As the Election Approaches --

For anyone interested in having an administration favoring education in power this coming January, consider the educational record of the McCain-Palin candidates. McCain, himself, finished near the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy, hardly an institution noted for its academic prowess.

Palin went to six different colleges in six years before she finally received her degree. None of her own children have ever been to college (doesn't that say something about her and her family'as values ?), and her husband, First Bubba WannaBe, may not even have finished high school. If you think a McCain-Palin ticket would promote improved education, which we sorely need to be competitive on the world market during the next thirty years, think again.

For full details about Palin's college education, go to httP://sendtoafriend.abcnews.go.com/politics/wireStory?id=5728215

The Substitute's Revenge

Today was a fairly good day, neither totally easy, but most of the time also not difficult. I substituted for a math teacher I had substituted for in the past. I also had several interesting encounters with students.

When one is 70 years old, as I am, and has studied God knows how many subjects and done a lot of reading during one's life, one inevitably become so well-rounded all he can do is roll. That describes me fairly well. The reason I know a little bit about a lot of subjects is simply because I have been around a long time. But this sure comes in handy with students when you least expect it.

The first was not part of the usual repertoire I draw on when I need it. It just happened. The second was part of my repertoire.

In one of the math classes, many of the students set about immediately doing the math problem sheets I had passed out. One student, however, did not. This was one very big guy. I thought he was Samoan or Tongan. You would have to say he was fat, but it was the kind of powerful, muscular fat that some Polynesians have. He wore dark, dark sunglasses so his eyes couldn't be seen. His last name suggested that he might be Tongan.

I asked him if he was.

He replied that he wasn't, that he was part Vietnamese and part Chinese, and that lots of people thought at first that he was Tongan.

I commented that having lived years ago in a Samoan village, if I had been able to see his eyes I might have known. "As Shakespeare said," I mentioned, "The eyes are the windows of the soul."

He took off his glasses and looked at me. "I like Shakespeare," he said. I read him a lot." (This was coming from an 11th grader !) "The trouble with Shakespeare, though, is that it's always about love." And he mentioned "Romeo and Juliet."

"You've been stuck in the tragedies," I replied. "Try the histories or the comedies. Try Richard the Third." I explained that here was a character who was one of Shakespeare's most evil. Born a hunchback, Richard III wanted to take it out on the world. I told the student about the drowning of the princes in the Tower of London, and about a few of Richard's other deeds.

Then we got back on the subject of love in Shakespeare's plays again, and we talked about Beatrice and Benedict, and how Shakespeare often wrote about how love makes fools of us all. It isn't all about waking up, seeing your lover asleep, thinking this was death, and taking poison to join them.

And then back to the subject of good and evil as people embody these and express these themes. We talked about looks and how these are supposed to reveal moral character, and we laughed about how wrong this notion often is. "It comes originally from the ancient Greeks, who thought that a handsome or beautiful exterior revealed a person's moral character. If you ever have to write an essay about something in Shakespeare, you could write about this.," I told him. "Hamlet is supposed to be handsome and of good character, isn't he ? But what about Othello ? What did the English way back then think about Black people ? What did they think about Blackness ? But Othello was essentially a moral person, wasn't he ? He was just driven mad by jealousy."

And so on. Yes, it was a math class, but if a student learns something about anything, I've come to count the session as a successful one.

When we finished talking, the kid did his math. At least I had also given him something to think about that interested him.

And then we come to the story of Mao T'se Tung. A few of my facts here may be wrong, but the gist of my story is correct.

A student in another class sat at his desk doing nothing, the math work sheet in front of him. I asked him if he was going to do his work. He shrugged.

"Then I must tell you about Chairman Mao"

"Who ?"

"Chairman Mao, who was the leader of the Chinese communists at the end of World War II, and who was responsible for expelling the Chinese Nationalists to the island op Taiwan."

"Chairman Mao and his followers made what has been referred to as 'The Long March.' They walked 10,000 miles to the coastline of their country, driving the Nationalists out of the country.

He became a total dictator, but was almost worshipped by many of the people. He had a number of sayings. These were collected and printed in what became known as 'Chairman Mao's Little Red Book.' Everybody, it seemed, carried a copy of this book, and quoted Chairman Mao often.

"One of his sayings was that "A journey of 10,000 miles begins with but a single step.

"What is your single step with this assignment ? It is to open your book and look at your math problems. Please make this happen now."

As pompous as telling the story may sound, it usually works. The kid in question not only started on his problems, but finished them all before the end of the class.

Another Day

I had no assignment for today but I received a call at 7:25 a.m. to come to School A because a teacher was unexpectedly going to be absent.

The day consisted of two periods of World History, a conference period (in which no students are present, so the teacher can relax and think about what is coming up next), followed by an American History class, lunch (45 minutes), and two more periods of American history.

For starters, these classes were to take place in one of the temporary buildings, and there were no keys to the classroom available. I had to go find a custodian to unlock the classroom. This sounds as though it isn't important, but the walk from where one signs in to the temporary classrooms is quite long and seems even longer when one has arthritis as I do.

The teacher had become ill and there had been no advance warning. When I got to the classroom there were no lesson plans. A search of the files and binders with classwork information in them revealed only lesson plans up until the day before, but nothing for the day I was to substitute.

When the students came in and took their places (reluctantly), I passed around a sign-in sheet and tried to remember various students' names. Then the moment of truth arrived. I had to tell the students what they were to do for the period. Nobody seemed to have any inkling, so I announced that they could 1) Work on classwork or homework for other courses; 2) Catch up on work for this course; 3) Listen to their ipods and relax -- which many of them always want to do, and which doesn't accomplish any learning; or 4) Those who wanted to learn something new could come down to the front of the class and I could tell them about Africa. About four students out of 25 came down, and I began a rambling, but internally connected talk, writing terms on the board as I went along. I told them about the Ivory Coast in West Africa, which I had visited the year before and which I will be returning to in three weeks. I discussed the French colonial capital of Grand Bassam; the yellow fever plague that killed 3/4 of the entire population in the area; the cause of yellow fever; the Kingdom of the N'Zima, which includes Grand Bassam, Southern Cote d'Ivoire, and part of Ghana; the French treatment of the King of the N'zima; the Assima holiday (which I will shortly be photographing); and that other scourge of Africa, malaria. All of this I couched in terms of relevancy for the African-Americans in the group because many of the slaves who were brought to this hemisphere were captured and sent from the N'Zima area. Once we got into malaria, I tried to point out that all things are connected. I asked if anyone knew someone who had sickle cell anemia, explained the difference between the sickle-shaped red blood cell and the normal shaped red blood cell, which can carry more oxygen, and explained that the sickle-shaped red blood cell was an adaptation of Africans that help them be less succeptible to malaria. From there we got into DDT, the near eradication of malaria, the discovery that DDT had enormously bad ecological effects, and the discontinuation of the use of DDT before malaria had been totally conquored. This. of course, is what caused the recurrence of malaria in many areas where it had been thought to have been eliminated. Then I discussed the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

At least one students actually wrote down the name of the book !

That was about as much as I could accomplish impromptu, so then we all relaxed for 15 minutes before the bell rang.

I had a repeat show with the same material for the second period and some time to relax during the third. Then the fourth period -- American history -- was upon me, again with no lesson plan.

I noticed that some of the students wanted to play "hangman," the game where you write spaces for the letters in an expression and the students guess which letters go where, and slowly piece the sentence together until they properly guess it.

I decided that since this was American history, I should use some sentences about important figures in American history, give some clues, and let them piece together what the sentence was about.

I wrote clues on the board, clues such as "Bang ! Bang ! Blood !" And I set out the outlines of a sentences like this:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, _ _ _. _ _ _ _ _ _ _, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ ?


As the students start guessing letters, what takes shape is: "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play ?" And this led us into a short discussion of Lincoln's assassination and John Wilkes Booth, whom most had never heard of.

We also did: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _' _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _." As they guess letters, I told them this was a song lyric, and gave them the hints that it concerned a white male who was strongly anti-slavery, who many people thought was mad, and who was eventually hung. And I added, "Shall we take the ferry, Harper ?"

