came the call from Linda, Lisa’s former principal, who like Lisa had moved on from her former private school post, only Linda had gone on to a new private school post, as assistant principal of a well-known and dynamic private school on the West side. I had worked with Linda, on a few occasions, whenever she would visit Lisa here in Pleasant Valley to go over teaching methodology. When I was in the process of switching schools, she had mentioned to me that I would be perfect at her new school. I laughed it off. I was in the process of switching schools already. Lisa had moved up to Pleasant Valley to leave L.A. Why would I want to commute to L.A. every day? Especially at private school pay.

After working for the Pleasant Valley Union High School District for nine years, my annual salary is around thirty-nine thousand dollars. Not bad as teacher salaries go, especially when one considers the health benefits that are thrown in as well (Non-teachers are advised, at this point not to mention "and three months vacation". This is the most asinine of all anti-teacher arguments. When one considers the amount of work during the year a good teacher takes home, how many nights and weekends are lost to reading and grading work, preparing for class, developing lessons and entire curricula, as well as trying to contact parents, the three months are really nothing more than accumulated evenings and weekends. Plus, the best teachers usually spend a month of the two-and-a-half month break [mid-June to end of August] developing curricula for the following year. So until you’ve walked a school year in my moccasins...). Lisa’s recompense nearly doubled when she left L.A.--between her salary, the health benefits (which the private school did not provide), and her student loan deferment (because she now teaches at a socio-economically disadvantaged school). Thus, when Linda blew her new school's horn (new buildings, classes of less than twenty students [half of my class sizes]), I felt it wasn’t worth even listening.

Linda called yesterday to tell Lisa that she wasn’t going to be able to make it up this weekend to visit. The reason was simple: she had forgotten. Life for her, too, was hectic. As assistant principal, she is pivotally involved in the hiring (and firing) of teachers. And she has to let a teacher go at the end of the year. Also, she needs to find a new English Department chairperson. "Would Bill be interested?" Lisa, looking after my guilt and our mortgage, asked if the salary would be near thirty-eight grand. Pretty near, Linda said. So Linda put the bug in Lisa’s ear. And Lisa put it in mine.

Interested? Lisa reminded me about class size and student motivation (I wouldn’t have to worry about my too-tough reputation there). She also said that I could try it for a year...maybe I just needed a year off from this area. It could revitalize my love of teaching here, or it could be the beginning of a new career down south. Of course, the silent cynic in me whispered, "Yeah, it could be the last nail in the coffin, too." But would that be all bad? I’ve spent the last two days’ showers daydreaming of possibilities, and I was about to tell Lisa that I was considering calling Linda up to learn more about the position, when the phone rang an hour and a half ago.

I was playing with Kyle on the floor of his room. I heard muffled talking and footsteps heading down the hall. Lisa looked confused. "A 'Shirley' from Cutting Edge?" She handed me the phone.

Shirley? Cutting Edge? My mind raced as I reached up for the phone, but I couldn’t make any connections, the heat and my sinuses having sapped me of any energy, physical or intellectual.

"Hello."

"Mr. Walters?"

"Yes."

"Hi, my name is Shirley [the last name was garbled and I still can’t remember it; I know this is bad form, so sue me] from the Cutting Edge. Earlier this month, you sent us your résumé in response to an advertisement we ran in the L.A. Times. We’ve been so deluged with responses that we’ve been burning the candle at both ends to get back to people..."

Aha. I handed Kyle over to Lisa, and took the cordless to the computer where I called up the cover letter I had mailed to them. I listened and looked over the letter as she talked about the company, an electronics firm that needs a manager to put together organizational teams for their firm. I had applied because (I remembered now) the ad sounded vaguely interesting, touching on electronics, organization (a strong point of mine), and motivating groups. And now I was receiving my first callback. Great. She said that my résumé and cover letter made me sound like the perfect candidate for the position they were trying to fill, since they were looking for someone who could teach new employees organizational and problem-solving skills.

She mentioned that since she knew I was a teacher, she wanted to know when I was available to meet during the coming week, and she gave me a few choices. Afternoon is best, since I won’t have to miss any class that way. And Wednesday afternoon it will be. Long Beach, four in the afternoon. It’s going to be a long drive, but it should prove interesting. If nothing else.

I’ll have to move Academic Detention for the English 9s to Thursday, but perhaps this is a blessing. This will give the students an extra day to turn in old work from last week to remove their names from the detention list. Maybe this could be a good thing.

Wednesday, it sounds so far away. It’s the day after tomorrow. And I’m exhausted tonight. And a week of teaching lies ahead, in wait.

There is Power in a Union

2008-04-12T23:32:00.003-07:00

Tuesday, February 21, 1995

My partner in WASC-crime had urged me on Friday to bring my camcorder today so that we could videotape the faculty meeting to add to our welcoming tape for the visitation team, who will arrive on our campus in less than four weeks to study then report on our site’s worthiness of accreditation. On their first day here, Aimee (the chair of Chumash’s WASC--Western Association of Schools and Colleges--Leadership team) wants to present them with a kind of "This is Chumash" video tape (she also wants to make a bogus tape to show the faculty, for laughs). On Friday afternoon, after school had ended, she told me that she had asked our site’s video production teacher if he could have some of his students shoot the raw footage for the video so that we could edit it later. I balked a little at the idea of editing a video since I had put in easily over one hundred hours already this year on the WASC report, between editing sections of it, putting together explanatory multimedia presentations for the faculty, and helping to finalize the final report. Aimee, not exactly a technological guru, doesn’t understand the requirements of editing video; since I’ve taught video production myself, I understand the monumental task we--she--was setting before us. But she’s the boss, so I relented.

She knew that today--Tuesday--would be a faculty meeting, a perfect opportunity to shoot some footage for the video. The only problem was that the video production teacher had already left for the three-day weekend, Aimee was supposed to have jury duty on Tuesday, and that meant no way for Aimee to get the message to him. I said that I would bring my camcorder on Tuesday to shoot the footage. That agreed, we went our separate ways for the weekend.

On my way back to my classroom, I bumped into my newest colleague, a woman for whom I have the utmost respect. She is the mother of two former students from my Pleasant Valley High days, as well as the foster mother to a young woman with whom I went to high school. She used to substitute teach at both PeeVee and Chumash, where she earned the distinction as "SuperSub." Needless to say, when she went back to school to earn her teaching credential last year, it was a wonderful opportunity to pick up a great teacher. And we did, three weeks into this school year, when staffing projections did not turn out as last spring predicted. She and I worked hand in hand, teaching all of the English 9 courses. We worked out a beautiful program. At midyear, however, staffing changed again and since her major was as a language teacher, the Bilingual department snatched her up. She was disappointed to leave the English Department, but she was thrilled to teach language again.

On Friday, when I ran into Mrs. Daniels--while I call Aimee by "Ms. Hamm" in front of students and by "Aimee" in private, I feel deference and can only say "Mrs. Daniels" when I’m speaking to her (no matter the audience, even alone)--she asked if I had heard the scuttlebutt concerning Tuesday’s faculty meeting. Now I arrive at school a few minutes before seven in the morning, I teach the first three periods without a break until twelve-twenty, eat lunch in my classroom, then work the last period--my prep--either in my classroom or in the library at a computer terminal, so I’m not always in the loop for site gossip (I didn’t even know that the English 4 Honors class was going to be a combination 4/4H class until another English department member told me in the hall). So, when I heard this tantalizing question, I stated my customary, "No."

She shook her head and smiled. "Well, you know, Bill, we had a faculty meeting already this month...on semester prep day..." She let that hang in the air. But Friday being Friday, and my mind already on three-day break, I didn’t make the connection or respond. "Come on, Mr. Walters, you know that the Union contract says that we’re required to attend only one faculty meeting a month."

It was beginning to dawn on me. "Yeah..."

"So some members of our staff are boycotting the meeting, even telling some other members--new ones, like myself--that I should not attend."

"To hell with that shit." I replied, and she let out a relieved belly-laugh.

"Glad to hear someone finally say it."

I shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t believe it; I wasn’t surprised (knowing my campus like I do), but I still couldn’t believe it. "You know, it’s this kind of shit that gives us a bad name, us and the union, too. We meet for an hour on a day we were all supposed to be on campus anyway. And people are getting bent out of shape."

Mrs. Daniels would have jumped in, agreeing, but I was building up a full head.

"Here we are, one month away from having a group of strangers come onto our campus and decide whether we’re doing our job well enough to warrant receiving accreditation for what we do, and we can’t even be professional enough to meet as a staff. Christ, this is ridiculous. This is the kind of thing that gets us no respect in the community. And it’s the union that does it. When the hell is the union going to stop acting like some blue collar protection agency and start acting like a professional organization. Total shit."

I shook my head. She smiled. "I knew I’d get a rise out of you."

And she was right. She knows how I feel about the union. I’m union, do or die. I’ve always said that I’m not afraid to strike, if that’s what it takes. I’m all for tough union negotiations. But I’ve also publicly bemoaned the fact that our union, with its ties to the AFL-CIO, remains a belligerently blue-collar organization, standing for, as Mary McConnell, our librarian, has said, "Equality over Quality." I’ve also said that we need a union that takes a stand more like the American Medical Association or the Bar, a strong PROFESSIONAL advocacy group. And this year, I was about to put my time where my mouth is; I was about to run for site representative.

I say about to, because only Friday morning a colleague of mine came into my class to ask if I was still interested in running for site rep. Here is a man who has been an advocate for change on this campus for longer than I have been here, a teacher up to whom both students and other staff look. He is also looking to go into administration one day and feels the need to understand the workings of the union so as to better help the plight of the classroom teacher. I’m all for that. And I told him that if he ran, he would have my support and certainly not my competition. For the next few hours, I felt pretty good about the union again.

So I went home Friday night, thinking that the Tuesday video shoot opportunity would probably be a bust, and I was right. Only half the staff attended the meeting today. Interestingly enough, one of the attendees was the current site rep, who had been telling people in the staff lounge only this morning that we did not need to attend, that it was only voluntary, and that it was ok--even better--not to attend. And there she was, sitting in the back of the library, reading a newspaper as the meeting progressed. I couldn’t help thinking that she was there to take mental roll of which teachers attended.

But what can they do to me? Hell, they won’t move on a shitty teacher, and they’re going to do something to me for going to a meeting?

I don’t think so.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Three

2008-04-12T23:32:00.001-07:00

Four years ago, I worked on Pleasant Valley High’s WASC report. I was the English department’s lead writer. I put together the report for our department, and since my department was English, I was volunteered to do much of the work on the overall report. It was my last year at PeeVee, and by the end of the WASC process, I was glad to leave the campus.

People get ugly during WASC.

Gone Today, Gone Tomorrow

2008-04-12T23:31:00.007-07:00

Wednesday, February 22, 1995

My English Nine classes are revisiting the attendance hell of last term. [By the end of the week, there will be a total of 164 recorded absences for my two English Nine sections. This is after only 13 days of the term and does not include the students who have still yet to check in. Thus, between the two classes, I’m averaging nearly thirteen absences a day.] I've just spent thirty minutes on the phone today, trying to make contact with parents of students who are already beginning to miss class at alarming rates. One parent wasn't aware that her daughter was missing class. One student answered the phone and had to translate my message for his mother. I had another student of mine translate another message to another parent. One parent informed me that her daughter had run away and the mother didn't know where the daughter was. I left an additional two messages, "reached" two non-answers, and one phone number was incorrect. One girl first period (the runaway) is already up to ten absences (and today was the eleventh day of the term); at least half a dozen students have reached half a dozen absences.

Last year, Bob Johnston, a science teacher who has been working on his administrative credential (he's the man who will be running for union site rep), created an innovative program for reducing attendance problems. Teachers fill out attendance review referrals on a student when s/he begins to miss class (at four absences, the referral goes home for a parent signature; at six, the referral goes to the office so that a parent/student/ attendance review committee conference can take place; at ten absences, the referral is returned to the office, so that the student can be removed from class or the teacher can be given the go-ahead to lower the student's grade). The attendance review committee is a rotating group of teachers and administrators who come together every day to review the referrals and student/parent conferences, and make recommendations as to the student's future in that class or on our campus. Individual teachers are called upon to serve on the team once per term, and they meet for an after-school committee session. By the end of the term, all teachers have served, meeting with as many parents as are scheduled for that particular day. Teacher buy-in has been good--here was a feeling of empowerment--and we have been beginning to see more parents on campus. Many students have been dropped from classes and there is a sense of movement in the right direction.

Fast-forward a year and now we learn that for that positive impression there is a price: because of the drop of students from roll, our school’s class-roll population last spring was artificially low... so that when the district office looked at numbers for staffing, C.H.S. came up low and without need for new teachers. When last fall arrived, however, and the truants came back for the beginning of the year, we were short-staffed (thus, the need to bring on teachers like Cindy Daniels three weeks into the new school year). The word from the mount for this term is that we will no longer be dropping non-attending students from the roll. This allows us for greater staffing next year (reduced class sizes? I'll believe it when I see it...), but it increases the "‘Fail’ problem" since non-attendees will doubtlessly fail, and it negates the concept of repercussions for actions and non-attendance.

I used to joke with Aimee and Mary that Chumash was the home of no repercussions. It wasn't funny then, and now I wonder if it is even a joke.

Bad News Travels Fast

2008-04-12T23:31:00.005-07:00

Thursday, February 23, 1995

I’ve been battling a cold for the past few days; this morning, I woke with a 100.3 fever. I didn’t tell Lisa because she’d have had me call in for a sub; I’ll do that tomorrow...today’s there’s too much to do. I’ve got homework coming in and Writer’s Workshop to run during the English 9 classes; I’m introducing Macbeth to my English 4/4H’s (we’re also going to the computer lab so that they may input their Research papers--and I can pre-date yesterday’s entry); and of course there’s today’s academic detention. Too much to do, and with the dependability of most substitutes in question, I can’t risk today’s work.

After third period is over, I walk from the computer lab to the room of the English department chair, for today’s semi-emergency meeting. On the agenda is last-minute WASC stuff--evidence cover sheets, I assume (since even I haven’t gotten around to doing mine). When I drag in, Aimee gives me a look, "Well, don’t you look like hell."

"Love you, too."

"Sick?" I nod. "Sweet." She then looks at me as if to say, "OK, so then why are you here?"

"A D."

"That’ll make ya feel better."

Smartass.

As I turn away from her, another colleague enters to the room. He’s the English 2 Honors teacher, demanding, conservative, a disciple of discipline, a pillar of morality (and the hater of Pulp Fiction), and he looks more harried than usual. "What’s up?" springs from me faster than the realization that I probably don’t want to know.

"Did you hear what happened at PeeVee?"

uh-oh. Nothing good ever starts with "Did you hear what happened at (fill in the blank)?" I shake my head.

"Shooting. Three down. One dead. Supposedly one of ours did the shooting."

"You gotta be shitting me."

We both turn as one of the red-coats comes in with her walkie-talkie. He turns to her. "Any more news?"

She shakes her head. Others are entering the room for the meeting, but as she speaks, everyone’s attention focuses on her. "No. Didn’t they make a faculty bulletin?" We all shake our heads. The teachers are usually the last to know; sad joke, but true. "Around ten o’clock there was shooting outside Pleasant Valley. Three kids were hit. One of them’s dead. Another critical."

Another colleague joins in. "And the shooter? One of our kids?"

She nods. "And he got away."

The department chair interrupts from his desk. "Here’s a picture of him." He holds open a yearbook from last year. This is the yearbook room, he’s the yearbook advisor, and this is opportune. He mentions the name. It doesn’t ring a bell with me, but it does with others who have now come into the room. One remembers him from freshman English. Aimee remembers him from the track team, which she used to coach. The student was a junior last year, the department chair begins. "But he’s no longer one of ours. He’s supposed to be on independent study." This is a discreet way of saying he was a problem student, and that he’s no longer in classes, but is in an "alternative program" so that he can receive credits and a diploma.

The red-coat is about to leave. Out the door, she says, "I can’t believe no one tol’ you guys. We had a meeting at eleven. We’re on high alert. We were told that the faculty was going to be informed, especially the men." And she is gone.

Especially the men. Some of us look at each other. Some are grim. Some have twisted smiles. I want to laugh. This could get real ugly. The phrase keeps going through my head. The one day I felt I had to be on campus and this happens. What If’s are running through like bad story pitches: What if he comes back here? What if some PeeVee kids want revenge and come over? What if it’s a gang thing? What if it’s a racial thing? News travels fast. This could get real ugly.

The meeting goes on, not that anyone is focused. We need to get the evidence sheets typed up. Big surprise. I decide I’ll do mine fourth period before Academic Detention. Not that I’m even sure it will happen now. If the red-coats are on alert, then probably the campus will be purged right after school; the administration will want to get kids off campus as soon as possible (cynically, because if they’re off-campus and killed, it’s not our fault). Thus, academic detention could be cancelled. I take a deep breath. I need to pick up conduct referrals to fill out on those students who fail to attend academic detention; while I’m up at the office, I’ll ask if there will be a clearing of campus. I bring my hand up to my forehead. It’s clammy. Shit. I forgot to take some Tylenol before third period. My fever’s probably back. Tomorrow, I am not coming in. The bell rings. The meeting is over.

I link up with Aimee at the door. She asks if I can help her with some WASC stuff after school. I remind her about academic detention. She nods. She’ll be on-campus late. If I can, would I stop by before leaving? Sure. And I’m out the door.

I return to my class. I prepare the room for academic detention and school tomorrow. I pull a substitute lesson-plan from my desk and begin to fill it out. I look up at the clock. It’s already one-thirty. I’ll do this later.

I head to the office, where I pick up the conduct referrals and ask Elizabeth, the principal’s secretary, to set up a substitute for tomorrow. She does, though she’s not sure if she can get the substitute I’ve asked for (a former student of mine from Pleasant Valley--a member of my first English 2 Honors class there--who is completing her teaching credential). On my way out, I see the principal, walking toward the office through the surprisingly deserted quad (usually there are students milling around, especially after lunch, but today it’s empty, giving me more mental evidence of a post-school purge). I wave her down. "Howdy," I say.

"What can I do for you?" No smile, not that I expected one.

"Question. Will there be... with all the ‘stuff’ that has gone down today...will there be a clearing of the campus this afternoon?" She stares blankly at me, like I’m some kind of moron. "I only ask because I have English 9 academic detention today. If there won’t be a clearing of campus, then I’ll know that any students saying that they couldn’t make it to detention because of a campus purge won’t have a legit excuse."

She purses her lips, shaking her head. "No. We’re not going to clear campus today." She begins to walk past me.

I turn to watch her go. Well, that was concise. I begin toward my class. I get two steps before I hear her call me back. I turn. At least she’s smiling now.

"That’s good. That would be really smart of them to say that."

"Gotta keep one step ahead of them." I wave and I’m off.

I retrieve my WASC stuff from my room and go to the computer lab to type my evidence cover sheets then I start working on this journal entry (but I don’t finish it...) ...

[POSTSCRIPT: By the end of the school day (now yesterday), the story concerning the shooting had changed. The shooting had now taken place just off campus of P.V.H.S., only one person was shot (the other was seen as wounded because of blood splatters from the first victim), and he was shot four times. The victim was fourteen and Hispanic. The shooter was still ours, on the loose, and African-American.

[By the six o’clock local television news, the shooting was blocks away from Pleasant Valley, in an alley way. The victim was alone, fourteen, and Latino. The shooter was unidentified, of no known race (though the neighborhood recently has been a "racial powder keg"), with no known whereabouts, and last seen in a small dark sedan.

[By the next day, the only news that was different was that the shooter was a former C.H.S. student, who, according to the principal, had been "on line for graduation," and yet he was no longer on our campus. Pleasant Valley High had gone through a normal school day: increased security but little restlessness. And the police’s usual community contacts had dried up.

[I kept hoping that with each new bit of information, the shooting would finally be placed out of state, done by nobody one anyone I knew would know, with a living, breathing victim. But that wasn’t going to happen... END OF POSTSCRIPT]

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Four

2008-04-12T23:31:00.003-07:00

In the spring of last year, the Pleasant Valley Union High School District came up with the glorious idea of readjusting the WASC schedule so that all five schools (seven, if you count the continuation school [read: the Siberian work camp for repeat offenders] and the adult education department) would do their WASCs simultaneously. While this did not adversely affect Chumash, since we were up for accreditation already, it upset some of the other campuses (Bard, for example, had earned a six-year accreditation only three years ago, but now they found themselves a-WASCing again).

Why the district decided to do this is still uncertain. Some say that it wanted to get such a hellish undertaking over all at once (the only problem being that, most likely, not all of the campuses would receive the same accreditation, so the district will be staggered again within three years). Others, more cynical, claim this is yet another way in which the district wants to compare the sites. This is particularly disturbing for the campuses on the south end of town, Chumash and Mission Oaks, pulling as they do from lower socio-economic populations than the northern campuses (Pleasant Valley and the more affluent and anglo Academy High). Some teachers on the C.H.S. campus already suffer from the "ugly step-sister" complex and this doesn’t seem to let them rest any easier. The more paranoid of the cynics see this as a personalized slam at our campus’ attempt at reform (the district being evil and wanting to do in our block-schedule program at any cost). The real rationale is probably not so conniving. My take has always been that to be conniving, one must be smart, and our d.o. (district office) quite frankly is just not that smart.

The Problem with Substitutes

2008-04-12T23:31:00.001-07:00

Friday, February 24, 1995

It’s after Kyle’s bath and I’m sweating. My fever may be back. I’m not sure. Lisa reads Wednesday’s newspaper on the futon next to the desk in the office. (She tells me James Heriot died yesterday. I think, "Prophecy? She’s reading a paper from day before yesterday.") I should really give it up for the night, but I need to get some more down on the keys.

I’ve just finished the entry from yesterday. And as Lisa heads to the bedroom to read a book, I try to get down some words about today. Today, in any other year, might have been a "mental health day"--one of those sick days taken more for relaxation than for curative value. But this year, it wasn’t all that relaxing. I slept until eleven (I guess my body needed at least that much rest), but then I graded papers and worked on lessons until three, which was when I had decided to go to campus. I needed to pick up today’s papers to grade, grade sheets so that I could figure the weekly grades for the classes, and to prepare the room for Monday morning’s classes.

Those are all lies.

I returned to campus to check on my room and my roll books. I have had very little luck with substitutes lately (save for Maria, my former student, who was not my sub today). Super subs--who can follow a lesson plan and actually teach--are rare; and we lost a great one when Daniels became a full-time teacher. Mediocre subs--who can take roll and at least follow a lesson plan moderately well, making only a few gross errors--are few and far between. This leaves the dregs.

It’s almost as if our district has a sign welcoming shitty subs, like the Statue of Liberty used to welcome immigrants, only our sign reads, "Send us your burnt-out, your shitty, your lobotomized troglodytes..." Now, I know, being a substitute is not a great job, nor is it easy; shitty teachers leaving unmanaged and unmanageable classes with poor lesson plans must make for a negative life-altering experience. But all I ask is that a sub take roll, follow the damned lesson plan, and leave some notes as to behavior...not really all that difficult. But it seems I cannot even get this recently.

Last year, I had left a substitute lessons plans that called for silent sustained reading, a quick peer-editing session for the students’ vocabulary sentences, and then the reading aloud of a single scene from Romeo and Juliet (complete with a character list for the scene, difficult words and meanings, and some notes to put on the board to help the students in their own note-taking). When I returned, I asked my classes how the day went and they said fine. When I asked how the reading went, they stared blankly at me. When I asked about Romeo and Juliet, they went, "HUH?" They hadn’t read the play. They had watched a video. Only it wasn’t Romeo and Juliet. It was a tape on George Washington. Only I didn’t have a tape player in my class. This sub from Uranus had brought his own tape and had asked a neighboring teacher to borrow her VCR to show his tape to my class. He didn’t follow my lesson plan; he never had any intention to follow my lesson plan. The scum bag baby-sat and picked up a paycheck.

Earlier this year, I had another sub who was twenty minutes late for my first class, failed to take roll in any of my classes, and was late again for my fourth period class. Luckily, I had planned video showings of Of Mice and Men on that day. But today I was nervous. I hadn’t planned a video showing for the English 9’s. And today I didn’t know who the sub would be. So I went to school at three.

I didn’t arrive home again until four-fifteen. Since I live no more than three minutes away from school, this is a bad sign.

As I walk on campus, Cindy Daniels comes out of the door of the classroom next to mine (I would call it her classroom, but as she is a first-year teacher, she must travel from period to period... so she shares the room for two periods of the day with another teacher). She asks me how I’m feeling, and when I tell her I’m ok and that I’m checking on my class, she tells me that it was pretty quiet when she poked her head in there second period. This is a good sign since period two is this term’s class from hell.

In the class, all looks good. Rows still in place. No student writing on the boards. The desk doesn’t look too bad. I look at the period three clipboard. Roll has been taken. Good. I see a note left for me from the sub. First period went well. Second period was loud (no surprise) but it "worked better since (he) had a better grasp on the lesson plan." This doesn’t sound so good. Third period was great. Gotta love the Honors class. I see the period one and two clipboards on the desk filled with papers. Good sign.

So I move on to preparing the boards for Monday’s classes and the week to come. And only then do I get around to looking closely at the clipboards. Period two... roll taken. Good. Notes on who had books, who had vocabulary sentences. Very good, just like I asked. A note here that the second period student aide Tricia was helpful. Good. I grade the papers turned in, disappointed in the amount of work that is left for me. Not that it’s too much, but that it’s not nearly as much as I hoped for after giving the students nearly thirty minutes of free work time...academic detentions next week are going to go up, if that can be believed. Then I go on to first period. Wait a minute. Roll hasn’t been taken. No notes on who had novels, or who had sentences. Hardly any new work. Oh, shit. This guy didn’t do the job first period. He obviously needed Tricia to explain to him what was to be done. And since first period doesn’t have an aide, the sub floundered. I try to piece together who was there and who was absent by unreturned, graded work that is left over (and that should have been passed back to attending students today) and work that has been left for me to grade (what there is). But this leaves nearly ten students for whom I have no I idea if they attended or not. Shit.

It takes me an hour to get things in a state so that I can come in on Monday without stress. Thank god I didn’t wait until Monday to come in. I’ve never been able to do that (no matter how sick I am, I come to work in the afternoon of the sick days, either to mop up after the sub and prepare for my return the next day, or to mop up after the sub and prepare for the next day’s sub), and I’m thankful that I’ve come in today, even though I’m now sweating and I’m sure my fever’s back.

I’ll have the weekend to rest. Hopefully.

Hopefully, I’ll never have this sub again.

Evidence and Envy

2008-04-12T23:30:00.008-07:00

Monday, February 27, 1995

[The following used to be the conclusion of Thursday's (2-23-95) journal entry. It disrupted the flow and so I'm moving it...since today (2-28-95), I'm back to working on the WASC evidence sheets...]

The WASC visitation committee wants to know what we are doing in the classroom in the various discipline areas. We have spent the last nine months going over what we do individually, as a department, and as a school, to improve the intellectual and emotional growth of our clientele. Beyond statements of what we do, we have had to provide evidence. And for each piece of evidence, we need to provide a cover sheet, explaining what the item (for example, a lesson, a survey done of students or parents, a piece of student work, or a piece of curricula) does, its level of success, its method of evaluation, and what areas of growth it addresses.

I have two cover sheets to type and one class observation. The first piece of evidence is my multimedia presentation lesson. I have a class watch three films, all based on works we’ve studied in class. Then I split the class into six groups, two per film, and give each group an element of fiction to discuss (it could be character, setting, symbolism, structure, foreshadowing, or the like). First, the group must decide upon the theme of the work, its overall meaning. Then the group discusses how their particular element of fiction helps to demonstrate the theme. The group’s job is then to find examples from the film that show the element and its relationship to the theme. They examine the films on laserdiscs, making notes of when the scenes that support their thesis should appear in their presentations. Once they’ve collected evidence, they create bar-codes for their scenes, and create a presentation in which they use film clips to teach their element of fiction and theme to the rest of the class. The group then presents its presentation.

The second of the pieces of evidence is an expository paragraph writing assignment. The reason I included this piece is that it’s a good example of how Atwell’s Writer’s Workshop (even in a truncated, mutated version) can help poor writers create good product.

During the evidence gathering period, we were asked to observe other teachers. I chose to observe another freshman English teacher, Nathaniel Yoshikawa. Yosh, as he’s known, is a study in opposites. He’s dynamic, yet grammar-centered; he’s structured, yet he lets his class run the show often; he’s intensely into student input, yet he lectures a great deal. While this may sound like it could be a negative, it’s not. He’s simply putting the two sides of teaching together. The yin and yang. I wish I could do what he does in bringing together the two sides; I’m constantly finding myself leaning toward one or the other side of the extreme (too structured, usually, I think). In October, I observed him discussing The Miracle Worker with his English One (college prep) class. The first part of my observation was a straight question-and-answer session. Fast-paced, but fairly old-school. The second part, however, was incredible. Yosh calls it "the Hot Seat." He has a student volunteer sit in a chair before the class and assume the role of a character from a work they’ve read. The members of the class then ask questions to this "character." And the student answers them in character. It’s a great activity, and it was wonderful to watch. In this instance, the girl who volunteered was less than thrilled when Yosh gave her the character of Annie. However, she responded thoughtfully and with just the right amount of attitude to the questions that were posed (some of which were posed in character--the Captain, James--as well). I envied his students.

At the beginning of this year, I was supposed to have taught English 1 Honors, a new pilot course on our campus. In our district, though there are Honors classes in ninth-grade math and science, there are no freshman Honors classes (unless sites elect to create a second-semester, half-year-only Honors class). The stated reason is that since English is such a subjective subject, it would take at least half a year for teachers to decide who should be in such a class. The reason is a sham, a real crock, since we already have a process in place to qualify students for the program, one filled with essays, grade point averages, recommendations, and test scores. Since previous years have found our English department reluctant to buck the trend or to look for loophole, the district policy has stood at C.H.S.. Last year, however, during a discussion of the possibility of creating a 1H class, I raised the argument that since our Honors kids, coming from a low socio-economic background, are in a deficit (this I knew after teaching the English 3 Honors, and seeing them achieve at a lower level than my English 2H classes at Pleasant Valley), we really do need a 1H course at C.H.S.. And, more importantly, that our restructured schedule was the perfect loophole. Spring semester here is a full "year" because of our 90-minute-long classes. This raised a few eyebrows. We ended up adopting the idea of a freshman Honors class, and I would teach it during the second half of the year, with another teacher taking my slot in English 3 Honors.

By fall, however, there had been a shift. Our department chairperson had left us over the summer to become assistant principal at Academy High. This left her slot as department chair and her teaching position as the English 4 Honors teacher open. Much wrangling ensued (which at some other point I may cover, but not now...). Suffice to say, Yosh is now the English 1 Honors teacher and I have the combination 4/4H. And I envy his students. And I can’t wait to have them as seniors (if I’m still around).

[I know this kind of chronological musical chairs is a kind of a cheat, but yesterday was a day from hell: an hour and a half in the dentist's chair, working on a crown for me; an afternoon doctor's appointment (strep for both Lisa and me); a pediatrician's appointment (an ear infection plus congestion for Kyle); and a pharmacy run.

[So sue me, if I didn't write today/yesterday...]

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Five

2008-04-12T23:30:00.007-07:00

In the spring of last year, the site administration appointed Teddi Applegate to head the WASC attack on our campus. It was a brilliant choice. Teddi was the English department head (there was that "let-the-English-teachers-do-it, they’re-writers-anyway" mentality working again). Plus, she was the current Teacher of the Year, not only for the campus but for the district. She was well-respected, but more importantly, she had a wonderful sense of humor, a Texan droll, rather than drawl, that made her endearing and someone for whom you wouldn’t mind working.

