A Teacher's Aide's Journal #8

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.

A Teacher's Aide's Journal #7

The District Meeting

                I expected the district meeting to set the tone for the school year.  The district has three high schools.  One is a selective enrollment school where the previous average A.C.T. score was 23 and the other two schools where thought to hold the left overs in the district.  Those two schools had an average A.C.T score for each of them was between 15 and 17.  The superintendent, Doctor West-Braxton addressed the staff with a welcome that was not very well accepted by anyone from what I could see.  Despite the halfhearted hand clap welcome, she spoke to us pointing out that the Hispanic students had the most gain in test scores.  She said that the Hispanics had gains in Science, math and reading whereas the black students had gains in reading but negative gains in math and science.  The white students who represent only 5 percent of the student population in the entire district had gains in math but no negative gains and the Asian students who represent less than 2 percent of the district population had gains in all three areas. She then pointed out that the construction crews did a good job on repairing the building.  They worked very hard over the summer making repairs to the building that caught fire at the end of last school year.  The fire took out almost 20% of the school.  She said that the building had a face lift – a paint job in certain areas and that the swimming pool had been repaired – it was destroyed 5 years ago when the river flooded due to nonstop three days of rain.  She mentioned that the financial oversight committee had approved the new teacher and support staff raise giving the support staff a 4% raise. She didn’t mention her $50,000 raise. She mentioned that the district had been given a B+ credit rating.  I wondered if anyone really knew what that meant.  I am fortunate enough to know that a B+ credit rating isn’t very good.  I do my share of investing in stocks and bonds and I wouldn’t invest in a municipality bond when the municipality had a B+ rating.  She said that there would be more funds for books this year and it occurred to me that while I worked the book room, just a few days ago, we had no math books to give students and there were no Chemistry books for the non-honors Chemistry classes.  This problem had been going one for a while and last school year the special ed students were given Honors Chemistry books.  Needless to say, they didn’t read them.  She suggested that this would be the last year that the state appointed financial committee would preside over the district spending.  The finance committee had the district under its thumb for some four years now due to poor financial management.  By state law, the finance committee had to take charge. 

       When she finished, she introduced a speaker who spoke to us for the next ninety minutes about race matters.  He played with the wordings to have double meaning.  He spoke of his personal truth and explained that everyone had their very own personal truth.  He began with a story about his experience as a child in school.  He started with an all-black school in the urban area of some east coast city.  He had photographs to showing his kindergarten, first and second grade classes.  He had photographs of his teachers as well.  All of the students and all of the teachers were African American.  He mentioned that there was a relationship that the teachers had with the parents in the community.  He mentioned that he saw his first grade teacher at the grocery store and there were teachers in the building who went to the same church that he attended.  He mentioned that when he went to the third grade, the school hired a white teacher and that was when behavior problems seemed to magnify.  He said that there were perhaps behavior problems in the previous grades, but he did not notice them.  He mentioned that the white teacher was very sensitive and the students found it laughable that she was very emotional and at some points she broke down in tears.  They were challenged each week with getting her so upset that they did not have to work due to her breakdowns.  He said that the white teacher had no connections with the community and he thought that she was an outsider.

      He explained that he was soon transferred to a different school.  It was a “smart school.”  In the fourth grade, he was one of just three black students.  He was suddenly the minority.  The teacher was white as well.  He spoke differently and as a result was not anxious to speak at all.  He felt very uncomfortable and isolated.  His teachers spoke about things that he did not relate to at all.  They talked about camping and he had never been camping.  They talked about skiing and family vacations all of which he had only heard of or saw on television.  He eventually made adjustments and went on to do well in his subjects.  He was accused of cheating once when he wrote a report for English because his grammar was perfect. 

