Building Meeting
Today started with a meeting in the little theatre located
in the basement area of the building.
There I sat in the middle, as I was not the early bird who gets the prime
seat in the back row while the late comers have to sit in the front. I sat next to Ms. McElroy and our union
delegate. The principal made the first
presentation. He stood behind the
podium. On the podium was a lap top that
was connected to a projector casting the lap top screen’s image on the large
silver screen that hung over the stage.
He started his welcome speech with a cordial welcome and then he went on
to mention the names of the teachers who were married over the summer – there
were three, two ladies and one man. He
then spoke of the people who left due to resignation or finding other places of
employment. Then he told us that we were
an official “Project Lead the Way” School.
This meant that we were a participating school in a program that was
sponsored by someone to teach engineering skills to the students. He told us that there were more new things
that would be instituted. He mentioned
that we would get a writing lab, maybe a math lab, there would be programs
during lunch periods to supplement classroom learning and that we had an intern
who would be working in the I.T. department.
He explained that there would be a parent support project started by a
group of parents who met and decided that the school needed an organized parent
support organization. He said that with
the parent support project, he believed there was a need for a Latino Parent
support group. This idea came in
response to surveys that indicated that the Latino student and parents feel
disconnected in the building. Their
culture is not represented throughout the buildings in classes or in
hallways. He said that “We’re committed
to including everyone.” He mentioned the
construction in the building – roof work in the field house, a breeze way to
block the winter wind at one of the student entrances, and the ventilation work
in the basement area where the driver's ed classes can reach ten degrees hotter
than the rest of the building.
After these things, he started to discuss the PSAE
scores. The Prairie State Achievement Examination
was a test given to junior students each year for the last fifteen years. He said that the scores had increased. He showed us a graph comparing the 2013
scores to the 2014 scores. The
percentages of students who met state standards increased in reading by 3.1%
and in math by 6.8%. In light of
yesterday’s race conversation, he pointed out that the Latino students who met state
standards improved by 4.5% in reading and 10% in math whereas the African
American students had a 1.9% gain in reading and a 4.2% in math. When it came to science, however, the Latino
students who met the standards improved by 6.6% whereas the African American
students dropped by 2.7% He expressed concern for the negative number in the
African American students science scores and the disparity between the two
groups.
With that, he started to talk about PARCC – the new test
that will start this year. The test will
be systemic and given to elementary, middle school, and high school
students. It is a performance based
assessment as well as an end of the year assessment. The test will be given twice in a year – once
when school instruction is 75% done and then again when instructing is 90%
complete. It was also mentioned that
this would be the last year that the school will mandate A.C.T testing for
graduation. The state will no longer pay
for the A.C.T and starting next school year, the test will be completely
voluntary.
The First Day of School
I punched in at 7:45 a.m. and walked to the teacher’s lounge
– a ninety second walk – but when I entered into the lounge I saw that it was only 7:44. The time on my cell phone also
read 7:44. By my estimate, the main
office time clock was three minutes fast.
I went to the D ramp and waited for my student. She arrived on time by way of a small school
bus. I didn’t know the girl or how she
looked. I only had the idea that she was
Hispanic based on her name Jessica Jimenez.
Fortunately she was the only girl and when she entered the building, I
called her by name and introduced myself. She had a schedule and revealed to me
that it had five classes and six periods.
She was missing a seventh period class.
She seemed slightly bothered by that so we walked to her counselor to get
the change. Mr. Love, one of the senior
counselors stood outside of the door to stop all students who came by in an
attempt to change their schedule. We
slipped through and got to her counselor who was very quick to help but then
noticed that there was a computer problem and she was unable to log in. She told us to return at lunch time so we
left and went to the student's locker.
Her first period class was Geometry Honors. Mr. Carter, an African American teacher stood
about six feet tall and maybe about 220 pounds.