In case you are wondering, this was "John Brown's body lies amouldering in the grave." So I got to explain some things about who John Brown was, what he did, and his significance.

This sort of thing took me through the fourth period, after which I had lunch, and then through the fifth and sixth period. I was exhausted when I went home. However, it did seem to me that I had managed to do some interesting impromptu songs and dances to get through the day. The next time around, may I PULEEEEZE have lesson plans awaiting me !

Can This Kid Be Saved ?

I had Trylor in some classes last year (2007-2008), and then again in a class a few days ago. He is an African-American young man, fairly good-looking, very short hair, medium dark complexion, about the average height of the other 12th-grade students. He has a pleasant smiling, even joking demeanor, and doesn't radiate nastiness or bad intentions like some of the students I have met. And he doesn't give the impressioin of someone who is consciously scheming to get over on a substitute. But he is a serious behavior problem.

Traylor's classroom behavior is the problem., He may sit down at his desk for a minute, but thge next thing you know he is out of his seat, wandering around the room, joking and talking with other people. He seems unable to settle down and do any work, and his constant talking with other students prevents them from doing classwork, too.

The number of write-ups he has received is lengthy. These started well before high school, but since he goit to high school they increased. Most are for classroom disturbance or for wandering the halls without a pass.

His family contact information doesn't work. No one answers the phone. Records list a moither or other female parental figure -- an aunt or a grandmother ? -- but whoever this person is, she seems never to be at home. No father is listed.

Traylor's grades are not good -- Ds and Cs at best.

The kicker in all this is that although he is in the eleventh grade, he is old enough to have graduated, but failed to do so. He has repeated one or two years. In a few months he will be 18.

At that point he will undoubtedly not go on to adult school, but will simply drop out. The most frustrating thing is that one senses in him a kid who, if he had been set on the right path, could have achieved a great deal. Now he has before him a life of poverty. And I don't think he understands this.

M's Story

Back at School A, the ghetto school, I encountered a young man last year in one of the classes where I was substitute who has an interesting story.

When I first met him, he tried very hard to conceal his name. He signed the sign-in sheet I passed around, but when I asked him what his name was he gave me a false one. What I immediately saw about this kid was that he was very popular with the other students, the sort of person they gather around and like to socialize with during class instead of doing their classwork. He is moderately good-looking, not an athlete, but with a football player's build, and larger than most of the other students his age. In the midst of the class we got into a conversation.

Several of our exchanges remain firmly in my mind. I asked him who he lived with, and he mentioned a younger brother and a sister. His sister was in her early twenties and worked at a local drugstore. His brother was in middle school.

When I asked M. what his hobbies were or what he did outside of school, he said to me, "You don't want to know." This sounded to me like a statement that he sold drugs. When I asked him what he wanted in life, trying to get the conversation directed towards the importance of education for achieving success, he replied, "The only thing I value is money." He also added that he didn't expect to live beyond that age of 22 or 23, so he was going to enjoy it while he had it.

Unless you live under a log, you cannot live anywhere in my city without knowing a little bit about the life of people who deal drugs. They die fairly young, usually shot up in some drive-by shooting or ambush. You see them in their neighborhoods, walking briskly and constantly looking nervously over their shoulder to see what cars or people are behind them.

I imagine some readers of this blog will think I should have called the police and turned this kid in as a dealer. With what proof ? My surmises wouldn't be evidence enough. You don't call the authorites when you suspect something. You call them when you can prove it. And further, I just didn't feel inclined to get anyone else involved in this kid's life when I thought there might be a chance that with someonme to talk to he might straighten out.

I asked M. if he had any adults to talk to. He said, "No." And then the class bell rang.

M. showed up in a few more classes I subbed in last year. I was certain he was a drug dealer. He knew that I knew and I knew that he knew and he knew that I knew that he knew. And I turned over in my mind what one could say to refute the notion that other things in life were more important than money. I told him that he should stop whatever he was doing, and that my assessment of him was that he is a good kid with a kind heart, and he needs to find some other way of life. His reply was that where he lives, there aren't many choices. My suggestion was to move his family to a better part of town. He mentioned how much that would cost, and I replied that he should use the money he probably had in a shoebox in his closet, and not worry about putting it to a better use, because that's the best use he could put it to.

He said that the "Bottom" was where his friends were. It was all that he knew. He would feel uncomfortable living somewhere else.

Over the summer while I was creating an online store or two and going about other business, I thought about this idea that the only thing worth valuing is money. How can one refute this ? And especially to a kid who isn't ready to believe anything else anyways ?

This year after I'd been back on campus a few days.I saw him again. He greeted me with a hug. and stopped to talk. I told him I'd been worried about him and whether or not he'd come safely through the summer. He told me that he almost hadn't. He'd owed some people a large sum of money he couldn't repay and they'd come after him with guns, but finally he had repaid them, and now everything was "cool." "I'm glad to see you back alive." I topld him. I knew the results of not paying drub dealers. I had known someone at a gym where I used to work out who'd appeared one day with two broken arms. He'd owed someone some money he couldn't repay and the main man's lieutenants had come after him with baseball bats.

All summer I'd been turning over in my head the central problem: How does a teacher divert a kid like this from the sort of drug life he leads back into a happier mainstream ?

I kept thinking of things to tell him. In the news school year I stopped him, once and discussed what he knew and what I knew. I told him that we were like two people living on opposite sides of a ten-foot high fence. All he could see was the "Bottom" where he lived. On my side of the fence, I'd been around. Now 70, I'd seen a lot of things that might make him happy, but that he'd never experienced or thought about. (Was I talking about Plato's The Allegory of the Cave ?)

Another time, I told him, "Listen to what the Godfather says, and think seriously about it. The Godfather says you need to get out of the "Bottom." Take your girlfriend on a 10-day trip to Hawaii. And don't tell me you can't afford it. Go see what some other kind of life is like."

He appeared to absorb this and seriously think about it.

I wasn't subbing at the same school for several days, but when I returned I heard about something new involving M. During my absence, his younger brother, a student at a middle school and who was already said to be dealing, had been shot five times and was now paralyzed for life. M. is said to have gone "crazy" out in front of the school, screaming and shouting and crying until the security guards came and calmed him down.

When I saw him the day after this, he appeared to be his normal self. However, he talked about going to France, to Paris. instead of Hawaii. The idea of travel seemed to be actively percolating through his mind. I told him he needed a passport, which he could get through the local State Department Office, that he should make sure his vaccinations were current, and that if he were really serious he should book his air flights as far ahead as possible.

He mentioned that he'd started working in a local store as a stock clerk -- which indicated to me that he had been considering getting out of the player's life for at least a few weeks. Maybe being unable to pay his drug debts over the summer had made him start thinking. And maybe what he really needed was an adult or two to give him some guidance. Maybe I can help.

Disappointing addendum, added 9 October 2008, several days after the above was written: Today I learned that M had a fight with another student and beat him up so severely that the other young man was taken by ambulance to the hospital. The beating was VERY severe. M is being held on charges of attempted murder.

[All material in this blog is copyright 2008 by Richard A. Goodman. If you are reading this somewhere other than on blogspot.com, see more at http://teachinginaghettoschool.blogspot.com/]

I'm Not As Smart As I Thought

I am not as smart as I thought. It turns out that the students I believed could not speak (see last blog entry) actually do speak a few words. The teacher who told me they didn't wasn't really acquainted with their abilities.

Maybe this will make it easier to teach them more.

The Kids in Special Education

Last year I worked in several special education classes for about three months, teaching students who, though in special education, still had a fairly high ability to function. They could all talk. All but one could read and understand history texts. They could all understand instructions and do pages of math, fill in the blanks on pages about health care, and so on.

