Before I sign off – let me just say, institute is no thang. Honestly  – who complains about having 3 meals a day prepared for them, free training, a teacher mentor and having lots of work that’ll make you good at your job in the fall? Only people with too much privilege. Let’s keep it real.

Ciao TeachForUs – it’s been real.

Let’s just leave it like this: I’m not too keen on the kool-aid, but there’s some valuable things written in the recipe.

What else? Oh yeah, without sounding cocky or anything – the Bay corps is ridiculously awesome.

Lastly – I still believe in education for social justice. Sometimes TFA puts that into practices, sometimes it really doesn’t. I need to work on my poker face because apparently my disdain for certain TFA approaches / concepts shows. Anyway – it’s a means to an end right?

I lied, but now for real lastly. Institute isn’t that scary. I’ll write more about it later, but it’s really just teaching and teacher prep – which is what we all signed up for. No big deal.

Tomorrow I move to California. I’m packed and ready. I’m excited – but not quite as excited as I thought I’d be. Don’t get me wrong – I’m THRILLED about teaching, it’s just that at the end of the day I still have reservations about TFA as an organization. Like why do they spend so much money on staff (and I heart the bay area staff – so this isn’t personal) but how many people are on the payroll and is paying them the most effective way to close the achievement gap? Also if one more person in TFA (CM or staff member) says that the achievement gap is the civil rights issue of our generation – my head will explode. Honestly – the civil rights movement was explicitly about comprehensive social change. So voting is great, but you need a job and access to quality education as well. What I’m saying is that civil rights are just that – plural as in more than one right that radically alters the social fabric. So let’s fight on for educational equality – but let’s keep it real – we don’t live in a meritocracy.

I want to teach and I’m so thankful that I get to meet CMs who feel the same way tomorrow. I’m glad I get to meet the staff to whom I’m owe my job and my future career. I’m so excited to jump in and teach summer school in a few short weeks. I love my kids, I just hope that I’m not to much of a fool and I can figure out how to effectively teach them from jump

Today I was teaching 4th grade and had the opportunity to see what quilombo (an old school Brazilian Portuguese word that literally translates to whorehouse, but is used to refer to something that is a ridiculously large hot mess) surrounding public education for ELL students in my sill hometown that we’ll just call Wackistan for the time being.

So Wackistan is home to five colleges and it fancies itself to be the most liberal place on the planet (like writing a letter to Iran dissenting from Bush’s decisions liberal). Still, silly wackosity happens in Wackistan all the time. I happened to be in the computer lab with my students while they did end of the year academic progress testing (more on that later). I just happened to be checking on a student when the computer resource teacher found me to let me know that there was a small situation. I really didn’t understand how I could be of any help – but I obliged. She told me there was an ELL student who needed a translator (but said he didn’t want one) to complete the testing as he understands some English and speaks basically none. So I’m assuming she knew I speak Spanish – I asked the student what was wrong.

His “translator” after literally only hearing me ask him what was wrong told me my Spanish was better than hers and asked me to translate instead. WHY THE F@#$ IS SHE THE TRANSLATOR IF SHE DOESN”T EVEN SPEAK SPANISH???? No wonder the students was frustrated. The translators broken translations were such a quilombo (pronounced key-lum-bo) that he could understand neither her words or the written words of the test. Hell – if I were him I wouldn’t have done a damn thing. How did that translator get hired?  Public education (even under the best of circumstances like in wealthy Wacktown) is a quilombo and everybody tries to sidestep responsibility. This would have been such an easy thing to take some responsibility for. Maybe check if a translator speaks a target language before hiring them capisce?

Obviously I’m really comfortable sharing this information with the principal – but would I do the same in my placement school – I mean TFA teachers have a rep of being condescending, and that’s really not my goal, but homegirl straight can’t perform the duties of the job, and her poor, poor students is just getting totally screwed. Oy vey, ese quilombo.

File this post under “kids do the darndest things.” Today I was observing my father teach and as I sat outside during recess. A student did something that will forever be etched into my mind. First you need to meet the characters:

Ms. B – A fifth grade teacher at my father’s school

Seth – A 6th grade student at my father’s school who is easily 5’7 and easily passes for 16.

