Bloom Where You’re Planted!

I received an email the first day of 2nd quarter from one of the office attendants. Apparently, one of my students withdrew, transferring to another school. She failed two classes first quarter, one of them mine, and got D’s in the other four. While the email gave no reason for the withdrawal, I had spoken to the father last month and knew the reason. She left because there are too many black students at our school and she felt uncomfortable--or so the father claimed. In reality, for those of us who had watched her interact with the African American students in the building, she had no problem getting along with blacks. Those of us, who know her, speculate that she wanted to leave in order to escape the work load and exploited the parent’s prejudices in order to go into a less rigorous environment. One of my colleagues even reported that she was rather close to a young African American man, hardly the behavior of a person who didn’t feel comfortable around blacks. As reprehensible as this situation is I would be lying if I did not confess that I see a similar attitude in many of my colleagues who believe that the overall ability of our students has been lowered significantly because of the increased population of African Americans. To this I would disagree.

My graduating class-more than 40 years ago--had two blacks out of 250+ seniors, less than 1%. As the communities that feed into the school have changed, so has the school population. Today, blacks make up about 39% of the students here, and that percentage is going up. It is clear that some day in the future we will probably be an all black school. Whether this happens before I retire (in less than 10 years) is unknown, though not likely. What is certain is that someday, before I retire, I will teach in a school that is more than half black. Based on my experience with the type of black student we attract now, I am not concerned.

Many of my colleagues are quite upset at this state of affairs. Some publically complain that the “students” we get now are not as good as the students we had in the past. While it is never spoken out loud, it is clear they are referring to the increasing number of blacks. When I told a colleague that I saw no such change in the abilities of my students over time she looked at me with the famous, "I just smelled something bad" face and told me I was crazy. Luckily, she is going to retire at the end of this year. Another colleague told me that I didn’t see the drastic change in ability because I teach only honors students, implying that I did not have as many blacks in my classes as those who taught the average students. I was curious about this idea and decided to collect some data.

As I said before, African American students make up about 39% of the school population. My classes break down as follows; A.P. Chemistry 34% Black, Honors Chemistry 37% Black, and Chemistry A 37% black. While the number in AP seems to be significantly low, it is not. If one student changed from white to black in that class, blacks would be 39%. So I can say with numbers to back me up that I have a representative mix of students. Do the blacks do significantly worse than the white students do? Well—no! The average grades (%) for white students vs. minority students in my classes breaks down to; AP Chemistry- blacks 86.7%,white 87.6%; Honors Chemistry- white 90.6%, black 90.4%; and Chemistry A- white 83.7%, black 87.5%. The numbers indicate that there is no objective evidence of a significant difference between white students and minority students in my classes—except if you take into account that blacks do much better than whites in my Chemistry A class. I hypothesize that the suggestion that blacks are bringing down the achievement level of our students is subjective, and based on a pre-existing belief that blacks are not a bright of whites.

The students I have now are as good as any I have ever had—the evidence for this is clear, AP scores in all subject areas are increasing at my school, even as the percentage of minority students increases. Academics are color blind—subject matter doesn’t care if you are black or white. The skills students needed 20 years ago are the same skills students need today,
Many of my colleagues need to silence their prejudices and teach students regardless of the color if their skin.

Welcome Back!

There were only three new teachers in our building this school year, one of which had taught here for a time two years ago. She is a language teacher and, while we are not close friends, I can say that we are acquainted. Her last year here we shared a free period; having coffee each morning and grading papers in the teacher’s room. My impression of her was that she was highly competent and professional, well liked by her students, and motivated to do a good job.

I have little contact with her this year, having different free periods. In fact, Friday was the first time I saw her long enough to ask how things were going. We met in the copy room and I asked, “How do you like being back?” This seemingly innocuous question led to a 20 minute discussion of how bad the other school was and how happy she was to be back; having escaped the land of juvenile delinquents and incompetent administrators.

She had taught in public schools before, even substituting at the public school she left us for. This teacher reported to me that she knew something was different the first few days of her new job. There were 36 desks in her classroom, but was assigned 42 students. Upon bringing this to the principal’s attention was told not to worry because after a few days many of the students would stop showing up. There was no tracking in her area, so she had students of all ability levels each period. Some, she said, were intelligent and hard working, but many were functionally illiterate delinquents. She claimed that the local police were in the building every day taking students away for crimes they had committed outside of school. On numerous occasions, security was called to her room to remove an especially disruptive child who was preventing her from delivering instruction.

School policy prevented her from failing students. Students not completing enough work to pass were to be given an “incomplete” and allowed to redo work and retake tests as many times as necessary to successfully get credit. As a result of this policy, students had no incentive to work hard and pay attention in class. The school policy—“Failure is not an option.”—was scam being played on the parents. It did not prevent students from failing; it only prevented their failure from being acknowledged publically.