Only one, Ralph, was fairly low functioning. You would not have known it from looking at him, but he could not read. He spoke well enough, but he could not remember his own telephone number, so he knew that if he pushed "1" on his cell phone it would ring his mother at home. When I first saw him, my immediate impression was utterly wrong. I saw a very dark-skinned African-American student who wore his hair in neat corn rows and who dressed in what I have come to call "the uniform" -- baggy pants with a bit of embrodery on one or both trouser legs, expensive sneakers, a loose pullover top, and, some of the time, a baseball cap. He looked very ghetto, very "street," and somewhat mean to me.

What I could not immediately see was this young man's kindness. He may have dressed very "ghetto," but he had one of the nicest dispositions of any of the students in the class. More than once when I saw him learn that another student didn't have food or money for lunch, I saw him offer to share what he had. As I got to know him, I saw there was no meanness in this kid.

This year, the autistic kids I have been working with for several days remind me a little of him, except that they don't dress "ghetto," they just dress clean and practical, trying to impress nobody. They also have the same kind disposition, However, as unable to function as Ralph was, his abilities far excelled those of my students this year.

At least half of this year's students cannot talk. They make inarticulate noises -- so inarticulate that the sounds really cannot be understood 99% of the time. They sit by themselves, paying almost no attention to anything but their fingers or their hands. A few do a lot of bobbing up and down. A few of the more active ones do a fair amount of screaming or noise making. They will be sitting in their chair, and all of a sudden they will simply hoot or scream. The ones who make the most noise this way seem also most prone to wanting to roam. We have to watch all of them all the time to be sure someone doesn't slip out of the classroom and wander around outside.

To teach them a few practical skills, we took the whole class on a short trip two days ago. We walked to a bus stop. As the bus pulled up, each student received a bus pass. Each boarded the bus and ran his or her bus pass through the payment machine. Then we collected their bus passes so they wouldn't be lost during the rest of the field trip. We ended up in a park. Some of them played on the swings. Others just ran around hooting and dancing and shouting. One of the lowest functioning kids sat on the ground, just playing with the sand.

After about fifteen minutes, the main teacher and I took three of the higher functioning students on a walk to a local grocery store. There we had the kids find the items we needed -- fruit juice, a package of frozen strawberries, etc. At the checkout stand, they were given money to pay for the purchases, which they did. They learned that the cashier will give them back the paper money owed, and that the silver money drops into a tray and they have to pick it up. They also learned that they would have to get a receipt.

Two of these three kids cannot talk. One of them can, and in fact is fairly articulate. He sometimes assumes a leadership position among the other students. For instance, I saw him several times urging another student to eat his breakfast during our breakfast time at the cafeteria.

I am wondering whether or not a few of the kids who supposedly cannot talk can be taught five or ten words. I don't know. I need to discuss this with the lead teacher and give it a try. If one who cannot really talk can say "pleh" when he wants play dough, he is certainly making the connection between his version of the word and an object. Maybe in the next months I'll be able to teach him a few more words like "food" and "sleep." We'll see.

Two Stories

In this blog entry I must tell two stories. The first concerns an incident that happened to me last year when I was substituting in School A.

The teacher had left a DVD to be shown to the class. I started it playing and circulated among the class, having the students sign a sign-in sheet. This took about ten minutes. Then, as the DVD played, I circulated around through the class. keeping my eye on what was going on. A few students were sitting with their eyes half shut, others were playing with their handheld electronic devices, and tried to put these away as I approached. A half dozen or more were simply chatting, paying no attention top the DVD.

When a teacher needs a substitute to fill in for him or her, many have the class shown a DVD. I think this is usually a terrible waste of time. Personally, I would rather administer a quiz deliberately designed with so many questions that students wouldn't have time to finish it before the bell rings. The students can be told that if they don't pass the quiz in by the end of class, they will get a failing grade for that day's assignment. This tends to keep them quieter and busier than any DVD.

But we were destined to watch a DVD. As I roomed through the classroom, there were times when I was in the back of the room with my back turned.

Four girls who had been sitting in the very front took one of these opportunities to depart from the class when I wasn't looking.

I realized quickly that they had left, and I made a note of this for the teacher, but of course I didn't know their names, so I could be as specific as I wanted in my report. I planned to pass arouind a second sign-in sheet before the end of the class so I could identify them.

About fifteen or twenty minutes later, as I was standing by the door, there came a rapping on the glass, which was covered on the inside by paper so people outside could not look in. I opened the door and found the four miscreant student trying to barge their way in. I told them that they had left and that they would not be allowed back in. All four began swearing a me("motherfucker this, motherfucker that"), trying to tear my hands from the doorknob and trying to pull the door wide open.

Fortunately a female teacher across the hall heard the commotion and came out. "You can't do that," she shouted at the girls. "If a teacher says you cannot be admitted to a class, then you cannot go into that class."

The four girls turned away and walked together down the hall, chatting.

The rest of the day passed without incident until I was signing out. One of the assistant principals asked me to step into her office and informed me that each of the four girls had signed a complaint that I had "hit" them. Furthermore, each had called home and made the same complaint to their parents. The assistant principal asked me to describe what had happened. I described the event precisely. Then I added that the teacher across the hall had come out and witnessed the event and could also describe it.

The vice principal said she had spent an hour on the phone convincing one or two of the fathers from coming down to the school to beat me up. "I am sixty-nine years old," I told the vice principal. I have not hit another human being in more than half a century."

The next day the vice principal told me that she had talked with the teacher across the hall and it was clear that the girls had been lying. She had called the parents of the four girls and informed them of this.

My second story is more a description than an actual narrative. Several days ago I began teaching at School B in a special education class for autistic students. Today was my third day. I am sure I was being observed by the other staff members as closely as I was observing the students.

These students are all severely handicapped. One cannot help but have one's heart go out to them. More than half of the 17 cannot speak. They make little noises that have to be interpreted. Three or four of them simply screech loudly every few minutes. Some nod back and forth repetitiously. A few carry with them special picture books that they can open when they need or want something so they can point to a picture. One of the students, who always has a smile on his face, jumps up and down and runs around in circles, having fun. Odd as it may sound, his joy is wonderful to behold.

In the three days I have been there, I have noticeably quieted down the class' most difficult student. It took quite a bit to get him to bond with me -- yesterday, about 2 1/2 hours of play dough in which he would put the dough on the table, take my hand, and move my hand to show me what he wanted me to do. Today I made progress with the second student who is one of the two greatest disturbances. I was told by the main teacher that, "You're doing very well," and asked to be there as often as possible. Later in the afternoon, I got this second student, whom no one had heard talk, to say four words: "sleep" and "I'll see ya." One of the other teachers heard the student say "sleep" and was amazed. "You're not just good at this. You have a gift," he told me.

Many of the students in School A where the four girls misbehaved are simply low, low class. Both boys and girls are obsessed with how they look and with securing and keeping peer approval. Earlier in this blog I described how these kids dress. They are constantly on ipods and other electronic devices, and many spend much of their time trying to con their teachers, and probably each other.

Compare those students with the kids at School B, who come from the same areas of my city. At School B in the special ed class, one gets no sense of lower class, upper class, middle class, or any class. One simply feels presented with needy kids. Not a one of them seems concerned with what the others think of him or her. They are too much into their own worlds. They don't carry phones or ipods because most of them wouldn't know how to use them. They have no guile, no intent to deceive. Nor do they normally possess rudeness or cruelty or the intent to hurt others. These kids may be 90% non-functional. They are worlds apart from the four students who tried to bust back into my classroom in School A. I am far more sympathetic with the kids in special ed.

A Comment From a Reader

Here's a comment from an experienced substitute teacher about whether one should teach in School A or School B:


"I'm an active member of LASUBS and I just read your blog about substitute teaching in ghetto schools. I'm writing to you privately, because if I post for all the group to see, I'd probably get some flak for what I have to tell you.I'd go with school B where the students seem more in tune with learning and stricter rules are enforced. You have no moral obligation whatsoever to work with students in the other school where they can't enforce rules. Don't be a glutton for punishment! You are 70 years old--make it easier on yourself! I'm no longer idealistic about students--they have to be receptive to learning for any to take place. I substitute teach for extra income and medical insurance, as my husband retired earlier this year, and insurance ceased. We are only 60, so not eligible for Medicare. I'd like to hear your thoughts about my response. I wish you the best in your substituting. I've been doing it for 13 years now, and like it for the variety of assignments and the fact that our school day ends at 3:00 pm., unlike a regular teacher. I don't do long terms. I work with elementary and special needs students from pre-K to 5th grade. I don't go into middle and high schools. In LA, you do one or the other, but not both. I assume that you just do secondary school,but I know in some districts they can send you to both elementary and secondary schools. My nephew was a sub for awhile in San Jose-Santa Clara area and he worked in all grades."