Teddi tore into the assignment with brio. She had recently earned her administrative credential, and I believe she saw this as an opportunity to prove her ability to lead a campus. And she did a hell of a job. Starting in April, she laid out the course ahead, not really explaining it, but giving us instruction on what to do and when to do it. She explained that this would be a different WASC, process-oriented. Not many of the faculty really understood this, but Teddi’s directions were so explicit that no one was worried.

There was only one problem. Teddi wasn’t going to be here in the fall.

A Typical Second Period

2008-04-12T23:30:00.005-07:00

Tuesday, February 28, 1995

It's Tuesday, eight-fifty-seven, and I'm on my brisk walk from the faculty lounge, where I've just voided my bladder, back to my room for second period. My second period aide Tricia (one of my Honors students) stands outside my door with the gathering throng. I lock my class when I leave after first period for this urinary trek; I just don't trust this class with an open and unsupervised room (first period I might; with the Honors, most certainly).

I unlock the door and let them in. Since it is Tuesday, I remind the students to have both drafts of their Vocabulary sentences stapled and out on their desks, and to be reading their novels when the bell rings. That is now only two minutes away (I've made my "run" in three minutes...not bad). I head over to my desk where Tricia is settling down, giving her some of the vocabulary from period one to edit (I'll double-check her work and assign grades later). Then I'm back to the door to usher in the stragglers and repeat my work reminders. As I'm pulling shut the door, the bell rings as Jaime is dragging his feet the few last yards down the hall. Close, but no cigar. I point him in the direction of the office, to get a late "re-admit" slip. "Aw, Mr. Walters," he whines.

"You're late..."

"Just by a second..." but he is already turning around and shuffling back down the hall. And I shut the door behind me and enter the class. Two-thirds filled. The class had 38 enrolled in it (at least, as of Monday, when I received three drop notices: one of a student to first period English 9, one of a student who had accrued more than half a dozen absences so far, and one of a student who still had not entered for the first time). So there should be 35 students here. At nine-oh-one, 12 students are absent, and I still have one no-show on the roster. I take roll, first on my daily grade sheet, putting a dot in the corner of the boxes of those twelve students absent, a slash through the remaining no-show, then I transfer the attendance to the official roll-sheet. I will save the computer scantron roll until later; the roll will doubtless change before the class is done.

I then begin to circulate throughout the class, picking up the vocabulary, making note of those students without assignments, docking them one of their possible five daily grade points for lack of work. As I make my rounds, some students hand me re-admits for recent absences, others meet my eyes when I ask where their missing assignments are, but a majority simply read their novels (as they have been directed to do). Twelve of the students do not have their work. I’m surprised; I actually thought the number would be higher for this class (since we have only seven students earning an "A", three earning a "B", and the rest failing [Looking back now, this is about right: ten students passing, eleven turning in work]).

By nine-oh-five, I have taken preliminary roll and collected half of the vocabulary. I think this is a record for this class. Usually, because of tardies and absences and re-admits, roll and administrative duties can drag on to twenty minutes. And just as I’m about to go down the last chevron’ed row, in walk two tardies, Jaime and Eric. Jaime I knew would be late, he of the whining at the door. Eric I should have known would be late. This is tardy number seven for him (on the fifteenth day of class this term). Both give me their re-admits and take their seats. Jaime of course must say a few words to Albert who sits next to him in the right chevron. Sal, who sits next to Eric in the rear--forward-facing--section, talks to Eric who responds. A great (okay, semi-great) opening now disrupted by two tardies. Now this is more like the typical period two.

I stare at the two of them, one after the other, and they stop talking. I look over at the on-board agenda, and they follow my gaze. They take out their binders, and I move on to collecting the last of the assignments. When I am through with the last row, I head over to Jaime, who doesn’t have his work. That’s two points off for the day so far (one for the tardy, one for lack of assignment). I head over to Eric, who hands me some papers. I take a cursory look, as I have done with everyone else’s. There is a problem: manuscript format.

In my classes, I demand that students follow certain guidelines for turning in work. Work is to be done on white notebook paper, in dark blue or black ink. A proper heading needs to be in the upper, right-hand corner, and a title needs to be on the top line. Skip a line after the title and you’re ready to start the assignment. All of this is meant to create a sense of pride in the appearance of one’s work; without pride in at least the look of the assignment (let alone the quality of the work itself), many of these students are without anything. So I try to instill in them a little pride in the appearance of their work, then in their work, and finally in their own responsibility. But we take baby steps first--manuscript format. If the student cannot follow the simple directions of manuscript format, then I will not accept the work. This they know, and this they have known, since the first day of class, when our first assignment was a proper heading.

Eric’s paper has an incorrect heading. The papers are still in his hand as I look them over. "Manuscript format," I whisper and begin toward my desk, where Tricia can edit the meager stack of papers later in the period.

"What do you mean?" Eric demands, in a voice already too loud, again disrupting the class.

I stop. Turn. Move silently next to his desk. Whisper. "Proper heading." Leave him looking at it. When I reach my desk, I hear a watch alarm go off. I turn.

Eric silences the watch. He mutters something to Sal, showing him the paper. Sal points out something to Eric in the heading. I glance at the clock.

I move back across the room, to retrieve my clipboard and resume administrative duties, now looking for students who have returned from absences and need to sign attendance referrals. Eric stops me not with a gesture or a motion, but with his voice, again taking the readers off-task. "You’re not going to accept my paper because of the name?" he demands.

"We’ve gone over this before. Resubmit the work."

As I reach my clipboard, I look over the class. Most are reading. To get the others back on task, I circulate once throughout the room, making note of those without novels (again a loss of a daily grade point). Neither Sal nor Eric has a novel. When I reach the file cabinet again, where I can work on the past attendance stuff, Eric’s watch alarm goes off again. Nine-twelve, it’s been five minutes. He silences it.

I look over the attendance referrals. Alejandra has returned to class, after her eighth absence. I reach down to pull out her referral, when the door opens again. Sandra, another attendance wonder, saunters in. Her tardy is excused; she had been in her counselor’s office. I make note of this on my clipboard and the roll. I continue with the Alejandra referral, walking it over and having her initial her absences, which she does without argument. I fill out more attendance referrals for those students who aren’t here today and who have more than four absences for the new term; I fill out two new ones today and realize I’ll need to make more phone calls this afternoon (when I’m scheduled for attendance review committee [irony, irony]). As I’m finishing filling out the new referrals, Eric’s alarm goes off again; he silences it. It’s nine-seventeen...every five minutes. As I walk by him, I tell him to silence the alarm and hand over the watch. He mutters that he doesn’t know how, and I tell him that if he can’t, he’ll learn how to do it in the office since that is where he will be heading. He does something to the watch and hands it over. I take it over to Tricia at the desk.

At the desk, I decide this would be a good time to return some papers to students before the vocabulary quiz, so I head over to the file cabinet, where I’ve left the papers. As I pass, I notice Eric, not reading of course since he doesn’t have his novel, and I get this feeling--just a hunch--that the damn alarm will go off in another...three minutes. So I head back to the desk to grab a conduct referral, so that I can fill it out now; this way, if the alarm goes off, I don’t have to waste time filling out the referral, I can just send him down. A preemptive strike. As I take a referral from the desk, the door opens again.

Michael walks in. This student is so tardy, he’s in the wrong class. I have him in my first period class. Third week, and he’s already missing seven assignments and failing. Last term, he was removed from my class because of a "personality conflict": he hated me and I didn’t really care for his attitude in class. This term he’s back, but not achieving at any greater level. He was absent first period, but here he is. He walks over to my desk and hands me his re-admit for first period. I look at it then him. "Mr. Brown," I say, since that is what he wants to be called, "This is an excused tardy for this period."

He looks at me, dull-eyed. "I know, but Ms. Villa told me to bring it here." His counselor, the head counselor (and that is a story all its own), has sent him here. Disrupting my class. Great. I sign the re-admit.

"Thanks." I hand him back the re-admit.

He grunts and leaves the class. Unbelievable. I take the referral and head back to the file cabinet, against which I can write. But before I can get there, the door opens and Jon walks in, nineteen minutes late. He hands me a re-admit. Unexcused tardy. I grab my clipboard to mark the tardy; this is tardy number six, which means I’ll need to fill out Jon’s tardy referral (a copy of which was sent home after tardy number four). I’ll have to do this later, I realize when I look at the clock. Nine-twenty (and a half).

I begin to fill out Eric’s referral. I make note of the number of tardies. I check my grade sheet to learn he is missing five assignments; I make note of that, too, on the referral. I make note of the fact that I’ve already sent three letters home to his parents: the expectation sheet (complete with manuscript format instructions) on the first day of class, the notice of the fourth tardy during the second week of class, and a notice of missing assignments last week. And I am signing my name when--

The alarm goes off. I look up to see Tricia looking at me, nodding.

Timing. In comedy, timing is everything. This I note to Eric, as I peel off the back, pink copy of the referral for my records and hand him the rest.

"Where do I go?" He asks, surly.

"Counselor. And take your watch with you." And I hand him his watch, and he disappears from my room. I look around to see heads quickly bowing to go back to reading. I take the pink copy over to my desk and shove it into a drawer. I can feel the period disintegrating with every passing second. I turn to see the door opening again.

Shit. Gilbert is back. I get rid of one asshole to get another back. Gilbert had been referred to the office last Monday (not yesterday, but a week ago) for insolence and disruption--failure to get on-task and mouthing off when asked to get on-task. He didn’t return during that class period. When he showed up at the beginning of the class the next day, I told him to head up to the office and return with the referral from the previous day, signed by his counselor. He did, an hour and twenty minutes later, escorted back to my open door by a red-coat. We were in the midst of Writer’s Workshop, and I told him to get to work. After I finished helping a student with whom I had been working, I looked up to find Gilbert gone, disappeared, my open door empty. That afternoon, I sent down another conduct referral on Gilbert, checking the "Left class without permission" box and filling out the "Explain above or other" section with a discussion of his previous tardy, his late return, his exit from class, and his failure to turn in work. He has not returned since.

But here he is, back from...his re-admit shows excused absences because of SUSPENSION. Great. I sign his re-admit, check him off on my roll sheet, grab his attendance referral (since his is now up to five absences), and hand it over to him for his initials. He takes one look at it and asks (doesn’t any freshman know how to speak in a hushed tone?), "Can I go see my counselor?"

"Sure," I say. "At lunch. On your own time." And I leave him behind to retrieve something from my desk. It is last week’s progress report that I sent home with every student. Gilbert’s never made it home, since he was never here long enough to get it. I take it, fill it out in more completion (since in the intervening week, he has missed an additional four assignments, not counting today’s vocabulary), and hand it to him, telling him to have it signed and returned to me tomorrow. I turn and look at the clock. Shit. Nine-twenty-five.

Inside I’m about to say, fuck it, I’ll return the work during the quiz. I’m about to say aloud, "Ladies and Gentlemen, come to a stopping point in your reading," my customary opening of class. I’m about to do all of this when the door opens again. I am about to scream.

Michael is back. In his hand is a transfer slip. This period just might turn around. I look at it. Haleluyah. The old class first period is my English Nine. My eyes travel over the sheet. Fuck FUCK FUCK!!! The new second period class is my English Nine. Michael is transferring into this class. It is already the class from hell, its class dynamic poisoned by too many lazy, arrogant, tardy, do-nothings, and now I must take in Michael to the mix. Great.

I sign him into the class and show him to his new seat.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, come to a stopping point in your reading. Take out a blank sheet of notebook paper and a blue or black ink pen. Put a proper heading in the upper, right-hand corner. On the top line put the title: ‘Vocabulary Quiz Three.’"

I look at the clock. Nine-thirty. Thirty minutes into the period. And we are only now starting the class proper.

A typical period two.

And They Stole My Door Mat, Too

2008-04-12T23:30:00.003-07:00

Wednesday, March 1, 1995

I am so fucking pissed off, I can barely type.

Today, I stayed home with my sick loved ones, Lisa with the strep and Kyle with congestion and an ear infection. I went to school at one-thirty to prepare for academic detention. The following is the lesson plan I left for the sub:

WRWalters Substitute Lesson Plan Date: 3-1-95

Good morning! The classes have (checked) / have not ___ been prepared for my absence.

Here are a few guidelines to help you have a good day:

1) Greet the students at the door and direct their attention to the on-board agenda.

2) At the beginning of class, circulate throughout the room to get them on task.

3) Take roll as quickly as possible via seating chart, roll book, and computer print-out (on the clipboards).

4) Continue to circulate during the class period to keep them on-task and to answer any questions.

Below are the period-by-period directions. Please leave behind any comments concerning student success and behavior.

Thanks, BW

Periods 1/2; Course: English 9 (Tricia is the aide 2nd period; she’ll grade the quizzes from 2-28).

1) They are to have the rough draft of the 10 vocabulary words on their desks (the first word is ABSURD). As they complete steps 1+2+3 of the DOL (west board), circulate and make notes as to who has the sentences. Please make notes on the highlighted column on the top sheet of the clipboard (A=absent, T=tardy, O=no vocab., X=problem). Also, take roll on the roll sheet and the scantron.

2) Let them read in their novels (after they do the DOL) for 15 minutes. Bring them to a stopping point. Reveal the DOL behind the screen. Go over the sentence and the reasons for the changes. Have the students do steps 4+5 of the DOL.

3) Hand out copies of "The Monkey’s Paw". Read the first paragraph aloud, then have the students read to the end of Part One silently (it ends on page 3). While they are reading, cover the DOL with the screen and put the 2 questions on the board (1. What did Mr. White wish for? 2. How do you think he will get it?).

4) Tell the students that when they are finished with Part One, they are to answer the questions on a sheet of paper (they need to follow manuscript format). When they finish answering the questions, they are to read their novels.

5) When everyone is finished writing, have them read Part Two silently (it ends at the end of page four); while they are reading, put the new questions on the board (3. How did he get the money? 4. What do you think he should wish for next?). Also, hand back old work while they read.

6) Tell students when they finish part two, they are to answer the new questions, then read their novels. At the end of the period, collect the stories, answers to questions, and any old work or make-up work they have. Remind them to show up at Academic Detention at 2:30 (I’ll be there). Hide the DOL behind the screen and erase the questions before the next class.

Period 3; Course: English 4/4H (switch the TV cable switch [on the East wall] to "Antenna")

1) As students read, collect Vocabulary Journals, and put the overhead transparency (which is on the clipboard) on the screen. The Honors students are to do that assignment. Have them turn it in and read their novels (like the English 9’s) when finished. Collect the book checks.

2) When all are finished, show part one of Throne of Blood. Use both TVs and let Tricia or James run the laserdisc player and BarCodes (BarCode one). Put the Act One notes from the BarCode sheet (attached) on the board.

3) When part one of Throne of Blood is over (45 min.), read Act 3, Scene 3 of Macbeth aloud. Have students volunteer as characters: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, 1st Murderer, Lennox and Ross. Allow for discussion.

4) If there is time, do Act 3, Scene 4 (witch and Hecate).

5) At the end of class, collect the Research Paper rough drafts.

Now here is what the sub left for me (exactly):

Date: 3-1-95

Teacher: Walters

Sub: Iris Cxxx

phone no. 482-xxxx

no aide showed up 2nd pd.

pd 1 -- I arrived after class had started as, although I was here early they sent me to the wrong room. So anyway, things were quite noisey. This class was not great as, it was hard for me to try + take roll, read notes etc. all at once. I wasn’t quite clear on DOI (sic) but, checked off ones who showed me voc words + the DOI sentence.

We then did "Monkey Paws" + answered questions. But, the worst thing they did was someone in 1st pd/ put gum on your chair, I sat in it without noticing it was there + therefore got gum on my pants + gum on your chair. -- I’m sure my pants are ruined + can only hope you get gum off your chair. I don’t know who did it, if I did they would have had a referral. (I didn’t realize until 1st pd students were gone.)

p.2. From not-so-good to just terrible. This 2nd pd. class was one of the worst classes I’ve had, as a teacher + as a substitute. Of, course the highlight was a fight between two students -- Luckily I was able to get between them + push black kid outdoors. Two other teachers came to help or their (sic) would have been a fist fight in class. If this wasn’t bad enough a 2nd fight almost broke out between Michael --- + another black kid. Luckily, it wasn’t quite as bad. I got Fines outside + Gilbert got the other kid to sit down. I think black kids in 2nd one was Jon ---. The only reason Gilbert didn’t get a referral written on him for early loud talking, not taking directions (sent outside 2) was I appreciated him helping keep the 2nd incident from escalating.

Others particularly bad was Diane --- continuous talking + no work done, Hector --- talking, fooling around. + others I don’t know names of.

Also, when the fight was going on they changed my name to Mrs. Horney and put FUCK on the board.

The first fight broke out when I asked Hispanic boy to read and black boy made some comment that I didn’t hear. + he (sic) 2nd argument came about according to Michal (sic) when he said something about Jon? liking boys, or something to that effect + guess it made Jon mad. They did settle down a lot after the first fight + the two boys leaving. I think perhaps maybe even a class discipline for boys + Diana. (other girls no problem, Jonathan --- okay) because if they get away with this they’ll be even worse for next substitute, so, feel that strong measures are needed.

pd 2 -- Glad to report class went very well -- Great kids, no problems. Watched movie + read "MacBeth"

I am now ready to quit. Tonight I go off to a kind of call-back for the Quorum Electronics job. I’m ready to take anything offered.

Fallout Begins

Thursday, March 2, 1995

Today was a really long day. The first two periods I kept them silent and working. I had both classes write about their impressions and responses to yesterday. And their responses were interesting to say the least.

During first period yesterday, students got up and changed seats, something they never do when I am there. They failed to listen, made fun of the sub, and talked without remorse. No one admitted to the gum on the chair incident. Typical "sink the sub" behavior. Disappointing but not too surprising.

Second period, however, had been shocking in their depravity. Hyperbole this ain’t. They walked in. They turned on the television (the school’s video period is second period, and we have the option of viewing the student version of CNN at the beginning or at the end of the period; I choose the end, so that I have control over whether or not we watch it). They switched channels. They switched seats. They flew paper airplanes. They fought. Over reading. One student told another who refused to read aloud (which you, oh careful reader, will remember was NOT part of the lesson plan) to "Just read, punk," which escalated into a full-blown confrontation (a colleague of mine joked that I must be doing my job if English Nines are fighting over reading...hardy har-fucking-har.). They wrote on the board. They stole marking pens. They fought over racial/sexual slurs (this is still unclear, even after the class’ explanations). They left the room a mess. They didn’t return all the copies of the story.

I find the behavior the classes reprehensible. Of course, I’m also learning more about the sub. Hamm tells me that after she had once had the sub in question she thought the lady was loony tunes; and the third period kids thought she was wiggin’, too...though after what she had been through, who could expect any less (or more). Some of her remarks I found disturbing to say the least, though. Her racial remarks and her less than conventional compositional style gave me pause. And the fact that the class was able to do what they did (especially the stuff they admitted but about which she had no idea) frightened me, too. But it still does not excuse their behavior.

Which brings me to... Academic Detention. Most of my period one kids showed up. Most of the period two kids didn’t (big surprise). So I spent about twenty minutes yesterday afternoon writing up conduct referrals for the no-shows (about twenty, all told).

During both classes, I had students who failed to attend yesterday’s academic detention sign conduct referrals and sent them (the referrals, not the students) up to the office. By the end of the day, I had received back the stack of referrals, with Saturday Work Detention assignments stapled to each. Finally, some action.

Less satisfactory was the response to the second period problem. Students who are involved in fights are supposed to be suspended. Yet all four "fighters" from yesterday were in attendance today. This I brought up to one half of the discipline team (to whom I refer as "Bubba Gump"--stoopid is as stoopid does). When I asked what the repercussions were for fighting, I was told that it is suspension. I explained the situation with the sub; I included copies of some of the student responses which named names. Then I handed over the names and student numbers of the offending fighters. The assistant principal (not the aging "failure hatchet man" [who is neither Bubba nor Gump] but another one, the African-American one, one of the three we have on our campus of 2400 students), he took one look at the four names and said, "You’ve got a heck of a group in that class. I recognize all these names." This means all of them are discipline problems. And he knows them already. As freshmen.

"That’s not the half of it..." and I rattled off four more names, Gilbert, Javier, Sal and Hector.

A whistle. A shake of the head.

"And I haven’t even started with the girls. This class has the worse dynamic that I have seen in nine years of teaching. It is the class from hell."

"I don’t doubt it."

"So I want sanctions. Hard ones. I want examples made."

"I’ll talk to John." The Gump half. "He supposedly handled this. I remember seeing Andrew in here yesterday. I’ll talk to him first thing in the morning...he’s not here right now...expulsion hearing...and we’ll see what we can do."

"I’d appreciate it." I said this, and I meant it. But I also knew what he meant by his statement: I’ll talk to Gump...and that’ll be it. No repercussions.

As usual.

Bright note: they didn’t steal my doormat. They threw it away. But Paul, god of mortals, super-janitor, employee of the month, saved it from the trash. God bless him.

It rained today.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Six

2008-04-12T23:30:00.001-07:00

By April of last year, it was widely known that I was no longer going to head up the Drama department (all one of me). My reason was simple. Lisa and I were expecting Kyle, and my days (and nights) of getting to campus at seven and not leaving until seven because of rehearsals or eleven because of performances were over. I wanted to be able to say I raised my son.

This, of course, left a problem. Every teacher is supposed to have an adjunct duty, one in which s/he is involved extra-curricularly. Some advise classes, like the Junior class and its prom; others time events at track meets; others are in charge of clubs. Drama had been my duty. The new Drama teacher would take over the Drama Club, so now I was adjunct-duty-less.

Teddi Applegate to the rescue. She needed an editor for the WASC report. I would be that man. And for my time (and Aimee Hamm’s, too, for she would be my co-editor), I would not be assigned with an adjunct duty. I would be spending "a few prep periods, now and then" doing some inputting and editing, but it was better than announcing basketball games.

By the end of last school year, Aimee and I had already logged more than two dozen hours on the report. And more would follow.

A Bright Shining Moment

2008-04-12T23:29:00.005-07:00

Friday, March 3, 1995

This morning at ten-forty-eight, my day and my week turned around. After asking Bubba if he had talked to Gump, between first and second periods--he hadn’t but the stuff was on the "top of his desk"--and feeling for certain that the administration was doing nothing; after sending Jon to the office with a referral for insolence and failure to do the assigned task, with a note attached that he was one of the four "fighters"--only to have Gump show up at my door later in the period, knowing nothing of the second fight but saying that he remembered taking care of the first two; after making sure that second period knew I was fully and completely in charge--by announcing the sanctions for the class (no food, no drink, no gum, no pencils, no leaving seats, no writer’s workshop, new grammar texts for daily exercises)--and settling in for a two week probationary period of "drill and kill"; after all this grinding me down even further, second period ended and before the five minute passing period before third period was over, four different students from the English 4/4H class had pulled me aside to tell me that they had received their acceptance letters from UCSB.

Their smiles, the fire in their eyes, their enthusiasm psyched me up again.

I had mentioned to them yesterday that I was feeling really down about teaching, even that I had had a job interview the night before. One student even asked sheepishly if I would be around to the end of the year. The question touched me. So after the short opening segment of silent sustained reading (of novels and plays from a list that should help prepare them for the A.P. exam), I brought them to a stopping point.

"Guys," I started, "a couple of things before the Scottish play." I launched into quick lesson/spiel on the UCLA style sheet requirements and how to format their research papers. Then I began my real point. "A couple of you have voiced a little concern about my... my career...philosophy." I smiled. "Don’t worry. I’m still here. Until the end of the year at least. Might even be here next year. Who knows?

"What you’ve got to understand is that no matter how much you love your job, no matter what your job is, you’re going to go through times when you hate it, when you think it sucks."

They laughed a little at this.

"But it passes. This past week has been rough, the worst I’ve ever had. The closest I’ve ever come to something like this was during my first year here. I was ready to say ‘See ya," ready to pack it in. I remember nights when I’d be curled up on the bathroom floor, fetal position, sobbing."

Their faces turned from smiles to...I don’t know what I’d call it. Discomfort? Yeah, probably. At what I was letting them in on, as if teachers should be infallible, nonhuman, above it all.

"I remember telling Lisa, ‘I gotta get out of this. I just can’t do this anymore. I hate this.’ And then two weeks later, it passed. And I loved teaching again. I don’t know what did it. Maybe it was Drama. I don’t know. Maybe because I started writing again. I only know it happened. And two weeks from now, all this could pass, too.

"But what you’ve got to know is that as bad as this week has been, right now, this moment, is the best I’ve had all week. Maybe all year. And you guys are the reason why. I mean, this is the time of year that can turn it all around. Because in the last fifteen minutes, four of you just came up to tell me that you’ve been accepted to college... college? Bullshit. UNIVERSITY."

They laughed again at my momentary lapse into profanity.

"And that means everything. I know I can’t take credit for your being accepted to universities. But I sure as hell can feel proud that I was around when it happened. And it feels good."

They smiled up at me. And it did feel good. I meant every word of it, even the stuff about the possibility of a next year. It felt very good, indeed.

Then we launched into a pretty solid reading and discussion of Macbeth. Thinking back on it now, it brings back memories of "A Night with the Bard" back at PeeVee, of other bright shining moments.

And even though I learned later in the day that the two fist fighters from second period were supposed to be out of my class yesterday (and in "In-House" suspension, giving my class the impression of some kind of consequences for actions), and that since the administration obviously cannot control discipline on this campus (because I’m supposed to send up the two students Monday so Gump can "take care of them")--even beyond all that, I walked away from campus today not feeling too bad at all.

I had had a couple of good moments of school today.

And Kyle took his first little steps last night (at eight and a half months...like I’m not proud).

And tomorrow I turn thirty-two.

Bardophile

2008-04-12T23:29:00.003-07:00

Monday, March 6, 1995

Today, we finished Macbeth in English 4/4H. We ended the play in a flurry with a fury. Usually, I take new volunteers to read at the beginning of each scene, sometimes stopping to act out a moment of the scene, often stopping to discuss an aspect of the language--foreshadowing, symbolism, imagery, scansion, characterization. But in Act Five of the Scottish play, we zoomed through, picking characters once, not breaking between scenes, pausing only to discuss the truly necessary literary aspects.

It was a blast.

Some--and at times like these, I think, most--of my favorite teaching moments have come through the study of Shakespeare. In the late twentieth century, the study of the Bard can be a hazardous undertaking, even with one’s peers, but I’ve never shied away from it.

In my first year of teaching back at Pleasant Valley, I was teaching sophomore English. The generally accepted tenth grade play is Julius Caesar. Now while this play is a classic, filled with great philosophical discourses on the concept of power, it’s not exactly action-packed or funny...in other words, not exactly sophomoric. So I asked my department chair if I could teach The Taming of the Shrew on top of JC.

Not in lieu of...

No. In addition to...

And it was with an old, withered smile (the visual equivalent of a pat on the head) that she let me try it that next year. But, she told me, her voiced graveled by decades of cigarettes, it won’t work. The kids won’t get it. What she didn’t know was that I would do anything, ANYthing, to get them to get it. We would begin the unit with a discussion of what the students wanted to see in the movies they attended and the videos they rented. Sex and Violence. Today. And four hundred years ago. I told them about Taming and Titus, sex and violence for the Elizabethans. We talked about the theatre...its sights, its sounds, its smells. I would jump on a desk (still do [even in my thirties] when introducing the Bard), and have the students pack in like sardines to get a feel for what it must have felt like for the groundlings (shoulder to shoulder, for two hours in the sun, no breeze, no intermission, no chairs...Shakespeare had BETTER be entertaining).

We read the play aloud, scene-by-scene. Twice. Once, stopping constantly, to get the meaning of the words and the speeches and the scenes. Then once more into the breach, getting the students up on their feet if I had to, to get a feel for how the scene played. I found old hats, put the names of characters on them and had the students wear them--which was particularly helpful during the scenes in which characters were in disguise. And, in the end, it worked. They understood...and because they understood Taming, they better understood JC because they had a better grasp of the language.

It all came down to the language. And so, even with my English Tens, we read the play in its original, not the watered down, or the "translated", version. We took it slowly, too slow for some of my colleagues, but not only did we make it through, we made it through with understanding and, for some, an appreciation and a love for the language.

By the time my second year rolled around, I had the English 2 Honors class. While I hated to see Taming go by the side, I knew this was an opportunity to teach two tragedies, side by side, a great chance to better prepare my students for the A.P. exam, two years down the line. Thus, each year I backed JC with another tragedy--one year Macbeth, another Othello, another Lear, then back to Macbeth (always switching to keep myself fresh, not bored)--always teaching the similarities and differences between the tragic heroes. Every year’s Shakespeare unit started with the link to their own tastes and it always ended with their tastes merging with Shakespeare. Most enjoyed Shakespeare because they understood it.

At the end of my second year, I asked my department chair if I could teach the Shakespeare course that was on the books, but never offered. She gave me that smile again, that visual pat on the head, and the same warning. But in the fall of my third year, thirty-nine students were signed up for Shakespeare. Half a year for the Bard. In that inaugural year of the new course, we covered selected sonnets, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, and Pericles (all early examples of their respective genres), writing major essays on each of the plays they studied in class; outside of class, they had to read another play (from one of the genres, off a list), on which their final exam essay (comparing it to the discussed play) would be based. Our twice through readings made comprehension and appreciation a given, but it was the in-class acting out of sections that made the class a success.

Not only would we act some scenes out, but we would talk about possible directorial concepts. I told them of the hackneyed Errors concept of setting the play in the circus, under the bigtop (since the play is filled with clowns or at least clownish behavior). I had student volunteers take a scene from the play and create a concept for it. One student set the play in Jamaica, with its inhabitants high on weed, thus allowing for their not-so-bright decisions. Another had as the basis of her direction costuming, use of colors to delineate the brothers. Others did gender switches. One great one was the use of blind servants, explaining much (in that scene at least, though it wouldn’t work for the whole play, of course). It was these directorial concepts that became the basis for our annual presentation of Shakespearean scenes, "A Night with the Bard."

Originally created to pay for the copying costs for the makeshift text for our second-semester class, Modern Literature, "A Night with the Bard" became an animal all its own. We created a production crew, though none of us had put on a play before. A special education student, too shy and without the memory to perform, became our lighting director. Two girls, leaders but not performers, became the executive producer and stage manager. Nine directors came up with scenes, edited their texts, and chose their actors from the class. Everyone had a job. It was going to be an event.

Word was getting out, and some of the faculty were starting to look at me like I was Kurtz in the jungle. Some voiced their concern that I was asking too much of the kids. And I took pride in relaying these messages (but not the messengers) back to the students. They don’t think you can do it. But I do. And they did. We took over a local junior high school, since no high school in our district has a theater facility of its own (all have gyms--fancy that--but the acoustics are shit). We went in on a Sunday, set up the stage and the lights, and ran a tech rehearsal. That night we tore down the stage, only to come back the next afternoon to set it all up for that night’s performance. After the show, we broke down the stage, took down the lights, cleaned the room, and left it better than when we had found it. It was guerrilla theater, in and out.

We had hoped for fifty or so parents. We set up seventy seats. This was a mistake and I should have known better. If you set up too many seats and don’t fill them, when your actors come out and see empty chairs, it kills their performance. The show was to start at seven, the doors opened at six-thirty, and at six-twenty-five, our first customers showed. My parents, ever supportive, and my first wife. No one else. Shit. We are gonna die. We let them in early. Six forty, a trickle started. I was sweating like a pig. I ran backstage to change into my sport coat and to take one look at my prefacing material, the prologue to Henry V, and to wish the actors "break a leg." I met with the directors to quell their fears and to make sure they were ready to introduce their works. And I headed back into the "house."