I related to that experience as the same thing happened to me when I was a high school sophomore.  I did not have perfect grammar but when I was assigned by my English teacher, Mrs. Marx to write poetry following the fixed verse formats of Villanelle, Sonnet and haiku it was assumed by her that I plagiarized.   She was out to get me.  At that time, she did not have the help of the internet, but she used every resource that she had available to try to find the poems that I wrote.  She searched books and she asked her colleagues.  When she returned the students work to them, I did not get mine.  Mr. Hinkle spoke to me about the poems; he was my freshman English teacher and one that became a favorite.  He told me that Mrs. Marx asked him about the poems and he told her that he thought the poems were original.  He told me that he said to her “If he copied them, why would he miss-spell words?”  In the end, Mrs. Marx gave me a C on the paper.  She said that I did everything correct and the poems were “nice” but the C was warranted because of my mechanical errors. Mrs. Marx was perhaps in her middle twenties; she was German and had blue eyes.  When I latter returned to that school as a school teacher, she was still there.  She worked there for over twenty years and retired.

      After the speaker told his story, he presented a question to the staff.  He asked how many of us felt that we came in contact with racism between 0 to 10% of the time in any single day.  He asked them to stand.  There were ten people who stood, they were all white.  He went from 11% - 25% and there were more than fifty more teachers who stood.  In that crowd, there were two black staff members.  He went from 25% to 50% and by this time, every white person was on his or her feet.  Oddly enough, with a very small exception, just about every black staff member remained seated.  He skipped to 90% to 100% and it seemed like every black person who remained seated stood.  I was waiting for 75%.  It was obvious that the vast majority of black people believed or felt that they were subjected to racism in 90% to 100% of their lives.  He mentioned that 90% of blacks who were surveyed said that when driving, they felt apprehension whenever they saw a police squad car in the rear-view mirror.  That there are few times, if any do black people feel protected by the police.  He went on to discuss the relationships between teachers in class and students.  He suggested that unless the discussion of race becomes a common occurrence, there will continue to be a gap between black students and white teachers. 

I thought it was interesting that we ignored the fact that our educational staff was composed of more than 75% white teachers, 90% black or Hispanic support staff, and a 93% minority student body.  The superintendent is a black female, her assistant superintendent is a black female, the human resource department is 100% black or Hispanic female, and the board of education has only two white members.  In terms of the regional office, I have not seen one black or Hispanic face at all. 

      When we went to lunch I was informed that the support staff was to leave and go to Central for the second session.  I expected that this in-service would be more specific to our job and the training we needed.  I was told by Ms. Reed, the special services supervisor / chair that I would have a one on one with a Hispanic student who was dealing with autism.  Her name was Jessica.  I had the opportunity to speak with her case worker, Ms. O’Dell  and Ms. Yarbrough who worked with Jessica last year during her freshman year.  I was told that Jessica had no filtering system and she would say whatever came to her mind.  I was told that her mother did not speak English very well at all but that she could say “lawyer” in three different languages.  I was told that Jessica came from a racist family and was extremely prejudice to black men.  As an example, they told me that upon announcement of a girl who was sexually assaulted last school year, Jessica walked down the hallway and pointed to every black male student she saw saying that “He probably did it.”  She was afraid of bugs and she often had temper tantrums.  Initially, I thought this strange that she would be assigned to a “black male” one on one.  Furthermore, I had no knowledge of autism with the exception of Rain Man the movie with Tom Cruise and the story The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time that I read with my younger son when he was 13 years old. 

      The meeting was a disappointment.  We were taught to relax.  There was a guest speaker who came to tell us the importance of relaxing out mind and finding outlets to reduce stress from work.  We were made to do irritating ice-breakers that caused more stress than the job.  In fact, it was very stressful to sit there and hear all of the mess that she shoved in our ears.  What I did, to relieve the stress from the meeting about relieving stress was to get my android and play a couple of games of chess.  I realized that I would have to result to Youtube videos to teach myself ways to deal with or help a student with autism.  Then I would have to make a strategy to deal with her alleged racist views towards black men.  