Another Day at School B

Yesterday I subbed at School B for the second time. I am astounded by the differences. Same student population -- students from the same parts of my city. Yet the students have a vastly different attitude.

I think I have already commented on the difference in dress between these two schools.

Another difference is in the school rules. In School B, students are told they must remove their hats in class, and either put them away or leave them on their desk. In School A, thery can wear anything, schoolwide, and to make them remove their hats seems to ther students there to be a major imposition, and meets with all kinds of argument.

In School B, there is a schoolwide rule that no electronic devices will be allowed in the classes. Here and there one sees a student trying to sneak a look at some little handheld device, but generally this rule is followed. And all that is necessary if it is not is a gentle reminder that the school rules do not allow these handheld devices in class. In School A, students pull their little devices out automatically and divert their attention to them rather than to the teacher. It is one thing to deal wioth one or two students who need to be reminded (as at School B), but it is quite another to deal with 25 out of 35 students in a class who all want to ignore you as a teacher.

There seems to be a much greater assumption at School B that students will achieve. The students are more respectful of the teachers.

These differences force a substitute teacher consider a moral question: Should I teach where the students are generally more obedient and better behaved, or should I teach where perhaps the students need me more ? How much do I owe students compared to what I owe myself, especially now that I am 70 ?

If anyone reads this, I would certainly like to know your opinion.

Comparing Two Schools

I subbed today for the first time in a different school than the one I have been writing about in all the other blog entries I have written so far. The two schools draw from the same areas of the city's student population. Twenty or more buses pull up to it every morning, disgorging a similar mix of students, so one cannot say that any differences are due to differing ethnicities of the student body.

But what one can say is that the campus culture is strikingly different and that this creates marked differences in what a teacher experiences.

In school A, where I worked last year, the students dresseds in a particular way. The boys wore their pants slung low, "gangsta-style," so their brightly-colored silk or nylon underwear showed. The girls dressed as sexily as possible -- as one of our contrbutors here commented, because they have such low self-esteem that they think the only way they are of value is as sexual objects. In school B, you see very little dressing like either of these. You see almost no l.ow-slung pants on the boys and very few jeans embroidered with fancy designs. The girls wear clothes that are less revealing, less sexy.

In school A last year (I have not subbed there yet this year) there was no rule against electronic devices (cell phones, ipods). In school B, they are prohibited in class and are confiscated if used openly. In school A, the boys are allowed to wear hats and caps in the classroom. In school B, the principal will not allow hats or caps.

In each school there is the same ethnic mix of students, but different behaviors are allowed. My impression is that in School B a lot more learning takes place.

I'm Back Blogging. School Starts Tomorrow.

I skipped blogging for a while because I got ties up in working on two stores, which I shall briefly but shamelessly promote right here and now before I get back onto the proper subject of thgis blog.

I have been working on putting together blank greetings cards based on my African photos taken in The Gambia and Cote d'Ivoire. You may find these at http://www.Zazzle.com/Goodmanster. I also worked even more on a different store I have opened, alson o Zazzle.com, but devoted to cards, mugs, etc. based on some of my thousands of flower photos. You may find these floral photos and gifts at http://www.Zazzle.com/Florabunda. When you see the sheer number of products I have put together -- close to 600 on the Florabunda site -- you can see that I have been quite busy.

But back to our main subject, being a substitute teacher. Tomorrow is the first day of the school year. About ten days ago I took a wonderful full day course on classroom management. It provided details about how to deal with specific situations, and how to get a class directed to their classwork instead of just fooling around.

Interestingly, at this daylong session I met a teacher from a nearby school where I have never substituted, who called me up this afternoon and asked if I could substitute for her this Wednesday. I said I would be very happy to. We've both had the same instruction together, so she knows more or less how I am going to try to conduct her classes.

The most valuable lesson learned during thius instructional session: don't get engaged in discussions or arguments with students who don't want to do the work. Simply tell them what is expected of them, and then when they complain ("This is BORING !"), respond, "I understand. But it is still necessary for you to turn to page X of the book and get started on the classwork."

I need to praqctice the techniques we were shown. I'll let you know more about them and my experiences in trying to make them work.

There is No Substitute For Knowing People

Here's what I did last year to get work, and what I will be doing at the same school this year. I didn't feel like driving all over town to a different school every morning or so, so I picked the school near home where I wanted to work. I managed through the School District administration to get assigned for 20 days to a particular special education class at this school. In the course of going in every morning, I got to know a nice lady whose job it is to deal with substitutes and their paperwork.

When my 20-day assignment ended, I came to work. I walked in and announced, "Do you need me today ?" More often it was a "yes" rather than a "no."

After a few weeks, we arranged that I would call her at a certain time early each morning right after she arrived at work. She would tell me whether there was work for me that day, and if there was, I would throw myself together and come to school to fill the vacancy. If there wasn't, I would stay home and write.

By staying at the same school -- I never subbed at any other during the entire school year -- and by writing detailed reports for each teacher, and by trying to visit each teacher for a few minutes the next day to turn in my report to him or her, I developed a good enough relationship with many so that they now ask specifically for me ahead of time. I will be back at that school again this year, doing the same thing.

I encountered only two teachers for whom I will not substitute ever again because of the way they train their students and normally allow them to misbehave.

An advantage of this sytem is that you get to know who is a good student and who is a little trouble-causing bastard. When you know them on sight by name and let them know you know by verbally greeting them by name, you have a lot more power over them. Also, one or two of the little trouble-causing bastards actually became reasonable and friendly.

My Student's Progress re: Court

The student I have referred to elsewhetre in this blog was sent home with an electronic moitoring device affixed to his ankle and ordered to return to court on the 27th of this month.

His mother, his mentor and I discussed at that court hearing that he should start on a regular educational program since he was just sitting at home with nothing to do. When he returns to court on the 27th the judge will decide on the final disposition of the case.

I e-mailed the mother once advising her that an educational program (reading a certain amount ewvery day) would make the judge feel better about the kid. No response.

I emailed the mentor and also telephoned him, He agreed that we should get started. However, after that there has been no meeting scheduled by the mother or the mentor.

It would not surprise me if this kid ended up in California Youth Authority on the 27th because these two adults have done nothing to make his chances of staying out of prison better.

Obviously I cannot push it further. It is up to them to want what might save him from CYA.

A Day in the Life of a Substitute Teacher # 5

A Day as a Substitute Teacher # 5

Another day as a substitute teacher, a day full of surprises in which I learned a great many things.

The school district doesn't care what a substitute teacher's expertise is. When a regular teacher is absent, the school administrators must legally place some warm, adult body -- any approved, warm adult body -- in that teacher's place. I have subbed for mathematics teachers, world history teachers, English teachers, conceptual physics teachers, English as a Second Language teachers, and even a Spanish teacher, though the only Spanish I know is "Hasta la vista." The administrators and I once joked about how they were going to send me out to substitute as a dance teacher -- at which I told them that I used to teach Polynesian dance, and that would be just fine with me.

So today I was sent to sub for a World History teacher. There was no lesson plan, nothing anyone was aware of that I was supposed to do according to the regular teacher, who must have fallen ill during the night and not been able to provide a lesson plan.
One teacher whom I like very much and used to act as a tutor for in her classes was just down the hall. Since I was scheduled to start during the second period, I spent the first period with her and her class. She had a memo that had just come down announcing that all students were to write an essay on "stopping the killing."