In five minutes, everything had changed. There must have been forty people there. And a line at the door. Hot Damn. I smiled at the house manager, who asked if we should get more chairs. Don’t get cocky. I told him to wait. By six-fifty-five, we had over eighty people in the house and house crew scrambling for more chairs, even taking some from actors backstage. It was wonderful.

We didn’t start until seven-ten; it wasn’t until then that the flow of audience slowed. We had a hundred people in the house. And I took the stage. I welcomed our audience, and told them that this was students’ night. This was Shakespeare directed, edited, acted, produced, lit, and managed by students. These scenes were experiments, and some would be more successful than others, but all had succeeded because they were being produced. Then I told the audience to imagine a great set, wonderful costumes, and a state-of-the-art theater, because imagination would be the only way they would get it...and I presented the prologue to Henry V. And the show started.

I stood in the back of the house, with the directors. After a director would introduce her/his scene, s/he would come back and stand with me and watch the scene. The first half went well with some strong ideas (including a Richard III opening soliloquy with three Richards, each a different aspect of his personality; a wild Julius Caesar and Calpurnia being greeted by Decius--as played by Ronnie, Nancy, and Ollie, respectively). The big cards were set for the second half. A great A Midsummer Night’s Dream "Pyramus and Thisby" would close, preceded by a solid Petruchio Taming Kate, preceded by what I was sure would be a fine Comedy of Errors piece. The Errors director, Wanda, was less than sure, however. She was nearly in tears when she left the stage to stand at my side. As the lights dimmed for the scene, she looked up at me, panicked, and said, "What if they don’t laugh?"

I smiled. "They will." I hoped. Maybe she was right. Her scene was filled with puns and verbal humor in the first half, before the sure-fire slapstick kicked in. I crossed my hands and fingers behind my back.

The first verbal joke hit. And missed. Not a single laugh. And I could sense Wanda tense beside me. I wanted to reach out and put my arm around her, touch her shoulder, something to allay her fear, but I couldn’t move. I was too scared for her.

The second joke...a laugh. One person. The third...a half dozen people. They were getting in the rhythm of it. A few puns later and the entire crowd was going off like clockwork. Then when the physical stuff went off, so did the audience. Wanda looked up at me again. Her eyes were still wet, but a good kind.

"It worked," she said and jumped up and hugged me.

"Told you." I couldn’t see the stage clearly. My eyes had misted over, too--though I told teasing students later it was because I was laughing too hard.

So I lied.

My first three years had had some great moments. But nothing touched this. This was the best instant of my teaching career. It’s still a highlight.

And the Nights of Shakespeare that followed kept those moments of watching students turn to creators and adults coming, making me feel more than ever that this process-to-product-oriented education was where it’s at, whatever it is. By the end of my time at Pleasant Valley, I had students directing forty-minutes suites from Merry Wives, complete with a false-bottomed Falstaff, an eye-patched Ford, a comically unintelligible barkeep, busty mistresses and truly merry wives; entering drama competitions and pulling awards away from some of the better high school drama programs in L.A.; acting in local community theater productions of Shakespeare; and--most proudly--still producing "A Night with the Bard" after I had left PeeVee (with no teacher having taken over the class in my absence)...proving that the students could and would do it, even without an adult advisor.

Of course, Shakespeare didn’t desert me when I went cross-town to Chumash. My first mainstage drama production here was a twelve-member-cast Romeo and Juliet, with every actor doubling and tripling up on roles (save those playing Romeo, Juliet, and Lady Capulet). It wasn’t completely successful...my mostly underclassman cast was inexperienced on stage, let alone with Shakespearean verse, and I had to replace my Juliet with only four weeks to opening. But it’s still my favorite of the shows done here. We had a kick-ass sword fight, truly humiliating Tybalt, which prompted him to kill Mercutio with Romeo’s dagger, some neat double-casting (Mercutio/Prince, Paris/Tybalt, Friar/Montague) to show some symbolic connections, and an interesting recutting of the final scene in which the Capulets arrive just in time to see their daughter drive the dagger in.

And every year, I teach R&J to the English Nines. And they get it. In the original language. My colleagues are always impressed with how well the standards (the non-college-prep students) know the play. That makes me feel good.

What makes me feel even better is the fact that I know why. Students rise to the occasion if we take the time. They understand and appreciate Shakespeare if we don’t make it a chore. And when they understand Shakespeare, they let him help them to understand their own lives. No one teaches the human condition like the Bard. Not to the Honors level student. Not the CP. Not the Nine.

Even the Nine.

Remembrance of History Past: A Change in Attitude

2008-04-12T23:29:00.001-07:00

I had done my student teaching down at Venice High in LA. When I used to tell people that, the usual response was "Wow, were the kids down there really bad?" or "Is it really as bad as they say?" The answer to that response is No. Of course, at my for PeeVee, my time in "the trenches" was impressive as I was about to go into what was called "a very particular demographic..."read relatively high minority, not all college bound, medium socio-economic stratum.

But I was lucky, I had access to CP, Honors, and GATE (Gifted And Talented Enrichment) students as well at the "particular demographic." In my five years there, I had students who went on to UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford, and Ivy League schools. Most of my Honors (and many of my CP) kids went off to four-year colleges. This is because most of them wanted to and their parents pushed them. And since the parents pushed, I could push even harder in my classes. I received great work from them and they were accepted into top schools. Everyone was happy.

Everyone but me. I was thrilled with the work I was receiving from the students, but not always thrilled with the students themselves. Many were beginning to grate on me as arrogant, bordering on snobbish. I had come back to this community because I had wanted to help kids like me. In fact, I had always wanted to teach back at Chumash... only I felt awkward my first interview there. I wanted to return as a successful teacher, a great one; only at the time, I was fresh out of the teacher credential program, a mere five years after leaving Chumash’s lockered halls. I didn’t think I was ready, so I took advantage of a certain pulling of strings to get me at PeeVee. Five years later, however, with Frankie over at Chumash, with my experience at PeeVee giving some level of success and respect within the district, and with my growing ambivalence with my current situation, I was ready for a move.

When that move was made, however, I was in for a shock. A move of less than five miles south seemed a continental shift in attitudes. PeeVee had been the home of not always successful, but usually motivated, students. Parents may not always have been there at Open Houses (I averaged about five per class in non-Honors level classes), but most at least seemed interested in their own child’s progress. Chumash was different.

At first, I denied there was a problem, any difference. I attributed it all to the classes I had on my schedule. Video Production and Drama were my preps, and since both classes were non-track electives, the two classes had become infamous as dumping grounds. In the first two terms, I saw only a handful of CP-level students (and all of them were freshmen... mis-scheduled). In my first year, I saw no parents at school functions and was able to make very few positive parent contacts. My visions of being at a paradise were slowly slipping away.

When I received my term three schedule, however, I saw my slide turning around and beginning to soar. Replacing Video was a SAT preparation class, titled under "Advanced Grammar." Frankie had known my successes at PeeVee and could see me starting to chafe under my schedule, so she gave me this plum. The top juniors in the school, the ones--mostly Honors-level--who actually were planning to go to college, were a part of the "two percent solution," that small percentage of Chumash graduates who went directly to a four-year university. This would be great.

WRONG.

Instead of finding a small group of motivated students, burning with an almost obsessive desire to score well on the SAT and win admission into a good school, what I found was a small group of students with their hands out, expecting a good score but not wanting to work for it. They expected, as one student put it, to be given an "A" because they had gone to so-called effort of taking an academic elective. They wanted good health because they put some veggies on their plate. Only they didn’t want to eat the vegetables.

Well, they ate it, all right. I pushed just as hard as I had the year before at PeeVee. It was like pulling teeth. But SAT scores went up in the Verbal section a little the next year. Of course, only half the class received A’s... and nearly a quarter received gift D’s (I failed no student, though--looking back on the grade sheet--four deserved it... who says I ain’t a nice guy?).

The course underscored the difference in students at the two campuses. At this end of town, students had been coddled, patted on the head in an attempt to give them good self-esteem (as opposed to helping them succeed at difficult tasks in an attempt to build self-esteem), and told that since they are disadvantaged they deserve special treatment (when they should be told that they need to work even harder to overcome their disadvantages). The students had been programmed for laziness. And these were the top students in the school. I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t expect the best from them.

Frankie learned the same thing. One thing I always admired about Frankie the Principal was that she would always teach one course a year, to keep her in touch with what was going on in the classroom. She taught the "Advanced Grammar" course fourth term (when there was a sudden jump in student who wanted to take Video and I was back in the so-called "studio"). So she got "in touch" with this different "particular demographic."

And the SAT prep course was never offered again.

Raison d’Être

2008-04-12T23:28:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 7, 1995

I’m in the middle of my introduction to Hamlet for the 4/4H’s (after a dismal pre-quiz; it seems no one in the class has read the play twice as I warned/urged/asked them to do). We’re going over Act One, Scene One, on the battlements, and I’ve just told them to forget everything they know or think they know about the play (but it seems they’ve already done that before the quiz). We’re looking over the statements of Barnardo and the actions of Marcellus; we’re dissecting them to find out what Denmark is really like...we don’t know who the king is, only that he’s dead (and with a title that includes "Prince of Denmark" this is important), we see military preparedness to the point of paranoia, and yet the military discipline seems pretty lax. I’m in the midst of all this, when I notice a young woman pausing by my open door.

If it were two weeks from now, I’d figure that she is a member of the WASC visitation team, ready to observe me. But since tonight is Open House, and yesterday I sent grade/progress reports home with the English Nines (including a checklist of all missing assignments and an invitation to Open House), I’m thinking this attractive young lady is a mother. Yes, she’s young. But, I’m the same age as the mother of one of my English 4’s, and only two years younger than the stepmother of one of the 4H’s. I don’t look all that old (I was still carded last Christmas), so I figure this might be a parent. I stop my presentation, mid-point.

"Hi. Come on in," I call out.

She smiles sweetly. Almost shyly. She seems reticent to talk. So I chime in.

"May I help you?"

She smiles wider. "You probably don’t remember me..." And she lets that hang in the air.

A student. Obviously a student. My mind races. I haven’t a clue. My brain is flipping names and faces--none connecting--like a roladex. The face looks like a student I had here at Chumash, but the hair is all wrong, wrong color, wrong cut. The hair...ah, now the smile. It hits me. A student I had in my last year at Pleasant Valley. She was a volleyball player. An English Ten. But into poetry. Lord Byron. Yes. And her name is... "Erin?"

The smile breaks into a full grin. I’ve hit it. "Kiffany."

Oh, shit. Blew it. I feel like an ass. A mass chuckle rolls through the class. I was right originally, it is my former student from Drama, my first year here. "Oh, my god. How are you?" I recover.

"Great. I just wanted to drop by. Say hello. They told me you had a break..."

I look at the clock. I hold up my hand, fingers extended. "Five minutes?"

"Sure."

"Have a seat."

She does and I launch back into my discussion of the state of Denmark. But my mind is working overtime, trying to piece together Kiffany.

If I remember correctly, she was a member of my Drama class in Fall 1991. Wait, didn’t she baby-sit kids at Lisa and my wedding reception? Yeah, I think so. We had rented an extra room at the hotel, where Kiffany took care of the kids of party guests. Big success. She was having trouble in school. Thinking of dropping out. And then she did. I never saw her after the winter break that surrounded our December nuptials.

The period ends, and students leave on their desks their research papers, packeted in manila envelopes. The last students leave for fourth period--no lunch today, since we’re on a minimum day schedule for tonight’s Open House (the union says if we have to be here tonight, we don’t have to be on campus this afternoon...though I will be for Academic Detention for the Nines). And Kiffany rises. Now I look at her and remember. She used to be blonde, longer hair, not the strawberry almost-pageboy she now wears.

Before saying a word, she surprises me with a hug. When she releases, her first words are "Thank You."

I must look confused.

"For helping me. I’m a junior now at Cal State Northridge."

My mind does some mathematical mental gymnastics. Three years ago, she was a junior starting to drop out. Now she’s a junior at a university. But she was bright, that I remember. I smile.

And she begins her story as we sit down, I on a back section desk, she on the desk in front of me, turned around to face me. She tells me that she is here to thank me and Mindy Rose, her counselor and the former head counselor (and I really need to get around to getting that story down on paper). Without our help she says, she would have never made it.

I search my memory. I really don’t remember helping her much. I listened to her when she would bemoan how bad school was, how she couldn’t stand it, how she wanted out. Maybe I said some words of encouragement...I don’t remember. I remember giving her that wedding-night baby-sitter job. We gave her a hundred bucks for the entire night, but... I just don’t remember being that helpful. Mindy, I understand.

She goes on. She says she learned more study skills in Drama than in any of her other classes...Good God, Drama prepared her for college. This must explain why, by the time I stopped teaching Drama, so few kids were taking it... Chumash’s just not a college prep kind of school. Anyway, she goes on to tell me that she ended up going through Adult Education to get her diploma, then to Ventura College for her associate’s degree, and now on to Northridge to major in psychology.

Her story is wonderful. She and her parents reconciled (and suddenly so many memories of her tales of arguments and desperation flow back); she’s living with them now as she takes classes at the Ventura extension branch of the university. She is married; her husband is in the army, an MP in Korea. She wants to go into professorial teaching or family counseling; her husband wants to go to college on the GI bill and then join the FBI. My god, a young couple with a plan. And she is only nineteen (only a year older than some of the students who had just left the room).

She glows as she tells me her plans. Finish this year at CSUN. The summer off to Korea to stay with her husband until the fall, when he’s due to transfer up to Washington State, where she’ll resume her studies. They’ve timed it so that by the time he’s ready to "early out," she’ll be looking for psychological residency. She had told me then I would be proud. And I am. I’m stunned. It’s been such a lousy two weeks that this is most welcome news.

She smiles when she says that she must have been a nightmare to have in class, which is why she’ll teach at the college level if she teaches. High school must be awful, she says, and I can only smile and laugh. She doesn’t know. It is awful, but in moments like this, it is also the best. This is why we teach. For moments like this, the successes.

We compare wedding days...as it turned out we both had our weddings at the same chapel. She is stunned when I tell her Lisa and I are now parents, and she fawns appropriately over Kyle’s pictures on the wall, all the while saying how she and her husband are going to wait (jokingly) ten years. I give her my address, and tell her to keep in touch, that I have loved hearing from her, this wonderful news.

Hugs later, she is gone and I sit alone in the classroom, stacks of papers to grade, Academic Detention impending, and Open House tonight (with its inevitable dismal turnout). With those three facing me, I should feel down. But I don’t. And I won’t for days, at least. Kiffany has brightened my day.

And once again I feel like I do make a difference. I think of my former students. A full dozen that I know of have majored in and graduated with degrees in either English or Drama. Five are teaching or planning to. I have made an impact. And this is why we teach.

I just hope it isn’t just "glory days" talking.

Open House

2008-04-10T21:39:00.010-07:00

Wednesday, March 8, 1995

Today, I have just finished working on WASC stuff with Aimee, putting together binders containing notes for the report. It has taken over four hours to organize the notes and put the binders together. And while other teachers in the district go to different in-service meetings and workshops, I take these few moments to type in a few words about last night.

Last night was Open House. Usually that means a half-hour meeting in the gym followed by parent visitations to the classrooms. In past years, I’ve offered extra credit to students whose parents attend. At these Open Houses I usually average ten or a dozen parents; that’s with the extra credit and a daily class load of 105 students (back at Pleasant Valley, I’d usually see two to three dozen parents out of 175 daily contacts, but that was with an Honors class). The Honors parents tend to show up at a slightly higher rate than college prep parents, and CP parents show up at a much higher rate than standard students. Even without the offer of extra credit (another bold experiment this year) I had expected to see a dozen or so parents because of the 4/4H class.

I arrived at six, to grade some papers and to put together a display for the English showcase table...this a new activity for Open House. Each department was to set up a table, tooting its own horn and showing what innovations it is using. I put aside examples of my students’ BarCode presentations. At six-thirty, I headed over to the gym. I picked up a program and looked around. Not many people, though our department was gathering. The table looks pretty good. Ms. Harris’ Creative Writing class’s greeting cards looked great, as did the visual interpretations from June Tsuko’s Reading class, and Gloria Henson’s Latino Lit course. I squeezed my disc, BarCode, overhead transparency, and BarCode wand onto the table and mingled in and out of conversations.

John Lead--anti-Pulp Fiction-man--asked me if this year it seemed as if I was working harder doing the same material for diminishing returns. When he mentioned it, it did occur to me that I had felt that way. He nodded, then shook his head. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. So I mingled more, as some parents started to wander into the gym and about the tables. Two younger male teachers talked about their basketball league and how they needed to "bail" early to get to their eight o’clock game. Then a special education student who has been mainstreamed into my English Nine class brought his mother over to meet me. My first parent for the night. We talked, I noted his maturity (an affectation that most of the class--second period--hates, but I admire the attempt), and she was supportive and caring. He then saw his NJROTC commander and they went off to accost him, too. I turned around to see Aimee talking WASC to Mary. I gave the program another glance and smiled... They’d appreciate this.

I walked over and asked if they had seen the program. They shook their heads. I opened it up to show them, and as they perused the opening paragraph, I read it aloud to them in my best game show-host voice:

Please join us on Thursday, March 7, 19945, for "OPEN HOUSE"...

6:30-7:10 General Parent Meeting
7:10-7:15 Cookies & Coffee in the gym
7:15-7:45 Incoming Freshman Parent Orientation
7:45-8:45 Visitations to classrooms

Yesterday was Tuesday, not Thursday. They had to hand-correct the mistaken year. The schedule for the activities was from last year, with no mention made of the departmental showcase.

Now that’s evidence for WASC.

When Bubba announced over the public address for everyone to have a seat, I decided my seat was in my classroom and I repaired there to grade more papers. But before I could grade a single paper, a period one English Nine parent arrived to question me as to why her son--surly and at her side--had academic detention. Why wasn’t she informed earlier that her son was missing assignments? Well, I explained, her son is a slug, a real shit who does nothing in class, and one of the assignments the idiot’s missing is the progress report from two weeks ago that outlined earlier missing assignments. Okay, so, those weren’t the exact words, but I was wishing they were, the way he kept interrupting her as she tried to get answers from me. When I informed her of the situation, she turned on him. It seems he is another special education student, one with a resource period to help him with the work he has in other classes. His resource period is second, right after my class. He had claimed to his mother he never has homework, that he did it in resource. Yet as of Monday, he was missing five assignments. She reminded him that he has no excuse, since third period is NJROTC and he has no fourth period class. This guy has only one academic class and he’s failing it. She left with a weekly outline of assignments and when they are due, as well as the upcoming writing assignments. We’ll see if it works.

I sat down to grade papers. But before I could start, Lisa walked in with Kyle. Fantastic. We talked a bit, then we decided to walk around, visit some other teachers and show off the boy. We visited my next-door neighbor, Jane, a great French teacher whom we are losing at the end of the school year; her husband has just been accepted to UC Berkley’s optometry school. Next, we visited Mary in the library, where Kyle walked a few steps. By then, parents were trickling out of the gym and it was time to go back to my room. Lisa took Kyle home and I settled in for the parental visitations.

All five of them.

I saw two more English Nine parents, both of sweet girls who are receiving A’s in class. Three parents of English 4 students showed up, I think, fearful that their students were being pushed too hard in the 4H combination class. I allayed their fears, especially since two out of the three are doing very well. So I had seven parents for the entire evening. My daily student count is around 93 (artificially low because of the small 4/4H class), and I still only saw seven parents.

I am particularly disappointed by the complete and total lack of Honors parents. Maybe since I had most of these students as 3H’s last year, and they met me at "Back-to-School Night" in October of ‘93 (on the night after Frankie Hunter died), they felt no need to see what their sons and daughters were doing. Typical C.H.S. parental support, all duly reported to WASC as something our campus needs to improve. But how?

I’m not sure about the total school turnout. Aimee’s was great, over two dozen. Bruce Metcalf’s was mediocre, around a dozen. June had ten. I’m willing to bet the administration will pump up the school-wide numbers.

But we know the truth. WASC is coming.

Two weeks and counting.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Seven

2008-04-10T21:39:00.009-07:00

The New WASC has ten "easy-to-follow" steps. By the end of June, Teddi had moved us through three and a half of them. We had looked at our campus and community, and created a profile for our school and surroundings. We had devised a list of Expected Schoolwide Learning Results, goals we expected every Chumash graduate to be able to accomplish by the time s/he leaves our hallowed halls. We responded to the last WASC committee’s recommendations within our departments. And we began to look over the new discipline-specific questions and rubrics for our departments, devising responses and trying to come up with tangible evidence which supported these responses. Meanwhile, Teddi had divided the staff, as well as parents and student volunteers, into "focus groups" which would examine the school from specific perspectives (like how the support agencies on campus--the counselors, paraprofessionals, aides, custodial, and library staff--respond to the needs of our clientele). We still had over six steps to go. But we were moving in the right direction.

When Lisa gave birth to Kyle on the last Monday of the school year, I was out of the classroom, with her and my boy. I had brought in a long-term substitute, my old English teacher from C.H.S., and one of my mentors from PeeVee (the string-puller). In the days following Kyle’s arrival, I received a call from Teddi, telling me of my teaching preps for the coming year; this was part of her job as department chair. She told me that in the first term, I would be teaching two sections of English Nine and a section of English One. Okay, at least the two preparations were on the same grade level; this meant the pieces of core literature to be covered would be the same between the two courses. This was a gift, since she knew I would be spending extra time working on the WASC. Second semester looked even more promising. I would be teaching the new English 1 Honors class. Plus, I would be sharing a class that was to have been taught by a dynamic young teacher, Nicole Myers, who had since transferred to Academy (depressed by the prevailing administrative attitudes on our campus, and, I believe, frightened by the descent of student behavior [twice in the past year, students have gone into drug overdose seizures in her classroom]). Nicole was to have taught a Creative Writing course backed up to a Grammar course (one term apiece). With Nicole gone, I was going to get to teach the Creative Writing half, while the department’s grammarian (and a former teacher of mine) Cookie Harris would teach the Grammar half; during the term when we would not be teaching the elective course (as individuals), we would split an English One section, I taking it the first half while Ms. Harris taught Grammar, she taking the freshmen the last half while I taught Creative Writing. Also, I would teach another English One section. This sounded great. Teddi also mentioned a couple of WASC items, and I told her I’d be around later in the week to go over them with her. She told me there was no rush; she was going to be putting her new administrative credential to use as principal for the first session of summer school, and I could drop by to talk any time.

And so the first few weeks of summer passed rather nicely. I was home with Lisa and Kyle. I cannot fathom how other new families and fathers can do it without time off. I would have died if I had to go back to work right after Kyle came home. Even with feedings, changings, and exploring new sleep patterns, I was loving the new experience of fatherhood.

Well, just before Teddi’s four-week stint as principal ended, I went in for my visit. She showed me some WASC stuff on her desk, wondering aloud if I wanted to take it home. I declined, figuring I would see enough of it during the fall. She smiled, nodded, but said nothing.

A week later, I received a phone call from our principal. Cordial. She even asked about Kyle. Nice. Then she dropped the bombshell. Teddi had applied for and received the assistant principalship at Academy. Shit. My mind did a quick once-over on this. That means we need a new department chair. Our fearless leader couldn’t be calling me about that: department chairs are elected by the department--administrative interference is strictly verboten. Not like this would be the first time a principal tried. Wait a minute...that means we’ll need a new English 4 Honors teacher... But before the thoughts could fully register, she dropped the next bombshell.

"Would you like to head up WASC?"

Interesting. Would I like to head up WASC? Flattering. But no way. I had given up Drama for one reason, to spend time with my family. WASC would be hell. I would have no time for my new family. Would you like to head up WASC? That was phrased as a question. And questions assume a chance to decline...

"Well, to be honest, I gave up Drama to spend more time with Kyle, and--"

"You’d have an extra resource period," she interrupted.

True, but I was seeing how much work was going into WASC, and I knew an extra resource period wouldn’t cover the headaches alone. Plus, with my luck the class they’d take away from me would be the English One. "That would help, but I don’t think it would be enough. I really don’t see how I could accept it--"

And I was about to go into what I would feel as a sense of betrayal to the Drama kids, taking on a huge, time-consuming responsibility after I had given up their activity to have more time with my family. I was about to say this, when she cut me off again. "I understand. Thanks."

And she hung up on me. No good-bye. Just click.

Now I was on her shit list, I was sure. But I didn’t much care. I had only grudging respect for her to begin with (in my mind, I was constantly comparing her [probably unfairly and unflatteringly] to Frankie, up to whom no one could measure). She had reprimanded me for not cutting the script of Other People’s Money, our fall play last year; she found it too bawdy on opening night, called me into her office at 6:55 in the morning the next day, and told me to cut two scenes from the remaining performances (I was relieved that I had submitted my letter of resignation two days earlier). I had received no support from her when I had a run-in with the Migrant Education counselor later in the spring, nor had I any support from her in getting new locks on the Drama room door after two unforced (i.e., keyed) break-ins. And now she had asked me a question, and when she received an answer she didn’t like, she hung up on me. I would have had more respect for her if she had given me an order. But she didn’t.

And I put the whole thing out of my mind.

The Grind

2008-04-10T21:39:00.007-07:00

Thursday, March 9, 1995

Second period again. Thirteen absences. This down slightly from the seventeen gone on Tuesday, during the minimum day. This week has been very subdued. The new and improved Stalag Nine has started: no gum, no food, no drink, no pencils, no moving around, no Writer's Workshop, no freedom, no excuses accepted for lack of materials (no stuff = instant referral, which they have to fill out). Monday, I gave out three referrals for lack of reading book. I also distributed progress reports to the students, outlining not only their grades but their missing assignments and behavior as well. Monday was also grammar book check out day. It was the beginning of their two-week probationary period.

Tuesday was Open House day, Academic Detention day, the day they were to return the progress reports, and minimum day--so I knew attendance would be down somewhat. But seventeen absences is ridiculous. Yesterday was a staff in service day, so I had many referrals to hand out today, most for missed Academic Detention Tuesday, a few for missing materials, and Michael for disruption, mouthing off and a lack of materials (Jessie Stanford-Jones, the head of the special education department, pulled me aside yesterday to tell me that the department hadn't forsaken me; they are working on Jon and Michael, the latter has a special conference tomorrow to move him into Special Day Classes). The referrals were sent after roll and collection of both this week's Cultural Literacy assignment and the remainder of the progress reports. By the time this was finished, it was nine-thirty-five.

We went over today's DOL (daily oral language; I write a horribly incorrect sentence on the board--today: he has a bite on his line janice exclaimed as she runs over to help her Brother--the students copy it, correct it, then write the reasons for their changes; later in the period, I write the correct sentence on the board and the reasons for the changes, we discuss the changes, and the students make adjustments to their versions).

I checked off the vocabulary sentences (rough drafts for next week's list) and had them self-edit them; the students without sentences had this short opportunity to write them. Then we kicked into the Cultural Literacy. I had them take notes for next week's assignment; I went over the items, putting some concepts on the board, but having them take notes from what I say as well as from what I write. This week's material is from classic myth; I had a blast going over the Oedipus myth.

Then we dove into the grammar book. Today, they had four assignments, necessitating the use of two of their three pens, as well as their ugly orange books. Another referral to a student for lack of the text. And it took most of the class most of the period to finish the assignments. Drill and Kill. The Grind has begun. It keeps them quiet and working.

The only good thing about all this is that a few students are raising their grades since all work is done in class. The bad things include: more grading for me (since Tricia's senioritis has kicked in and her attendance is becoming spotty); grammar for the sake of grammar is not my idea of the greatest methodology or pedagogy in the world (though some of my departmental colleagues would disagree); plus I hate using work as punishment. But of course, punishment it is, and it is better than copying the dictionary (another punishment two of my colleagues have used and suggested).

I have already graded the assignments from today and discovered than many of them need "Do Overs"--meaning that they have failed to earn an A or a B on the assignment, so they must do it over until they do. This guarantees that they get the work right, and in this case forces them to work even harder. I have very little sympathy.

In thirty minutes, another round of Academic Detention begins. I expect a slightly better turnout than Tuesday, thanks to the referrals. We'll see.

Evidence of What

2008-04-10T21:39:00.005-07:00

Friday, March 10, 1995

Today, before I went about my task of going over the 4/4H research papers, I dropped by the library. Just another opportunity to avoid work and make a small human connection with an adult on campus. Mary was putting the new sign on the old "media room" when I came in. The media room had been where she used to store all the old media equipment. During the past year, however, our principal decided in her infinite wisdom that it would be better if the room was turned into a "professional room," a workspace for teachers, a kind of technical room where teachers could create multimedia projects, or work on computers to build lessons (never mind that we don’t have the computer workstations to do this). Our fearless leader simply told Mary to remake the room in this new image, one that would impress the WASC visitation committee.

That had been before winter break, during which I put together a wish-list for Mary to submit. She knew I was interested in such things and that I could create an appropriate list of necessary machines and software. I did. Much of it wasn’t approved, but at least the principal now knew that the Library/Media Center was serious about bringing technology to the teachers. If you don’t count the blinds to create privacy in the room (which arrived a month ago), the first addition for the room arrived today: the sign--"Professional Room: Teachers ONLY". Yes, we now have a sign. And Mary was putting it on the door when I came in. Of course there was a problem: the old sign ("Media Room") wasn’t coming off the door without leaving chunks of adhesive still clinging ugly to the door. So Mary was putting the new sign just beneath the old one. It looked very professional.

Right.

Anyway...

As I asked her how the end of her week had been, she started recounting today’s visit to the library by a new member of the school district’s board of trustees. No, not the guy arrested outside a local bar a month ago on suspicion of attempted murder (this is no lie, though he was released because of conflicting testimony... of course, wags on campus, I included, started wondering if we should start putting our "no weapons allowed" posters in bars now). No, not him. The other guy. While the work experience teacher was impressed by the new trustee--"Looks like we might finally have a winner on the board... he actually said, ‘Each school has different needs.’"--Mary was less than blown away.

The new board member had told her that he "hadn’t been in a library in years" after asking if this was, in fact, the room’s function. That’s the way to instill confidence. Our fearless leader, who was taking the trustee around on the tour, pointed out the new, but signless, Professional Room and told him that this room was going to be the area in which great new innovations would be hatched, and that a certain teacher on campus--insert my name here--was an "expert in interactive video."

What a crock. I can use laserdiscs, I can BarCode them, I can teach students to do that and to create HyperStudio stacks that incorporate text, graphics, and segments from laserdiscs. If that’s interactive video, then I know some. But a real "expert"? Hardly. "Interactive Video" is a catch phrase she heard another principal using, and now she wants to be on the bandwagon... just as some of the other principals in the district are demanding that their media centers be connected with the Internet. They all want to surf the ‘net without knowing what’s out there (which is why one of those principals now wants to be disconnected, since he has learned what immoral matter can be accessed). Oh, brother. Needless to say, Mary and I had a humorless laugh over that one--over that one and the fact that with ten days to WASC, no new equipment has been placed in this "professional room."

I helped her position the new sign on the door. "A little up on the right side..." She made an adjustment. "Good." She began to press it onto the door. "Oh, no. It’s--" I watched her body tense. It was too late: the sign was attached. She jumped back to look at it.

"Hell. It’s straight." She did a slow turn to look at me, to find me smiling. "Funny." She looked haggard. Unamused.

We talked for a bit, going over weekend plans, and I queried her on what Lisa and I needed to bring to her annual St. Patrick Day’s bash next week. Later, yawning, she bemoaned the fact that she didn’t think that the next two days would be enough rest, having spent extra time here every day this week, either reloading software into media center student computers, working at Open House, or working on WASC focus group evidence boxes. But she nodded her head at me and said, "But I bet you’ll be working on stuff, too, right?"