A Teacher's Aide's Journal #6

     I had an interesting conversation with one of my co-workers and I asked her why does everyone seem so disgruntled at work? She explained that everyone is bitter due to past treatments.  The conversation came about when I noticed that it was approaching time to leave, but there were still people waiting in line at school registration.  The line started outside in the school parking lot.  At the entrance door was a security guard who waited for a call over the radio that informed him of how many people in that line he could allow through and into the band room where the parents were to wait in  a different line until we called them to our table.  It was near time to leave and the band room was filled with parents.  Every seat was taken.  This was the third day of registration and people were entering the building in droves.  The general consensus between the other teacher’s aides who worked with me was that when the clock struck seven p.m. they would leave with no regard to the people in line or in the band room.  Ms. Ware explained to me that there would be no overtime paid to us for extra work and that home was an hour away; therefore volunteer work was not an option.  Mrs. Hernandez said that she would consider volunteering her time, if she was not treated so poorly in the past.  It was mentioned that she would be assigned to a one on one with a student.   Aides assigned to one on ones were given a single student to shadow from the first period to the last.  That aide was responsible for getting the student to class and assisting that student in whatever way was necessary for the student’s Individual Education Plan that was created by a team of professionals. 

My personal thoughts regarding these teams are mixed.  Obviously I hesitate in making broad accusations and statements so with that disclaimer; I will say that in my personal and professional experience, the entire beast that I will call special education needs to be revamped.  First, I’ll start with my personal experience.  I have a child who has a hearing deficiency that came from a sickness during the toddler years. The sickness caused a fever that apparently damaged the developing hairs inside of the ear.  Such damage is irreparable.  My child is a three sport athlete, reads well, loves science, and does well in math. By all comparisons at worst she is an average child.  Due to the hearing issue in the right ear, it was determined that an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) was needed to give accommodations.  The accommodations involved seating arrangements in the front of the class or closes to the teacher and to the right side so that most audio could come at her from the left side.   With that being said, I found myself over the last three years of elementary school literally fighting with professional teams regarding in class treatment.  In my experience with my daughter, the professional team seems to do everything in their power to cripple my daughter instead of empowering her to self-advocate.  The go overboard with services even at one time suggesting that they force teachers to use a microphone in class to assist my daughter’s hearing.  This was far overboard as she had damage in one ea. When she played sports she does not use her hearing aids.  When she stands in center field, I’ve never saw her softball coach have issues adjusting her when he calls to her from the dugout.  I say all of this to say that despite the special education team’s insisting that my daughter have a resource class, microphones, and special ear pieces, she does well enough without them and she only needs two accommodations: sit in front of the class and a teacher that can keep the classroom quiet or at least free from disruption. I have many more examples of how the special ed team in this district does more harm than good.

      Mrs. Hernandez was very unhappy with the assignment and said that she would try to fight it. As a one on one, she would have to follow a student to every class and sit in that class to assist that student.  She did not like the fact that she would was assigned to the student at the bequest of a parent’s request that the one on one teacher’s aide have the ability of bilingual speech.  She believed that sense the student’s IEP did not mandate a bilingual one on one, she should have additional pay for her services.  She felt that she was given this assignment because she has a special ability and that was some sort of discrimination.  She felt that if she was given an assignment based on having a skill that other aides do not have, then she should be compensated financially.  So for this reason, she planned to fight the assignment.

     When it was 7:00, everyone at my table left, so did I.