So all is well and good, students are playing foursquare, hanging upside down on the monkey bars, running, screaming, playing soccer and laughing with their friends. As I’m enjoying the jubilant sounds of children playing, Seth walks by. As Seth strolls by he strategically places half of a donut in his mouth so he can eat the whole things in one giant bite. He places it into his mouth the long way. All seems fine until Ms. B asks Seth how he’s doing. Instead of swallowing his now partially digested donut, he reaches into the back of his throat, regurgitates the donut, pulls it out of his mouth, says he’s good, then places it back in his mouth and swallows it whole. I’ve seen many a gross thing – and I’m placing this in the top 25. Horrifying. Wow. Oh, #thejoysofteaching .

as an aside: 2011 CMS: I love hearing about induction, keep it coming. I’m super jealous because I can’t wait to be there myself!

I believe I now have an explanation for my amazing ability to drive a standard while texting, changing the music and putting on mascara. According to a wealth of research and some recently highlighted by the nytimes:

Q. One would think bilingualism might help with multitasking — does it?

A. Yes, multitasking is one of the things the executive control system handles. We wondered, “Are bilinguals better at multitasking?” So we put monolinguals and bilinguals into a driving simulator. Through headphones, we gave them extra tasks to do — as if they were driving and talking on cellphones. We then measured how much worse their driving got. Now, everybody’s driving got worse. But the bilinguals, their driving didn’t drop as much. Because adding on another task while trying to concentrate on a driving problem, that’s what bilingualism gives you — though I wouldn’t advise doing this.

For the sake of clarity – it’s crucial to remember that by bilingualism we mean using both languages in a meaningful context everyday. The academic benefits of bilingualism abound. So not only is linguistic choice a matter of social justice, it’s also a matter of educational justice.

I really think people who aren’t bilingual are just jealous. Everywhere else BUT the USA explicitly values and teaches more than one language. It’s not a new story that the USA is woefully backwards in this arena, but it’s never wrong to name it and to work for change. So thanks San Jose Unified, California, and a bunch of other districts and states for keeping it real – I’m glad to be on your team!

I’ve been spending a lot of time teaching and doing observations in the rather affluent district in which I received my primary and secondary education. I find myself tackling some strange sensations. I see a lot of time wasting (while acknowledging that it’s the end of the year so the time-wasting might not be typical) and a lot of silly stuff. For example (and keep in mind I do yoga like every morning and I love it) a teacher I observed spent 15 minutes doing yoga with her students (do that after school, duh!). One of her 2nd grade students can’t distinguish between the blended sounds ish and ush and she’s doing yoga during school hours, wtf? Some sick sad part of me was like “more time for my students to catch up to hers” who through a confluence of circumstances will likely, still do better on standardized tests than mine. How can that even be?

Geesh…

On another note – I was teaching a 5th grade class when the subject of the UEFA championship came up. Really I should have just redirected the conversation to the work at hand, but made the rookie mistake of engaging in the conversation. I could feel myself holding back the insults that I would usually hurl at a Manchester United fan. It was difficult to be sure, but it was kind of useful because the kids were 1 – shocked that I knew anything about soccer and 2 – so excited to talk about soccer with me that I could reward hard work with a few second conversation about the upcoming game and leave me and the kids feeling pretty satiated. Now that the game is over and my team (VAMOS BARCA) won – all I want to do is rub it in – but alas, that doesn’t build a relationship and it doesn’t show the respect and love I want to convey to students.

I told the students I would soon have my own classroom and asked if they had any feedback for me. One incredibly bright young woman told me “our teacher lets us work at our own pace and work independently. You should do that because then each student can work on their level.” I swallowed my laughter and thanked for the feedback. Can I just say NO F**KING WAY is that happening in my classroom. My students will work at the level that I determine to be necessary so that they can catch and hopefully surpass their more affluent peers. I will set the pace and the standards for work in my classroom. I will demand that students work tremendously hard every single day. “My own pace….” hilarious and so silly. So sad for the students that approach leaves behind but (evil laugh) more room for my students to catch up.

Another student told me to be strict and to provide structure – I’m pretty sure I’m gonna stick with that advice.

Today was my last day at work (no more arguing with lawyers!). Accordingly – it felt really real that I’m actually becoming a teacher. I have a placement, I have a school, on August 15th – I’ll have students. Awesome responsibility, AWESOME.