"Not even. I’m avoiding the Hammer. That’s why I’m not in my class right now. Harder to hit a moving target." I smiled, almost proud of myself.

"Too late." Mary cast a look beyond me, over my shoulder. I turned to follow her gaze.

Aimee Hamm, folders in hand, wry grin on her face, was walking across the semi-deserted library toward us. "Got those notebook cover page roughs for you, Bill."

I smiled my most fake, shit-eating grin. "Gee, thanks, hon. But I didn’t get you anything."

She scratched the side of her face, just outside her right eye with her middle finger, the other fingers retracted in a fist. And she smiled back, handing me the sheaves of yellow legal pad.

We shot the shit for a few minutes, and Mary launched into a wonderful story of trying to get Open House attendance numbers from the front office. She had talked to Bubba Gump, whom she has now christened Dumb and Dumber (while I hate to have my creation of a moniker topped, I do have to admit that she’s much closer to the mark than I). In the midst of her story, she was called away to help a student out, leaving Aimee and me to discuss her delineation of who was Dumb and who was Dumber; Mary refers to Bubba as Dumb and Gump as Dumber. Both Aimee and I found this to be a flawed assessment: Bubba is much dumber than Dumb. We mentioned this to Mary as she returned; she concurred then went on with her tale.

She had gone into the office Thursday to gather evidence for the Support focus group box. She thought some discussion of parental attendance of Open House might be of some benefit to the visiting committee. She first questioned our fearless leader, who sent her to Dumb(er). So she questioned BubbaDumber. He wasn’t sure. But he was willing to think out loud on this one.

"Well, it’s funny. I never knew how many people the gym holds. But on Tuesday night, when I was walking around, I saw the capacity sign. It says twenty-one hundred. So I’d say we had about eleven hundred."

Mary had been incredulous. "What?"

"Well, the gym looked about half full to me. And half of twenty-one hundred is eleven hundred."

At this moment, Aimee and I were looking at each other and smiling. The imperfect math aside, this incredibly high estimate could call for only one response: yahright.

Mary cut us off. "I told him that there was no way in hell that there were a thousand parents in there. So Dumber scurried off, left me in his office for a moment. And I could hear him talking next door to (Gump)Dumb. I could hear Dumb tell him that his estimate was around two hundred and fifty parents. Dumber tried to convince Dumb of his estimate, and the two settled on five hundred. So that’s the administrative estimate of attendance. Five hundred."

Aimee and I stared blankly at Mary. That’s still a little high. But Mary only smiled a perverse grin and shrugged.

"So I told him to write up an evidence cover sheet and put it in the box. I’ve done my job."

And on that note, I knew it was time to do mine. So I headed back to my class to work on the 4/4H research papers. In the midst of them, at four o’clock, just when I was realizing that there was no way I was going to finish them before heading home for the weekend, Aimee came by.

Her arms were full of papers and in her hands were her car keys; she was obviously on her way out and home. She looked depressed.

"What’s up?" I asked.

She set her stuff down on a student desk and leaned against it. "I just learned that Mary isn’t running for leadership team." Her head, shaking from side to side, dipped to look at the floor.

uh-oh. The Leadership Team is the elected group of teachers, counselors, administration, and support personnel that will lead the campus into the reforms outlined in the WASC report’s Action Plan. Two weeks ago, ballots went out to every staff member to nominate members for this team (which would be comprised of seven teachers, one counselor or librarian, one from the support staff, one from the administration, with an additional member, a parent, to be elected from the PTSA). Last week, the staff members who were nominated were notified and were given a private opportunity to accept the nomination; they could either state that they accepted the nomination, decline the nomination, or by not returning the nominating sheet decline silently. So it seems, Mary declined the nomination.

Here’s where the problem comes in. I never turned in my nomination sheet. So I declined silently. Last week was the week from hell. Last week, I left this campus saying, "Fuck it, I’m outta here." Last week, the last thing I wanted to do was tie myself to this school for another year. The problem was/is that if Aimee is this bummed that Mary isn’t running...

But I had to come clean. "Well, Aimee. Neither am I."

She snapped to look at me. Her face was unbelieving, like say-this-is-a-really-bad-april-fools-joke-three-weeks-early-please-say-it-SAY-IT.

I shrugged. "I can understand where she’s comin’ from. She’s burned out on this. Except for you, nobody’s worked harder on this than her--she. She’s had it with WASC, Aimee."

"And what about you?"

"I’m not sure I’m gonna be around next year." I had run into Aimee last Wednesday, after the Academic Detention on the SubDay from Hell. I had told her how frustrated I was, even--in confidence--that I was going to a job interview that night. She should understand.

"Are you transferring?" And I suddenly saw fear cross her face. Nicole had been her best friend on campus last year, and last spring Nicole had transferred to Academy.

"No. I’m not sure I’ll be teaching." Her head bowed again. "Look. It wouldn’t be fair for me to say in June, July, or August, ‘Hey, guys. I’m not going to be there in September...find yourself a new guy.’" Both Aimee and I knew that Leadership Team members would be going through some intense in-servicing during the summer to prepare them for the task ahead. Her head bobbed a little. "If I knew that, on June 16, I was gonna love my job, be absolutely sure I’d be back in September, I’d have run for the Team. But that’s not the case."

"You know, even I was thinking of not running. I’m burned out on this, too, Bill. But how would it look if the WASC chair suddenly said, ‘Sorry, guys, but I don’t believe in the process enough to be a part of it’? It’d look like shit. I couldn’t do that. But now I’m afraid I’m going to be alone in this."

"Who else is running?"

And we went over names. Some very good people. Other focus group chairs. Solid reform-minded people. But not Mary. And not me.

"Fuck, Bill. We need you."

"Well, that’s not going to happen, my friend." I tried my best Paul Reiser. Not a response. "Look, a few years ago, when I wanted to leave PeeVee, I put myself in a position where I felt obligated to stay an extra year. And I really got bit on the ass that year. I hated feeling that way. I’m not the kind of guy who can abandon ship, just bail, when he’s got responsibilities. And let’s face facts: If I run, I’ll be elected. So I’m avoiding responsibilities now, so that if I need to make a move, I’ll feel at ease to do so. I can’t let myself get bit on the ass again."

"I understand that..." she let it hang in the air, let it fade, as she picked up her stuff.

She headed out the door, and I followed. Outside, she said, "Well, this has been uplifting..."

I hate moments like that. I get very honest. I say things that I usually want to keep inside, safe. "Look, Aimee, the bottom line is this. It’s fucked the ballots had to be in last Friday. You know what a fucked week that was for me. If it had been today, things might... naw, would have been different. This has been a great week for me. Period two is starting to come together, I hope. I’ve been enjoying teaching again. I had a student come back, tell me how great I am, lifted my spirits. This week has been good. I’d have accepted the nomination this week. But last week...

"Let me tell you this: I can do just as much, maybe even more, from the cluster groups. Grass roots stuff. You know I’ll support you through the process. I’ll be your foot soldier. I can carry out the plans out in the trenches. I can influence in the field."

"That does nothing for me right now."

I tried.

She started to walk off. "I hope you feel like shit tonight, Walters."

"I’ll cry all the way home."

She looked over her shoulder. "Lucky for you, it’s a short ride. See ya on Monday." I couldn’t tell if she was smiling.

"Have a good one." It sounded hollow. I meant it. But it sounded weak. And for the first time I felt like I was jumping ship.

No, I had to stand firm. I was doing what was right for me. I can’t live my life for the school anymore. I have my own life to live. I’m doing the right thing.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Eight

2008-04-10T21:39:00.003-07:00

A few days after the fearless leader’s phone call, I was on campus, to begin moving my stuff into my new classroom. Since I was no longer the Drama teacher, I had to get my stuff out of the Drama room and move it into Nicole’s old room. This was a stroke of luck; she had a practical palace of a room--two televisions, new desks, a new whiteboard, two file cabinets. Fantastic. Of course, I had to move my stuff myself, only to find that one of my colleagues, when he (or she, as I would learn later) heard Nicole wasn’t returning, had swiped all the new student desks from her--my new--room, leaving me with desks at which I probably sat fifteen years earlier. In the midst of this discovery, I ran into Aimee Hamm on campus. She looked fatigued.

"What’s up?" I asked.

"Don’t ask, Walters. I’m an ass. Do I look like an ass? Don’t answer." She looked over her shoulder to see her husband John (a teacher at Bard) and their thirteen month-old son Devon coming around the corner, catching up with her.

I smiled. "What happened?"

"You hear about Teddi?"

I nodded. "Great for her. Shitty for us."

She shook her head. "No. Shitty for me." I arched an eyebrow. "I’m WASCing." I started a slow nod and a smile began to expand over my face. I couldn’t contain it. "What? What’s so fucking funny?"

I started to laugh. "When did you get screwed, I mean, promoted to WASC-goddess?"

"Funny. Wednesday. Why?"

"Afternoonish? Two? Three?"

"Yeah..." She started to look suspicious. "Why, Bill?"

"I turned down the job."

"Turned it down? What do you mean turned it down?"

"Just what I said. Boss woman called me up. Told me about Teddi, then asked me if I wanted the job. It was a question." I look at John, holding Devon. "A question means you can refuse, right?" John nods slowly, a smirk widening. "So I refused."

"No."

"And you wanna know what she did? Grey hung up on my ass." I laughed. "Hey, if you’re gonna ask a question, you better be ready for a no. Either that, or don’t ask the question."

"You shit. Well, she learned her lesson, all right. She didn’t ask me; she told me she needed me to do it."

"Well, at least she’s getting smarter. You did get the extra resource, right?"

Aimee nodded. "Like it’s enough time."

I smiled. "That’s why I said no. You gotta learn Aimee. N. O. No."

She gave me the finger. "Well, buddy, I’m telling you now, your life is shit, too." I must have looked like I was stupid. "I’m no longer editing the damn thing. You are. Solo. And I’m going to work your ass."

Just Another Day

2008-04-10T21:39:00.001-07:00

Monday, March 13, 1995

Today, the hottest piece of Viking News is yesterday's (Sunday’s) Ventura County section of the L.A. Times. It seems we were featured in an article that I overlooked in my cursory read yesterday morning. The slant of the article was a comparison between our block schedule and the schedule at a Newbury Park high school, which is a variant of ours.

The picture wasn't very flattering, the gist being that the schedule seems to be working there but here it's a failure. The impression that I received from people who have read the article (or at least said they read it) is that the article raised questions as to whether or not our schedule is suited for our clientele. Well, the clienteles are most definitely different. They have a predominately white, upper-middle-class, college-bound clientele; ours is mostly minority, lower socio-economically, with seemingly fewer collegiate opportunities (though this last aspect, I think, is merely a self-fulfilling and -defeating prophecy). Another point of the article was that our upcoming accreditation is forcing us to reevaluate and change our flawed and failed schedule before we lose our accreditation.

Neither of these is hard fact, nor are some of the statistics cited in the story (the higher fail rate is completely inaccurate, and the higher dropout rate under the block schedule than before, while partially true [if comparing this year to the year before the shift in schedule...by two-tenths of a percentage] is completely contradicted when comparing it to last year [by nearly a full percentage point]). It certainly has placed many here on campus in a tizzy, however; most are feeling on the defensive. There's a copy of the article highlighted and posted in the teacher's lounge (I just gave it a cursory read...it seems somewhat biased against us, but not the hatchet job that the cynical conspiratologists on campus would have one believe). Also posted is our principal's written response for the op/ed page. Not bad in stating our case and the problems with the story (including the fact that the reporter talked to the principal for only ten minutes, talked to three students at lunch, talked to no faculty or staff, then wrote the article), but it has the air of frantic denial written all over it.

The running gag on campus is that it's a good thing this came out yesterday instead of a week from now, with WASC on campus. Of course, I'm doing a little bit of mental addition. If the principal gets the letter in the mail today, then the Times will receive it tomorrow or Wednesday, and the printing of the response will be Friday, Saturday, or Sunday...the day the visitation committee arrives in our fair town. The fallout of letters could be reaching a crescendo next weekend or early next week, just in time for that morning paper to be slipped into the hands of a visiting WASCer.

In comedy, timing is everything.

The Lounge Lizards

2008-04-10T21:38:00.009-07:00

Tuesday, March 14, 1995

When I first started teaching, lo those nine years ago, I was warned by my mentor Frankie Hunter, to pick and choose my acquaintances carefully. Don't fall in with the wrong crowd, she warned, and though I initially felt like a high schooler all over again, I quickly learned what she meant.

On every campus, there are the idealists, the pragmatists, and the cynics. There are the revolutionaries and the bitchers. Hang out with one particular group and you are seen as a member, but more importantly you begin to take on their traits. We may all claim individualistic freedom and initiative, but the argument of nature vs. nurture goes back at least to Shakespeare and we still don't know if its our genetic make-up or environment that shapes us. At PeeVee, I had my mentors and my fellow rookies, and I basically kept to them.

I am, by nature (or is this nurture?), a creature of habit. I am also physically lazy (definitely nature). My room at PeeVee was number 105 on the far west end of campus. The faculty cafeteria was clear on the other, east, end. In my first year, I was simply too lazy to make the walk at noon. I ate lunch in my room, which also facilitated my coaching of the Academic Decathlon team (this was when and where we met). I always seemed to be in a rush, so I never had time to hang out in the staff lounge too much. I didn't much like the atmosphere in there.

Physically, the place smelled. Cigarette smoke had soaked itself into the walls, and you couldn't make it through the room without tangibly feeling it. And since I don't smoke, but I had to pick up my mail and messages from the room, this made my desire to stay in the room non-existent.

Emotionally, the room smelled, too. Of something burning. Bitterness. There were teachers who would spend their entire prep period there, some ate their lunches in there, many spent more time than was necessary to pick up their mail there before and after school. And they were NOT there simply to pick up mail or to run off dittos (the lounge still had the one working ditto-master machine on campus; the Xerox machine was elsewhere, in a smoke-free environment). They were there to talk. About students. About their jobs. About their classes. About other teachers. Other schools. Politics, and how it related to our field. The administration, site and district (located just across the street from PeeVee [which of course made Pleasant Valley teachers feel watched, put upon, yet simultaneously ignored...yet another ugly step-sister complex]). They were there to bitch.

At first, I saw these teachers, mostly the elder statesmen of the staff, as the burn-outs, the soon-to-be-retirees. I didn't want to associate with them...I didn't what their bitterness to scald me. But my perception that they were burn-outs really wasn't the case. Or if it was, it was only one part of the puzzle.

As I said earlier, there are idealists, pragmatists, and cynics. Notice I didn't say burn-outs...burn-outs come from all three categories, as well as from the revolutionaries and the bitchers. The idealists, usually young (but like liberals they can age rather obnoxiously), are the ones who see teaching as a calling, something divine. Many rarely marry, carrying on a nearly monklike existence, or they marry other teachers and their lives continue to revolve around the holy crusade of defeating ignorance. I used to see myself as a part of this contingency.

Then there are the pragmatists. These are the grunts, the foot-soldiers in the war on ignorance. These are the teachers who slug it out, day to day, year to year, planning during the summer, getting to school two weeks before the school year begins, staying late almost every night, and always seeing the world around them as a possible teaching tool. Many have a love-hate relationship with the profession. They love the teaching, they just hate all the baggage that comes with it--the hassles with administrations, the system, some of the kids. I think I am a pragmatist now, now that I no longer live for teaching.

The cynics are a different animal, actually many different animals, there being various species of the cynic. One is the natural cynic, who sees teaching as a quasi-government job, one in which s/he can do as little as possible and still pick up a pay-check. These people should be shot (or forced out of the profession). Luckily, there aren’t too many of them. Then there are the burn-out cynics, usually idealists who, after years of watching society shit on and disrespect the profession, have suddenly turned their backs on their former faith like heretics and now simply live for the past and bemoan the present situation (unlike the aging idealist, the burn-out cynic believes nothing can be done, and lives and teaches in a kind of siege mentality). These should leave the profession. And then there are what I like to call the devolutionary cynics, those who began their careers as either idealists or pragmatists and who have moved slowly from idealist to pragmatist to cynic. They still, for the most part, love teaching, and the creeping hate has moved in on them so slowly that they have a hard time realizing that something is wrong with them and their job. They don't realize that they may need to leave the profession.

And I wonder if I'm devolving into this kind of cynic.

Lately, I find myself spending more and more time in the staff lounge. I try to rationalize it. It’s more pleasant now that it’s smoke-free. I'm growing older. Before, when I was in my mid-twenties, I could relate to the students more than to the staff. I had them in my room constantly. We liked the same music (mostly), we saw the same movies. We had a connection. But now, I'm growing older. Our connection is growing weaker and weaker. And when as before I could relate to only a few of my teaching colleagues (some of whom I had had as teachers of my own, other were old enough to be), now I am reaching a point when I am just a little younger than the average teacher on the Chumash campus. Now I relate to my colleagues as well as or better than I do with the kids. Thus, I’m in the lounge more than I used to.

I’m there before school, and now I actually sit down to read my mail. I’ll have a conversation with someone before heading off to class just before the warning bell rings. I go there between periods one and two, so that I can void my bladder, my only opportunity to do so between seven-eighteen and twelve-twenty, when lunch begins. I go by at lunch, and then I might even lean against the couch and talk. I check my mail after school, maybe make a parent phone call from there, and chat with a peer, before heading to the library to talk to Mary, Liz the library clerk, or Kathy the textbook lady.

I rationalize this by saying that I’m merely trying to be social (something I’ve never cared for in the past), that I’m just trying to stay "in the loop" so that information doesn’t pass me by, that I’m only trying to have some kind of connection with some adult on campus.

Sometimes I don’t know what is happening or what has happened to me.

I used to be a revolutionary... I still would like to see reform. Only I see myself bitching more than I used to. The only problem is that we all know there’s nothing more stupid or unnecessary than a revolutionary cynic. And there’s nothing more dangerous than a cynical revolutionary.

Remembrance of History Past: A Stat

2008-04-10T21:38:00.007-07:00

When I was taking my teacher credential program courses at UCLA, I heard a statistic that (at the time) I thought was frightening. As I try to remember it now, not only does the fear fade but so does the exactitude of the stat itself.

Supposedly a study had been done and the result was that the average new teacher lasts an average of five years in the classroom. Or maybe it was that a large percentage of new teachers quit before the five-year mark. Or maybe it was that five years was the point at which most new teachers quit.

Whatever it was, I found it frightening then.

Of course, now, it’s not as frightening.

When a WASC Visitation Committee came to observe us back at PeeVee, I was in my fifth year. One of the Committee members warned me of burn-out and cited the statistic again; she wanted me to cut back on my extra-curricular activities and intensity (fearin’ for my future, I s’pose). I laughed it off. I was already feeling the burn--the need to get away--but I knew that next year would be different.

Next year, I would be at Chumash.

WASC is Coming

2008-04-10T21:38:00.005-07:00

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.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Nine

2008-04-10T21:38:00.003-07:00

By the end of last summer, the writing was on the wall, so to speak. Aimee was WASC woman, Mary and I her faithful companions; Mary was helping on the leadership team and the focus groups, I was working on the writing and editing of the report. Aimee and Mary attended seminars and workshops on how to prepare for the WASC; I was handed stuff to input into the computers. And the school year had yet to start.

When school did start, more work began. Aimee had her regular prep period plus a resource period, in which she would work on the report; these two periods fell during third and fourth period. This was too bad...my prep period was second. We wouldn't be able to work together on this. However, on the plus side, Aimee could hand me material to work on near the end of first period, I could work on it during second, and hand it back to her at the end of second, and she could finish up on it during third and fourth.

And that was the way the first two terms went. I'd spend at least one prep period a week on WASC stuff, while Aimee slaved away usually two hours a day on the report. This was the typical. Atypical were those times when extra work had to be done. Aimee wanted to put together a presentation to show the staff the process for creating the "Focus on Learning" WASC report. This was an opportunity for me to put together a HyperStudio presentation, creating "cards" of information (text and graphics) that would be presented to the faculty via a computer-linked overhead projector. The presentation used rudimentary animation and fades to teach the staff the ten different steps of the process; for the first three steps, after the description of what needed to be done was shown, the words "Been there, Done that!" were plastered over the step. This made the staff feel as if we had accomplished some stuff in the past, and that we were moving in the right direction. We even linked the presentation to a laserdisc player, and at the end of the presentation, Aimee asked the staff what would happen if we failed. Out of the television then came Bill Murray and the Ghostbusters giving the answer: We're talking a disaster of Biblical proportions...Old Testament stuff. Wrath of God-type stuff...The dead rising from the graves. The rivers and seas boiling. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.

The presentation was a success. The staff enjoyed it, and better yet, the three of us had the distinct impression that they understood the process.

We were wrong.

Pregnant Pause

2008-04-10T21:38:00.001-07:00

Thursday, March 16, 1995

Only a quick note before another session of Academic Detention (actually before Hamm tracks me down in the Professional Room to put together more WASC stuff... and then AD...):

I just received back one of my attendance referrals on one of my second period charmers. Alicia, out now already over ten days. A Xerox copy of the referral, with the following hand-scrawled note from her counselor (Rose): "Referred to Rio Mesa’s Teen Parent Prog. Need proof of pregnancy."

Our district has a Teen Parent program, almost exclusively a Teen Mother program, which caters to over two hundred and fifty students. Our district has maybe, at the most, thirteen thousand students. Do the math. That’s two percent of the total student population, four percent of the females. That means one girl out of every twenty-five we see (or one girl out of every two classes), is going to be a part of that program. Usually we don’t hear about who’s going... right to privacy, that sort of thing. But this is now the fifth year in a row that I have known of one of my girls going into the program. And that doesn’t even take into account possible/probable abortions.

Kinda makes one feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn’t it?

Remembrance of History Past: The Four-Period Day

2008-04-10T21:37:00.010-07:00

Remembrance of History Past: The Four-Period Day

After Frankie Hunter had spent her first year at Chumash as principal, garnered enough support from the teaching staff (as she had been "one of us"), and planted the seeds of change in enough influential minds, she proposed the first major reform of the Hunter tenure: restructuring the school day.

Her rationale was simple: Fifty-four minutes (as was the length of the current class period) was simply not long enough nor flexible enough for innovative teaching to prosper. And it was her contention that if an administrator fostered an atmosphere that would engender and support innovative instruction, then innovative instruction would occur. Her plan was also simple in its vision: instead of six periods during the day (and thus twelve semester classes throughout the year), her school would be structured around a four-period day (of ninety-minute lengths); the semesters would be shortened to nine- or ten-week terms, with students taking three (or in some rare cases) four classes per term, so that a student would have the opportunity to take (at bare minimum) the twelve courses throughout the academic year that the old schedule allowed, while being forced to concentrate on only three courses at any given time.

This new schedule would allow for greater flexibility. Students could arrange their day with more freedom, possibly taking courses at the local junior college or taking on a job (especially important in our socio-economically depressed area). Teachers would be allowed greater time in the classroom to mix and match activities; "old school" teachers, used to the drill and kill, would have to change their ways (or transfer out). This greater time also would allow for better individualized attention. And it also meant that teacher would now have a ninety-minute prep period rather than a fifty-four minute one. Of course, teachers would be teaching two more courses a year (twelve over the ten taught in the old six-period day), but with the additional prep time, the pain of this blow was lessened.

If Frankie’s rationale was simple, the latest in educational theory backed her up, as did reform movements nation- and world-wide. And when she proposed this idea to the staff, she allowed them to take over the idea, let them play with time and concepts. And the staff came back with a fine-tuned program. They voted for the change to the new format by a whopping 92-to-8 percent margin.

Frankie had her mandate and the support of the staff. And she pushed the change through the district. No bones were made about it, however, and the district never voiced whole-hearted approval or support for the schedule. Sister schools scoffed at the idea. And Chumash never garnered the positive press that PeeVee received when it attempted its OLA program, their school-within-a-school reform.

If Frankie the idealist had any failing, it was that she was never a pragmatist. She wasn’t the best at gathering hard numbers to support the positive changes that the staff could feel that followed the shift in schedule. That lack of statistical analysis would be the death of the schedule reform a year and a half after Frankie’s death.

The Mad Rush

2008-04-10T21:37:00.009-07:00

Friday, March 17, 1995

I had planned to go home fairly early today, three-ish, after finishing this week’s grading and doing next week’s preparation during fourth period. This would allow me time to rest up before tonight’s St. Paddy’s Day bash at the McConnells, and to return the call of an editor of a trade publication to whom I had submitted a résumé two weeks ago, and who left a message on our machine yesterday afternoon. At least, that was the plan.

Wrong.

Before school, Aimee gave me today’s assignment: talk to Vince and find out the status on the video. So after a pretty productive third period, filled with a great Hamlet discussion and a sneaky little E4 (whom I had caught cheating on an assignment yesterday) transferring out of the class, I headed over to the video lab, where I found Vince hunched over an editing bay.

"Howdy." I began.

"Yeah," he retorted in his always charming churlish way.

"How’s it goin?"

"Well, you’re lookin’ at part three. Two’s done. Halfway done with three. Haven’t done four. Or the transitions yet. But we’re gettin’ there."

"Cool." Aimee wouldn’t be ecstatic, but she wouldn’t be paranoid, either.

"Wanna see?"

Not really. Just the facts, sir. Let me get the report to the Hammer. Back to my room to grade. And I’m outta here. But politeness and curiosity got to me. "Sure."

It was great. Computer lab stuff. Voc ed. The severely handicapped class. With more to come on JROTC, ASB, sports, and yearbook. It looked great. This I told him and then I was off.

Aimee wasn’t in her room, so I checked the library. The office. Staff cafeteria. Nowhere to be found. While I was in the cafeteria, Dave Anderson cornered me to get me to agree to giving another Shakespeare presentation to his special ed students during fourth term. Two years ago, I presented Romeo and Juliet to rave reviews. He doesn’t have to twist my arm much... this year we’ll do Macbeth. And I went off to track down Hamm.

At the end of lunch, I found her in her room. I delivered the status report, and she told me of her morning. Science evidence is missing. The action plans--new copies--still have not been put into faculty boxes. And the room in which the WASC team will be headquartered, the Career Center, is a bloody mess. Dust so thick it couldn’t be wiped away. Aimee had sent student volunteers and aides to the CC every period so far today, and the room was still a mess. She sounded stressed.

It wasn’t like we’re forty-eight hours away from the arrival or anything.

I was almost out the door, when I did something really stupid. I asked what’s next. She told me that she was heading over to the library to take the stuff over to the career center. And I asked if she needs help.

Stoopid. Just call me Dumbest.

For the next two hours, I carried evidence boxes from the library to the CC. Set up computers and printers. Got network connections from Metcalf and set them up to link the Macs to the printer. Helped Aimee move furniture. Arranged evidence boxes. Did a final clean-up and polish of the room.

It was now three-thirty. I headed back to my room to do that grading and the class prep. DOLs from both first and second period needed to be done. Old homework from each class as well. The 4/4H CultLit from yesterday (the shotgun essays from earlier in the week would just have to wait for this weekend... not that there will be much time: I need to shop for Lisa’s b-day gift, change a light fixture in the dining room, do computer work, cut the grass, and be back here on Sunday to help welcome the visitation team). Class preparation started. Cleaned the boards. Put next week’s overall agenda up, as well as Monday’s period-by-period specific agenda. Took down this week’s grades, so that next week’s grades can be put up on the bulletin board on Sunday (Monday morning will be impossible, as I have to meet with the visitation committee at six-fifty...and that will probably last until just before first period begins). I also put up next week’s DOL sentences. Then I remembered that I needed to put together the English Nine progress reports. I had had Tisha put the names of the students on the slips that I will hand out Monday morning (shit, I forgot to put that on the on-board agendas...gotta re-do that). Now I needed to put the number and names of the missing assignments on the slips, so that they could be taken home and signed off by mommy or daddy or the friendly household guardian. This threw me off by even more time. Then I changed the on-board agendas. Then put Monday’s assignments (DOL, Weekly Grade, and Progress Report) on the assignment/grade sheets on the bulletin board.

I looked at the clock. Four-thirty. Shit.

I grabbed my stuff and I’m out the door, in the car, down the street, into the driveway, and home. Lisa and Kyle greeted me at the screen door. She looked pooped. Kyle looked rambunctious. We went over our days. And I remembered the phone call I needed to make. Shit.

Four-forty-five on a Friday. I called. Machine... office hours are from eight to five, Monday through Friday. There should still be fifteen minutes. But no. I left a message, feeling lame and stupid. This could have been a chance and I could have blown it.

I collapsed back onto the couch. What a week. And it was nothing compared to the one coming up.

Remembrance of History Past: More Setting Redux

2008-04-10T21:37:00.007-07:00

From the "Student/Community Profile" of the WASC Self-Study report, January 1995:

Chumash High School and the surrounding community comprise a rich mosaic of ethnic and cultural diversity, which has evolved over the thirty years of Chumash High School’s existence. These changes and their impact upon our student-community profile (and consequently, the staff’s perception of our clientele) are important to the understanding of our self-study results.

First in any discussion of Chumash High and its community must be a discussion of the local socio-economic infrastructure. This infrastructure is low to low-middle income. A vast majority of our clientele qualify as Special Needs, either through compensatory education, limited English proficient, or migrant education. At least three quarters of our students qualify for those special funds. Another example is that nearly one-third of our population is actively involved in the free/reduced lunch program and that an estimated additional ten percent would qualify if they chose to apply.

Beyond any socio-economic study of the community comes the demographic profile of the student body itself. Our clientele is largely minority, with a predominately Latino population (comprising over two-thirds of the student body). Over two-fifths of our clientele are limited English proficient.

Working with students who come to Chumash High School with below-grade-level skills creates a number of challenges for staff and students alike. Student CTBS scores demonstrate a better than year-for-year advancement. Aggregate student grade point averages, however, have not risen as much as expected following Chumash High’s restructuring implementation, though Minimum Proficiency test passing rates have risen as well.

In preparing this self-study, the staff at Chumash High School has identified a number of trends which impact the school and the education it provides. These trends include a demographic shift, the partial restructuring of the school’s academic day, parent involvement, and student perception of the school.

The most easily noticed trend affecting the school is the massive demographic shift which has taken place in the last decade and a half. In 1980, nearly one-half of the student body was identified as Caucasian or anglo, while today the percentage is less than fifteen; meanwhile, the Latino population has increased dramatically, from just over one-third of the student body fourteen years ago to over two-thirds today. This accounts for the rise in limited English proficient students as well.

In an attempt to better reach and teach this changing clientele, the staff of Chumash High School implemented a restructuring of its academic day and year, creating a four-period, ninety-minute class day, four term per year, academic schedule. The restructuring has show some positive results, but there is a growing feeling among all stakeholders that more needs to be done.

Another important trend is the lack of parental involvement. Attendance at school functions is low, and the site WASC committee’s first attempt to survey the parents met with dismal failure--only fifty of the six hundred parents responded to the survey.

The students, too, were surveyed, and their perceptions are eye-opening. While a vast majority feel that the restructured schedule made it easier for them to succeed in their classes, less than half feel that the campus is safe or clean, and nearly one quarter feel that the courses are neither interesting nor challenging to them.

On a positive note, the work experience coordinator at Chumash High School conducted a business community survey in which all responses can be categorized as good to excellent. These results lead the staff to believe that the majority of students in the work experience program are doing well and performing to the expectations of the business community. Therefore, these results engender reflection on how Chumash High might continue the successful transition from school to work for the vast majority of its students.

This is Chumash High School, a school at the crossroads.

I Usually Get Kissed First

2008-04-10T21:37:00.005-07:00

Monday, March 20, 1995

Where to begin?

Yesterday, I guess.