                                           Freshman Orientation

    Today the Aides punched the clock and walked to the lounge.  I joined them there and did some research on the computer.  Then I made some hotel reservations for my son who was invited to Texas for a baseball show case.  We had some interesting conversations some of which I found myself getting involved.  First we talked about police officers.  Apparently there was an incident in St. Louis where some kid was in a fight with a police officer.  Ms. Thompson started to talk about that children should submit to the authority of the police.  Ms. Gomez the registrar came in for a few minutes and expressed her worries relating to her grandchildren regarding police harassment.  I shared the information that I told my children.  I told them not to talk back to the police officer and do not explain things to them.  I told them to first ask “Am I under arrest?”  If the answer is yes, then they are only obligated to state their name and where they lived.  If they are pulled over for a traffic violation, they do not need to get out of the car.  I also told my sons that if they are involved with a police officer, turn on the video recording of their cell phone and inform the police that they are recording the conversation.  The should ask for the policeman’s badge number and inform the police that when the recording stops the video is automatically sent to his online drop box account.  Ms. Thompson’s thought that what I told my sons were extreme and intimidating to the police.  She did, however agree that they should do whatever the police officer asks.   I shared two stories.  One story was about my oldest son who was approached by a police.  The officer asked him if he had a gun.  He said no and continued to walk away.  The police asked him to stop, he did.  Then he asked the police officer if he was under arrest and if so the charge.  The police officer did not answer the question and apprehended my son.  They got into a scuffle.  In the end, the judge dismissed the charges of resisting arrest due to the fact that there was no probable cause for arrest.  I shared with them a second story about a day when my youngest son and I were heading home in a taxi from the cinema.  The taxi was stopped by a police officer.  Then there were four other cars that came and surrounded us.  They pulled out their guns, made my younger son who was 12 years old get out of the taxi, lay face down on the ground and then they hand cuffed him.  I had just purchased him a new wooden baseball bat just before we went to the movie while we were at the mall.  They had me get out of the car and they went through all of my personal belongings – a briefcase.  They said that they drew their weapons because of the baseball bat.  They said that there was a recent robbery of a taxi driver in the area and that is why they stopped us; coupled with the idea that it “looked like,” my son was trying to slouch in the back seat.  After I started to refer to police officers by badge number, they changed their aggressive tone to a more apologetic one.  “We just came from the movie theater Star number 3218,” I remember saying.  All of these things and more happened within a few months.

Not by coincidence, my daughter had her softball bat taken from her by a police officer.  She had the bat in a softball bag that was a back pack.  The handle of the bat was visible and because of that, the police officer, holding his gun in hand, called my daughter to him while she walked from the high school along 5^th avenue.  He told her to give him the bat and she did.  It took me a month to get back the softball bat.  I was told that the officer took the bat because he was afraid that someone would take it from her and use it for a weapon.  I am over 40 years old and I cannot say with much certainty that I have any respect for a police officer.

      Mrs. Hernandez asked me if it made me felt safe because the treatment that my three children received from police officers was strict evidence that the police officers were protecting the neighborhood.  Ms. Thompson held firm that the police officers had the guns and for that reason alone, we should simply do whatever they ask.  I told Mrs. Hernandez that W.E.B Dubois once said that the police system was designed in the South to control slaves.  This is no less far from the truth in the North.  The police system in America is in no way designed to do anything more than intimidate, frustrate and impose American racism on blacks and Hispanics alike. 

     We had another conversation about the new contract.  Ms. Thompson pretended to be knowledgeable about the contract.  It was asked what happens to sick and personal days when or if one retires.  She said that the contract allows us to have our personal days and they will pay us full rate for them, but they will pay us $35 for each sick day.  I commented that that was a loss of money it was better to use all of the sick days, and then retire or resign.  Then Ms. Thompson said that we would get paid all of our sick days up to $2000.  By then, I realized that she didn’t know what she spoke of and I ignored the rest of the conversation. 

     When Ms. Willis entered, the conversation of her assignment from yesterday took command.  Yesterday, she was given a female freshman student who was dealing with down-syndrome.  Ms. Willis was the student’s one on one aide during the freshman orientation.  The student later was assigned to Trainable Mentally Handicap classes. The wording has changed suddenly to TST – but no one knows what TST means.   Ms. Willis told her story about how the girl was resistant to participate in the freshman orientation activities.  She did not want to enter certain rooms, or walk down certain hallways at certain times.  She did not want to write and she became at one point aggressive enough to hit Ms. Willis’s hand.  The conversation went on to critique the decision of bringing the student to school on an orientation day where mainstream freshmen were walking through the building on scavenger hunts, forming groups and teams for various competitions.  It was obvious to Ms. Willis that the activities and the environment were not good or safe for the girl or the mainstream students who had to come into contact with her.  Then the conversation veered into Ms. Willis’s lack of training.  In fact, she had not been given any special training neither had she been advised on what to do with a child dealing with down-syndrome.  She felt helpless.   