The community in which I live has a great many African-American drive-by shootings. I have been to the funerals of several youngsters about the age of the students I teach. Both of these deaths occurred as murders, one under a freeway in our city, another in a similar setting in Washington D. C.

There is an immediate problem with this class assignment. The students don't want to write an essay on any subject. Most refuse to do it. They hate writing. Since I am not their regular teacher, they know I cannot really announce that I will dock them points on their final grade if they don't write the essay.

Students know that they don't have to behave nearly as well for a substitute teacher as for one they see every day. They know they have an advantage. Most important to them is that the substitute doesn't know them by name. Therefore, the substitute has more difficulty holding them accountable for their actions.

The regular teacher has another advantage just as important as knowing his or her students by name. The regular teacher determines the students' grades. Students know that if they act up and don't obey the regular teacher, their grades will suffer.

To overcome some of the disadvantages of the situation, a teacher I have substituted for before has regularly had me come into her classroom and spend about one day a week there while she enjoys personal time off. This way I have gotten to know the names of many of the pupils. The last three weeks of school I will be taking all her classes, because she is going off to a family reunion on the other side of the world. I will be determining half the students' final grades, and averaging this with the half the regular teacher has already assigned.

I am expecting much better behavior from these high school students than what a regular substitute teacher normally receives.

A Day in the Life of a Substitute Teacher # 4

This was originally published on Qassia on February 20, 2008.

I lucked out this week because I am substituting for a particular teacher for four days straight, which means that I have the same students Tuesday - Friday. The best part of it is that these students, although almost all sophomores, are the best-behaved and probably the most intelligent students I have encountered all year long.
Their regular teacher left extremely detailed lesson plans for them to follow. And since the students are so intelligent, the plans were both very simple for me as a substitute and demanding for the students.
Today, they were to start by passing in a composition they had been assigned to do about the place of women in Muslim society. I read over about a dozen of the themes. The issues the students attacked and disapproved of included arranged marriages, honor killings, genital mutilation, the wearing of variations of the veil, and the low status of a woman vis-a-vis her husband. Several students said that there is nothing in the Koran that requires a woman to wear a veil, and that most of the things they objected to were in fact distortions of the Muslim religion.
All this sounded extremely negative, and I didn't encounter anything anyone had written that sounded positive, so I asked the entire class at one point whether or not we were so culture bound that we were not unnecessarily seeing the Muslim religion as less positive than it really is. (My own feelings are that we are not so culture bound that we cannot appreciate these aspects of the Muslim religion, but I really wanted to toss out the question and see what anyone said.)
Then I posed to them the question of whether or not, since we have our own values and were discussing a culture or cultures different than ours, we could find a way to judge cultures in a way that might be fair. What criteria might we use that would be less culture bound ?
A few people mentioned happiness. I pounced on that one and mentioned that one possible way might be to follow Jeremy Bentham's system of hedonistic caluclus in which he suggested that an action that made the greatest number of people happy would be morally better than one that made fewer people happy. (I hope I have this right, but I pulled this out of thin air from having studied philosophy a lonmg, long time ago.) Maybe this was also a method for judging the quality of a culture.
One of the students with an even more subtle mind than the others had mentioned in her composition that the media in the United States often distorts what occurs in Muslim countries.
I was able to have prolonged conversations with several really notable students. The main one was a fellow named B who sat in front not far from my desk. It turns out that he had been going to another school elsewhere and had been kicked out of the school because, according to him, he had had an intellectual argument with a teacher. As he explained this, he got into the argument because the teacher used terms that he was not willing to define. I guess B. pushed a little too hard. He may well have been brighter than the teacher. On the other hand, his description of events may not be accurate.
B and I had a discussion about the United Nations report that was issued a year or two ago in which a panel of Muslims under the auspices of the United Nations issued a white paper intended for the Muslim world on the necessity for Muslims to modernize and change certain practices if they are to catch up with the West's development.
A very traditional (we might say "conservative" or Right-wing") physician in Egypt with whom I had a long e-mail acquaintance with a year or so ago told me that he had a copy of the U.N. report "on his desk," but when I tried to discuss iot with him he was never willing. One of the main points in that report, as put forth by Muslim scholars, was that by disenfranchising half the population (women) these cultures seriously diminish their intellectual power. They waste half their intellectual resources. If I recall one of the comments in the report correctly, these scholars stated that the country of Greece annually produces more new books than all of the Muslim world.
Anyway, B and I discussed all this.
Another "devil's advocate" question that I raised, beyond asking out loud if we were all just too culture bound to appreciate the Muslim religion, was that there are a number of Muslim women here in the West who are advocates of the Muslim religion and apologfists for women's place in it. Are we missing something, I asked, if there are Muslim women with this attitude ?
Even though I personally feel that the place of Muslim women in their societies is really an unpleasant and difficult one, ill-suited to human nature, I was at least trying to be fair and question what the students seemed all to have decided.
The general impression I got was that the students thought women who apologized for the place the Muslim religion allows women are the equivalent of Uncle Toms.
It was an interesting day. I went home feeling good about it.

What Subs Are Up Against

Sorry I am a little behind schedule in posting in this blog -- I have about six going at the same time, and every day is too short.

I read an account from a Los Angeles Area teacher who had a terrible day and who seems to teach in a ghetto school such as the one I teach in. (The politically correct term, I have learned, is "an inner city school.") I wrote a few comments to this teacher because I have had a few days like he or she did, and these taught me a few things.

Here's what I wrote:

Hello, Beatendownsub, I read your description of your horrible day and sympathize with you. I have have had days like that, too.
I am in a city in California where ALL the high schools are rather like what you describe. I sub at only one school, and usually work 4 - 5 days/week during the regular school year. It sounds as though our schools are similar.
I am 70 years old, have subbed all last school year and will be returning this year. This past year was my first year.
I have been faced with situations similar to what you described in classrooms away from the main school building in which the teacher who was absent TOOK the phone the day before. I learned the hard way always to bring a charged cell phone with me because I do not want to be isolated away from any possible help. I know from memory the number I must call.
Many of the teachers ask for me ahead of time now. There are two out of many whom I have subbed for whose classes I will refuse to sub for this coming year. The way kids behave depends to a certain degree on how their regular teacher has them trained.
I was advised by one of the vice principals on how to deal with unruly situations. Tell the offending kid, "You have 30 seconds to be in your seat and be quiet, starting NOW." Walk away from the kid to avoid a confrontation, but keep counting. At 31, if the kid is still not in his or her seat, return and ask his or her name.
If the student won't give a name, then call for security and tell them you have a student who will not identify him or herself. If the student gives a name and you suspect it is false, demand to see an ID. If there is said to be no ID, tell the student to go to the office and get a printout with his or her photo on it and bring it back to you. If the kid refuses, call security and have the kid removed.
If the kid gives a name, take out a write-up slip and write the kid up. Call the office, ask to have an office helper sent to your classroom to bring a writeup slip to the office and to escort the kid to the office.
I often start a class by passing around a sign-in sheet and having every kid sign in. Then about 20 minutes before the end of the class, when a few kids have slipped out, I pass around another sign in sheet. Those who don't sign the second sheet get marked absent.
I leave copious notes for the regular teacher, and I go see the regular teacher the next day during conference period or at some other time convenient for the teacher.
The key to much of this, of course, is having a working cell phone.
Don't give up. Stay resolute. You are fighting the good fight.
Richard Goodman

The Burdens My Students Carry - Part 1

In considering the classes I substituted in last year, one theme returns again and again. It is the theme of how many of my students carry with them immense burdens that make their functioning effectively far more difficult for them than it is for many of the rest of us.

For instance, I think immediately of one young Vietnamese girl I met who all the time seemed tired in class. Usually she could scarcely keep her eyes open. When I asked her what was the matter, she opened up to me. Yes, she was tired, she said. In fact, she was exhausted. The reason was that she lived with her mother and father, and her father, who tended to be authoratarian, abusive and violant, remained jobless. Why ? He just didn’t want to work. He had set a rule for her and her mother. Her mother was to work and earn enough to pay half the monthly rent plus other expenses. She, the student, was to work and earn the other half rent. If she didn't, he said, he was going to kick her out of their home.