Jesus, my mind is fried, and I don’t know if I can get all this down. I have a pounding headache. It is nearly seven Monday night, and I’ve been home for only about fifteen minutes. Lisa was a goddess enough to fix me dinner--on her birthday, no less--and let me get on the computer before I lose all my thoughts. But that is today. Yesterday...

I arrived at school at two o’clock, to meet with Aimee and look over the video Vince had left her on Saturday. It was wonderful. Better than anything Aimee and I could have concocted, filled with great footage, good music, neat transitions. She was still nervous, but happy. She had gone out shopping on Saturday, spending three hundred dollars on two suits--today’s was the "power suit" (I guess I don’t respond to power well)--a new skirt, panty house, jewelry and assorted doodads. So far, so good. She went off to meet the visitation committee and to tour them around the campus; I went to my classroom to put polishing touches on it for the beginning of the week.

At ten ‘til three, I headed into the library to find members of the leadership team gathering for the first meeting with the committee. Aimee was there; she explained that since no one was asking her questions on the tour--except two members of the committee complaining that they had received reports that were missing appendices--she decided to head to the library and prepare there. Everyone was nervous, but I knew we had a killer video and a great report...

What, me worry?

The Committee came in and settled in for the meeting. Before introductions, Aimee introduced the video, but before it could begin, the chair asked, "What, no multimedia presentation?"

Oh. Shit. The video rolled, and I thought that would allay her desire. No way, at the end of it, she said, "When I visited the campus here in September, Bill had created a great multimedia presentation, and I’ve been raving about it to the members of the Committee. Now I see you have other talented members of your staff as well."

Gulp. Aimee looked at me. Well, I hope you’re happy, Bill. So a video would be good enough, huh?

Then the meeting began. The chair had us put the library tables into a circle/rectangle. We introduced ourselves, and the Committee started in on their questions regarding our report and the process that led to it. ESLR’s. The Focus Groups. And so it went for nearly an hour and a half. We are praised for our honesty. This worries some, who suddenly think that we have been too blunt. I make mention of how some members of the staff had problems with examining our campus, "warts and all" in such a public forum. Others take on the concept of process versus product. But no mention yet of the Action Plan. And suddenly I am thinking that maybe there was reason to be nervous, after all.

But I couldn’t concern myself with that now; I had to get out of there before four-thirty if I was going to make it in time for Lisa’s birthday dinner with my parents. The meeting broke up at four-twenty-five. As Lori, Mary, Aimee and I gathered briefly, all three stared at me, grinning.

"Well, multimedia boy..."

I put on my best mea-culpa chagrined grin. "Gee, Aimee. I’m sorry I cost us the six." It was a joke. The idea of losing accreditation years on the lack of a dog and pony show. It was funny at the time.

I left in time for dinner and to hear my Bruins had won their NCAA tournament game. All (or mostly all, if you just didn’t count WASC) was right with the world.

This morning, however, it all started to fall apart.

I arrive on campus at six-forty, ready to edit some past journal entries, but, without time to do so, I go straight to the library for our six-fifty meeting. As I enter the quad, I notice GumpDumb taking photos...bad sign. Then I see why. Taggers had hit overnight. There is graffiti everywhere. Wonderful. Well, at least the WASCers are seeing reality.

In the library, Mary and Lori voice their quiet unease at the feeling gleaned from yesterday’s meeting. When Aimee asks me to help her take some stuff back over to her room, I know she has some concerns of her own to voice. We head across the campus, not heading directly across, of course--Aimee’s high heels have to remain on concrete--and Aimee tells me that not even this new suit is retail therapy enough to erase her fears, her bad feeling about all this. I look at her suit. Very nice, almost sexy, a bright pink-purple (Lisa and Aimee would be able to tell you the specific color [magenta, I later learn]; I can’t). It matches the shirt I’m wearing today. We look like the fucking Bobsy twins.

She feels that she is letting the school down, that the report she has incited the staff to write won’t be good enough to get us a six-year accreditation. The missing appendices. The lack of a multimedia presentation. The grilling we took yesterday over the ESLR’s (something that was fully written up in the report...hadn’t they read the report???). All of these are making her worry. I try to allay those fears, but all she’s doing is make me second-guess our preparation.

Back in the library, the Committee walks in. Stone-faced. One of the WASCers, wearing an almost identical copy of Aimee’s suit--only this one is green (well, it works for her)--sits next to me, and I pull out her chair. Chivalry is not dead, but niceties are. The chair launches in on a full-scale probing (Aimee would later call it an attack) on our Action Plan. It seems they had discussed it last night, but were and are unclear on specifics, especially on how it relates to student achievement.

Well, since ambiguities were built into the plan, we can understand some level of un-clear-ness. We had written the plan as a true process, one in which we had not prescribed the actions ahead, but had set up a framework and a structure for decisions to be made. We had been asked to write a narrative, one that would show how we planned to move into reforms over the next few years, and that was what we had done. But now, the Committee was unclear and they are nailing us on process-based ambiguities.

We try to answer their questions. Some of us become rather defensive--one vocal member of the team talks of faculty buy-in, of creating a process for our campus (not necessarily for WASC) and uses the phrase "WASC be damned." But there is little time, as most of us need to be in class by seven-twenty-five, and the Committee has to be ready for classroom visitations by seven-thirty. As we walk out of the library, Mary looks at me as if to say buckle up, ladies and germs, it’s going to a bumpy ride. Two of the guys teasingly give me shit about if you’d had a fuckin’ techfest, they wouldn’t be givin’ us shit. Lori just closes her eyes, like she’s dying a slow unnatural death, and shakes her head. Aimee looks like she’s about to cry. "Are we fucked or what, Bill?" she asks.

I tell her, "Usually, I get kissed first, or at least offered dinner..."

And it’s off to classes we go.

During first period, one of the WASCers comes in while I’m moving from a discussion of the perceptions and supporting examples for the characters Anne and Helen in the section of The Miracle Worker we watched on Friday, to quick showings of the remaining scenes from Act One. I’m pausing frequently, using the laserdisc player, so that I can elicit further responses on the characters’ personality traits and how these traits are proved by the actions and statements of the characters. This will be the basis for later writing, and a possible multimedia presentation project done by the Nines. Of course, my observer leaves before I can allude to this. For all I know, she could be thinking that I’m just another video-happy, electronic-lesson-plan-spouting knucklehead. Oh, well.

Second period is its regular, happy place. Luckily, there’s no visitation/observation. Midway through, I receive a note, cryptic, that I need to see our fearless leader after lunch. Third period goes well as usual, as we are burning through Hamlet. At the end of class, I’m heading over to Bruce’s room, for our English department meeting with two representatives from the Committee.

Lunch has been catered, a three-foot sub sandwich with chips. I lean over and quietly tell Aimee about my post-lunch meeting with the principal. She whispers to me that she’s been summoned, too. Now, she’s downright worried. She’s heard that the morning focus group meetings have gone poorly. God knows what "in-flight adjustments" we’ll have to make after lunch. We sit in a circle, and talk about the process of creating our department narrative. Of how we need to integrate more. Of what ways we need to redefine what we do across the strands (Honors, college prep, standard) within the course years. Their questions still seem kind of, well, hostile. Maybe we’re just being paranoid.

After the meeting, the members who have fourth period prep--Bruce (he actually has Yearbook that period, but that is a class that--at this point in the year--practically runs itself), Aimee, and I--stay around to talk with the two members of the Committee. We discuss assessment standards, and one of the WASCers asks about our own ways of determining how we decide which methodologies we keep and which ones we abandon. This is the woman who observed my class. I tell her of how the assignment she saw will be the basis for the writing and multimedia assignments. I tell her that I’ll take a look at example-based paragraphs written before the multimedia presentation, and ones done after, and if there is a higher lever of writing afterwards, it’s a lesson I’ll keep. I’m winging this big-time. I tell her that I’ve done it both at the Honors level and the college prep, but since this is English Nine, this is the real experiment. She is impressed with this heightened level of expectation, this use of the same assignment across the strands. And she wants to know how prevalent this is in our department, on our campus. I let the others ramble now.

The WASC ladies are impressed and on that note, Aimee and I leave to Joanne's office to find out what's up. When we arrive, there is a note on her door directing us to go to the office conference room. A quick turn and we are there. So are four other members of the leadership team, all buzzing with activity. They seem to be trying to compose some kind of response. Aimee and I sit down. We listen, but it's hard to make out what is going on at first.

It all sounds familiar. The Action Plan? But somehow different. More educationese. More assessment-oriented. Oh, God. It dawns on me. They're rewriting the Action Plan. I guess it dawns on Aimee at about the same time because she questions if that is what is going on.

"Not rewriting," our fearless leader states, "just putting it into their own language."

Bullets, I think. I’ll give ‘em some bullets.

"Obviously, they're not getting it in our version," Lori pipes in.

"Okay... so are we screwed, or what?" Aimee asks.

A round of not-at-alls explode from every corner of the conference room.

Aimee's worried and she lets it show. She says that she thinks we've already lost the six. All chime in at once on how we have a great plan, that we've done the job asked, that it's just that they don't seem to be understanding how it relates to... and here they start to look over a new handout, one to which Aimee and I have not yet been made privy. Somehow, we now have in our hands the questions that the Committee must answer; these have been placed in our hands by Dr. Taratino, the visiting chair. I think, she thinks this will allow us to doctor our response to get the six. Or maybe she thinks we’ll think this will allow us to doctor the response for a six. I don't know. She certainly isn't happy with what she's getting. And Aimee has slipped into this kind of catatonic funk. Not responding. Barely even meeting my gaze.

We look over the questions. All of this is student-based. This is good, though a majority of what we've done over the past year has been teacher-based. Apples and oranges. Mary is taking notes, acting as scribe, penciling what it is becoming clear will be some kind of addendum to our Action Plan. And our fearless leader is pushing it through. Others are chiming in. But Aimee and I are completely confused as to what is going on. What are we doing?

As it turns out, the other members of the team are less than clear on all this as well. Working on an addendum? Yes. But what form it should take--methodology or outcomes--is still a matter to be decided.

My mind must be fried. I'm still not getting it, though Aimee is seemingly catching on. The fire is back into her eyes. She says that while writing something new might work, it might not. Maybe something written is not what we need. She looks my way. Oh, no.

"Whatever we do, we shouldn't write another narrative," she says. "Look where that's gotten us. Taratino keeps harping on the damned multimedia presentation... well, let's give her one."

I shake my head. "By when? Tomorrow morning, six-thirty? I'm not sure it's even possible...and I'm not saying I'm even willing."

Our fearless leader gets us back on track. Even if we decide to go multimedia, we're going to need to have something that goes on it. Back to content, substance, matter, message. But within another fifteen minutes, we've bogged down again. Just what do these people want?

We decide to send for Taratino, pull her out of a focus group meeting. She arrives and she says that the Committee is having problems with our lack of specifics in our Action Plan. She doesn't explain whether those specifics are in outcomes or methodology. Part of me thinks she's being coy, another part of me thinks she has not a single clue as to what she's supposed to do.

I press the point. I tell her we were given the task to create a process, and that's what we've done. But now, as we're about to be evaluated on that task of a process, it seems we are being dinged on not having a good enough product. What's the deal?

She responds by telling me that looking over the Action Plan, it seems pretty obvious what needs to be done on this campus, but we don't outline it. There are no explicit statements.

Others jump in, calling for staff empowerment, staff buy-in. But she claims that the buy-in should already be there, a product of the WASC process itself. That's horseshit, and I think it takes every ounce of Harold Law’s restraint not to tell her that in a visual--a prime mover and shaker on the leadership team and the campus at large, he is a reformist now champing on the bit. But before he can attack, I take a different tack. I say that while it is obvious to us what needs to be done, it's not so obvious to some other members of the staff. Yes, we see what needs to be done, but we cannot merely prescirbe that. If we did, the general perception would be that, and here I point at our fearless leader across the table, she wrote the report, that this is a top-down process, it's another case of the administration telling teachers what to do. And it will never fly. We, here in this room, know what needs to be done. Sure. But the staff out there needs to discover it.

And still we hem and we haw over this, what is becoming increasingly obvious to me, crucial point. Product versus process. And it's hard to walk that fine line between the two. Again, we press her for an answer, what do we need to give you?

She says that she cannot speak for the rest of the Committee. She will talk to them tonight. She'll have more information for us in the morning. Tomorrow. Six-thirty. And it could mean more questions rather than answers. In fact, that is becoming a given. And she leaves.

We talk for another thirty minutes. We talk out what could be two good responses for what we can already envision might be two questions tomorrow morning. The team members who pontificated so well minutes earlier are now urged to remember what they had said, so that it can be regurgitated in the morning. Great. I feel better. Sarcasm.

Aimee feels even less on-balance. As the meeting is breaking up, she looks to me. "We need a visual," she says.

"Library," I respond.

Aimee catches Mary's eye. "Let's pull a long afternoon."

It's already three-fifteen by this time. But it's off to the library we go. I buy five dollars worth of candy bars from the textbook clerk, and we begin work. It takes nearly two hours to get even the slightest idea of what kind of visual we need. We don't want words. Pictures. A re-examination of the organizational flow chart. With concrete examples. A discussion on how it will impact student learning.

Aimee asks me about a multimedia presentation, some bells, no whistles. No text, just graphics, no film clips, no music. I say that that's really tough to do. Any kind of animation would take hours. I don't think there is enough time. She says she can deal with flip charts. It would be nice to just blow up the flow chart from the report. Liz Kurtz, library clerk extraordinaire, who has been sitting in on this meeting, suggests overhead transparencies. PERFECT!

And I sit down to create the visuals on Mary's computer as the four women (Aimee, Mary, Lori, and Liz) hash out what it should show; even Cindy Daniels drops by--still on campus at five--to toss in some ideas. I listen and create, and by six o'clock we have four visuals. We print them out (thank God the Committee has left so that we can put the transparencies in their printer). And we set up the overhead projector and take a look at the visuals on the big screen. Cool. I will be in charge of displaying and overlaying the transparencies as Aimee talks tomorrow morning; I'll also be drawing on them with colored markers to highlight points she will make.

In about twelve hours. And we all go home.

WASC is hell.

WAsSC-Backwards

2008-04-10T21:37:00.003-07:00

Tuesday, March 21, 1995

It's six-twenty and when I arrive this morning, the sky is only slightly lighter than it was when I left last night. It has rained overnight, and the hall ceilings have leaked. Great, more reality. Some of the members are walking into the library. I head over. As I put my hand on the door handle, I hear Aimee's voice behind me, "Bill."

I turn and look. The new skirt. Long black top. She looks tired. "What's up?"

"Do you have the transparencies?"

"Don't you have them?"

"Don't do this to me..."

"They're inside on the overhead. I think." I smile. I’m ready. We head in together. Lori is inside waiting for us. She looks around the room and notices just about everyone is wearing black. Does that sum up our perceptions on how well this is going or what? Some of us are laughing. Fatigue has turned to giddiness. Gallows humor.

The Committee enters. Stone-faced again, only now they’re tired, too. But they look cranky-tired, not giddy-tired. Oh, well. Doctor Taratino, as usual, begins. "After yesterday, we met last night to go over our notes and our recollections of our dialogues yesterday. We feel that there are some misunderstandings over what your Action Plan." no shit, sherlock. "I met with some of your leadership team yesterday afternoon. And we’d like to know if there is any preliminary statements that you would like to make."

Is she serious or did she see the overhead projector and figure that she’d better let us ramble? Regardless, Aimee stands, motions Mary to kill the lights, and I hit the overhead.

Aimee dives into her spiel. It seems to be going fairly well, right up to the second transparency. Then questions start flowing in again. And Aimee’s idea of going on the offensive dissolves and we’re back on our heels, back on the defensive. They don’t still see the impact on students. Aimee motions for the third transparency. It’s up and I’m writing on it, going with her cues, showing the connections between ideas, teachers, and the classroom... the kids. Are they getting it? Yet?

Nope. We never get to the fourth transparency. Within five minutes, the lights are back on, the overhead off, and Aimee’s and my asses down against metal. Thirty minutes later, I will tell Liz that I wish they’d bring the K-Y next time.

Some of the leadership team are not only going on the defensive, but they’re getting defensive, too. Almost siege mentality. Luckily, one of the WASCers senses this and its unhealthy repercussions, and turns the tables deftly.

"I think I know what you are trying to tell us. But could we go around the room and see what you all think we are trying to tell you?" Very smooth. And smart.

Aimee: "I think you want to see the plan and proposed student outcomes."

Jim Miller: "Product, not process."

BubbaDumber: "I think you want to see the ‘staff’ in our flowchart replaced with ‘students’ with an assessment structure built in before it goes off to the School Site Council and the Leadership Team." huh? I know he’s working on his thesis, but DAMN! I never thought I’d hear him trade edu-speak with the WASCers.

And on it goes.

By the end of the pre-first-period meeting, we come to realize that they really do like our Plan, they just want more specifics on what we think we might be doing (as opposed to our fear of prescribing to our staff) and what kind of student outcomes we envision these changes having.

This doesn’t seem too bad, though I’m not sure exactly how we can do that in the twenty-four hours before they write their report. So I’m not exactly feeling great when I leave the room.

Others who stay behind, however, feel much better with the extended dialogue they are allowed to have.

When I meet Harold in the staff lounge between first and second, I on my bladder run, he on his coffee run, he’s loose, almost happy, definitely satisfied and confident. He says that he thinks--after the lingering moments of the meeting following the exodus of first-period teachers--that the Committee and the team have come to an understanding... or at least that the Committee now has an understanding through dialogue of what we wanted to achieve. Well, I’m glad he’s so confident.

Others share his good feeling, as well. When I meet with Aimee, Lori, and Mary at lunch, all of them also feel better about the morning meeting than I remember thinking we had any right to. Of course, all of them had been able to debrief with the Committee at seven-thirty. Lucky them. But their good vibes are contagious. This coupled with overhearing a student, who had been pulled into an ad hoc student discussion group third period, tell Aimee how well he thought it went--complete with a retelling of his statements to the panel--make all of us feel almost confident with less than a day to go.

But before lunch is over, that good feeling is already eroding. We are beginning to hear less wonderful word on the student panel. Now the recap has a surlier student group, mostly Latino, some white, some African-American, being sullen and silent for most of the meeting (save some positive outbursts--Aimee’s student), then the teacher/school-bashing beginning. School is boring. We don’t learn anything (at least correct laying on of responsibility there). Then... African-American students telling of what they see as racism on campus, of their fear for their own safety, of racist teachers (with named names...though we hear no specifics). From that point on, the Latino students chime in on their take on racism. We do not hear if the white students say anything. Great.

Suddenly, Aimee’s back on her whipping post, being the first WASC director to bring a less than six-year accreditation to C.H.S.. She fears this more than anything. She has intimated to me that she feels as if this is something that can make or break her career in this district. I think she’s overreacting. But she retorts that she has yet to be awarded a mentorship, she is afforded little respect at district meetings, and that this could be the final nail into her career coffin. On the flip side, I see that her mentorship was possibly seen as too site-specific (with no possible intra-district in-servicing possibilities), the lack of respect is due to a kind of cronyism (at twenty-nine, she may be seen as not having enough years under her belt to really know what she’s doing; this in reality is bullshit, but I can see how some stupid, insecure teachers [not Aimee, but the cronies] could believe such a rationale), and I’m willing to bet that by next fall, no one in the district (let alone our school) will be able to say who ran WASC where.

I tell her that she’s done the best job that anyone could have done; Teddi could have done no better had she stayed, I could have done no better had I accepted the mantle. She tries to argue with me, but I will have none of it. A process is a process is a process. And the document coming from the process does not depend upon the chair, but the groups. She tells me that Teddi could have done better because of the respect accorded her by the staff. I don’t buy it. While Teddi may have had more respect, I don’t think her product would have been any better. She wasn’t telling us anything about process, she merely gave us instruction. And looking at some of her materials in preparation for the final stages (these were the notes Aimee and I waded through a few weeks ago), I see that Teddi wasn’t heading for a true process plan. She was heading for some kind of mutant process/product. Aimee then asks if isn’t that what (at least) our Committee is looking for...

And I tell her my take. Sure, the Committee seems to be looking for the most concrete aspects of the plan as they can find. It placates their security. We had been given the charge to create a process. We did. We dived off the end of the pier. They have been given the charge of evaluating a process. This is difficult. Aimee and I know this as well as or better than anyone; we teach writing as a process. It’s hard to evaluate a process... we keep going back to the product to help us. The Committee is the same way. They’re floundering and so they’re clinging to anything concrete they can get their hands on; what they don’t realize that concrete will pull them down to a soggy death in the deep water. But they want to hold on to something. We’ve given them a process, they want to evaluate a process, but they’re not willing to dive in fully. They’re insecure because no one’s ever done this. And we’re getting defensive because--WASC be damned--we did dive in, and it pisses us off that the so-called experts aren’t willing or don’t have the guts to do what we’ve done. But through dialogue, we’re better off than the other schools, I tell Aimee. Since we can talk our way into specifics, we can help our Committee. On other campuses, where they have constructed wonderful products, the Committees must feel secure holding on to that sold, concrete product, the report. But sometime between now and Wednesday (or maybe when they get back to their respective schools where they will probably give their recommendations outlining what accreditation to award), those Committees are going to realize that those products are NOT the processes that the WASC requested. And no amount of dialogue will be able to change the fact that they did not follow the directions.

She still looks nervous. Or maybe I’m wrong, and they’ll deny our accreditation. And we’ll all be looking for new jobs in the fall. Only she doesn’t find this very funny. Lunch is over, and the party breaks up. Mary goes off to her focus group meeting with the Committee, Lori off to her class, Aimee off to her classroom, and I set down to work on miscellaneous stuff.

An hour and a half later, I see Mary and I ask her how the meeting went. She shakes her head. This can’t be good.

It started off fine, she tells me. Until our Migrant Education counselor went on one of his tirades. Mary knows that this little, Napoleonic blow-hard is probably my least favorite person on campus, so she doesn’t have to prepare me for the specifics of his rant. But for you, gentle readers, anything...

He began by telling the Committee that the Hispanic community at this school is the most over-looked population on campus. yahright. His "Future Leaders" program is the only support system that really caters to this population. We do not spend enough time or money at this site helping Hispanic students. Most don’t participate in student government because ASB is seen as a white activity, both in students and advisor. There are no clubs that welcome Hispanics on campus. Most monolingual teachers are unwilling to call Hispanic parents to access their assistance in either bringing the students into extra-curricular activities or helping the students achieve in class. Yadayadayada, as Aimee would say.

The message is implicit. We honky teachers are all racists and we are depriving a quality education to all those poor unfortunate students of color (but not that really dark color, mind you--whoops, them too, I forgot the ad hoc student panel). Mary was so upset by this that she took it up with the principal and vice principal, who wondered aloud what he was doing at that meeting anyway. It wasn’t his focus group; his had met earlier in the day, WITHOUT his attendance.

They wonder. Gee, think but don’t act. There will be no reprimand for attending the wrong meeting or blowing off the right one. If I had pulled a stunt like that, my ass would be on the carpet by three o’clock. But don’t fuck with the minorities. And everyone runs scared.

Okay. Freeze. Breathe. Calm down...

Okay. I’m fine. Let’s take this one calmly.

Okay.

Bullshit.

Here’s the deal. We teach at a school with a Latino demographic of over two-thirds. Our limited English proficient population is over a third of the total student population. We employ bilingual teachers, English as a Second Language teachers, a separate counselor for the Migrant Education students, and a number of Migrant Ed aides. We have a great number of bilingual and ESL course sections. We have at least three organizations on campus that cater almost exclusively to the Latino population (MeCha, Zeltzin, "Future Leaders"). There are extra-curricular activities that take in a predominantly Latino demographic. And then there are the school-at-large’s clubs into which every ethnic group is taken for membership. I’m sick of hearing this.

Maybe it’s a bug up my particular ass. For the two last years of my Drama tenure, this particular counselor had been holding court in the Drama room during weekday evenings. I’m willing to share, but he wasn’t asking. The first year I let it slide. When the second year began, and I began to notice that the room wasn’t left in the same condition that I had left it (and they had found it), I raised my concerns to him. He told me that his class for Adult Ed was scheduled in the room and that he had to use it, but that he would keep tabs on the room. Then my office in the Drama room, which they should have never been in in the first place, was left a mess. I asked again for assistance, without much of a response.

Then on the night of their next meeting, the room suffered a "break-in" as well. I quote the phrase because the door had been left unlocked. Much had been stolen, including some personal items. This was the last straw. Whether it was his fault or the fault of his students no longer mattered to me. I wanted him and his class out. He questioned my desire to help all students of all ethnicities. I backed off only when I received his assurance that I would never have to clean my boards after his meetings, that I would never have to rearrange my furniture after his meetings, that I would never have to think twice about finding my stuff on my desk after his meetings.

And it was a civil co-existence for about two months. Then one morning I had to clear my board (and rewrite them, having had half of them erased by his meeting) and rearrange my furniture. I tried to track him down before school so that I could show him what I found. He was not on campus before school that day. So I left him a note, informing him that I would prefer that he not use my class again, citing the state in which I found the room. He shot back another note within the period that he had every right to teach his night class in that room.

So I called Adult Education during my second period prep. They had never heard of his night class. They had no class scheduled in that room on those nights. The class, whatever it was, was not affiliated with Adult Ed or Night School or the District. Hmmmm. I sent him another note, after again not being able to find him in his office; this one recounted my new information, and stating that since this class had no affiliation with either the Pleasant Valley Union High School District or Chumash High School, the "need" to use the Drama room was non-existent. I again reinterated my preference that he no longer use the room.

That afternoon we had a faculty meeting. As it was coming to an end, he accosted me at the back of the library, waving my last missive, berating me. How dare I send this trash to him. How dare I tell him how to run his program, his program that services migrant students, unless of course I meant to deny those student an education. I retorted that it was not my intention to deny anyone anything, but to simply keep my classroom as I saw fit, and to make sure people lived up to their agreements. At which point, he invaded my personal space... the aging fuckin’ punk got in my face. I think he expected me to back down. Fuck no. I could take the old fart down, so I wasn’t backing down.

Of course, eyes were beginning to turn upon on us, eye brows cocking. He wagged a finger in my face. I told him to remove it, I wasn’t some ignorant putz he could intimidate. And voices began to increase in volume.

At this point, the library clerk at the time, Lola, came out of her office to pull us into it. She said something about decorum and professionalism, and I deferred. The Napoleonic shit would not. And then she barked some Spanish at him. I couldn’t give you a complete translation, but it basically said to show some respect. He glared at her then at me. He snottily said that he would "personally" guarantee the state of the room, and he began to storm out, shouting back at me that he would continue to use the room anytime he pleased because he had cleared it though the principal. As he exited, I called out after him that I appreciated his professionalism, too.

I apologized to Lola for making her pull us out of the library. And quite frankly I felt ashamed. It was unprofessional behavior. Of course, not as unprofessional as I would feel in the coming days when staff members would pull me aside and tell me that I should have punched the fucker out (and it was even worse, when the next day at a district-wide in-service, people from other campuses were telling me that the bastard had it coming). I felt badly.

So did I ever confront the principal on the issue? Had she sided with Senor Dickhead? I never went in. I caved. I did not want to look like a racist, something I knew would happen if I tried to do battle with him. I caved, in fear of the perception. As do many of my peers and administrators. And we are gutting our integrity when we do it. Standing up for what is right, no matter the color, is now becoming a joke.

A case in point that I will finally tell (after many teasing foreshadowings)... In the fall of last year, just after the death of Frankie Hunter, and in the power vacuum that followed, Mindy Rose, the head counselor, went to a conference. At this point in time, there were four other counselors, Kpu Sorreno, Elena Maria Ledesma (a woman with NO high school teaching experience who was hired as a counselor under pressure exerted by El Concilio [a Latino rights activist group] which stated that the district must hire more Latino counselors), Sal Ortiz (Senor Dickhead), and Lorraine Washington (a new counselor). In Rose’s absence, they convened and voted her out as head counselor (Washington voted for Rose, thinking the process was all wrong). When Mindy returned, she was out, Sorreno was in. Sorreno, it was obvious, was Ortiz’s puppet. She could no more be head counselor than I could shit gold nuggets. Ledesma was pregnant and unwilling to take on the duties of head counselor. And Ortiz wanted the power but not the title; it would be too obvious that way. When Mindy took this up with our fearful leader, the response was that she would see what the district felt. But before that could happen, Ortiz made it known to the administration that if they made any move to reverse the counselors’ vote, he and El Concilio would call for a discrimination suit. So nothing happened. The righteous bow to strong-arm tactics so that their reputations won’t be sullied by the title "racist".

And it’s not the only example. Earlier this year, when the Proposition 187 upheaval was taking place, just about everyone came out in opposition to the initiative. Probably rightly so, since it was poorly worded and incompletely thought-out. But most people on campus who voted for it did not voice their support publicly in fear of being called racist. And few teachers called for the suspension of students who walked out of classes in protest over the initiative. Now, I’m sorry... Thoreau went to jail for his beliefs, Gandhi went to jail for his beliefs, King went to jail for his beliefs. If you’re going to practice civil disobedience, you’d better be willing to pay the price, live up to the consequences. But nooooo, not at C.H.S., the home of no repercussions. You ask that those students be suspended and suddenly you’re some racist, fascist pig undermining the Constitution. What bullshit.

Take a deep breath... smell the manure.

Okay, fifteen hundred word diverson over. Sorry. But it had to be said.

Anyway, that’s how the day ended, with the tale of Ortiz in a focus group: Chumash Warriorland is really full of NordicVikingAryan racists.

Let’s just hope that the rumor that this is Ortiz’s last year is true. And hope that he hasn’t done more damage to our chances of accreditation.

Untitled

2008-04-10T21:37:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, March 22, 1995

When I begin this journal entry, it is eight-oh-five, Wednesday night. I'm in the Library/Media Center office, basically drunk off my ass. I'm here to kind of supervise the library during Knowledge Bowl during the final round of its year-long competition this year (of course, I was supposed to be here at six-thirty only to arrive here at seven-fifteen

Fallout Begins

2008-04-10T21:36:00.006-07:00

Thursday, March 23, 1995

Last night’s entry is abortive, thank god.

I had tried to input some thoughts in the Library onto Mary’s Mac. But other staff came in to talk and so I abandoned the attempt. Plus, I’m not sure I would have been lucid enough to set down what happened yesterday properly.

Not too sure about tonight, either. But here goes...

Yesterday was red and white day. So when we meet at ten-fifty (yes, I was not in 4/4H, leaving them to work on Book Report Essays) to hear the draft of the Committee’s report, it looks like Homecoming. Almost everyone is upbeat, smiling; I’m not sure if it is false hope, optimism after yesterday’s dialogue, or just stupidity.

They walk in at eleven. Stone-faced as usual. We sit down, I next to Aimee... if this is going to get ugly, I want to be near her to give her support. They again thank us for our hospitality and honesty. I’m really beginning to hate hearing about our honesty... there’s something more than double-edged to that compliment. Taratino then apologizes that there are not full copies of the report for us to peruse as they read it to us. It seems our copying machines had gone down, so that a front-office secretary is at this moment frantically page-by-paging it. We will have to share copies which include only the first half of the report. And Taratino sets up the procedure for the meeting. Each member of the Committee will read a section, and then there will be a time for questions and concerns at the end. And so we begin.

