And Now We Interrupt This Program For An Important Message

If you bother to ask teachers in our building, you will find out that many are quite disturbed and angry about the number of interruptions to their teaching time. In the last two weeks (10 class days) alone, my first period AP Chemistry class has been all but canceled by various interruptions on four separate occasions. The first time it was the day we returned from spring break when nine out of my twenty students took their “personal free day.” The PFD is given to students who raised their quota for the yearly fund drive. I have no real problem with this, except where it involves so many students that I am effectively forced to give a study hall instead of teach. The next day I had planned several important review problems, only to find out that the band members in first period were going to meet with the band directors for an important announcement. We were promised that they would only be 5-10 minutes late, and on time if an exam was scheduled, but none of my 11 band members arrived until 20 minutes into the period. One of the English teachers told me that he had an exam scheduled but his students were 20 minutes late as well. The band director has these students 5th period, but apparently the news could not wait until then. As it turns out, the news was important, but could easily have waited until his class, resulting in another unnecessary class interruption. Thursday of that week the third interruption to first period took place. Twice a year, all students who received a 4.0 GPA for the semester are honored in a ceremony before school. Invited parents and free teachers watch as each 4.0 student is called by name and given a certificate of achievement. The process usually begins at 7:30 and takes 20 minutes, returning students to their first period 5-10 minutes late. This year they got a late start; my 9 missing students not returning until 35 minutes into the period. The next Tuesday all the A.P. English Language students (14 of my 20 students) would miss the whole period for a “pre-administration meeting.” In the past I complained to the Guidance person in charge, suggesting this be done after school. I was told that this would interfere with their sports practice, which is apparently more important than my class time. Ironically, this year the A.P. Pre-administration conflicts with students being let out of class to set up for a performance of the school Musical for local grade school students. The powers that be deciding that the play was more important than pre-administration; class time being placed on the bottom rung importance ladder again. Some of my colleagues will never cease to vigorously complain when these regular interruptions occur. I have given up; realizing that my complaints about the need for more class time fall on deaf ears. While the administration would strongly deny this, what I do in class will never be valued as much as what other people do for the school.

Back Again

I haven’t written anything in my blog since November; not because I haven’t had anything to write about, but because I have been otherwise occupied. During the last two months, five of my high school classmates have passed away, one of them my college roommate.

He had been diagnosed with cancer in March of last year. Over his last 10 months we spoke on the phone every few weeks, and on three occasions we planned dinner, but each time he found himself too weak to attend. His body did not take well to the chemo and eventually it had to be discontinued. The last time we spoke was the day before we were to get together for a Christmas dinner at my home. He said his physical condition was such that he could no longer get out of bed. A week later, on Christmas day, his wife called and said that he was in intensive care; his organs failing fast. I went to the hospital that day to see him, but he was unconscious, a week later he passed away.

I have an email list of our class—supplied by the alumni office—and have used it to inform everyone of some event. I used it to try to get everyone to come to the last reunion, and to announce the death of a former teacher. When I sent out a message about his death I was shocked to find out through replies that four other classmates had died as well; all within about six weeks time. Needless to say, it is quite unsettling to be faced with the deaths of your friends, especially as many as this in a short time. Two of them passed away and were buried before I knew, but I was able to attend the wakes of the other three including my former roommate.

As far as school goes, we had a very successful open house for prospective students in early December, though the numbers at the entrance exam were a bit disappointing. On the bright side, the results of the exam indicate that the scores are up from last year, especially among the top students. All-in-all, our freshmen class next year should be about the same size as this year.

Semester exams went off without a hitch, and for the third year in a row I did not have any failures for the semester. After a somewhat restful Christmas break, the second semester began with a few changes in my class list. Friday we made it to mid-quarter.

My outside tutoring has been busy and I have been feeling the effects of long days, getting home after 8:00pm many times in recent weeks. I leave the house at about 6:30 am each morning. Last weekend I was so worn-out that I slept twelve hours Friday night, napped for four hours Saturday afternoon, and ten more hours Saturday night. I then spent eight hours Sunday grading papers and doing work for school. This weekend I have no school work to do so I am relaxing before another week of long days and late night tutoring sessions.

I have no interest in the Super Bowl beyond the numbers I got in the pool I joined. A batch of beef stew in the slow cooker today is awaiting my wife getting up after working last night at the hospital, and a possible visit from my daughter before she attends her super bowl party later.

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.