A Teacher's Aide Journal #5

                                                                    Day 3

     I worked a half day today because I had to appear in court this morning.  My ex-wife by help of a lawyer entered a petition asking the judge for permission to remove my daughter from the state so that they both can live in Georgia.  She believes that since I have a master’s degree and a few classes away from a second one, that I should earn more money and being that I am due for a downward support modification, she claims that she can’t afford to live in Illinois if the modification goes through.  Humorously enough, finding her own job does not seem to be an option for her.  At any rate, we were ordered to see a mediator.  This is very upsetting to me because I will miss 5 days of work in the next three months due to domestic issues related to an ex-wife who wants more money than I am paid. 

    When I arrived at the school, I saw that I was assigned to work at the welcoming station for the third day of registration.  There I was with two other aides, a secretary who works in the attendance office and a band instructor.  Our jobs were to give the registering people a printout of their registration progress, then check to see if the registering student was listed on the disciplinary dean’s list for mischief conduct or if the student was a freshman who had not taken the Explorer Exam.  After we verified that the student’s name did not appear on any of the two lists, we checked the paper work brought with them from home to ensure that the forms were properly completed and that the proper proof of residency information was in the parent’s possession.  They were required to have rental leases or property tax bill, utility bills, state ID or driver license, and a birth certificate.  The most common form missing was the birth certificate as it was not mentioned in the letter that was sent to parents to detail what documentation they needed to register their child.  At any rate, we were told to turn them away if they did not have the birth certificate.

     I remember an in-service from three months ago.  It was conducted by Mr. Frazier from the regional office.  He told us that it was unlawful to prevent someone to register if they did not provide a birth certificate at registration.  The way he explained it was that birth certificates were needed to show guardianship and that we were to allow parents to register their children and they would have a number of days to bring in the birth certificate so that it would be placed in file.  If after those days had passed, the student was to be reported to someone who would take it from there, contact the parent and do whatever their job required them to do.  I mentioned that we – the school – may be liable for turning them away, but it was not my call and I was here to parrot what I was told and not to think or to make sense of what I was asked to do.  Furthermore, I was certain that the parents who were here to register their children had no idea of the legalities involved.  We turned away twelve parents from the time I arrived. 

                                                                          Day 4

      When I started today, I was at the same station as yesterday.  I was the first line of defense, or the greeting team – whatever it was called.  When I entered the band room where everyone waited, I saw nearly thirty people seated and waiting.  I thought to respect their time and announce that if they did not have a birth certificate, they would not be allowed to register.  About five people stood and walked away.  I continued to make this announcement for the entire day until 50 minutes remained and Mr. LaSorda, came into the band room to explain that we could not turn people away for not having birth certificates.  He said that the returning students’ certificates were on file and that we could only hope that new students and freshmen would have the certificates with them.  He then went on to explain everything that Mr. Frazier explained months ago. For the last 50 minutes, we did not turn away anyone for not having birth certificates.