Taratino glosses over the opening section, the "general description," basically a restatement of our school and community profile. She then skips over the "progress report," a report on the progress made on the last WASC’s major recommendations, a response to our discussion of those recs. She moves on to section three: "Self-Study," a discussion of our report. It discusses our Action Plan and its three goals (to understand our clientele better, to empower the staff, and to initiate changes in curriculum and methods of delivery). Then there are their responses to our "‘Focus on Learning’ process" and here is where it all starts going downhill. Response two states that even though evidence was collected, "the impact of the program on student learning was very hard to determine." Number five goes on to state that "the Visiting Committee (was) unable to validate whether student learning was taking place." Ouch. Number six discussed the Action Plan "which is almost entirely process oriented...(and) does not tie specific improvements to specific student needs." It goes on to say how the Committee "dialogued extensively" with the leadership team regarding "concerns in this area." Number seven is like another nail in the coffintop: "The process nature of the schoolwide action plan creates a gap between plan and direct student impact...With the generality of the plan, it is hard to predict the direction that the school will take."

I can feel Aimee tense as she is scrambling to write notes in hopes of a rebuttal. What kind of evidence is needed to show learning? What the hell are they talking about? Number six shows how completely out of line all this is... we were charged with creating a process, a plan for the future. And then we are criticized for creating a plan that is "entirely process oriented." Isn’t that what they wanted? Process nature. Generality. We dialogued extensively over these issues. But what was the conclusion of the dialogue? That we were up Shit Creek without a paddle?

Then comes the next section, a discussion of the school program in regard to the "Vision, Leadership, and Culture" focus group. Earlier, in the WASC process, the focus groups had discussed the school program in terms of WASC-provided questions. Before the visitation, when Aimee asked Taratino about how to create our focus group narratives and whether we should structure the narrative around the questions, Taratino said that the questions where just that, questions that could act as a springboard for discussion. The questions were not a framework or a structure. Well, as one of the male members of the Committee settles in to read the discussion of "Vision, Leadership, and Culture" on our campus, we realize we have been had: their response is structured around the questions. But at least this section of the report is not too damaging... it basically outlines that we have vision, little leadership (big surprise there), and only some level of safety on campus.

The next focus group area to be reported is "Curricular Paths." Here we take more hits. While the bilingual department wins kudos, "other departments and paths are problematic." The only problem is that their report doesn’t state that we’ve already listed these areas as ones needing improvement; the tone is harsh. But no more harsh than the next area, "Powerful Teaching and Learning." Many students "do not experience powerful teaching and learning... (with) a rigorous curriculum missing in many classrooms...a striking amount of seat work with worksheets." Worse yet, the Action Plan is attacked as not including "specific step addressing these needs." Of course, the plan--the process--sets up a framework for the identification and then elimination of the problem areas.

At this point, our copies end, and we must simply listen to the rest of the areas. We all jot down notes for rebuttal, but it is difficult without having text before you. The "Support" focus group is next. While the Committee praises the school for creating support services that were non-existent six years ago, it dings us for not having a coordinated system. Of course, this is something we’ve mentioned in our report, but again our recognition of the problem is itself not recognized and the tone seems to be getting even uglier. This may be paranoia, but I’m looking around the table, and everybody looks like they’re being buttfucked sans K-Y.

The last focus group section "Assessment and Accountability" is next, and it now seems they’ve saved the worst for last. It has been "difficult...to determine whether...learning is taking place." We are fucked. We are taken to task for having "traditional" assessment models. And we are pilloried for not linking assessment to the ESLR’s, even though these were created only this year.

Our principal is shellshocked. Aimee looks like she could cry. Others are shaking their heads. And now come the section for "On-Going School Improvement," their recommendations. Again, the Action Plan is "so process oriented that what the plan is to accomplish is not clear." Then a Top Ten list of "urge(d)" recommendations. Of course, five of them are directly covered in the Action Plan, another three are alluded to; but does their report state that we’ve already recognized these as areas to change? No. Another rec--that the administration needs to clarify its leadership role--I actually like, but this is poor consolation now. We can all feel the axe about to fall, on us, on our school, on our schedule.

And Taratino pauses for questions. What she gets is an attack. Harold Laws calls the report a kick in the teeth, mean-spirited. Nods of approval come from around the table. Taratino tries to state that this is really a supportive report, but Harold is on her immediately. He alludes to the tone. And more than nods chime in. We smell blood, and, even if it’s our own, we are attacking. Aimee, trying to remain calm, goes after items one by one, in order. This only gives others of us time to gather our thoughts before attacking. Even the old (as in retiring) activity director goes on the offensive (spurred on by, I’m sure, the statement that most students feel student government is irrelevant). The Committee takes notes, say they’ll re-look at the language and the tone. And I cannot hold my tongue.

"The thing that really bothers me," I begin, "is that we were charged to create a process, a plan, a framework for change. And damnit, we did that. We took the big leap. We delivered. And all I hear is how our plan is too much a process. How can a process be too much a process? It’s tough to assess a process. We know. We’re teachers. But it seems you wanted a product that you could put through a checklist--"

And Taratino cuts me off. Now she’s on the offensive. Her tone is biting, brutal. But I don’t give a fuck. I must have touched a nerve.

And Jack Knight steps in, the patriarch. The one assistant principal--hell, the one administrator--who has my respect, gives an impassioned speech, one that announces that he won’t be around for the next WASC, but he will be in the community. His fear is that when these seven pack it in and leave, they will leave in their wake a gutted program because, as he explains, the district is looking for any excuse it can to revoke our block system. He speaks eloquently of our staff and its commitment to change, as evidence in that block schedule and our Action Plan. He warns that his staff has worked too hard to be treated so rudely. His voice nearly breaks near the end of the speech.

And that sends most of the women into tears. Aimee, barely holding it together, demands that our Yearbook and Journalism programs be commended for doing exactly what WASC stated should be happening, creating a school/work experiential link. Taratino’s only response is "You’re right. We forgot to include that. We’ll put in something about the Photography program." She must be reminded that we’re talking about the Writing for Publication class.

Taratino looks like a fool.

The one parent on the committee speaks up. She too warns of the dire consequences of this harsh a report. She uses a wonderful analogy. Our campus has always been on the back-burner of our district’s stove. If this report goes out as is, we’ll be taken off the stovetop and shoved in the icebox. My ass already feels cold.

Harold again goes into the harshness of the report, questioning whether our campus has done anything over the past six years. Yes, Taratino responds...it’s all in the section on the response to the last WASC; that’s purely positive, she contends. Then why not read that, everyone seems to shout. It will be read this afternoon before the full staff. And now the Committee must leave to create its final draft.

The leadership team disperses quickly, leaving behind only Aimee, Mary, Alice (the parent), Harold, Bob, Lori and me. The ladies are in tears, Harold, Bob and I fuming. This will not get us a six. We’ll be lucky to get a three. We begin to talk, but decide it’s better to move to the Professional Room for privacy.

There, we commiserate. It’s all we can do. Talk begins of appeals and rebuttals. We all give our takes on what has happened. Bob is the staff conspiratologist, so the Committee talked to GoD at the d.o. and was given the charge to fuck us over. Harold begins a cynical view that we really should have known better and we should have just lied our way through...this is what we get by playing by the rules. My take is that we did what we were supposed to do. We dove into risky waters; we had the confidence of the righteous. And the Committee was just gutless--or in Aimee’s son Devon’s phraseology "Devon... (has a) pee-pee; Committee...no pee-pee"--they weren’t ready to dive into the process, to accept a far-reaching vision. Six of the seven members were administrators; these are people used to giving orders to teachers--do this, at this time, don’t ask questions. Ours was a truly staff-empowering vision. And I don’t think they could accept that.

But basically, we’re just trying to keep the anger going because once the anger dissipates, the depression will sink in and we’ll be in that state for a long time.

Aimee looks like she wants to die. I touch her shoulder. I know her fairly well, but not well enough to know if a hug is what she needs, or just a hand on her shoulder or arm. I’m not sure even of what I need at the moment. And at the end of lunch, we all break off and go to our rooms to wait the next hour and a half before the Committee reads its poison-pen letter to the full staff.

And at two-thirty, the Library is packed. Harold and Aimee sit side-by-side, in front of me; for a moment I feel five years old again, riding in the back seat, just over the shoulders of mom and dad. Only now Mary’s by my side, and just before us and next to Harold is Alice, with this morning’s copies in hand, ready to mark changes.

The Committee enters. At first, it looks like they’re going to stand behind the magazine check-out counter. Gutless fucks. But then they sit before us. And go into the report. This time they read section two, the "Progress Report." And it sounds positive. And familiar. They’ve lifted it word for word from our response to the major recommendations. I should know; I inputted it into the computer. Boy, they really burnt the midnight oil doing their job.

And they go through their report. Mary and Harold and even Aimee seem somewhat calmer this time through. Is it the fact that they’re reading the report with more intonation now? Or is it not as painful the second time you get reamed? Small changes are made, the verbal--as opposed to oral--tone does seem to be softer in places. By the end it’s a little better, but only by a little. And they are out the door faster than you can even imagine.

An hour later, many of us congregate at Yolanda’s. There must be at least twenty of us there, many are already into round two as I come in, getting a ride with Aimee (I don’t want to have to drive back to school for Knowledge Bowl...I just want to get shitfaced). There are some Mission Oaks people here, too. Others I don’t recognize. I learn later the unrecognizable ones are members of the M.O. visiting Committee. I guess they bonded. Hell, if we had had a drinkin’ Committee (instead of the tightasses we got), we’d have gotten a twelve. oh, well. let’s start drinking.

By the time some of us get a table for food nearly two hours later, I’ve had three Long Island Iced Teas. I think I had one at dinner; I can’t remember, it could have been two. We laughed through three hours...it was the only thing to keep us from cryin’. We played games: Which member of the Committee would you like to see get the flesh-eating bacteria? Whose district would you like to visit as part of a WASC visitation Committee (Hello, Tortalini, I’m Bill... remember me?).

Yesterday’s journal was the abortive paragraph written in the Library. It was interrupted by a discussion with both Bob and Jack, the night custodian. We all three reminisced about Frankie. I guess I knew then that today would be the most dismal and depressed day on this campus since the day Frankie passed on...

Today begins with my arrival at seven. After I put my stuff in my room, I head toward the lounge, to see Aimee and see how she’s holding up. As I’m heading down the hall, here comes Bob, grinning ear to ear.

"How ya feelin’, big fella?" he calls out.

"I’m here. You?"

"I just wanted to check on you. Just saw Aimee...she said I could get some aspirin out of her room."

"I’ve got some...want it?"

He took the aspirin, and we headed down the hall. He told me of the M.O. drinking crew. Un. Believable. I head to the lounge, where everyone is subdued. Everyone asks how I’m holding up...I’m not sure if they’re referring to my reaction to the report or the four/five Teas from last night. I’m hanging in there, I tell them.

Outside, Harold is recounting his dream from last night. It’s part of the hellish draft-reading meeting. After we’ve been reamed, Taratino introduces a consultant who can teach us how to teach. Harold can’t make out his face clearly, all he sees is one of those consultant’s smug, I’m-getting-paid-an-outrageous-amount-of-bucks-so-you-won’t-be-getting-a-raise-for-the-next-three-years grins. And he hands out worksheets to the staff, to have them filled out. And Harold looks up to see the face of one of the most inept social science teachers on campus, a real drill and killer, a worksheet king. Harold says he woke laughing hysterically. Lucky him.

Some teachers pull me aside to tell me that they thought we had done a wonderful job, and that the WASC Committee really treated our staff poorly. All I can do is agree.

I don’t find Aimee. I’m a little worried...

At lunch, I finally do track her down. She’s been meeting with other teachers, all of whom want to reconvene members of the ad hoc student group to find out what has been said, especially since we’ve learned the format of the session. The Committee members asked the students if they could think of anything positive about the school. Few hands. Negative? A landslide (like any other school would be different). Then the Committee asked questions about the quick availability of drugs and weapons on campus. So at least we now know why the comments about school safety came up in the report.

Our fearless leader has already started opening doors to appeal and rebuttal. And supposedly, Ortiz was called in on the carpet today. But these are only hopeful twinkles in an ultimately black sky.

Today was dismal. Tomorrow, the members of the writing team are supposed to meet in the quad at lunch for recognition. What are they gonna do, pillory us? Anyway, tomorrow is another day, and another happy hour.

Send me again to that island of long...

More Fallout

2008-04-10T21:36:00.005-07:00

Friday, March 24, 1995

Today is not really the twenty-fourth. It’s Saturday the twenty-fifth, but I didn’t get a chance to input last night. More on that later.

Yesterday morning, some spirits had risen, others were still down... not nearly as bad as Thursday, but bad enough. More word about the other schools’ reports is trickling in. Supposedly Pleasant Valley received a one-page report, a narrative with only global discussions; this is in complete contrast to the twenty-page draft we received as a suppository. Additionally, there is a rumor (unsubstantiated as yet) that Mission Oaks has received a two-week period to make changes to its Action Plan, which could improve an already glowing report. I guess each Committee takes on the personality of its chair. And more than one wag on campus has been saying Taratino (or Roto-Tiller as she is now dubbed [much better than the earlier version, Tortalini]) must be the GoD of her district. Lucky them.

The new Leadership Team is announced in the morning. A great line-up, all long-term thinkers. Some want to meet already. Others want to begin a cabal, whose sole purpose would be damage control and propaganda. When Aimee and Bob Johnston, both newly elected, tell me this, I volunteer to doctor the spin. Jack Knight, also elected as the only administrator on the Team, wants to begin meeting immediately, to take a pro-active and pre-emptive approach. He wants to start looking at schedule modifications before the d.o. can start talking about taking the block schedule away; Knight also declares all district-bashing verboten (it seems the Committee passed on our discontent with district [non]support to Superintendent Bill Kurtzmann, and he was unhappy, to say the least). All of this ties into the spin doctor cabal...put on a happy face and keep plugging away.

Between first and second, while on my run, I see Vince who cryptically says, "Watch the Video." With second period being exiled to Stalag Nine, we haven’t been watching the video period, but yesterday I make an exception. It’s the WASC Committee welcome video. I almost turn it off. Then I think, why would Vince tell me to watch something I’ve already seen. I keep it on. He’s added a new ending. More student footage, with a truly inspirational voice-over (Vince in his pastoral best), telling all of us, student and teacher alike, that we have worked hard, that we are reaping benefits, that we are all worthy. It’s wonderful. It simultaneously lifts my spirits and contracts my chest (I mist over a little as I write him a note, telling him how awesome this is and how it must make everyone feel so much better... and that a drink will be waiting for him at the Whale’s Tail, after school).

At lunch, Grey calls every person who had a hand in the WASC onto the quad’s stage to receive recognition and a wooden pen. It’s a nice gesture, though some feel that the recognition is tainted with the inclusion of some of the feet-dragging department chairs. C’est la vie. Aimee is presented with a plaque as well, as if that could really show her how well she did (despite what she may think).

After school, Aimee comes by my room to pick me up (she’s to follow me home, so that I can drop off the car; after she takes me to happy hour, Lisa and Kyle will pick me up). She sees part of the journal lying on my desk and she peruses it. She’s known about the journal, and she’s read some of it. Today, she’s reading more. She laughs out loud at spots. It’s good to hear her laugh again. She also says that this is evidence. Real evidence. And that it might be helpful in an appeal. Who knows?

Happy hour goes well. I think I finally have all the need for alcoholic commiseration out of my system. I passed out at eight o’clock.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Ten

2008-04-10T21:36:00.003-07:00

After the first WASC process presentation, a number of setbacks occurred. First, Aimee, Mary, and an assistant principal met with the WASC coordinators from our area, only to learn that since there had been such confusion over this new process, it was going to be altered to help some of the slower schools. We would have to suck it up, and make "an in-flight correction." Great. The second setback was evident when our fearless leader asked us to put together another presentation. It seemed that the staff really didn't know what was going on. Even though we had since moved on through steps four and five, creating responses and gathering evidence within our departments and discipline-specific groups, then meeting in focus groups to see how the school program was working according to the WASC criteria, the staff was still unclear as to what they were doing. They were following directions and creating a good report, she said, but they needed to understand the process better. She wanted, as she put it, "a visual" to make the concept clearer. Yeah, I got a visual for you.

Aimee and I sat down and thought hard. I came up with a metaphor of floating papers creating stacks that then would become the finished report. Aimee liked it. Plus, she wanted even more sights and sounds. Film and music. And I set to thinking. An educational film. But funny. No To Sir With Love here. Stand and Deliver? No. Too preachy. Fast Times at Ridgemont High? Cool... whoops, not available on laserdisc. ANIMAL HOUSE. Right. Perfect. We could even recast the film with members of our own staff. And I set off to work on it.

Creation of the text and graphics took days. Scanning in images from Animal House, for the staff re-casting took more days. Creating the HyperStudio buttons to drive the laserdisc player another day. But we still needed a visual. I kept bugging Aimee, who in turn bugged Mary, for an idea. One day, the three of us, laughing at the insanity of it all, said that this was a huge pile of shit.

Now that's a visual.

So Aimee convinced David Jones, art teacher extraordinaire (and good sport) to draw a heaping, steaming mound of dog shit. It was beautiful. But it wasn't enough. I asked David to then draw two flies, and put Aimee's and my faces on the flies...this way I could animate the flies to move around the pile of shit. We now had our visual.

For the staff re-casting of Animal House, Bruce Metcalf went out and took photos of the members of our faculty we wanted to use. The faculty members were unaware of our purposes. We were going to superimpose their faces onto the faces of the actors in the "meet the Dean" sequence, in which the members of the Delta House receive their grade point averages from the Dean. We had pictures of everyone except someone to be Bluto (John Belushi); this person would have to be a good sport since Bluto had pencils up his nose like a walrus, and we wanted something similar. I don't know how Aimee did it, but she convinced Joan Grey to take a picture with pencils up her nose (I learned later, she told our fearless leader it was my idea. Thanks, Aimee.).

We were set. The visuals were ready. We had a Top Ten list ready (including #10 "WASC is like a box of chocolates...you never know what brown thing you're going to bite", #5 "I just work here...the person you really want to talk to is Aimee Hamm", and number one [from Animal House]: "Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the fucking Peace Corps!"). The film clips were ready. The only thing missing was music. I had set up one graphic that read "The Road to March has turned into... The Highway to HELL!" And we had AC/DC cued up for that card, but what could we use to open the presentation?

I liked the idea of using the opening music of Pulp Fiction, the surf sounds of "Miserlou," to open the presentation, and I had the disc. The afternoon before the presentation, as the three of us were putting the final finishing touches on the presentation, I broke out the disc. We cranked it up. There was only one problem. Just before the opening of "Miserlou" there is a rather profane dialogue. We could cut that out when we used the piece but today we let it roll.

Did I say one problem? Make that two... just as the disc kicked in, the principal walked into the library to be greeted at volume ten with:

"If any of you fucking pricks move, I execute every motherfucking last one of you!"

She had come in to check on our progress, I think, worried about how professional her nostril shot had turned out. And now this.

"I certainly hope this isn't part of your presentation." And she walked out of the library.

Great.

The second presentation went well. But not great. Most of the staff was in no mood to be entertained, as if our sense of humor would be entertaining to most of the staff. Oh, well. So they didn’t laugh. At least more of the staff seemed clearer on the process.

Funny, though... Grey never asked for another presentation.

A Letter

2008-04-10T21:36:00.001-07:00

Monday, March 27, 1995

On Saturday, I received the following letter in the mail:

Hello folks!

I'm leaving for London tomorrow, March 22. I'll be there studying Theatre till June 2, after which I will travel around Europe. Wow, huh? I'm goin' to Stratford! I'm gonna see the best Shakespeare in the world! The best theatre in the world! My first show is Hamlet played by Ralph Fiennes. Oh, I know you are stoked for me. I promise I'll send you postcards.

I'm getting very nervous; my heart is pounding. But I know there will be many a story to tell when I return about all my adventures. My address will be:

The Avalon
46-47 Cartwright Gardens
London-WC1-H9EL
England

That address will be till June 2. Then who knows where I'll be? Some hash-infested youth hostel in Amsterdam... a pub, drinkin' Guiness in Dublin... looking at Van Goghs in France... Anne Frank's house... Berlin... Madrid... Greece... wherever that Eurorail youth flexi-pass takes me. I'm going to stand on the Parthenon and say a monologue, godammit.

Take care and wish me luck!
All my love,
Sara

P.S. Kisses for Kyle sweetthing

Sara Martyn is one of my 2H and Shakespeare students from PeeVee. Her parents were incredibly supportive when she was having problems in the first half of the English 2 Honors class. Sara had been thinking of dropping down to college prep, and her mother came in to ask me for my take.

I knew she was having some difficulty, but I also knew she wasn't giving up, and that as long as she didn't, she would turn the corner sooner or later in the class. I told her mother this, and I guess she took the message home. I watched Sara redouble her efforts and the corner came quickly, within weeks.

The following year she worked on "A Night with the Bard," as a lover in Midsummer. Her senior year saw her in the Shakespeare class, doing drama stuff for me, acting in a student-directed Merry Wives, and competing in L.A. drama festivals. On the evening of her graduation, she and her parents were celebrating at the same resturant as Lisa and I (in the parking lot of which I would propose to Lisa later that night); the Martyns sent over a bottle of champagne. I felt like a GoodFella.

Sara has kept in touch since her departure for Oregon to major in Theatre. Her notes always bring me up. It's wonderful to see that she is off to Europe. I have no doubt that she will "make it," in whatever form she wants.

I'm not sure why I've written this entry. I don't know.

A Look Back

2008-04-10T21:35:00.008-07:00

Tuesday, March 28, 1995

I've taken a cursory glance at what I've written in this journal. It's not too bad; though really rough, it does tell the tale.

It tells the tale at least as it is happening now. But the past, what brought me here is not as clear. I'm thinking that I'll have to start putting in extra entries, a sort of history of things remembered, in with the regular entries. I'm not sure yet.

Some of the journal seems soft-pedaled, a little watered-down. Other sections are just as brutal as they need to be. But the not naming of names is problematic. So I will name names. But I shall change the names to protect the guilty (or me from the slings and arrows of pissed-off teachers).

So none of the names you've read are real. Not the students, not the teachers, not the schools. Not even (maybe) mine. Maybe, if I ever have this journal published, I'll just be credited as "a teacher," not by my name. Or maybe I'll change my mind later on.

Regardless, I'll keep this entry as is. As a sign of the process.

Remembrance of History Past: Freud’s Field Day

2008-04-10T21:35:00.007-07:00

When Kevin Davis and I used to teach together at PeeVee, we would talk about writing the ultimate screenplay, the one that we could sell to a studio, and thus could earn us livings by writing. Kevin had some great ideas, but never got around to putting any of them down on paper. We both left Honors positions at PeeVee in the same spring of ‘91, he to write grants for another division of the district, I to move on and back to Chumash.

At the end of my first year there, I finally got around to writing the screenplay that had been brewing in my head for years at PeeVee. In it, a bright high school junior, Megan Foster, looks into a series of seemingly unrelated student deaths and suicides. Gifted girl that she is, she believes they aren’t unrelated. Working intuitively and on hunches, she uncovers a secret student skinhead organization on campus. She lets her grades drop and behavior plummet in an attempt to infiltrate their ranks so that she can bring the group to justice.

What she doesn’t realize is that the skinhead group isn’t behind the murders, and that she is now the next on the list of students to be silenced. The real culprits? A rouge band of teachers, out to make the school better for everyone by off-ing problem students.

Wish fulfillment?

I don’t know... it never sold.

The Crusher

2008-04-10T21:35:00.005-07:00

Wednesday, March 29, 1995

They call him "the Crusher."

Back in January, when I was inputting focus group narratives, I came across the statement that our campus was one of a nurturing quality. "Mother Chumash," it called us. The saccharine level rose in my gorge and I wanted to spit. Later, that day, when I was in the computer lab with my English One class (this was last term), I was passing the time, standing with Liz Kurtz, who at that time was the computer lab technician [before she became the library media clerk], and Harry Kruetzer, a social science teacher and coach.

I was in the midst of listening to one of Dirty Harry’s tales from the dark side, another story of despair in the teaching trenches, when one of my students came over.

"Can I go to Mr. Johnston’s room?" he asked.

"Why, may I ask?" I responded.

"I need to get my disk."

I stared at him incredulously. "Your disk..." I let that just linger in the air, hoping he’d get my meaning. He didn’t. "Why is your disk in Mr. Johnston’s class?"

"Well, I took it there."

"You took it there."

"Uh-huh."

Liz stepped in. "You know, the disks are not supposed to leave the computer lab."

He nodded.

I took over again. "And you took it there anyway." Another nod. "And you’ve known for now, what, five days, that we were going to come here today, right?" Another nod. "And you didn’t bring it back from Johnston’s class for today’s class."

He looked at me as if to say, yeah, so...

I stared back at him. A long pause.

"So, can I go?"

"No." Liz and Harry watched me watch him slink back to his seat. I turned to them. "Was I out of line? Was I too hard on him?"

They both smiled, Liz even laughed. "I’m thinkin’ pretty soft on him," Harry tosses in.

I tell them about "Mother Chumash," and how after moments like this, some of the kids must think me "Mutherfucker Chumash." They both got a kick out of that one.

I mention this not in passing but as a kind of introduction. Harry, to whom I had been too soft on the student, is a large hulk of a man. He looks like a fifties football coach. Well over six feet. No neck. No necktie. Round glasses perched below a bowl haircut (or maybe it’s not a bowl, but just combed forward to cover what might be balding). Perpetual four o’clock shadow (present, but not quite five yet). Never without an old metal briefcase.

His demeanor has the same rustic charm. He has been known to propound the it’s-tough-to-be-a-white-guy-nowadays philosophy. He has been called on the carpet before for making (let’s just call them) insensitive comments in front of students. He is a bitcher.

And some would say he is also a butcher. He has been known to break up fights more with shoves and punches rather than hugs and tackles. Rumors abound of his verbal attacks on students. And a couple of rumors have surfaced about more than verbal attacks.

Innocent until proven guilty.

Nearly a month ago, Harry went ballistic when he entered the staff lounge to find students putting mail away in the staff mailboxes. This wasn’t what upset him; the presence of one of our surely-he-will-graduate-this-year seniors did. I guess this student and Dirty Harry had a run-in earlier in the year. The student’s comment to Harry in the lounge was "So where you gonna be next year?"

The faculty grapevine had it that Harry’s probationary (non-tenured) contract might not be renewed. Now here was this kid making the statement like it was the truth (which was bad enough) and that everyone--even the students--knew (even worse). Harry was not a happy guy.

Continuing the saga, last Wednesday, when we were beginning our commiseration in the library, Harry came storming in, looking for Principal Grey. She had already left. He looked upset.

When we asked him the problem, all he said was, "That little fucker, the one her and Sanders, they’ve been protecting, that shit fucked over my car again."

As we would learn later, his car had been keyed. Scratched into the paint job were the words FUCK YOU.

He stormed out to find Grey. As he left, we began to ponder the fate of Coach Kruetzer. The rumors of non-dismissal/non-rehire reared their ugly heads again. More (than) rumors. Second-hand accounts of wartime atrocities.

A former student, drop-out, now part-time janitor, had been listening while vacuuming the library. He removed his earphones from his walkman, and from across the room chimed in. "Man, the guy he’s talkin’ about didn’t do it."

We stopped. Turned. And Mary asked, "What do you mean, Victor?"

"The guy he said did his car, man, he didn’t do it. But there’s like a hundred others who would. The guy he thinks did it wasn’t even around today. But the others. Man, like he’s on a hundred lists. Guys just line up for him."

Liz saw an opportunity for information and the presence of a willing witness. "How come?"

"Oh, man. He don’t care who he messes with. He’ll like hit kids in class. He put me in a headlock before. He’s fu-- messed up. Lotsa guys want him."

Thanks, Victor.

Victor got back to work. We shook our heads. Innocent until proven guilty. But we could picture it. It was very easy to see.

They call him "the Crusher."

Remembrance of History Past: Standoff

2008-04-10T21:35:00.003-07:00

The following is a scene from my screenplay, Deadline:

INT - WILSON’S CLASSROOM - DAY

The thirty-plus students of Mr. Wilson’s remedial English class (mostly students of color) are broken off into pairs--study partners for the next day’s vocabulary test--with desks pushed together, face to face. Most pairs are quizzing one another; Wilson circulates through the class, verbally tossing out vocabulary words to pairs and high-fiving students who call out correct spellings and definitions. LUIS ORTEGA and VICTOR SAUCEDO, a pair of goateed Hispanic hard-guys, in pressed flannel shirts, try to disrupt Wilson’s review session by yelling out ridiculous spellings to other pairs’ words; as Wilson reaches them, he calls out the last word.

WILSON

"Nocturnal". Definition?

LUIS

Stupid. Puto.

WILSON

Spelling?

VICTOR

P - U - T - O.

Luis and a few other students laugh as the rest of the class falls silent.

WILSON

Is that your response?

VICTOR

Yeah.

WILSON

Then stick around after class, both of you. Ladies and gentlemen, put the desks back where they belong, please.

The class begins to pick up and move the desks back into the chevron shape, and Wilson begins to walk away.

LUIS

You’re an asshole.

WILSON

Excuse me?

LUIS

YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE.

Wilson turns slowly in the silence, as all students watch.

WILSON

Funny...I don’t remember you coming out of me this morning.

The class breaks up in laughter as Wilson heads for his desk.

LUIS

I’ll pipe your fuckin’ ass.

Wilson takes out an office referral from his desk and begins to write it up.

WILSON

That was "pipe your fuckin’ ass", right? I want to quote you correctly. Such...command of the language.

Wilson walks over to MAGGIE, a quiet girl near the door.

WILSON

Maggie, would you do a favor for me?

Maggie nods.

WILSON (continuing)

Run this down to Dean Reynolds’ office and have him come down here...now, please.

Wilson hands the referral to Maggie, who takes it and runs quickly out the door.

WILSON (continuing)

Folks, since there’s only a minute left in the period, I’m going to let you go a little early...just don’t disturb the other classes, okay?

The students, including Luis and Victor, begin to move slowly to the door.

WILSON

You, gentlemen, can have a seat.

The two boys pause as the class exits. Tense silence builds.

WILSON

You guys aren’t going anywhere.

LUIS

You can’t keep us here.

Luis tries to walk to the door but Wilson blocks his path by placing his own body in the doorway.

WILSON

Wanna bet?

Luis tries to squeeze by Wilson, who blocks his way by firing his hands to the doorjambs.

LUIS

You can’t touch me, man.

Luis backs up a few steps and charges the door. Wilson grabs the doorjamb on either side and pushes his own body out the door. As Luis nears the door, running, Wilson pulls himself into the classroom and chest-butts Luis to the floor.

WILSON

I can’t lay a hand on you. And I didn’t.

DEAN REYNOLDS--a tall and stocky Caucasian in his early forties--arrives behind Wilson. His Terminator-style sunglasses perfectly accentuate his look: Big Authority in a Suit. To either side of Reynolds are Red-Coats.

REYNOLDS

Problem here, Mr. Wilson?

WILSON

Well, Mr. Reynolds, masters Ortega and Saucedo here have been most insolent, disruptive, and uncooperative. I think they need some...oh, I don’t know...discipline.

REYNOLDS

Thanks, Marc. Let’s go, boys.

LUIS

Fuckin’ puto.

[NOTE: This scene actually happened back at PeeVee. Exactly as recounted. The student never returned to class (in the screenplay or in real-life). I read a few years later he had been arrested on a robbery count.]

The Crusher, Part Two

2008-04-10T21:35:00.001-07:00

Thursday, March 30, 1995

Last night, when I finally came to bed, I asked Lisa if she wanted to hear the latest entry. It had been weeks since I had shared a section (WASC making sections too long to be shared so late at night), and she said yes.

At the end of the section, she stared at me. She looked stunned. She didn't know how to take it. I didn't know how to take her lack of response. Did she hate the section?

"He's not coming back, right?" she queried.

"I don't think so. Hope not."

"Good... And that's a good thing, right?"

"Yeah... why?"

"Well, I wasn't sure on your feelings on the guy."