When this young lady left school at 3:30 p.m., she went home briefly, then went on a long bus ride to a job where she started at 8 PM. She finished at midnight, then had to take a long bus ride home at a time when connections were very bad. Usually she didn’t get to bed until 2 a.m. She had to leave home early enough in the morning to be at school for her first class at 8:30 a.m., which meant that she had to be up to prepare breakfast at 6:30 a.m. With everything else she had to do, this didn’t leave much time for sleep.

I have developed a tendency to look carefully at my students to see if any of them are in serious depression. I am psychologically-oriented. Based on my having lived for a year doing fieldwork in psychological and photographic anthropology in a Samoan village, I have written a book and a number of shorter pieces on aggression, its displacement and its expression in traditional Samoan culture. Three or four times Dr. John Spiegel and I offered tours for psychiatrists to areas in the South Pacific and Indonesia. Before I met him, Dr. Spiegel had been president of the American Psychiatric Association, and was one of the most famous psychiatrists in the country. While I have not been trained as a psychiatrist, I learned a great deal from him in our travels. Visiting other cultures with John made me a great deal more observant than I might otherwise have been.

Perhaps because of his informal tutelage, I watch all the students in my classes. I try to observe who is working or gossiping or listening to an iPod, and to notice who is staring off into space. You may be shocked to read that students spent a lot of time listening to their iPods. I’ll explain this in another entry so you better understand what I as a teacher find myself pitted against.

When I find a student whom I believe is in serious clinical depression, I normally try to do something about it. My first step is to try to talk to them. Sometimes this works, but often it doesn’t. If I could bond more easily with them, this would make the job easier. But as I've been told a number of times by students, "You’re only a substitute teacher." They're telling me severa; things when they say this. They're telling me that I'll be around only for a period or so, and then I'll be gone, which implies that having any sort of relationship is useless. They're also trelling me that if I am a substitute teacher I am not certificated, and therefore I am inferior in education and worth to their regular teachers.

When trying to talk to a depressed student gets nowhere, then I make more serious moves. I let someone know so the student can get psychiatric help. Not doing this risks the student attempting suicide.

I should say here that whenever I have identified a student as being seriously depressed, I have never been wrong.

Tomorrow I'll write about some actual case histories.

The School Model in My Head

Note: This was originally written and published on Qassia on February 16, 2008

Today is not a school day. It is a day for reflection. I entered the occupation of substitute teaching with teaching and education models already in my mind. These have obviously affected the way I have responded to the teaching environment at the high school where I now work, so I'll describe my experiences in secondary school many years ago (1952 - 1956) and the educational preconceptions I had last year when I first walked through my high school's front door.

You'll note that I had an elite secondary school education. I don't apologize for this.

My educational model was based on my education at one of the United States' elite prep schools, Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire. At the time I attended Exeter, it had about 800 students, most of them boarding at the school, though a few lived with their families in the surrounding town. Phillips Exeter Academy was then (and is now) considered to be quite possibly the best secondary school in the country.

Almost all of us were there because we wanted to be there. Those few who didn't exited quickly through a variety of mechanisms, the main one being academic failure, with a smaller group departing due to disciplinary infractions.

The largest class I experienced at Exeter had 12 students in it. The smallest consisted of myself and the teacher. A gentleman by the name of Harkness had given a huge amount of money to Exeter back in the 1920's when a dollar was worth a great deal more than it is now. This money allowed the principal, the trustees and the teachers to form a school designed to specifications and methods that they believed would produce the very best education possible.

As students, our primary job at Exeter was to learn. Yes, we had athletic programs and other activities. But for each hour of class we attended, we were told that we were expected to spend at least two hours studying. In practice, the amount of time required to do our homework extended far beyond this.

Monday though Friday our daily class schedule varied. On a light day we might have just two classes. On a heavy day, we might have four. The unlucky among us occasionally ended up with one day of the week when they had five. Obviously if one had five hours of class on a given day, a lot of planning had to be done ahead of time to ensure that all the homework got finished on schedule. You couldn't just start studying the evening before and expect to do everything that had to be done for the next day.

Classes were conducted with both students and teacher sitting around either a large round or oval table. The teacher usually went over the homework, asking each individual student in turn what he thought about some aspect of the previous day's homework. These were often difficult questions that called not only for factual knowledge, but also for value judgements that had to be explained. Was the management of such-and-such a coal mine justified in having a strike broken by hired strike-breakers ? Why ? Or why not ? Were the mine owners just being greedy ? Or didn't the shareholders deserve some return on their investments ? Or were the miners really being treated unfairly and was the strike justified ? If so, why ?

If you hadn't done the readings (note the plural) about that one, you looked mighty silly in front of your classmates. It was usually the best not to try to fake having done your homework, but simply to admit that you had not.

In short the educational process we went through as students involved a lot of hard work and effort, a great deal of intellectual give and take with our instructors and fellow students, and a lot of concentrated study.

Certain aspects of the quality of this educational experience still amaze me. Yes, the faculty were extremely qualified. In addition to knowing their subject matter, they were all gifted teachers. But the quality of Exeter's education went way beyond that. Occasionally for short periods of time teachers were replaced by what we called "visiting firemen." One day I came to physics class and found my usual physics teacher sitting in the back of the room instead of standing in front of the blackboard where he usually explained physics problems.

In his place that day was a thin, mild-looking man. Our physics teacher stepped forward briefly and explained that our classes that week would be conducted by this newcomer. His name was J. Robert Openheimer. Most of us did not know at that moment that he more than anyone else had been responsible for inventing the atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer's duties for ten days at Exeter were fairly simple and straightforward. He was to teach whatever classes he wished to teach. I think that during his stay he taught English, physics and also a few classes in Chinese history !

He was also to give two public lectures, one on each of the two Sunday evenings during his stay. These were given in the Academy's large auditorium. (I remember the quality of these talks. He would make a statement that seemed like the result of an enormous amount of thinking. He would then make another statement, and those of us in the audience would feel that between each one, we had to descend logically from a mountain top and then laboriously ascend another mountain before understanding how he had reached his second conclusion. These talks were unmitigated brilliance.

Oppenheimer's other obligation was that he was to spend much of his time in a large room where students hung out, and would talk to any and all students who wanted to speak to him. Incidentaslly, Pierre Mendes-France, a past prime minister of France, had a similar stint at Exeter the following year.

This was the educational model I had in my head when I began substitute teaching in a ghetto high school in Northern California. Of course I knew the high school would be different. I just didn't know how different.

The Ugly Face of Racism: A Communication from the Internet

I posted in several places that I had a blog about teaching in a ghetto school. I received the following e-mail from someone who had not bothered to go to the blog and read it before he reacted. I will leave his name and e-mail off this post so as not to publicly embarrass him.
-------
I saw you posting stating that you work in a "Ghetto" school wel I worked at a school just a few blocks from the beach and the children were badd bad. I resent you labeling but what
can I expect from those such as you.
You just turned 70 is indicative of the fact that maybe you need a change of venue--teaching is a hard job in our day and hey I am just a few years younger than you.
I by just being whom I am have beeninvolved in situations whereas the modern sterotypes have been asumed and I have had to stand up for my rights-well enuff said
_______

"Rather than going off half-cocked, as they say, you might make your comments AFTER you have read my blog:

http//teachinginaghettoschool.blogspot.com

"Feel free to leave whatever comments you wish to leave. As long as they are not obscene or filled with profanity, I would probably allow their publication right there.

"Several things about you are obvious from your e-mail to me:

"1) You are prejudiced against an older person when you don't know anything about his or her physical or mental capacities.

"2) You are among the group of African-Americans who refuse to admit the problems in their communities. You see any public discussion of these things (which impact us all) as being impermissible. People like this in the Black community were very offended when Bill Cosby came right out and articulated truths about problems in Black America. Yet those problems did and do exist, they impact us all, and because of their impact we ALL have a right to discuss them publicly. Those problems affect our schools.