     There was a student who came to my table wanting to see her counselor.  She was already registered and had her books.  She was unhappy that she was not placed in Honors English and wanted a schedule change.  I tried to calm her by explaining to her that the counselors were all busy with registration and that the issue of schedule change was such a small one at this time that it could be resolved on the first day of school.  She left and in about two hours, I noticed that she had returned and was in the registration line outside of the school standing with her mother.  At this time the line was so long, that it was out the door and in the parking lot.  I stopped to talk to her mother and I repeated what I told her daughter.  The mother understood what I said, but she was unwilling to leave.  “I know these people,” she said and explained that sense she was already hear, she would wait and settle the matter today.  She was so adamant, that she was willing to wait the remainder of the day.  She said that she was not leaving until she spoke to a counselor.  I had security call Mr. LaSorda who came in a matter of minutes.  I tried to brief him of the problem, but he said that I didn’t have to.  Not feeling very comfortable with that, I simply said that I have a parent who is insistent on seeing a counselor.  We walked to the parent still in line outside of the door and I pointed her out.  Mr. Burks, the head of security showed his face accompanied by another security officer.  Naturally, security had their ears open to hear what the parent had to say, and when she explained that she needed to talk to a counselor for a schedule change, Mr. Burks turned to walk away saying to me that he would not have bothered to call Mr. LaSorda over such a matter.  I told him that she was insistent and that she said that she would not leave until she spoke to a counselor.  Mr. Burks said “Well, she has that right.” His suggestion that she could have waited as long as she wanted struck me as insensitive.  He continued on about his business and I went back to my table.  Later, I overheard Mr. LaSorda summoning me over the security radio held at the side of the one security officer who was in the band room with us.  When I went to LaSorda’s office, he asked me to have a seat as he finished his telephone conversation.  When he was finished, he told me that what I did was right and he wanted to let me know that he had no intentions of insulting me when he said that he didn’t need me to brief him.  He said that he didn’t want me to feel like it was my job to deal with disgruntled parents.  He said that dealing with disgruntled parents was part of his job.  He said that with registration going on, we tend to forget that we are here for other reasons and services.  I thanked him for saying what he said and returned to my station.

A Teacher's Aide's Journal #4

                I sat in the bookroom with nothing to do as I had already placed barcode labels in all of the new books and I had already stacked the books in categories based on subjects.  There was nothing left to do so I sat at a table towards the back of the room, took an American Literature Anthology in hand and started to read an Edgar Allan Poe’s short story.  It was at that time when a student named Haven entered the classroom.  She was a student in my class a year ago when I was a long term sub at the start of the year.  The story behind that is that the English department chair who was Mr. LaSorda now promoted to assistant principal was replaced by Ms. Jones - unofficially.   The board of education for some reason decided to make all of the coaches in the district along with all department chairs re-apply for their jobs.  Over the summer, the principals were given the challenge of re-hiring; then after hiring or re-hiring they had to wait for the board to approve of those selections.  The process took a while – much longer than the ten weeks of summer vacation.  So when the school year started, Ms. Jones was not approved for the English department chair’s position.  She was offered the job and began to assume the responsibilities of the job.  Being that she was assigned five classes, that she could not teach while working as the unofficial department chair, I was asked to come in as a substitute teacher until someone was hired as a full time teacher.  The full time teacher would interview after Ms. Jones was made the official chair by board approval. 

This was the way last school year started.  I was the substitute teacher for Ms. Jones who often felt it necessary to sabotage my classes by dropping in and teaching a lesson.  There were a number of things bad about that situation.  First, Ms. Jones was in the classroom on the first day and I was not allowed to start the class with my routine of establishing order.  Our styles were very different.  Ms. Jones started the first day by open discussion with the students about what they did over the summer and what she did over the summer.  She introduced me as her substitute and felt the need to explain to the students that she was going to be the department chair and that a new teacher would have to be hired to replace her.  She explained to them that if they had any problems that they should come to see her.  In the past, what worked for me when I was a full time teacher is that on the first day I would give the student an assessment that allowed me to have a clear understanding of their skills relating to grammar and writing.  When I had finished that, I established order by specifically detailing the expectations and routines.  It has never been my concern what the children did over the summer or what they would like to do with their lives – all of that would come out in due time.  As a result of her conversation with them, the classroom became too social and students tried to take advantage.  They went to her with complaints about my discipline procedures, they complained about my demands that they used Cornell Notes.  They complained to her about too much homework, tests or quizzes every Friday, and telephone calls home.  All of this, according to the students was “too much” and I was “just a sub not even a real teacher.”  One of the biggest complaints came when the students were assigned to write an expository essay.  A good number of them wrote a narrative.  I graded them a zero because they did not do the assignment.  I explained that those with zeros needed to see me after school for re-teaching and a second chance to re-write the essay for full credit.  I was asked to use the department writing rubric on their essays and by the standards of the rubric, points were given for simple things like Format – the student uses double spacing and one inch margins with the proper font. 