"The tone wasn't clear?"

"Pretty clear. It's just that I wasn't sure if there wasn't some part of you that kind of respected him."

I saw her point. It frightened me.

Let me clarify: I do NOT condone the as-of-yet unproven acts of the Crusher.

Of course, there are moments at which I feel like Mr. Kurtz in the heart of darkness, behind my closed door, doing whatever is necessary to get the job done, without a real link to the outside world. There are moments when I think that when others come after me, when you Marlows will read this journal, you might find scrawled across a page, somewhere near the middle, hidden by reams of text, red-handed scribble:

"Exterminate the brutes."

PsychoTeacher

2008-04-10T21:34:00.006-07:00

Friday, March 31, 1995

In the faculty lounge--where yesterday Miller the Okie proclaimed that he was afraid of earthquakes since the high-speed Santa Ana winds we’ve been having denote "earthquake weather" where he comes from... I didn't ask which planet--I was accosted by Hamm who needed different information. Actually a piece of software. The disc that held the little Warrior graphic that I had used on some of the WASC material.

"Like I said yesterday," I told the Hammer, "it's at home."

"Sheeeet."

"Why?"

"Well, Johnston needs it. And I kinda told him that you could get it to him."

"When does he need it?"

"Oh, like yesterday."

"That's good." At that point, Johnston and crew came into the lounge. "Hey, Bob... so this Viking logo thing you need... when did you tell Hamm you needed it?"

He smiled at her. He knew where this was going. So he played it up, knowing I'd follow his cue. "Aw, shit. You know, I told the Hammer here two days ago I needed that stuff. You didn't tell him?" He faced off at her.

And I kicked into gear. "Two days ago. That would be...let me get this straight...Wednesday, right?" Bob nodded. "Ah, I see, now. And you needed it when?"

"Yesterday?"

"Right. Yesterday. So when she tells me about your request FIVE MINUTES ago, that really doesn't do you a shit-load of good."

"That would be correct, Bill."

Aimee started to giggle. There was this runaway train, she was tied to the tracks, and there was nothing to do but laugh.

"But you know what, Bob, I should have known. I really should have. Because Aimee here was working under the incorrect premise that I can read her mind. That I wasn't in need of any Dionne-Warwick-Psychic-Fuckin-Friends-Network because I could read her mind, as if there was something in that vast wasteland between her curls that could be read."

Bob and Aimee were both laughing now. Aimee stood up at that point to go. I was relentless, though.

"Aimee, I'm not PsychicTeacher. I'm not psychic. Psychotic, maybe. Psychic, no."

Bob chimed in. "Psychedelic?"

"Maybe. PsychoTeacher, though... that works for me."

Aimee was now ready to leave. "You're all assholes."

Yeah, well, at least we didn't have a little English Ten girl drop her birth control pills in class yesterday. The girls in the front row of Aimee’s class turned twenty shades of red, the student aide (a former English 3 of mine from last year) went into hyena-like fits of laughter, and the boys--duh, what's that make-up compact doin' on the floor--were clueless. I told Aimee that today would be the perfect time for that SafeSex-in-the-Age-of-AIDS lecture...pills--bad, barriers--good.

At least it's Friday and we still have a sense of humor.

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Eleven

2008-04-10T21:34:00.005-07:00

The best thing about the second (bawdy) WASC presentation was a statement Aimee made to me when we were previewing it. It was pretty randy at points, and she was concerned about how faculty members, especially the principal, were going to take it. She shook her head.

"You know, Frankie would have loved this."

This was just a few days after the one year anniversary of Frankie's death, and when Aimee said that, my whole world came to a momentary stop. I swallowed hard.

I nodded. "Yeah."

Aimee could not have had any idea how important that was. She didn't know how I felt about Frankie, my former teacher, my mentor. That fact that Frankie would have loved it was important to me. Not that I created it with her in mind; I didn't. But that made any lack of response from the staff a little more palatable.

The Miracle Worker

2008-04-10T21:34:00.003-07:00

Monday, April 3, 1995

Today, we finished watching The Miracle Worker in English Nine. What a great film (the 1963 version with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke)! Following the Gibson play better than any other adaptation (since he wrote the screenplay as well), this is the way to teach the play if you don't have time to read it. The play is a great watch but a tough read since it is so filled with stage direction that it becomes pretty dull just listening to it, without acting it out. And with time running out this term (this is the last week of this nine-week term... thank god next week is spring break), I didn't have time to act out sections of it with the classes (particularly unruly second period), so the film it had to be.

I've been breaking the film down into mini-acts, having the students write their perceptions of the characters (personality traits, not physical attributes) and citing evidence from the film to support these perceptions. The short-range goal is a example-driven paragraph that they will complete as a kind of final exam for the class. The long-range goal is multimedia presentations using the barcoded laser-clips, the one I had discussed with the members of the WASC Committee. It will also act as a launching point for next term's writing... the expository paragraph, using textual evidence from the pieces of literature we'll be reading (Of Mice and Men and Romeo and Juliet).

Today, however, it is the end of the film, from Helen's return home to the "miracle" at the water pump. It never fails to mist me up, when Helen "gets" it and a tortured, long-pent-up "wawa" is finally released out to a world that can hear. In the moments following the ending of the film, we talk about the story as a perfect tale for the classroom as it deals with learning and teaching. We talk about Helen's obstacles to learning and how she overcomes them. We talk about the joy Anne receives in working her miracle. Even the less than bright students see how if any student is tenacious enough s/he can succeed; the brighter ones see that the lesson goes for teachers as well. Often in these post-play discussions, I am asked if I have ever had a moment like that. And I tell them that it is in those moments that the love of teaching is found. Teachers don't get paid nearly enough, and so money isn't the reason we do what we do. But when a student makes a breakthrough (though it may not be as great as overcoming deafness and blindness), it is that sense of achievement that is more wonderful than payment. I talk of their own writing and the improvement I’ve seen from the beginning of the term to around now and the improvement I will see between now and the end of the year...monumental growth for some. That's a communication breakthrough every bit as important as Helen's.

Some students are stunned to learn that Helen Keller actually existed, and they are amazed when I share with them selections from Sullivan's diary that take the story further into Helen's life (a new teacher on campus, the new Drama teacher, Letty Garcia--yet another Chumash alumnus [as are Bob, Vince, Hector, and a handful of other who returned to the roost]--gave me the stuff, to my eternal gratitude). This helps many of them see the relevancy to their own lives. Whatever works.

It's the perfect work of literature with which to end the term. With just a week to go, I can use the curiosity of Helen and the determination of Anne as touchstones for the students to use in an attempt to raise grades in these final few days. Many see the connection, and some will actually act on it. And now's the time that could make a difference. Period One has the ability to erase nearly half its fails in these next few days. Period Two, though not as dramatic, still has the opportunity to pass more students.

I don't want to call it a miracle. But if the shoe fits...

Case in point: Eric--Mr. JROTC tardy-man, Mr. Watch Alarm, Mr. Resource Period and I-Still-Can't-Get-the-Work-In--was missing nine assignments as of this morning. At the beginning of class, he tells me again about he's going to get all this work in. Thirty minutes later, he's goofing off in class, not reading, not writing his book report (due today), not even trying to do the old work. For a guy so concerned about his grade, he's not doing a whole helluvalot to improve it. This I tell him... and his Directed Studies resource teacher, Dave Anderson. Dave’s trying to ride him, but it doesn't seem to be working. Even Dave seems like he's ready to quit on Eric. Eric seems ready to quit on me. But I, for once, don't feel like quitting.

I've seen The Miracle Worker again. I've been misty-(f)-eyed. I’m ready to storm the castle again.

March Blues

2008-04-10T21:34:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, April 4, 1995

We are three days away from spring break (if you don't count today, which at one-forty-three is pretty much over for me). We are all exhausted. This is what is commonly called the "March Blues," only it’s April now so it’s even worse.

The staff looks and acts like the living dead. WASC, March, and the end of the term have taken their toll. Even those like me, instantly and momentarily revitalized by The Miracle Worker yesterday and the miraculous Edney-less victory of my beloved Bruins last night for the NCAA title, are dragging. I know I have bags under my eyes. The last few nights have been late ones, working on edits on English Nine papers, working on worksheets from What Color is Your Parachute (the career-change classic by Bolles recommended by Lisa's friend Sandy--the woman who went through the teacher credential program but not into the classroom), and the time-change-induced restlessness.

It's the same on other campuses, as well. Lisa, who teaches a block away from Chumash at one of our feeder junior high schools, is even more tired than I. She's been working extra hard these past few weeks, in-servicing teachers in her district (hers is an elementary school district) on how to grade their proficiency tests holistically. Their union has been griping over this grading, even though it is during a workday on which the teachers will see no students. So Lisa's been having to fight lethargic teachers and vehement union reps. The days off for the grading-training take her out of the classroom, so she must prepare not only for the training, but for the substitute who replaces her for the individual days as well. And then, of course, she checks on her class after the training. Selected for her experience and expertise in testing and writing, Lisa had been thrilled to do this in-servicing, but now it is becoming clear that this is more work that it is worth (which is little to the district... a non-paying position). And all this is on top of her normal classwork, long-term writing projects coming in and grades about to go out.

One of her classes receiving grades is her student government course. This is her last year of advising student government, after a five-year stint. She's been incredibly successful with her students (but we'll probably only see this in the next few years, when her kids go into the new, revamped student government class here at C.H.S.; the old, retiring teacher has been coasting now for over fifteen years [when both Lisa and I were in student government] and the new guy's vowed to overhaul the system). Kyle is one reason that she's giving it all up... for much the same purpose I gave up Drama. We feel like there is so very little time. Even though I was receiving a stipend for Drama (it worked out to less than a dollar an hour when the hours were tallied), it was too much time away. For Lisa, it's the exact same problem, but on top of everything else, she receives no extra pay for the duty (she fought for and received an extra resource period for phone calls and activity set-ups, but there is still no financial recompense).

She has always had doubts about the true lessons and worth of student government, but this year an incident occurred that cemented the idea of giving it up for a while. She caught her students stealing from the student store's candy inventory. It hurt her, even more than it hurt the students (who were compelled to call their parents to tell them what they had done, who were restricted from school functions from the rest of the year, and who will receive D's in student government for this quarter). This betrayal of the program, ethical behavior, and Lisa, was the last straw for her. And this week she has to give those D's.

Combine all this stress with her grandfather's illness, her uncle's impending visit, Kyle's neediness (as he enters a new separation anxiety period), and she cannot wait for spring break.

If only we could be assured it would be relaxing.

[POST-SCRIPT: I was in bed by eight-forty tonight.]

Remembrance of History Past: Sustenance

2008-04-10T21:33:00.006-07:00

When I teach the Vocabulary to the Nines, I uncover the List--the words, parts of speech, and definitions--one by one on the overhead projector, sliding a sheet of paper from behind an overhead transparency inside a clear plastic page protector. This way, I have control over the speed at which the students copy the material from the screen. I can pace my lesson better.

A day in late May, the list included the word SUSTENANCE. "Sustenance: Noun; that which sustains life; food; means of making a living"

Then I give the students a couple of sentence examples to show how to use to word correctly.

"After the child had gone without SUSTENANCE for a week, he died of starvation." then "For me, teaching is SUSTENANCE; not only does it pay my bills, but I feel a need to do it. If I didn't teach, I don't know what else I would do."

Was I lying?

A Touch of CLASs

2008-04-10T21:33:00.005-07:00

Wednesday, April 5, 1995

When I first started teaching, way back when, the state of California used to have what was called the CAP (California Assessment Program) test, which was given to students at various grades; this combination reading, writing, and mathematics test was used to measure the achievement of California's students and to compare the students of individual counties, districts, and schools. It was kind of a public report card, something onto which the media could cling when discussing the state of the state’s educational system.

In those years, schools, PeeVee included, used to make attempts to "beat the CAP." PeeVee used to do intensive training in the senior English classes, then offered pizza parties to raise the number of students taking the test (until of course it was learned that sometimes it is better for the school if some students continued to be truant on test days, allowing for an "acceptable" absence percentage while testing a stronger student demographic). "CAP crap," as it was called, was vital to the school since this was one of those all-important report-cards. If one did well on the CAP, then the heat--public, county, district heat--was off until the next big report card.

In the past few years, in an attempt to remove the "multiple-guess" aspect and onus from the CAP, the state's educator/legislators made wholesale changes in the test, creating a whole new animal... the CLAS (California Learning Assessment System) test. The state-ed purpose was to raise to a "demanding" level the expectations of and for our students to be "top students." This new test would not be graded simply pass/fail, but rather on a continuum from 1 to 6, thus showing higher levels of achievement. A score of one demonstrated little or no understanding, a six advanced mastery of the material (the kind of mastery that species, the mythical "top student," would have), with a three showing a basic and general understanding. Scorers the first year, including Lisa, were instructed that threes would be a pass on an old-style pass/fail test.

Most teachers I know found the change very positive. Now the test would be looking at the process of student learning, what students do (and what they've been taught to do) when they are reading, writing, and making mathematical computations. Each area tested would include a written essay by the student, explain her/his responses. Thus, the end product answer was only part of the student response, and the process of finding that answer, of attacking the question, now became part of the student response and could be analyzed.

This new slant on compositional support of the students’ answers created the first problems last year. Analyzing and scoring written responses is not easy--ask any writing teacher--and it is definitely more time-consuming (the tests administered one spring would have their results released the following spring). Econ 101: Time = Money. Thus, grading the new CLAS test was expensive. So, in a brilliant cost-cutting measure, the state decided to grade only "sample" student tests from two years ago and attempted to predict school, district, and county results from their sampling. WRONG. Bad idea. Some schools’ scores were based on as few as only three tests, and anybody who has taken a statistics course can tell that this is horrible methodology. An outcry arose and last year the state decided to grade all the student responses in upcoming years.

Because of the new emphasis on student response, the items on the English sections of the test became of crucial importance. The students must have something to which they can respond. It’s easier to respond if the material grabs the reader emotionally as well was intellectually. Safe stories with little or no conflict, used in years before to test comprehension, were of little or no value now. Newly selected stories were filled with provocative concepts and conflicts, ones which would evoke and provoke responses from the students. Violence and it repercussions entered the stories. So did abuse. Internal ethical conflict. And therein lay the second major problem.

Ask a student who killed whom, and that's okay. Ask a student to respond to a selection that involves an act of violence as s/he is reading it, commenting upon it, adding personal relevance and opinion to the act, possibly discussing its ethical justification or depravity, and suddenly the test is in trouble. Conservative and religious parent groups voiced concern over the test, calling it classroom psychology, values clarification, even brainwashing. How this could be brainwashing--having students comment upon acts, writing comments that could come down in harsh criticism of said acts--is beyond me. But so be it. Cries arose of how depraved the new story selections were, filled with concepts from which we should be protecting our children, not to which we should be exposing them in a state-mandated test.

And so many affluent (read white and rich) districts and schools made the exam a voluntary one last year (Conejo Valley, home of Simi Valley and the first Rodney King trial, had more than 40% of the students [parents] refuse to take the test.). This completely gutted the integrity of the test. It may also have had repercussions on results, or so we hoped. We thought if many students from advantaged, high socio-economic areas boycotted the exam, then maybe our students, whose parents did not raise a fuss over the brewing media storm--too busy working two jobs to notice, or too lazy to care--then maybe our students could score well. Or so we thought last year.

Last night, while taking a walking-wild Kyle over to visit grandma and grandpa, we caught a section of a news story outlining the "disastrous" CLAS test results. Even the Superintendent of Public Education for the state called the results "abysmal." Only ten percent of L.A. Unified's tenth grade students were achieving at grade level on the math section of the exam. L.A. Unified's response to the "incredibly disappointing" results was that over fifty percent of their clientele has only limited English proficiency, thus the test scores were bound to be lower than hoped.

Lisa had heard positive rumors of test scores from her school, but we had not heard anything about Chumash yet. Hearing L.A.U.S.D. bemoan the scores and blame them on LEP students was disturbing to say the least, however. We have over a third limited English proficient. This could be very bad for us, if the L.A.U.S.D. trend was true and moved up the coast to us.

When I arrived on my new bike to campus this morning, I found taped to the table in the staff lounge a copy of an article from the Ventura County edition of the L.A. Times (not those guys again). County CLAS scores are announced. Fourth- and eighth- grade scores in the county were above the state average. Tenth-graders were scoring at near the state average. Our county superintendent of schools is quoted as stating that the scores at the high school level are skewed because the schools in the Conejo district and other campuses (like our own district’s lily-white AcadHigh) did not take the exam, depriving our county of higher scores.

There is more on scoring. And the paper keeps on about "passing" scores, ignoring the basic premise of the exam--assessing progress along a continuum--instead focusing on a basic "score." Again, process versus product. And here is where it gets even more interesting: the Times has a score of three as a "fail," not a "pass." This is not what the scorers had been told and taught (though maybe this is another raising of the "demanding" standards for "top students"--a "pass" is no longer good enough to pass).

But there is even more: a table off to the side. Some stats are highlighted. The first section that had some highlighting regards the writing section. Top ten schools in the county. And we're there. The next highlighted section...reading. Top ten schools in the county. And we're there. Next highlighted section... math. Bottom ten schools. We're there, too.

Well, how 'bout that?

The irony is incredible. When WASC left us in their wake two weeks ago, the math department had been lauded for its innovation and assessment techniques. No mention had been made of the English department, only that it was/ we were slow in incorporating portfolio assessment. But we've scored fairly well in the CLAS. It raises our spirits some. The irony is fun. (Maybe these stats need to go into Aimee's letter to our area's WASC chief. Aimee's letter is personal, passionate, and more than a little pissed-off, outlining what we had been told about how to create our report versus what we faced when the Committee arrived. It discusses the despair the Committee's response has caused on our campus. And it delivers a stinging blow against the seemingly hypocritical dichotomy between the process dictated and the product expected. It sets the groundwork for our rebuttal, if one is necessary following the announcement of the accreditation term in May or June.)

A Tale Told of WASC: Part Twelve

2008-04-10T21:33:00.003-07:00

By October, we were heavily into gathering evidence that would support our claims about our program here at C.H.S.. This evidence was gathered primarily within departments, whose members would disseminate it out not only to the department’s evidence box, but to the appropriate focus group boxes as well (for example, one of my pieces of evidence, a sample student BarCode laserdisc presentation, would not only be placed in our department’s box, but in the "Powerful Learning and Teaching" box [for the use of technology], the "Assessment and Accountability" box [student assessment], and the "Curricular Paths" box as well [use of the lesson across teaching strands]).

Or at least, that was the way it was supposed to work. By this time in the year, it was becoming obvious that the usual suspects were the only ones leaving evidence. The same old teachers were sharing their goods (and bads and uglies--since WASC wanted to see the entire spectrum of the program). Some teachers were not contributing, as usual. Some teachers were contributing but not putting together evidence cover-sheets. Others were clueless about putting copies in the focus group boxes. And Aimee was having one helluva time getting the department chairs to explain the process to their departments. It was beginning to get ugly.

If that wasn’t bad enough, now that the departments had answered their discipline-specific questions, and had gathered the evidence that would support those responses, the departments now had to write narratives (simple prose paragraphs) that would describe the departments’ strengths and weaknesses to the WASC committee. While this sounds easy, it wasn’t, especially to the old-timer for whom WASC meant "whitewash." Many of the narratives had to be sent back to departments to un-do their PR quality. Others Aimee and I rewrote.

That was our/my job. And Aimee was beginning to "work (my) ass."

D-Day

2008-04-10T21:33:00.001-07:00

Thursday, April 6, 1995

A few weeks ago, just after speaking to Sandy about possible career opportunities, after she had recommended I contact the American Society of Training and Development (since she felt that my first love was still teaching...just maybe not at the high school level anymore), I received a flyer in the mail from Jillian Jillen. She used to run staff development in our district before retiring a few years ago. Her flyer was a promotional one for the upcoming technology day put on by ASTD. Karma. I signed up for it.

There were workshops there that I definitely wanted to attend, especially one on the use of the "Persuasion" multimedia authoring software. The only problem was that it was on a school day. Today. If I was going to be able to sit in on the "Persuasion" session, I would have to miss second period, leave the charmers with a sub. Right. Oh, well. I really didn’t want to learn another software application. I picked other sessions to attend, and set up for Bruce Metcalf to cover the second half of second period (if I could get them started on something, like free work for a term-ending deadline while watching a video, then I could leave them with someone for the second half of class), and Student Government Heir Apparent Brad Scofield for third period.

Of course, the conference registration was before WASC and before our fearless leader announced last week that there would be a MANDATORY meeting after school today at which Bill Kurtzmann, the district superintendent, would address the staff. I begged off from the session, telling our principal of my conference. When I did this, I asked if she knew what this was all about. She muttered something about WASC and was otherwise tightlipped. She let me go--both from her office and to the conference(like she really had a choice)--and she mentioned that the meeting might be videotaped; if it was, I could watch it in all its glory...if not, she could have Kurtzmann call me at home and give it to me personally. It seemed like a weird joke. And all I wanted to do was leave.

As I go, I began to think of all this. Supposedly, Kurtzmann had been infuriated when the first words spoken at his meeting with the WASC visitation Committee was a report on the feeling held by many staff members that the district has not been wholeheartedly in support of our programs at Chumash. He had watched the WASC Committee deliver their report to the staff, saying nothing in support, then a week later announced his papal audience with the true believers.

We were all pretty sure that he was going to come down and try to clear up any "misconceptions" about district support for the school and its staff. The only debate was on which tack he would take. Would it be a "rally the troops speech" a la Henry the Fifth before Agincourt or would it be an angry father disappointed at his brood? We all hoped it would be the former, knowing that the latter would only serve to create even more rancor on our campus toward the district office. He couldn’t be that dumb, no matter what I’ve said earlier of my perception of district intelligence (an oxymoron if there ever was).

Anyway, I wasn’t going to be there, much to my disappointment (I did want to hear the speech, though, see the response, if for nothing more than to report it semi-objectively in this journal), and the tongue-wagging teasing of my colleagues (one even called me chicken, though most called me lucky).

Today, with the final days of the term winding down, I used the penultimate day of the English Nines to show side one of Searching for Bobby Fischer, a film that exults intelligence and giftedness, qualities I wouldn’t mind my Nines emulating. This they could watch or they could finish up any old, late, or make-up work before the period-end deadline. This allows for returning work tomorrow so that students can put together complete term notebooks for extra-credit...anything to get some of these kids to pass. The Honors class, after an exhausting term (yesterday capped with group presentations on the various narrators of Frankenstein), would finally finish watching Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (after a five week break between viewings. This was the plan...not a bad one.

The only problem is that the thirty-year-old wiring of our wing is starting to show its wrinkles. The school was never wired for computers, and my south wall is adjacent to the computer lab, and for the last few weeks we’ve been having breaker failures. This morning, first period’s showing of the laserdisc was interrupted twice by power-outages. This gave me great pause about second period, unforgiving bastards that they can be. And sure enough, the disc player and televisions went down a half dozen times (I’m not sure they even finished the side). So when Bruce came in, and I sneaked out to the conference, I was feeling pretty shitty about my working conditions. This was the perfect mood to attend a conference centered around what I’ve started examining as an alternate career.

The seminar workshops ranged from the mundane and useless to the exciting and enticing. I met Jillian Jillen there, and (wonderful lady she is--so wonderful Kevin Davis once said she’s so nice, they named her twice) she introduced me to a number of people, including a past president of the organization, to whom she blew my horn, and before I knew it he had handed me his card and asked that I give him a call concerning possible part-time training positions (part-time, since Jillian told him she’d kill me if I left the district... get that uzi ready, baby). So this is networking... I’m not overly sociable, but I think I can do this.

By the end of the day, I had networked my way into another possible job interview, met with two other representatives of the district, both of whom knew Kurtzmann would be on our campus and semi-congratulated me on finding a way of not being there. Also there were three old-timer members of our staff--two business teachers, one science teacher, all IBMers--who were tangibly thrilled to miss the meeting this afternoon. All this talk was beginning to disturb me. Did they know something I didn’t? Was I out of the loop again? They claimed no other information, but I was getting a bad feeling nonetheless.

I left the conference a touch early, and headed back to school, to pick up what grading had been turned in. I figured I could walk back on campus--it was now nearing three-thirty--and get this work done, since the meeting should be over by now. Wrong. The lot was full when I pulled in. The library door across campus from my room was closed, the lights on. I went into my room and did my grade-stuff. The library door was still closed. Three-forty. I did the preparation of the room for tomorrow. The library door was still closed. Three-fifty. I didn’t want to go in. Not now. If it was still going on, something must be up. And I didn’t to stroll in like some Johnny-come-lately. I might as well paint a target on my ass. No thanks.

So I went home.

And I called Mary at the library at four-o-five. She sounded bummed. And she told me why.

Kurtzmann pulled our schedule.

We’ll be back on a six-period day in the fall.

I pressed for details. Kurtzmann came in and was at first conciliatory, commiserating with us over WASC. Then he hit us with changes.

Mary put Aimee on the phone. She sounded devastated, and said, "Thanks for being there for us today." She sounded seriously hurt I wasn’t there. Then she recounted what Mary said, adding that there might be "some kind of flexibility," but she didn’t know what that meant. I asked her where that puts our action plan. She said she didn’t know since it was based on continuing reform and change on campus, using the four-period day as a springboard for further change. Not that it matters, she said, and she sounded so down that I almost didn’t ask why, but she told me anyway. Kurtzmann said that it was his perception that we would receive only a one-year term of accreditation.

When I pushed on this, she told me that Kurtzmann had said that he had been "privy" to discussions that led him to believe that a one would be our accreditation, but that not even a six could save our block schedule. WASC isn’t the real reason, Kurtzmann had said. Concerns have been raised from every corner of the earth it seems. I asked her how the rest of the staff took it. She said that after you’ve been kicked in the teeth, you really don’t feel your knees being cut out from under you. She told me that she had to go, that she’d talk to me tomorrow. I told her to call me tonight. She said she would, but I know she won’t.

When the phone rang an hour ago, it wasn’t Aimee, but Cookie Harris. Her first word was "Chicken." Her take on Kurtzmann’s presentation was much more brutal, even more than the teeth and knees imagery. She said one of his first statements was that we have "several good teachers" on our campus. Well, that’s nice. The rest are shit, I suppose. She said after that positive opening, his big statement was that changes would have to be made. It took twenty minutes for the staff to ask if that meant the end of the four-period day. And it was only at that point that he said yes. Whether he would have made the statement on his own is still debatable according to Cookie. I told her all this is unbelievable... that I thought it was going to be a "rally the troops" speech, to which she said he was probably a lieutenant in ‘Nam. Frag’ the bastard. She told me that her most lasting image of the meeting was that of the Crusher standing alone in the back corner of the library, smiling, seemingly enjoying all this, almost gloating. I wasn’t sure I got it, then she told me that the word has it that he has filed a grievance with the district, claiming work-related stress over indignities endured, and that he has received a fourth-term exile into substitute-land. I didn’t want to get into the tale of the Crusher, so I moved on and I questioned the timing of the hook. WASC was just an excuse, she said, we should have seen this coming. I asked if it is any coincidence that he drops the bomb after the yearly deadline for requests for voluntary transfers. We’re stuck on a sinking ship. He has torpedoed the boat and stolen the life rafts. She said tomorrow will be even more dismal than the day after WASC... nobody went drinking tonight, they all went home to sulk.

One day left. Fatigue and WASC had kicked our ass. At our lowest point, we are now told that our program is a casualty. This sucks.

I hope somebody videotaped the meeting. I’d love to see it. Otherwise, I’ll be hearing as many versions as there were staff there today.

It’s going to be a very long minimum day.

The End of the Beginning/The Beginning of the End

2008-04-10T21:32:00.004-07:00

Friday, April 7, 1995

It is now eight-thirty-nine, I still have the English 4/4Honors book report essays to grade before I'm finished with third term, but I'm at the keyboard to enter the last journal entry for the term. It could be a long one.

Or it could be short. Would it matter?

This morning I arrive at the teachers' lounge to find some of my colleagues still/already bemoaning the events of yesterday. A disgruntled teacher has already scrawled across the posted class size information for next term, "NEVER MIND..." thus summing up the opinion of at least half the staff. Gallows humor prevails with one teacher asking how we'll adapt to a six-period day...the response is that we'll just cut our worksheets in half. We'll have to renumber the second half, but that's okay. What wags.

On my way out, I run into Aimee coming in. She apologizes for not calling me last night; she had been deluged by phone calls. I ask her how she feels. She says that last night was like a rollercoaster, one minute it was fight, the next it was flight. She had wanted to tell Bruce to take her off the voluntary CoreLit readers list for the summer (if the district wasn't going to support us, then she wasn't going to support the district). She says she wants to fight the district, but she doesn't want to do it unless the staff is one-hundred-percent behind a fight.

She looks around the room and leans close. She wants to talk to me, though. She pulls me aside to tell me that there is a contingency of faculty that wants to fight the sup's proclamation. This sounds good. But how? Some of the ESL teachers are saying that a lawsuit could be filed claiming discrimination against our predominate demographic. I shake my head on this one.

No way. I don't believe in discrimination suits in the first place, and I certainly don't see the district's action as discriminatory. Maybe against our campus. Maybe. But not against Latino students. If the only way we can fight the decree is through a bogus lawsuit, then fuck it, I want no part of it. The ends do not justify the means. At least not in this case. I tell her this. I'm not sure how she is taking this. Have I betrayed her trust? Have I concurred with her secret feelings? I'm not sure, and I don't have time to ask since one of the ESL teachers comes up and tells Aimee that she can rally the Hispanic community in support of our old schedule, and they can "raise some hell" since this is a clear-cut case of discrimination. Aimee shoots me a glance and I keep my mouth shut. In fact, it's so shut, it's out the door.

As I leave, I glance at the daily student bulletin. In the faculty section is a notice reminding some of us about the possibility of a videotape of Kurtzmann's message. Kurtzmann would rather personally meet with us as a group if we feel the need to talk about the situation with him. Yeah, riqht.

(Wait a minute. The bulletin goes to press at noon the day before its release. This means Grey and the office staff knew what was going down hours before the meeting, at least. Suddenly, I'm feeling like Johnston the conspiratologist, seeing a massive orchestration on all of this. I look up. Grey is standing in the hallway. I go over, hold up a hand like a cop stopping traffic, and smilingly tell her that I'll pass on the private audience... I have a pretty good picture of what went down yesterday and I don't need it in super-slo-mo instant replay.)

The warning bell rings and I'm off to first period.

During second period, we receive in our classes a special take-home bulletin for the students from Grey, outlining the shift from a four-period day to a six-period day, effective in the fall. It calls the change "a decision... reached for Chumash" because of the need for "increased instructional time for all students, a continuity of academic classes across the school year by semester instead of quarter and a better sequencing of courses." The kids are bummed.

Of course, my seniors third period are breathing sighs of relief. They're outtahere in June. We spend the shortened period talking about all of this. They question why the shift is made. I tell them of the district's discomfort at having some students leave campus at twelve-thirty. They rebut with the fact that most of those students are either working or attending classes at the local junior college (though this is not necessarily true for the freshmen). I repeat the lack of real positive change in test scores. They ask if the scores have gone down. No. Are less kids graduating? No. Are more kids dropping out? No. Are grades down? No. And so why are we changing back? The kids say that unless the new system is having bad effects, it should stay. Now, this sounds logical, but I tell them about leaving campus early. Of academic continuity. I tell them that for an Honors class, it would be more beneficial to have a year-long course since I would be able to assign readings from September to June. This they see, and some agree...for this, their own class. But for the school at large, they're not buying it. They've been in literature-based English classes their entire high school careers, and so they say having a break between lit courses is not damaging. I don't know what to tell them. Other than they're right.