"3) You do not understand -- at least in this instance -- that before we can solve a problem, we must admit that it exists.

"4) You have had bad experiences that fill you with anger and aggression against any slight, real or IMAGINED, and against anyone whom you know nothing about. If you want to vent, fine with me.

"5) You do not know that I have spent a major amount of my 70 years doing free civil rights work on behalf of African-Americans, working to find indivduals job, working to get unjustly incarcerated African-Americans out of prison, working to help them better themselves financially.

"But the main point really is that you should first read my blog, and only then comment."

Maria's Story

I worked as a "tutor" for about six months the year before I began substitute teaching. A "tutor" in this case is someone who goes into a class being conducted by a regular or substitute teacher, and who helps students with their classwork. Another term for it might well be "teaching assistant."

In the one class where I worked, I weas one of two "tutors" who worked at the same time. There was a young Hispanic student named Maria. I think she was in the tenth grade. She was definitely not a senior. I do not know if she was in this country legally or illegally, though I would bet it was the latter.

I had worked in "special education," about which I shall have much more to say in future posts. In special education, the students are so severely disturbed that they can scarcely function. They have an enormous variety of psychological problems. And since each individual has his or her unique set of difficulties, one spends a great deal of time just sitting there, observing the students, trying to determine what you can and cannot do to help them.

I carried this habit of observation over into Maria's class.

As I observed during the first week or so, Maria spent almost all her time talking to two or three other Hispanic girls, usually in Spanish. The instructor, who was also Hispanic, would be explaining some about the course's subject, and there would Maria and her girl friends, chattering away disrespectfully on the side. Sometimes the instructor would pass out classwork -- multiple choice quizes which he would discuss after the students had had time to choose what they believed to be the correct answers -- and Maria, though taking one, would never even try to do it. She continued talking with friends, though in a low enough voice so as not to disturb the class seriously.

I tried to form some kind of relationship with Maria by getting into a few discussions with her. I learned that she lived with her parents, and counted on living with them and eventually with a husband, quite possibly still in the parents' home. I tried to explain to her the importance of math, or being able to calculate costs of items, of being able to budget. I asked her a series of questions and it quickly became clear that she had no idea how much it cost to rent an apartment, or even to buy a package of tortillas. In short, what I saw was a pattern of total irresponsibility, of expecting that she would be taken care of by someone for the rest of her life, and of simply not caring about the difficult realities of existence.

On one occasion there was to be held a march downtown on the subject of immigration policies. Maria was enthusiastic about attending this, even though it was on a school day. "We've got to go," she said. "It's very important. We've got to do this to be free." Indeed, on the day of the march, Maria was absent from school, marching somewhere for her "freedom" when she didn't realize that by refusing to do schoolwork she was giving it up at the same time.

At that point I was consciously developing a pattern of triage. Each class, it seemed to me, was divided into three parts. One group consisted of motivated students who were going to do their work, and if they had questions, they would ask for help. Another group lay in the middle. It was impossible to determine whether or not they would succeed, but so many of them could go one way or another that these students deserved most of the attention. Here was fertile ground. With a few pushes in the right direction, you could help a student accomplish things he or she might not otherwise accomplish. These students were worth devoting extra time and effort to. And then there was that bottom group, the students who didn't care and wouldn't work.

When I spoke with Maria's teacher about her, he held up his hands in frustration. "There's no hope for her," he said. She was failing the class and he saw no hope for her. Not being willing to write her off that easily, I asked Maria a day or two later whether or not she was concerned about failing the class. "No," she said. She said the work was too hard and she didn't care. I responded by saying that I could help her by explaining things, and that there was still time to pass. "Would you like me to help you ?" I asked. "No," she said. "I'm not going to try."

I made the determination then and there that she belonged in that bottom section of the triage. "It's up to you," I said. After that I continued to see her, both in the class and in the hallways. I always greeted her as though I were happy to see her. Once I even gave her a hug. But I never again tried to help her with her schoolwork because I knew the time could be better spent with other students.

The year after that I became a substutute teacher and had charge of classes on my own. I saw Maria's teacher frequently and once I asked about her. Halfway through the year I still had not seen her. "She got pregnant and got married," he told me. "They're living with her parents."

You win some and you lose some. And you cannot help them all.

A Day in the Life of a Substitute Teacher # 2

Not a bad day today in my substitute teaching.

I was fortunate to be assigned to a class of English as a Second Language students. These are students that I tutored for last year, so I already know almost all of them.
In general, the ESL students are a little less mature and sophisticated in some ways than the regular students, but also less cynical and less disobediant. They come from different cultures, and unlike the predominant cultures of the rest of the students in our school, they respect teachers and elders.

The third period of the day was given over to an asembly devoted to Black history. I was expecting a rather sorry show like last year's, with a certain amount of badly synchronized and totally undisciplined ass shaking, plus a monologue or two that didn't say much. This year, though, was totally different.

First, the show started with a tall Black student reciting Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech. This high school kid had obviously spent a lot of time looking at movies of King making that speech. He had every intonation, every pitch of the voice, and even every hand gesture down pat. It was truly inspiring, just as the original must have been.
Following this, about twenty-five students came dancing down the assembly halls' aisles, doing Brazilian dance to exciting drumming. The drumming came from two African students performing onstage. For once there was discipline, coordination, precision and feeling to the dance. I was reminded of what I have seen dozens of times in Tahiti.

This was followed with something I had never seen before, a sung recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet #23. After that came a series of very short speeches by three or four students asking why they, the people their age in their community, are killing each other. Everyone in the audience knew that last weekend we had had seven murders in our city, which may be a record, and all these had been in the Black community. At the assembly's end, a Black teacher spoke briefly and movingly about what he considers to be the definition of "Black."

Then it was back to the classroom. The foreign students are learning some basic vocabulary, so we talked about a picture of a "community," and what a "community" consists of. They were then required to make a drawing of a mall and the activities going on in it. One of the interesting things I have noticed is that the Chinese students, while very tuned into math and science, have difficulty being creative and imagining things. I was once told by a Chinese student who was instructed to draw an illustration for a story, "I can't do that because it isn't real."

The final two periods of the day were devoted to composition. The students wrote about the assembly they had attended, what they saw, what they liked and what they didn't like. To get 250 words out of them in a composition is a major effort. They have trouble with the definitions of words, and they have a lot of trouble with the grammar. But the only way they will ever learn is to try to do it and to be gently corrected when they make errors.

One other thing happened today that was very important. A few of the students in the class are Hispanic. One of them seems to their regular teacher to be a real troublemaker. He probably is, but he definitely wants to learn. I think we have a situation in which two personalities grate against each other. The student claims that the teacher looks at the name on his work and just gives him a D or an E without even reading it. While I doubt that the situation is as cut and dried as all that, I am sure she gives him bad grades because his English is terrible. I respect her very much and I know that she is extremely competent.

What happened today was that the student came to me and told me about the situation. I told him that there was a way to remedy it, but that it would take some work. I Xeroxed several of his terrible papers, and we are going to meet on Tuesday in the school library after classes, when there is almost always a tutoring session. We will go through one of his papers with a fine tooth comb, identifying every grammar and spelling error. I will explain these to him. He will then rewrite the essay in good English. He will put the Xerox of the old version plus the rewritten version in a manilla folder, write his name on the top right corner of the folder, and write "For Ms. X" (X being the teacher's name) and simply leave it on her desk. There will be no explanation. I think after we do this a few times, he will have improved his written English and she will begin to see him in a better light.

To find a struggling student who is doing poorly and estimated by his teacher's to be a failure and to be able to help him get good grades and a little bit of respectability in his regular teacher's eyes is one of the great joys of teaching.

Court Disposition of My Student's Case

One of the three or four students whom I feel has great potential got into trouble a few days ago. As I reported in another blog entry, he was being held in Juvenile Hall and had a hearing yesterday, the 18th of July. This is, in my opinion, a good kid who has followed some peers down the wrong road. Make no mistake about it. I regard this kid as being very intelligent, respectful, and well-mannered.