He was a fast talker and repeated two phrases until it became
humorous. He said that this was Honors
Geometry at least twelve times, from when I started counting. It was as if he was trying to make a
point. When Matthew did not have paper,
Mr. Carter asked why and reiterated that this was Honors Geometry and that his
expectations were higher than they were for regular geometry classes. He said that he would not go over class rules
except for the phone and food rules because there were many students
missing. Only twelve students were in
class. One student asked him if she could
use the restroom his reply was “No, I don’t do bathrooms.” Two minutes later, she tossed the cookies on
the floor. He then allowed her to go to
the restroom and proceeded to clean the vomit from the floor. The student returned and soon asked if she
could use the facilities again. This
time, Mr. Carter said yes. He asked if
she needed the nurse, she said no. The
geometry class was made of five Hispanic girls, two Hispanic males, two white
males, two African American girls and boys.
Mr. Carter made a speech about the difficulty that the
students would have with honors geometry if they did not have the algebra
skills from the previous year. Following
up that speech, he proceeded to put algebra problems on the Promethean
Board. He walked around to get a sense
of how difficult the basic problems were for the students. In all, he put up nine problems that ranged
in difficulty from the simple computation, to find the value of x, to
multiplying radicals. Although he did
not want to go over the class rules, he continued to give information while the
students tried to work their problems. Once,
after telling them to “have at it,” he walked around the classroom explaining
that they would eventually get seating charts.
He spoke for the entire ninety seconds that he gave them to complete the
problem. He did this consistently and I
wondered – after so many wrong answers - if the students got wrong answers
because they did not know, remember, or because they were distracted.
The second period class was Spanish. Ms. Martinez was married over the summer and
her new name was Pibelar. She explained
that the students could continue to call her Martinez. She allowed the students
to sit where they pleased, she asked them to remember not to have their cell
phones out. Within twenty minutes, she
reminded them to not have out their phones.
Ten minutes later, she asked them to put away their cell phones. In all she asked them four times during the
first day. She explained that they
needed a notebook and binder for her class and that the notebooks would stay in
her class. After that, she gave
placement tests to the native Spanish speaking students. This was to see if they needed to take the
Spanish 1 course. If they did well,
they would move to Spanish 2. She spoke
to them in Spanish as well and a few of them understood her. She said that they would be rescheduled for a
different class. Afterwards, she gave
everyone a printed out sheet of questions for them to complete. They had the remaining 35 minutes to answer
12 questions.
Lunch
Jessica was given
10:00 a.m. lunch that ended at 11. The
system was set up so that a teacher’s aide was assigned to the special ed
students in the cafeteria. There were
seven of them who had autism or some other condition that made it difficult for
them to interact with the regular students.
Jessica did not want to sit with them.
Instead, she wanted to find her friends and I waited inside the
cafeteria for her to find them. She did
not and eventually sat with the other special ed students at their very own
table which seemed to be waiting for them.
After I left her, I went to the store to purchase some canned tuna and mayonnaise
to make tuna sandwiches for the football players who were allergic to
peanuts. We had to supply food for our
football team, because it was assumed that their parents would not furnish them
with snacks or food to eat after school.
Football practice ended at 7:30 and some of our children’s last meal
would have been at 11:00 a.m. Coupled with the fact that we had instituted a mandatory
study hall for all of our players, the football players would spend 12 hours a
day at school and have only one meal.
With this in mind, we fed them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
English
The English teacher was a white female with a Spanish name –
Ruiz. She had previously taught in an
alternative school. Now she was the
English 2 techer for honor students. She
did much the same as everyone else; she went over rules and expectations.
Afterwards, she played a CNN news report on the Promethean board. Jessica, after hearing that she would see and
hear CNN spoke out. “Oh you mean the
ones who tell lies.” The teacher was
caught off guard and had a loss of words.
Then she asked the students if they wanted to play a name game. After the CNN report the teacher decided to
play the name game with the students. There was a moment when the CNN report ended
that a potentially hot conversation started.
Rashid made a statement about the police officer in Missouri shooting
the innocent African American male. The
teacher abruptly responded to him. “Were
you there?” She went on to explain that
she was not trying to change his opinion, but he needed to consider that all of
the facts have not yet been disclosed.
She mentioned that she was white and that the black students should have
a more informed opinion before reaching conclusions.
So much for race matters, I thought.
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