They ask how long a class period will be next year. I tell them if we go six periods a day, then most likely classes will be around fifty-four minutes long. One student laughs out loud. "You're kidding, right? By the time roll is taken, papers handed back, homework gone over, you'll get to ask one student one question and the period will be over and we'll be doing the Chumash Shuffle out there again..." and she thumbs outside.

The Chumash Shuffle. That was good. The slow crawl from class to class. I'm moving but I'm going nowhere. Slowly.

They ask what they can do. Student action? Walkouts? No way, I say. I tell them that I think that if they try anything like that, the district will be even more hard-line about all this and will come down on this campus like an iron boot. No student action. Parent action, I say, is another matter. The Grey flyer mentioned a parent meeting the Wednesday we come back from break. This could be used as a show of force. But as I tell them, volume will not be important, numbers will. If five vocal parents show up, it will mean nothing. If five hundred unified parents show, then the board will run scared. Votes and voters matter to elected officials, and they can overthrow the superintendent. But all of this seems doubtful since the parent meeting is nearly two weeks away. There is more than enough time to cool and forget.

And Kurtzmann's timing is now seeming impeccable. Not only does he wait for the WASC visitation to be over, for both a way to avoid providing true evidence of district non-support and a reason to pull the plug, and not only does he wait for the end-of-March deadline for voluntary staff transfers to pass, but he also springs this one day before spring break, allowing no chance for pre-break parental uprising and creating an instant two-week cooling period to forstall any later parental outcry. Maybe there is a brain alive at the d.o.. Too bad it's Hitler's.

After fourth period (during which I cover for Cookie, taking over her Creative Writing class, and discussing the schedule change again), I head over to Aimee's room to check on her. She looks okay, tells me that she's heading over for an emergency Leadership Team meeting--convened by Jack Knight (who, according to some, has now found a way to be principal in action if not in title)--and asks if I want to tag along (since the Team has on open-door, open-ear policy). What the hell.

When we arrive late, Grey is already speaking to the Team. She's not on the Team, having not been elected by the staff, but she's there (I guess) to give the district line (fitting, since it's becoming increasingly obvious that she knew beforehand that this was coming). She says that the public line from the school will be that we are moving into what "we" are calling "Plan Three." Plan One was the traditional six-period day that we used for decades. Plan Two had been our experimentation with the four-period block schedule. Plan Three is now a return to six periods, using the lessons we've learned during our experiment to create the "best of both worlds."

It is pure horseshit. It's Plan Three from Outer Space. Ed Wood should be directing this, but we have Grey, instead. And either she has so convinced herself that this is the right story to tell parents and the press, or she's in pure capitulation to the district, that this is the new party line. Know it, love it, live it. And she states that this is the way it is going to be, and that we'll just have to deal with it. If we feel that "gee we didn't get our way, so fuck it (my words, not hers) I'm not going to work on this anymore" then we give up all say in what our school will be. It's almost a reprimand.

By this point, some other non-Team members are trickling in to listen, and I'm taking notes. My first note is to myself; it reads, "boy am i glad i'm not on the LT". The meeting goes around the table...random thoughts.

Johnston: He feels that Kurtzmann has invalidated the Action Plan, since it had been predicated on a block schedule (for its flexibility). Knight disagrees, saying that the Action Plan can go forward, that nothing outside of this campus can stop it. (yeah, right)

Lori Teller: She feels we are underestimating the power of our community and parents. She foresees a great outcry from the community and a possible (if not overturning of Kurtzmann's decree, then at least a) softening of position and the buying of possible time.

Knight: He is concerned by a lack of time flexibility in a six-period day. So his suggestion is a program that is different. Kurtzmann pulled the plug on our block schedule, but he didn't necessarily mandate a six-period day. (This is a new interpretation that I had not heard. I like it.) Knight claims that Kurtzmann waffled, that he never laid down concrete parameters. Thus, we have different interpretations from people who all listened to the same speech. This, he sees, is the loophole.

Grey: She lays down the time-frame. If we are going to submit a new plan, rather than a traditional six-period day, it will have to happen fast. She tells the group that counselors will be finishing up four-period registration the week we return. Then they're going to have a computer run of flimsies (tentative schedules) and begin to use those for regrouping and doing six-period registration. Thus, "you" have a week to create a new plan. The Leadership Team is taken aback. Okay, you have until the 27th, which is the school board's next meeting. So that's the time-frame. And Grey leaves.

Hamm: She wants to know if anyone thinks that the parents can make a difference. No one knows for sure. And Lorraine Washington--the former teacher/present counselor newly elected to the Team--speaks out on teachers being too extreme in telling students to get their parents involved. This ruffles feathers on the Team, who see this as the only response that can get anywhere with the district (since the d.o. won't listen to teachers or students...only voters).

Washington: She claims that it's obvious that the d.o. wants a six-period day. She then says we have two options: complain and be forced into a six-period day, or go to a six-period day on our own but make it our own. Johnston flashes Aimee then me a look. He's been dissatisfied with Washington’s performance on the Team from the second meeting, in which he (and other members, including Hamm) perceived her as being less than enthusiastic for implementing the Action Plan as written, and dragging her feet.

(I had tried to come to her defense, using the classic "nature versus nurture" argument. She used to be a teacher--one of us--but now she was a counselor--one of them. She is bound to have a new perspective on things. Plus, being elected by teachers, she must be feeling heat now from her colleagues in the counseling office, pushing her to take their side not ours.)

Of course, Bob has been reading The Hot Zone, and he's sure that there's an airborne virus in the front office that reduces the victims' IQs by five points a year. He is incredibly dissatisfied.

Baird: He disagrees with Washington, bringing the discussion back on course, saying that different configurations could work. He raises two alternatives, both based on the concept of combining both terms at the same time. One alternative has us continuing our four-period a day block schedule, only now alternating days; Monday would be the equivalent of terms one and two, Tuesday terms three and four, alternating back and forth, so that a "week's worth of material would be cycled through every two weeks and the classes would meet from September to June (thus meeting the district's demand for semester continuity). The second alternative is a variation on the first, with one day a week being an eight-period day, with all classes meeting for forty-five minutes, and the remaining four days alternating back and forth between four-period blocks as in the first alternative. The Team begins to lean toward this first alternative, despite Johnston's declaration that this schedule is the one "dumped" by Oceanview High (in the Ventura district) seven years ago as being ineffective. For them, Baird counters, but maybe not for our clientele. The Team, still wanting some form of block schedule, begins to clutch on to this alternative.

Some members toss in devil's advocate arguments, however. Number of teacher preparations. Class sizes. Number of "daily" contacts. All of these issues are raised. None are clarified, but neither are they meant to be at this time; it's just brainstorming. Some members are getting hopeful again, but only cautiously so. They outline the proposal, agree to try to sell Kurtzmann on the idea. If he buys in and is willing to compromise, the Leadership Team can work on the faculty. Planning continues to take place.

By the end of the meeting, things are looking up. For a minute. But then Washington reiterates her problem with teachers encouraging parental complaints. Knight says that we've got the message already, that she's running the idea into the ground. Cedric, a campus supervisor and a listener-in, comes to Washington’s defense, and Knight and he go at it. My last note is "gonna get ugly".

I look at Aimee. The meeting is breaking up. And we leave--quickly--together. She questions me as we walk across campus on my take on the Washington situation. I still think she's feeling heat. She's one of us, but she can't be anymore. And that level of frustration is building within her, we see she's not what she was, and we're taking it out on her. But I see it all as part of the larger Kurtzmann-Solution. Divide and conquer. Get the staff bickering amongst itself, and the individual members won't be able to fight any outside force.

Jesus, I sound like Johnston. Like Kurtzmann could control Washington or instigate her to irritate Team members. I laugh it off to Aimee. We need some rest. Thank god break is here. We all need it now. And we're probably gonna need it for the term to come.

Remembrance of History Past: Le Morte de Frankie

2008-04-10T21:32:00.003-07:00

The second week of October ‘93 had been a tough one. Some time between the end of an Other People’s Money rehearsal on Tuesday afternoon and the beginning of school on Wednesday, the Drama room suffered a break-in--its second, unforced--with over two hundred dollars worth of equipment stolen (some of it my own), a personalized note from the robbers to me ("Fuck You" scrawled across my Drama office wall), and nothing being done on either the site or the district level.

On Thursday, October 7, a minimum day in preparation for that semester’s "Back to School Night," I ran into Mark Todd, the school’s great band teacher in the parking lot. As we approached the gate off the east end of the administrative office (next to the Music and Drama rooms), we noticed the flag flying at half-mast.

Mark looked at me, "Do you think?"

"Naw, couldn’t be..."

But he went to check as I went into my little cubby-hole of an office. Within minutes, he was back. His face said it all. Frankie had passed away in the night.

I thanked him and he went on his way. I lost it.

When I tried to tell my classes throughout the rest of the day, I lost it again and again. I tried to convey what this woman meant to me, to the school, to education. I tried to tell them of my senior year, of her brutally intense "Independent Study" course (which I have long viewed as being the one thing that not only won me admission into and scholarships to UCLA, but created within me the fortitude to remain there--when some of my classmates who had gone on to UC schools were back in Pleasant Valley within months of going off to college). I tried to tell them of her legacy as both a teacher and a principal here, I tried to share with them her innovations. But mostly I cried.

I wasn’t the only one.

At "Back to School Night," I was greeted by so many students and parents asking if I was all right, that I damn near lost it again (I still think my day-long cry was the reason that parent event had the best turn-out in my years at C.H.S.). But I held it together. Thank god the next day was an in-service day, no kids, a chance to share with staff, a time to cry again.

We all would need it.

Letters

2008-04-10T21:32:00.001-07:00

Monday, April 17, 1995

Where does one begin? With the fact that break sucked, what with Kyle being sick and we having way too much company? With the opening of a new term and the insanity it induces? With news that the Crusher has been put out to District Substituting Pasture (from which he will sub at any school-—except ours?--every day for his regular pay)? With even more fallout from the upcoming change in schedule? Where does one begin?

Well, since I did not write during break, not even-—as was my intention—-to write some more of the History Past pieces for interspersing throughout the journal at large, let us skip a discussion of spring break. This will allow the healthy side of my psyche to repress its memory forever.

That would bring us to a discussion of the opening of a new term. So let us begin there.

I arrive at school a little early, just before seven, so that I can do some last-minute prepping of the room and my clipboards before first period. I could not do this yesterday or any day during the break because we are not allowed access to our rooms during breaks because supposedly the wing is alarmed and we have to pay for any calls made to the police the alarm company makes (I say "supposedly" because I doubt if the d.o. would pay for alarming a wing when it wouldn’t pay for re-keying the Drama room last year, even after a non-break-in-break-in). On campus, I receive a few additional flimsies (programs) in my box before class, and I put those with the ones I will hand out first period. This should work out well, quick and easy, today, since a majority of the students in this class are the same students as from last term.

In past terms, the opening day has been ridiculous. Students would arrive at their regular time (seven-twenty-five), and they would pick up their alphabetically organized flimsies from tables situated throughout the quad. It was a mess. Period one would "begin" at eight-thirty, with most students milling around and arriving to class at least fifteen minutes late (hindered—-or is that helped?--by the nonexistent bell). An hour and five minutes later, period two would begin, and an hour and five after that period three. Then we would break for lunch, followed by an hour-long period four. We would not take roll on this opening day (providing perfect ADA, Average Daily Attendance, for the first day), and word of this, coupled with hour-long classes, basically killed off any chance of any importance being found on an opening day. We knew it, but--worse than that--the students knew it, too. And because of it, attendance was horrible. This, of course, had ripple effects, making the second day of the term another non-instructional one, as we attempted to bring up to speed students who were absent the first day. I had sent a memo decrying the pitiful opening day procedures to Joan Grey in September, and I guess I wasn’t the only one. By February, we were attempting a new opening day schedule.

Now, when we open a term, students look up their names on posted lists, find their names and first period classrooms and report to those rooms by seven-twenty-five for first period (though still without bells, allowing for first-day tardies). The teacher then hands out the flimsies to the students. And we’re off to a regular day, hour and a half-long periods, during which we take roll. What do you know... accountability. What a concept.

First period goes fine. I have only a few new students on the roll. So I have the returning students sit at their old seats—new ones receive seat locations from me—and read the new student letter/expectation sheet from me. We then go over the sheet, previewing/reviewing how the class is run, including the daily agenda, the weekly agenda, the Assignment/Grade Sheet, and the philosophy of the course (only A’s and B’s [and sometimes C’s] given, because of the use of Do-Overs, Writer’s Workshop, and Academic Detentions). The A/G Sheet we use almost immediately, writing down this week’s first assignments: Proper Heading for today, the return of the signed portion of the Parent Letter tomorrow, Book Check on Wednesday, and Materials Check on Friday. We complete the Proper Heading assignment in class, and now everyone has an A in the class. I then, in my preview of the week and the course, admonish the class to have certain handouts in their binders by Friday (How to Re-Submit Returned Work, Written Work Manuscript Format, Writer’s Workshop: the Process, and Writer’s Workshop: Conference Questions). This takes up most of the period, and what’s left I give to them. Thus, first period goes well. Today, I learn that for this term, I even have a Special Education paraprofessional, Wilma, who will be helping me during first periods (but only after eight o’clock in the morning... para’s are not allowed to work more than six hours a day, so they begin their day at eight so they can end their day at the end of the regular school day. Another case of our union doing all it can be bring professionalism to the classroom).

I dread second period, but it is inevitable and there is nothing I can do. It arrives. I’ve lost a few miscreants from last term. Jaime, Amador, Hector (a perpetual no show), and George are all gone. In their place, however, I now have Felix, Leonardo, and Guillermo (this huge behemoth is a senior, though on the roll sheet he is listed as an eleventh grader [though no one actually believes he has enough credits to have attained even that status], in my English Nine class). And I still have Eric, Sal, Javier, Gilbert, and Andrew all on the roll. Oh, joy. Looks like another fun term. The opening day agenda is the same for them as it was for first period. And it goes almost as well, as there are many no-shows (reminiscent of opening days past).

And of course, third period’s English 4/4H is its usual godsend. I go over the Book Report Essays from the week before break and outline the upcoming term, and then we dive into T.S. Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Gotta love real lit.

All in all, not a bad first day. Less hectic than usual, a little more work than usual.

Now, onto the continued fallout from the Kurtzmann situation. When I arrive on campus this morning, I am greeted in the lounge by Lupe, the ESL teacher who ten days earlier had told Aimee that she could rally the community on a discrimination suit. She is now handing out flyers, urging teachers to attend a show-of-force/ planning meeting Tuesday after school. She also hands me a letter that has been drafted to be sent to Kurtzmann and the Board of Trustees for the district. She is soliciting comments from me on how to improve the letter. I barely glance at it before heading to class.

Between the lounge and the class, I run into Aimee who says that she had wanted to call me over the break, but she had only returned back from Arizona yesterday, but (again, but) "we need to talk." Okay. In class, I give the letter the once-over. It decries the decision to revoke the four-period day. Then it goes on to state that we can furnish proof of the success of our program. And finally, it discusses "advice" given by "several assemblymen" and "legal" counsel; it mentions "affirmative action" and the upcoming board meeting on Wednesday. It’s not the world’s greatest letter, but it’s a draft. It’s signed by the "Faculty, Staff, parents and students of HHS." Not that any of them had been approached by the writer of the letter. Attached to my copy (I am supposedly one of the lucky few who have received a copy--don’t I feel honored), is a note asking for input concerning the letter; we can give the input to either Lupe, Gloria, Bob or Aimee, thus implying their involvement in the letter. I put it aside. If I want to respond to it, I will later. First, I have classes to teach... er, administer.

During my post-first-period bladder run, I find another memo in my box. This one is from Grey, entitled "The Next Step." It outlines the switch that is to be made in the coming months. No mention is made of the possible alternative schedule; it just plows ahead with the "district line"... we’re now in Stage Three... yadayadayada.

During lunch, on my way to see Aimee, I stop by Cindy Daniels’ room du period francais. After telling me her horrible sub-story (she was out on the Thursday before break, which is why she couldn’t cover second period for me), she spins an even more interesting tale. It seems that over the break, she attended a party at which she met up with Bob Bonds, Trustee, former principal at PeeVee, former president of the Board. He had asked her what Kurtzmann said (as if he didn’t know). She told Bonds that Kurtzmann had unceremoniously pulled the block schedule, and when Bonds asked how the staff took it, she responded by saying that we were stunned, outraged but stunned. And it was at this point that he made a very interesting comment. "Well," she said he said, "it should have happened two years ago." Seeing what pleasure with which he had made the statement, she decided not to pursue the matter.

I had heard rumors that the only person who was a lesser fan of our block schedule than Geoffrey Duncan (Assistant Supe in charge of all things academic, and our own WASC GoD) was Bob Bonds; Kurtzmann being a fence-sitter. Now it was out in the open. Daniels has little nice to say of Bonds’ integrity, both publicly and privately. She queries me on my take.

It was and is my belief that had Frankie sold the block schedule to the PeeVee faculty while she was there as Assistant Principal (under Bonds, who let her have pretty free reign to guide the campus), and it had flown there—-with Bonds receiving media kudos for innovation—-then he would have had no problems with Chumash’s block system. But since he had nothing to do with its devising, he would have everything to do with its derision. Daniels sees the possibilities in this.

After lunch, I find Bob and Aimee in the lounge placing copies of Bob’s very public response to Lupe’s letter in people’s boxes. It is scathing. It proclaims his lack of support for the letter, his dis-appreciation for having his name attached to the letter, and his proposed nonattendance at the scheduled meeting. It goes on to take his own "personal" Leadership Team take on the matter, mentioning the alternative schedule which will be proposed to Kurtzmann on Wednesday. I ask Aimee how it is going. "You need to come to my room. I need to show you something," is her only response. I am about to make some smart-ass response about what it was that she needs to show me, but I realize she is in no mood to bullshit around. Usually, Aimee is amenable to humor... I gather the very tangible impression that this is not one of those times.

Before I go, Bob hands me a two-page typed memo. Another letter. This one addressed to the Leadership Team, from Lorraine. It discusses her feelings about what had happened at the meeting on the Friday before break. It sounds like another attempt at a group reprimand again (redundantly). While it does raise some valid points (concerning committee chairing/ facilitation and agenda-setting), much of it becomes a rehash of her toeing of the new district line and her disbelief at the team’s seemingly selfish and futile attempt to cling to the school’s former schedule (my interpretation, not her verbiage). Other than some really bad grammar, nothing really stands out to me. And I toss it back to Bob. He makes reference to yet another letter, this one from Cedric. But this one has Bob’s respect, though. He uses the terms "really big balls" and "a man." But before I get a chance to ask for specifics on the letter, Aimee has me heading to her room with her.

There, I get to read Cedric’s letter as well as Aimee’s own response—albeit a less public one—to Lupe’s. Cedric’s begins with an apology to the Team for his outburst at the meeting. Balls. A man. A gentleman. It goes on, moves on, to discuss a possible solution to the concerns of campus safety, with the formation of a committee to explore new methods to make the campus a safer place. Aimee’s letter is basically one of support for Lupe’s ideas, but not for her methods, and an outright demand that Lupe send out a notice to all staff members who received a copy of the draft, stating that Hamm had no involvement in the letter.

After I read all this, I look up at Aimee. She looks tired. And this after a vacation. And it only gets worse. Within minutes, Gloria comes in the door with more news. Bob, in his efforts to distance himself from the Lupe letter, had taken his letter to Joan. She had wanted to see the original letter. Bob gave her his copy.

And she faxed it to the d.o..

What the FUCK was she thinking?

It’s unbelievable. Aimee is now more pissed than ever at Lupe. Gloria, Lupe’s friend, is placed in the middle, friendship to one side, anger at how badly this reflects upon the Team on the other. And I can’t believe either of them. Don’t they see the real problem? Forget Lupe. She had good intentions. She wanted to get us fired up. Misguided, but well-intentioned. She fucked up... no big deal, everybody makes a mistake. But this Grey fax is no mere mistake. This is a fuck-up bordering on the criminal.

Gloria tries to explain what happened. Grey had told Gloria that there is obviously a "spy here on campus, feeding the d.o. information. In an attempt to "come cleans before any spy-rumors hit the d.o., Grey sent the fax. Yeah, and if I believe that one, I’ll make a down payment on the suspension piece of architecture in NYC called the Brooklyn Bridge. Bullshit. Grey is playing way too much to the district at this point, as far as I’m concerned. This is a huge tactical error, if it’s an error.

Aimee begins to see my point. Even if Kurtzmann had been serious about his claims of flexibility, even if he might have been swayed to consider the alternate schedules on Wednesday, all of that is probably moot now. If he was upset by the WASC report, he’s gonna be fucking apoplectic because of this letter, with its veiled references to discrimination litigation. We are fucked.

After Gloria leaves, Aimee tells me that she doesn’t even want to attend the Leadership Team meeting after school. She looks up hopefully. Will I go? Nope, I’ve got things to do. Like go home to my wife and son (and write this). She says she wants to quit the Team. And I believe her. Her voice cracks as she tells me that it seems that all her good intentions, all our hard work on the report, all the great ideas in devising the Action Plan, are now spiraling out of control. Tears well up. She’s on the edge. It all seems to be falling apart.

I don’t know what to tell her. I want to come up with some witty, smart-ass remark, but nothing comes to mind. She notices this and tells me that this is the worse sign of all. It means we’re really fucked.

Not nearly as fucked as she thinks.

After the meeting, I head over to the library, where Mary and Liz are holding a quick, end-of-day conversation. Word from the secretaries in the front office is that the d.o. is trying to pressure Knight to retire. Once he’s gone, every administrator who was around during the creation of the block schedule will be gone. Liz ventures that this is the reason that the former Assistant Principal Daisy Roosevelt was sent to Gateway High (the continuation school) as its new principal when Joan was installed as the temporary/ replacement principal here. Within a year, Lily was principal at PeeVee. It would have been just as easy to name Lily as the temp/replacement here, but she wasn’t; this, according to Liz, is because that would have left an administrator who had some history here. Not what the d.o. wanted. Liz is starting to sound like Bob. Interesting, but still farfetched (the break having restored my yeah-right attitude toward the conspiracy).

Then I call Kevin Davis at Adult Ed to discuss some software stuff; we had been comrades at PeeVee--he teaching the 4Hs while I had the 2Hs--before he moved onto administration and I onto the better fertilized pastures of C.H.S.. He asks me what was up with our schedule. He’s out of the loop worse than I. I tell him it is old news; Kurtzmann had dropped the big one. He questions if it was Kurtzmann who did the dropping. I figure he means Bonds and the Board. WRONG.

"Funny thing, Bill," he starts, "is this memo we got from Joan today."

"Huh?" I’m confused.

"Yeah. We got routed an internal memo from Joan today. Don’t know why it came to us. Didn’t really pertain to us. But it was routed our way, so I read it, initialed it and passed it on to Mike (Kevin’s superior and the ‘principal’ at Adult Ed)."

"What was this memo about?"

"It was like a list. An outline of possible repercussions of the reinstitution of a six-period day at Chumash. It was real sloppy. I’d never send out a memo this raw. The weird thing is that I couldn’t tell from the wording who was behind the move back to the traditional schedule." Interesting. "I mean, I would think that the decree would have come from above. But this memo doesn’t give that as a clear impression."

"You still have the memo?"

"Naw. Sent it on to Bob. But the funky way things get routed around here, it’ll probably end up on my desk again at some point."

"If it does, can you put that puppy in the Xerox and pop a copy my way?"

"Can do."

"So you think Kurtzmann wasn’t the real culprit?"

"Well, when I put the memo on Bob’s desk and asked him what it was all about, he said that it’s been a long time coming, that Joan’s been prepping the Board for months."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah. Those were the words. ‘Joan’s been prepping the Board for months.’"

"You sure you got the name right?"

"What was the name Bob used. I can usually tell the difference between ‘Joanne’ and ‘Bill’. ‘Bill’ is, after all, your name, too. I would’ve remembered that."

"Son of a bitch. It sounds like she fucked us. We’ve known there’s been a mole on campus, and I think we just found her."

"Could be, but if it’s Joan, it’s like saying Khruschev was a mole."

"You gotta get a hand on that memo, Kev. Get me a copy if you can."

"I’ll try. Can’t make any promises. Can’t just go in and say, ‘Duh, Bob, silly me, I need that memo back..., and uh, by the way, can I use the copier...’"

"I know. But I could really use it..."

And he said he would try. Again.

I just got off the phone with Aimee. It’s ten o’clock. I’ll recap that conversation tomorrow. Suffice it to say (in case I don’t get around to it), we both feel like characters from a certain Oliver Stone film, and we ain’t talkin’ Natural Born Killers (though that’s what I feel like doin’ now...).

Maybe Johnston’s right. The conspiracy is widening. To places we do NOT want to go.

Period Two Redux

2008-04-10T21:31:00.002-07:00

Wednesday, April 19, 1995

Only a few quick notes concerning stress, as I quickly type these notes before hurrying home, where Lisa is with Kyle—-she on break, he with a one-o-three fever. So, quickly, quickly.

Around two and a half years ago, in the midst of my first major production at Chumash, Romeo and Juliet (gee, around the time I had to replace my Juliet with only three or four weeks to opening), I started to have sharp stinging pains in my right shoulder/neck area. I usually carried my satchel-—an old, weather-beaten, leather job given to me by my parents for my teacher-credential program graduation—-in my right hand. And it hurt like hell whenever I lifted the bag.

After two weeks of this pain, I went in to see my doctor, who told me not to carry the bag in my right hand. Duh. He also told me that it was probably stress-induced. And he mimed what he thought would be typical movements that I made throughout the day. It was like he had a video camera on me all day. He nailed my every movement. All with the right arm. All of this was related. The stress tightened the muscles, the repetitious actions strained them, the stress aggravated the strain, and so on. I needed to start using my left hand more. And I needed to relax. Not take things—-the play, school, etc-—so seriously. He gave me a few methods, which I promptly ignored... just not enough time.

When the play was over, and when we went on winter break, the pain disappeared.

But by February, with the beginning of the new term (and thus planning for the spring production), the twinges came back. So I went to using my left hand almost exclusively. The twinge went away. But then I started having bouts of insomnia. I would fall asleep every night by ten o’clock, exhausted, only to wake between two and four in the morning, unable to fall asleep for another two hours. Then during the day, I would walk like the living dead. It was awful.

This went on for over a month. Then when I caught a particularly nasty case of the flu, I went to see my doctor again. I mentioned the insomnia. He asked if another play was starting. I smiled. Stress, again. The cure this time, beyond relaxing and the same to-be-forgotten methodologies—-would I never learn?--was warm milk and honey. It worked wonders. I even passed it on to other stressed-out teachers. And soon summer was there and the insomnia was gone.

Fall came, insomnia began, and I started up with the warm milk and honey again. The insomnia faded.

And the fluctuations went on through the spring. I had already given my notice for teaching drama, but I still had the final production to direct, my first musical. At least the insomnia was being held at bay, sort of. Only now I was starting to get really bad rashes on my shins. I usually get dry skin patches during the winter--artificial heat and all—-but these were really bad. Time passed. The rashes worsened. When we happened to be in the doctor’s office for some reason, I mentioned this to the doctor. Insomnia? he asked. Off and on. A new production? he queried. Yeah. And the rash, he said, was yet another breakout of stress. And he gave me a lotion that helped soothe the skin. But he told me again that I needed to relax. And again he gave me numerous methodologies to achieve this.

But summer and Kyle came and the rash went away.

In October, at the height of WASC pre-production, I was starting to get spike-like pains in my chest and side. Spasming intestines. Again stress.

Since February, I’ve had off-and-on running battles with the shin rash, and occasional spasming bowels, some brutal headaches, and lately the insomnia is coming back. Only there’s no production in sight.

All I know is that I’m exhausted. Not helping are... Kyle’s perpetual ear infection and recent high fevers... first period’s quiet lethargy (and the addition of a student who speaks English so poorly that she is also enrolled in English 101, the first English as a Second Language course... credit Ortiz for her enrollment [a situation he explained then abandoned with nothing more than civil chilliness])... second period’s Dantesquely hellish behavior (three more students today—one check-in and two transfers—with four drops [all no-shows, after a request for information I made following the addition of the third student (which had put me one over the union limit)])... Lisa’s grandfather’s cancer (for which he had been hospitalized earlier this week)... all the WASC fallout... working on the proposed alternate school-calendar project (one that has many old-line traditionalists freaking out as wildly as they must have when Frankie first sprung the four-period day)... the Kurtzmann-Grey stuff (and Kevin hasn’t been able to come across the memo again)... the in-laws’ impeding visit next week to help Lisa’s grandparents... and my pondering a new career...

Stress. But at least I’m now riding a bike. Isn’t that supposed to help?

And I’m running—-riding-—late. This was supposed to be only a few notes.

Stress

2008-04-10T21:31:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, April 19, 1995

Only a few quick notes concerning stress, as I quickly type these notes before hurrying home, where Lisa is with Kyle—-she on break, he with a one-o-three fever. So, quickly, quickly.

When the play was over, and when we went on winter break, the pain disappeared.

Fall came, insomnia began, and I started up with the warm milk and honey again. The insomnia faded.

But summer and Kyle came and the rash went away.

In October, at the height of WASC pre-production, I was starting to get spike-like pains in my chest and side. Spasming intestines. Again stress.

Stress. But at least I’m now riding a bike. Isn’t that supposed to help?

And I’m running—-riding-—late. This was supposed to be only a few notes.

Remembrance of History Past: An Honor

2008-04-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

In the fall, following Teddi's departure as WASC Queen, Department Chair, and senior Honors teacher, the question arose of who would take over the senior Honors class. I had been set to take over the newly inaugurated freshman Honors class, but my love had always been the upper level classes and English/European lit. Knowing Yosh would make a great 1H teacher, I voiced my desire for the 4H’s.

June Tsuko, one of the reigning experts on seniors, also wanted the class. She had also made an unsuccessful bid to be elected Department Chair (and her defeat had been greeted with charges of sexism by many female members of the department). She is more than capable, able to take over either or both positions (DC and 4H) and succeed with it or them.

She came up empty on both attempts, however.

I was granted the 4 Honors position by Bruce Metcalf in late December, leaving only a month to prepare for the course (which was to be taught third and fourth term). In January, however, a glitch was found. Many of the students I had taught in English 3Honors last year were feeling less than enthusiastic about the amount of work they could foresee doing in another Walters class. They stated so to many of the returning students, and many of them refused to take the course.

Thus, in mid-January, Bruce, June, and I sat down for a pow-wow. The low English Four Honors enrollment was the main topic for discussion, and the only possible solution (save scrapping the Honors section altogether) was a combination 4/4H class. I was unhappy with this solution. Bruce and, so he claimed, Joan were more disturbed by the situation itself. If a non-combination Honors section could be taught, that would be best, Joan put forth, intimating that Bruce should possibly switch the teaching assignment. But there were no guarantees that the change in instructor would do the trick, and so June rejected the idea of switching for the sake of switching (and though she made no bones about wanting to teach the class, she was insulted by the idea that somehow she was an "easier teacher," one with lower expectations).

Nothing came of Joanne’s suggestion, but it did nothing to improve my image of nor respect for our fearful leader. My feeling was and is if she is dissatisfied with my work, she should come out and replace me (of course, scheduling comes under the auspices of the D.C., and I think she fears a grievance from me). And if she doesn’t have the guts to replace me, she should at least be making these statements to my face.

But she didn’t.

And I began teaching a combination class in February.

My only hope is that we won’t have to go through this next year (and we shouldn’t since this year’s crop of 3H’s don’t know me... don’t know how evil, cruel, mean, demanding, and tough I can be).