He was asked to drive a car, and it turned out that the car was stolen. When the police started chasing it, he panicked, tried to escape by driving away, and bashed a few cars before he was finally brought into custody. No one was hurt.

He had about six people come to support him, including his mother, a fellow who has been his mentor for a few years, myself, a brother, and several other people whose exact relationship to him I was not clearly told. Three of us were allowed into the courtroom -- his mother, his mentor, and myself.

The kid was brought in wearing handcuffs behind his back. He is dark-skinned and normally wears his hair in dreds that hang down almost to shoulder length. Before the hearing, he hgad done something to the dreds so they were gathered tightly around his head and didn't look as much as usual like dreds.

Three people spoke: the judge, the kid's lawyer, and the prosecution. The choice seemed to be that either he should go into custody at the California Youth Authority for about 18 months or that he should be released with an electronic minitoring bracelet around his ankle.

The young man pled guilty to several of the counts and several others were dismissed by the judge. The prosecutor wanted to have him sent away to CYA. As I had written in a letter that was presented with others in the lawyer's attempt to ameliorate the sentence, incarceration in California costs the taxpayers between $30,000 and $40,000 and this doesn't seem a wise expenditure when other less expensive alternatives are available. And it is also true that if conditions are set for him to be released on probation and remain at home instead, if he gets out of line, then he could have his probation revoked and be sent to CYA.

The electronic monitoring system has become very accurate and sophisticated. It uses a global positioning system that can pinpoint a person's location precisely. The kid, if he is put on this, would have a precise schedule -- on his way to school at 7 a.m., at school by 8 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., possible remaining at school for football practice until a certain time, then back onto the bus to go home by a certain time, and then at home until the next morning.

In a discussion with his mentor, who is also African-American and, I think, a really good person for this kid to associate with, we both felt that the kid should be on a schedule that keeps him so busy he hasn't time for anything else. I had suggested that once or twice a week I would be willing to meet with the kid at school at the end of the normal school day, and go over his school work with him. The library remains open an extra hour-and-a-half, and since the amount of home work the kids are given is, in my opinion, pathetically small, he could use this time and effort to advance intellectually beyond what he would normally be able to do without an enriched program.

Now, lest you think I am some kind of knee-jerk bleeding heart who believes that no poor Black man belongs in prison, let me fill you in on my background. I worked for a number of years as a volunteer with the county probation department, helping newly released inmates find jobs and otherwise get their lives together.

I also worked for about half a year in Juvenile Hall until two things simultaneously happened: 1) It became overwhelmingly clear to me that the people running juvenile hall really didn't want the kids helped. They wanted them stored, like boxes on shelves; and 2) I was told that I needed to start taking criminology courses to continue working. Since I was there because I felt kids should be helped, I resigned.

And I also worked from the outside with a number of prison inmates who were systematically being denied parole by the California Parole Board by proving that the Parole Board members were not doing the job they were legislatively-mandated to do, but were working instead for the Governor (who appointed them to cushy 100,000+/year jobs that they wanted to keep) so that he would never be embarassed by being charged as being soft on crime if a parolee went back into the world and committed another crime. My proof actually got a few people out !

I mention these things so that you don't think I was just sympathetic to this kid no matter who he was or what he did. I know there are people who belong in prison and who should never get out. I have met some face-to-face.

The judge in my student's case veered strongly toward the electronic monitoring alternative, for which we are all thankful. Formal sentencing will take place on the 27th of August, but monitoring is what we are all expecting it to be.

What do you think ? Is this the right altrernative ?

A Day in The Life of a Substitute Teacher # 1

This post was originally written on February 14, and was published first on Qassia.

Today, as a substitute teacher in a Bay Area high school, I worked in five different one-hour classes of "multicultural education." The kids were supposed to take several printed sheets, one of them about the Mission period of California history, read them, and then answer on a separate sheet of paper about 15 questions.

I passed out the sheets to each period's students. I would estimate that only about 20 percent of the class actually then did the work they were supposed to do, even though I read to them their instructor's statement that they had to pass their work back in by the end of the class period.

They just didn't care.

These were all 9th graders. Ninth graders are normally young and full of stupid, though there are exceptions. You can see who these exceptions are just by looking around at the class twenty minutes into it. The good kids, the ones from families who have told them there is a connection between high school grades and what you get out of life later, are working at their lessons. The others are talking, playing music on their ipods, doodling, or just staring off into space.
There was one young lady sitting near the door of the class today who had long, thin red braids. She was doing nothing, just staring into space. I asked her if she wasn't bored. In a hostile voice, she said "I'm not bored," and continued staring. Not once during class did she touch the lesson sheets I had passed out or make any motion to do any classwork.

When you're a substitute teacher, the kids try to get away with all sorts of things. They simply do not treat substitutes with the respect and courtesy they teach their normal teachers. We are at a disadvantage because we don't know them all by name. A name is a handle you can use to exert control. "Morris, sit down and stop talking or I will have to write you up."

There is one kid who has shown up in many of the classes where I have taught never actually belongs to the class he is in. I learned his name the other day and addressed him with it. "Damn," he said. "I hate it when a substitute learns my name."

Today in one of my classes five kids started playing craps for money. This is completely against school rules. As soon as I picked up the phone to call security and have them hauled away, they stopped and walked out of the classroom. None of them were supposed to be there anyway.
Every class every day brings something different.

Do I Like My Students ?

After a year of substitute teaching, I have had to look deeply into myself and ask the question "Do I like my students ?"

I am going to try to be as honest as possible in answering this.

When I began substitute teaching, I had a particular vision in my mind of what teaching should be like. This vision had been formed by my having attended an elite private school many years ago, having attended an Ivy-League College, having been to graduate school at one of the more prestigious campuses of the University of California, and also having taught a course at a community college.

I am Caucasian. I live in a very Black area. For decades, most of my friends have been Black. For a long time, due to the nature of my work (journalism, photography) I knew very few whites other than my wife.

In America, race is always buried somewhere in any interaction. That is simply the peculiar nature of our society. I must tell you that an acquaintance of mine who taught at a junior college, who is a militant Black, and who got into teaching at junior college years ago at the urging of the Black Panthers, once told me at her home that my wife and I were the only whites she had ever invited to her home and that we were the only whites who didn't treat her as though somehow she was "different."

And I must tell you that for years I worked as a volunteer with the county probation department, always with African-American parolees who had gotten out of prison and who needed help (jobs, a place to stay, etc.) as they reentered society. And I also worked for about six months at a county juvenile hall until I realized that the people at the hall didn't care anything about actually helping the kids, but were simply warehousing them until they were released or sent to California Youth Authority.

That brings me to the answer to the question I raised at the beginning of this blog entry, "Do I like my students ?"

As I teach, I find a student here and a student there who has a respectful attitude and who genuinely wants to accomplish something in school. I like this kind of student very much. In this situation, race matters very little to me, though I also have to admit that because I know more about African-American culture and the things African-Americans have to endure in America, I tend to like the African-American students more than the others.

The kind of student who is lazy, who not care about learning, and who just wants to listen to his or her iPod all day I do not like. This kind of student I simply tolerate.

That brings is to the question about how much responsibility an individual should bear when they have only been subejcted to one kind of life and one set of values and know almost nothing about others. I'll have lots more to say about that as this blog progresses.

I am off this afternoon to a hearing at juvenile hall concerning sentencing of one of the students I picked out during the school year as being especially worthwhile. The young man is 16. He got involved with the wrong friends, drove a car, got scared by the police, and crashed the car into two others in a vain effort to escape. I will find out more about his situation and let you know in another blog. But his mother called last night, asking for a letter to give to the judge.

It seems that the young man's sentence can go one of two ways. Either he can be sentenced to prison, which in this case would be the California Youth Authority, well-known as being a hotbed of corruption, sexual abuse and horror; or he can be sentrenced to probation, strict supervision, and wearing an ankle-bracelet so his whereabouts is always known. If he receives the probation sentence, he will return to school. I have offered to ride herd on his schoolwork once or twice a week in the school library after the end of the day.