Since I’m sans job – I’ll be spending the rest of the school year at my father’s school teaching ELLs. Also awesome! As I drove past Staples today it took every single ounce of my will power not to go in and buy everything. That’s silly as I should at least wait until I know if I’m teaching 3rd, 4th or 5th grade before I get supply crazy (also, Office Depot is waaaaaay cheaper!). I want to know now so I can UNIT PLAN and MAKE AWESOME MUSIC VIDEOS ABOUT MATH. I am spending a good amount of time working on classroom management, working on mechanisms for weekly parent communication and my ongoing WORLDROCK project with justcallmemaesta. I’m signed, sealed, delivered and so ready to be a teacher.

I know this sounds really nerdy and like I’m too excited – but it’s just because I am!

Color me surprised (and pardon the bad pun!). People seem to love when I write about race – that or they really hate it. I got about 3 times more hits than my average for my comments on racism. Interesting – I’m not really sure how I feel about that. I definitely wanted to write a blog that found away to make more space for social justice education. I’m wondering how it might make sense for me to explicitly incorporate anti-racism into it:

1. I will add an anti-racist education / ally resource page. Give me a few days.
2. I might debunk a few myths now and again.
3. I might continue to have discussions about race when I feel like something needs to be called out.

Here’s the thing though – racism is ugly stuff and it’s often that people who are trying to be allies get their feelings hurt. Much like I’d be hard pressed to truly feel for a man dealing with his male privilege, I’m similarly hard pressed to feel bad for white folks about their guilt. I DO want to connect you with folks who can feel your pain and help you work through it

I don’t really think a discussion on critical race theory is super easily translated to teacher actions in the classroom – but some authors do a really good job of breaking this down. I might do a little segment on the anti-racist author of the week – I might not. I don’t really know what I might want anti-racism to look like in this blog, but I’m for sure down to tell you what it looks like in my classroom.

I got 99 problems but A PLACEMENT AIN’T ONE! I have a placement at a wonderful elementary school and I adore the school. I’m gonna share all the details when I actually know what grade level I’m teaching (not knowing what grade level I’m teaching is KILLING me, I want to unit plan so badly!).

Anyway – like I said I do have 99 problems and one of them is how little money preschool teachers make. During college I was a TA at preschool. I had zero pedagogical knowledge, zero certifications and zero qualifications (and no college degree). All that said – through my work study, I was making a dollar or two less an hour than the full time teachers. That’s a crying shame folks cause being a preschool teacher (when done correctly) is harder than just about anything. In 2008 the median annual preschool teacher salary was $23,870.

THAT. IS. OUTRAGEOUS.

I know teachers in general don’t get paid enough for the work they do – but keeping a class of 15-20 3-4 year olds alive is hard enough. Try prepping them for kindergarten with the necessary social and academic skills – and think about how important early childhood education is in terms of long term success. The achievement gap is alive and well in pre-k classrooms – so the importance of taking it head on at the earliest moment is paramount. What I’m saying is with the obvious importance / difficulty of pre-k teaching why are pre-k teachers paid so poorly?

I mean it seems obvious to me that paying pre-k teachers appropriately and requiring demanding preparation for said teachers should obviously be one of the many pieces that’ll help us get to One Day. We need to change the incentive structure such that it becomes important and financially viable to teach pre-k. I mean there’s a clear need for the best in the brightest in education (not that there aren’t many already there, I’m just saying) – that call might just might need to be heard even more loudly in pre-k classrooms. The Center for Public Education agrees:

Experts emphasize the need for [pre-k] teachers with college degrees who can deliver educational programming and who are paid at sufficient levels that promote retention.

AND

Low-income black children randomly selected to receive the comprehensive preschool program showed impressive long-term results regarding educational progress, delinquency, and earnings. Seventy-seven percent of these youngsters eventually graduated from high school, compared with 60 percent from the control group. In adulthood pre-k participants were also less likely to be arrested for violent crimes, more likely to be employed, and more likely to earn higher wages than those in the comparison group

Honestly I really can’t believe that I’m just realizing this foolishness, why isn’t there a major discussion around pre-k and closing the achievement gap when it’s arguably at its smallest?

Are there national standards for pre-k? How is student progress measured? Why aren’t there high standards for pre-k teachers? Why aren’t we doing better?

AND to my pre-k / soon to be pre-k teachers: mad, MAD love to y’all. Please believe I’ll be sending you supplies – hop on donors choose and let a sister know what you need. Also – y’all are the front line of the front line and I just want to give you a ridiculously large amount of respect, appreciation and LOVE!