The one good thing that came from those two months of teaching Ms. Jones’s classes was that the honor students had an appreciation for what I presented.  She had five classes in all and two of them were honor classes.  I did not know the magnitude of the appreciation that the honor classes had until that day while I was in the bookroom wasting time.  One of my former students was a NJROTC volunteer working in the bookroom.  She explained to me that she felt that she learned nothing in English class from the time I left.  She said that I was the only teacher that taught grammar and who was motivational.  She asked me if I was going to teach again.  I told her that I didn’t think so because now I was not a substitute I was a part time teacher’s aide.  She said that the teacher that was hired and replaced me didn’t know what she was doing.  She also told me that she took the ACT over the summer as I had encouraged them to do.  She said that everything I taught was on the test.

Near the end of the day, another student from one of those honor classes entered the bookroom.  Her name was Divinity.  She was a very receptive girl and she as well as the other students in the honors classes showed me a lot of appreciation for the lessons as they felt that they were getting preparation for tests.  Admittedly, I spent more time motivating them with ideas of dreaming big and not making limits on the possibilities of success.  “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.” I used a lot of quotes from Napoleon Hill.  At any rate, Divinity explained that she liked the way I spoke to the class and she aspired to be a motivational speaker on an international level.

                Our conversation started with her explaining to me that she did not take the ACT exam over the summer as I had encouraged her to do at the end of the previous school year.  She missed the June test and she asked for advice; I told her about the October test that she could take.  She said that she had the ACT prep book and that she often studied.  I thought of other resources and when I saw Chief from the NJROTC walking in the hall I remembered that there was an NJROTC test prep site that I used for my children.  I asked him over to tell her about the site but he would not tell her unless she joined the NJROTC – she was not interested.  He went ahead to sell the NJROTC program to her with a long spill and I could see the blankness in her eyes - she had zoned him out.  Her body language was obvious that she was not interested.  She examined her nails, shifted weight, pointed her foot to the door, folded arms and made an occasional statement “I’ll take that inconsideration.”  When he finished and shook hands with Divinity’s mother who was with her, I took Divinity and her mother to the career center where I turned on a computer and pulled up the collegeboard.org web site. I explained that this was a good resource as I conducted a mock college search while asking questions about her future plans.  She was most excited about her plan to graduate a semester early and spend time with her dad visiting colleges. 

Eventually we started to talk about her dream and her passion.  Her mother was naturally pushing towards a sensible career option that would guarantee her daughter a chance of working and earning a living while she pursued her dream of being a motivational speaker.  I was not very comfortable with this, because it often occurs that people give up on their dreams while holding down a job that they really don’t want and Divinity valued my honest opinion so I could not agree with the mother.  I had to be tactful.  I eventually told her that she should stop saying that she wants to be a motivational speaker and she should begin to say that she is a motivational speaker.  If she believes that she is then the next step is to do.  She did not have to wait to start motivating people she simply needed to start doing it.  She had ideas about a communications major in college but I told her that such a major was for journalist and broadcasting people.  She then thought about psychology classes and studying the brain and I realized she was thinking of formal ways of understanding how to motivate people.  I asked her why couldn’t she just make speeches and put them on YouTube?  I asked her if she had google plus, twitter and such social networks that she could subscribe to and promote her motivational speeches.  I suggested that she could upload her speeches and videos while promoting them to the people in her circles.  She liked that idea.  I went one step further by giving her my email address and suggesting that if she wrote a motivational speech, she could send it to me and I would write one back to her.  Such practice and feedback should help her to improve.  She liked that idea. 

One of the things that I thought I would do when I became a teacher was to inspire and motivate students.  I thought that I would have an impact on the world forging a new way of thinking in the youth and cultivate that thinking into a thinking pattern that would make change in the world or at least the community.  Somewhere in teaching methods, curriculum, student discipline, phone calls home, lesson plans, college readiness standards, and ten miles more of shit piled on education, that idea of motivating and inspiring students was lost.  It felt nice to do what teachers are supposed to do and ironically enough I was able to do this more after I was no longer a teacher.