Things got really complicated for her when she finished her Master’s degree and requested the pay increase their union contract required. The administration initially denied her pay increase but the union stepped in and forced them to comply. At this point se claimed that the administration became very hostile toward her; doing everything possible to get rid of her. She was continually observed by assistant principals, blamed for every class problem that arose, and run around the three stories of the building changing rooms every period. She reported being told that students not paying attention in class, being disruptive, or even absent were the result of her not being engaging enough in the classroom. When she pointed out that many of these problem students were problems for everyone she was labeled as uncooperative and told that there were no “problem” students in the district.

When one of our language teachers retired last year, she was enthusiastically hired back.

Escape from Chemisry!

When I was in graduate school I was taking a statistics course and, when the first exam was returned, if the student had failed, the teacher stapled a filled out add/drop form to the student’s exam. It was her not so subtle way of letting you know that you did not belong in her class.

Some of my colleagues have similar ways of getting rid of students they don’t think measure up. I, on the other hand, am not as quick to press the matter when I feel a student should drop. In my experience, if you force the matter, the student and parent will always believe that you acted rashly and that they could have passed if allowed to stay. I prefer when the student or parent throws in the towel and requests the change in schedule, which usually occurs after the student’s grade has tanked and they have their “epiphany.”

Surprisingly, some teachers make it difficult to get out of their subject. I don’t know why, you would think that a bored or failing student would become a discipline problem in class and you would want to get rid of them. I have often spoken to teachers who take a student’s underachievement as a personal insult to them; the punishment being that the student has to stay.

I have already lost one student this year to a schedule change. She requested to be moved from Honors Chemistry to regular Chemistry because she was struggling, while in reality. she had a B- and was not doing that poorly. I think that she realized that Honors would require a level of study and commitment that was more than she was willing to give. The mother emailed me requesting the change; asking it be done as soon as possible. When I approached the assistant principal in charge of approving the schedule change she was reluctant, feeling that the student should be required to stick it out. I was able to convince her that the change should be made and the paperwork was processed that day.

I have two other students who I feel should drop, one in AP Chemistry and one in my regular Chemistry class. As is my policy, I am not pushing the change now. Both parents have been contacted and neither parent wants their student to drop. I am waiting until their situation is serious enough that neither parent will fight the process. This should occur for both of them in about three weeks at the end of the quarter. Both of them are failing now.

Another student has made it clear, through nonverbal communication, that he is not happy with me as a teacher or the amount of work I require. After the quiz last Friday, he asked to get a pass to Guidance. The average grade on the quiz was 83% while his grade was 35%. I said I could not, explaining that all passes to guidance had to be made through his study hall teacher. He responded with mild disrespect, but went back to his seat, put his head on the desk, and fell asleep. Soon a request will come from his mother to arrange a schedule change; a request I will honor as soon as the quarter ends. He will then become some other teacher’s problem.

School just ended its second full week things have been exciting to say the least. The extreme heat and humidity, coupled with a case of food poisoning landed me in the emergency room at the end of the second day of school. I was diagnosed with extreme dehydration and given an IV to restore my fluids. Two days later, when my blood work returned to normal, I was released.

My symptoms began just as school ended with nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea followed by extreme sweating. I thought it was an insulin reaction and had another teacher get the school nurse. After a quick check of my blood sugar—which was normal—I experienced another violent bout of vomiting. The nurse feared I was having a heart attack but I was not convinced, having experienced food poisoning before. My friend in the Theology department and another from the Math department volunteered to take me home. I called my wife and told her what was happening. Half way home she called me on my cell phone, insisting that I meet her at the emergency room. They immediately determined that I was not having a heart attack. While with the triage nurse I began to violently vomit again in a garbage can. My blood work indicated abnormal kidney function and a very high potassium level. The diagnosis was severe dehydration, resulting in me getting a shot to reduce the nausea and IV fluids. I felt better after about an hour, but was kept under observation Thursday and Friday night until my blood work came back normal again. I was released about 11am Saturday.

The next week I was back at full strength, being careful to drink fluids all day and wash my hands better when handling raw chicken in an attempt to stave-off a reoccurrence. Later that week we had our annual “back to school” night, when parents get to meet the teachers and run through their student’s schedule. Teachers characteristically dislike this evening. After a long day in a hot and humid school the last thing most of us want to do is come back at 7:00pm and spend two more hours in a hot sticky building. Many young teachers don’t understand the purpose of this evening. As unpleasant as it is, especially when the temperature is hot, the night serves an important purpose for the school. Getting parents involved and engaged is essential to educating their children. Only about half my parents attend the evening; much less than half for the seniors and much more than half for the freshmen. I see it as an important duty that needs to be done, even if it is a minor imposition on my free time.

As they run through their student’s schedule, the parents have 5 minute sessions with each teacher. During my time I introduce myself and explain how parents can monitor their student’s progress and assignments. One parent, who arrived late to her student’s period, asked me to repeat everything she missed. The request was obnoxious and insensitive considering it was her fault. I smiled and suggested that she come during her son’s study hall period so she would not be late for his next period. She agreed and thanked me for the suggestion, but never returned.

After leaving the house at 6:30 am that morning, I got back home at about 9:45 pm.