 The Cup Half Full -Alex Farr I'd driven a cab in Oakland for years, but the business started dropping as the George W Bush economy blossomed. Either people could all afford to buy their own cars, or they couldn't afford to take taxis... interpret as you will. In reaction, I obtained an emergency credential, and began substitute teaching. I'm not sure that I really thought I could make the sort of difference that the miracle teachers in the movies made, but I hoped I could maybe make learning less onerous than it had to be. I tried not to use words like "onerous" in the classroom too often. The issues of class size and discipline (the complete lack thereof, rather) wound up making any attempts to teach feel increasingly futile though. All it took was one student who couldn't be bothered to stop gabbing, or two if they were at least half-conscientious enough to try to whisper, to make any other activity but trying to corral them impossible. So I got the bright idea of taking a long term teaching assignment. If I was in the same classroom for a while, that initial substitute giddiness would pass... or so I'd heard. And after 10 days the pay rate would increase too. Win Win. Not so much. Not only had the regular teacher not provided a lesson plan of any sort... but I didn't even know what the students had studied thus far, and what they hadn't. I had no idea where to even start trying to make up on the fly lesson plans. To make it even more 'fun', even with a site-specific second substitute in the room, not to mention the occasional aides for the handicapped students, the 6th grade class was an exercise in over-educated babysitting. The 7th grade math classes weren't so bad... I didn't even mind when one of the students told me "Go fuck yourself, and your fucking test." when I tried to get her to take a half ass test I'd made up to try to see what, if anything, the students had already learned. She was having a bad day. I could relate. But then there was the 8th graders, math 8. Pre-Algebra. Like with all the other classes, when I started, I had no idea where they were, or what they'd done before I showed up. So, I asked the class. There were only maybe 23 to 28 students in this class though... and it was amazing how much easier that made it to teach than a class of 32 to 36. I got the yells from the students who wanted class to start wherever they felt like it should start, just like from the other classes... but these kids actually shut up when I told them to. It was amazing. I think I smiled. So I began asking specific students what the last thing they'd done was. Near as I could tell, they'd just started mapping points onto a Cartesian coordinate graph. I think maybe 5 to 8 of them could consistently tell me where to place a point, say (3, -4) would go on a coordinate system. Where was this work in their book though? When I opened the book to look, they'd go back to chatting. They were at least sensible enough to chat quietly enough so that the class next door couldn't make out what they were saying though... so I let it slide. What I didn't realize until the end of the second week though, was that teachers apparently no longer feel the need to go systematically through a textbook. Apparently the textbooks are little more than references nowadays. Wonderful. So what the fuck have they learned so far?!? I'm still not sure. Around the time I figured out where the coordinate graphing was in the book, another student came sauntering in... his hair in cornrolls, a big smirk on his face. "Just fucking great..." I thought to myself. I was wrong. That guy turned out to be my star, and confused the hell out of me in the process. I had students who looked at me blankly when I talked about combining like algebraic terms (2a + 3a = 5a... is it really that confusing??), and then Eric, who'd sauntered in like he owned the joint... he managed to deduce how to graph y=2 on a Cartesian coordinate system! What the fuck was I supposed to try to teach them?? And then there were the 2 cool cats, in the middle row, who liked to lean back in their chairs so they could chat over their shoulders with the cute chicks behind them... but managed to keep up and answer any questions I threw at them from problems I worked on the board. Yet another class that didn't bring their books to school unless I specifically told them to. The halls were lined with lockers, and the students weren't allowed to use them. Let's hear it for draconian measures taken to keep kids from having a storage space that can be used to keep their guns and knives! This class was cool though. They broke stereotypes. The black kids who got things were quiet about their chatting while I went over solving single variable equations by addition/subtraction/multiplication/division or some combination of all of the above with the asian girls that didn't get it. The high scores on the test came from a Eric (a black male), and a latina girl. If all the classes I taught at that school had been like that... I'd still be teaching there today. They weren't though. Cab driving was like a vacation compared with teaching half of those kids. At the very least, in a taxi I don't have to deal with the city's ignorance in such large doses... and, somehow, the freedom to tell people to get the fuck out of the car whenever I want to makes all the difference.Still and all... I can't help but wonder what an incredible difference the funding to get class sizes down to 25, from the occasional 38 that I'd seen, might make. The public school system might become functional again. Teachers might be able to teach rather than have to spend half of their time dreaming up new and creative ways to create discipline/order enough to be sure to be heard by their classes. Students who aren't disruptive might be able to get some personal attention from a teacher. The Eden Unified School District (EUSD), where the glass is actually half full... The Rethinking- substitute stories You gotta be shitting me Alex... |