Post 75: In Which I Become a Babysitter

About three months ago I filled out the paperwork applying for a summer job of some sort with the Unified School District.  I had received very good ratings from the principal and teachers at the school I recently described, so I felt I had good chances of landing one.

Days passed.  More days passed.  And still more days passed.  As we got into June and the normal school year ended, I concluded that I had not been assigned a job so I should plan for other work to sustain me through the summer.  Then late on a Friday before summer session was to start (on Monday), I received an email assigning me to an elementary school, and naming the teacher who would be in charge of the classroom.  Never mind that classes started several days later.  Never mind that I might well have made other plans.  Never mind that I wasn't told anything about the class I would be assisting in.  At least it was a job !  And I assumed I would still be classified as an "Intervention Specialist," teaching and tutoring kids one-on-one according to their educational needs.

I reported at the assigned time and date, found the classroom, and met the teacher, a pleasant fellow who himself, he told me, had only learned a week earlier that he, too, had a summer assignment.  And our students began arriving.  There were about 8 of them, with 5 adults in the classroom.  I was assigned to be the one-on-one for a young man I will call Jack.  Jack is about ten, and as events unfolded I learned that he is not only seriously autistic, but that he also has a serious case of attention deficit disorder.

The teacher told me a few days later that he was absolutely surprised at the type of students in the class.  They all had serious autism.  Most other than Jack could pay attention to something for a while.  Jack, however, could not focus on anything for more than 15 - 30 seconds.  One could get him to sit down, but only for about ten seconds.  Then he would stand up and start walking rapidly all around the classroom, usually in the same pattern, usually investigating the same places he had previously investigated.  If one were lucky, it might be possible to get Jack to repeat a word.  But normally he did not speak.  He lacked fine motor skills and was unable to draw a straight line between two points.

I am used to dealing with students who can talk, discuss, question, and express their thoughts.  The only thoughts Jack seemed able to express was an interest in a few of the foods his mother packed for him for lunch, and whether or not he had to go to the bathroom.  (Thankfully when he needs to go the the bathroom he volunteers this.)

Jack takes medication to slow him down a bit, but he is still uncontrollably restless.  And he paces more rapidly than most people could,  To burn off energy, twice during the four hours I am assigned to watch over him, I am instructed to take him out to the playground.  This is a vast, paved area with a few basketball baskets.  It is surrounded by a high chain link fence.  And Jack paces from one end to the other end perhaps 200 feet away, then turns around and paces back.  Over and over and over.

There seems to be nothing cognitive that I can teach him.  The teacher in charge suggested a series of blocks and plastic shapes that can be arranged inside similarly-shaped cutouts.  Jack has that mastered and fits eight shapes into their appropriate places with no hesitation.  There are plastic cubes that fit into each other and form long chains.  Jack will fit one or two of these together easily.  Then he jumps up from his chair and is off again pacing around the classroom.  He knows how to count to ten, but is uninterested in doing so.  He also cannot concentrate on stories.  Two sentences into a story and he is off pacing again.    My job at that point is to make sure he doesn't fool around with electrical plugs or the fire alarm and fire hose in the room.  He will dit down when directed -- but only for about five or ten seconds.

I like Jack.  I think he is a sweet kid.  He comes over every so often and hugs me and the other adults in the room.  He is friendly, not hostile.  But I find myself reflecting most of the time every single day I work in this classroom that this is not what I am best at.  I don't enjoy it.  I am grateful when 12:30 arrives and I can come home from work.

"Do-Now"s, Reflections and Exit Tickets

At the high school where I previously taught, a student could easily have sleepwalked through four years with serious reflection on his or her education, goals, mistakes and successes.  Not so at the middle school where I have been teaching for the past six months.  I think part of the school's success can be attributed to the school's policies intended to raise the students' consciousness about what they are doing, why, and what their goals are.

At the beginning of each class, the students line up outside at the classroom door unless the weather is so bad that they need to be inside before entering the class.   They file in, each one greeted by the teacher, often not just with a "Hello.  How are you today ?" but with a handshake, too.  Inside the door there is often a selected student passing out the class's "Do Now."  The students have two immediate tasks before them.  The first is to look on the board and copy into their planners (the school gives each one of them a planner so they can write homework assignments under the appropriate day).  This is the first order of activity.  Once this is done, they are then to turn to their "Do Now," usually a half sheet of paper with questions or activities on it and with blank lines to fill in answers.

The "Do Now" may be devoted strictly to academic matters.  Perhaps it bears several questions such as "Was Lincoln motivated by humanitarian reasons when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, or do you think he was motivated by strategic military considerations.  The second question might be something like, "Why ?  Explain your answer to Question #1."  Another question on the same "Do Now" might be something like, "Explain the effect of the Missouri Compromise.  What was it and who liked and disliked it ?"

On the other hand, the "Do Now" might have some less academic questions or requirements on it.  For instance, it might ask, "What was the most interesting thing you saw on the field trip to the Technical Museum, and Why ?"  Or perhaps, "What remains for you to do in your preparations for your EXPO exhibit ?"  (More about EXPOs in another entry.

Sometimes there may be questions such as "What skill(s) do I have to improve in order to get a better grade ?"   "What is the most interesting thing I have discovered in my research about ancient Egypt ?"

In other words, there is a considerable inward focus on some of these "Do Now"s.

A few minutes after the students have finished their "Do Now"s, their attention is drawn to the board where a "Learning Target" has been written.  One student is selected to go up to the board to read this learning target.  It is read twice.  The first time, the student simply reads it straight through.  It is written in marker in two different colors.  The second time the student reads, he or she stops before each word in a color different from the main text, and the students all read together aloud that word or words.  Usually they shout them.   In other words, expectations such as "I will read and understand pages 12 - 22 and be ready to discuss them" are clearly understood.  The key, of course, is that students are given very clear expectations about what they are to study and understand.

Occasionally in class the teacher will pass out a "Reflection" handout, a sheet of paper with questions on it about personal study habits, goals, successes and failures.  These are not so much academic in nature, but serve to buttress the student's thinking about how well he or she is managing their study responsibilities, and how they can do better.  Sometimes there may be pointed questions about study habits:  "I watch TV too much and should devote more time to my reading.  True or false and why ?"  "I need to find a quiet place to study because there is too much noise and too many people at home."

I recall one student whom I tutored here, one who cut her name in the skin on her arm, who told me she lived in a one-room apartment with her mother, several sisters and a dog, and it was very difficult for her to concentrate on studies there.

Many classes have what is known as an Exit Ticket requirement.  This is similar to the "Do Now," but is phrased as something that must be done before one walks out of the class.  Perhaps it will be three math problems based on what was taught in class that day.  Or it may be material about climate change or ancient Egypt or the Dred Scott Case that a student should by the end of class know about or have mastered.  The important point is, I think, that the Exit Ticket is an indication of what is expected of the student.  Expectations at this school are never unclear.

Rewards and Recognition

One of the wonderful practices at this middle school is that students are given frequent recognition for the good things they do.  Today, on the last day of the school year, our sixth graders had an assembly in which all of their teachers recognized outstanding students -- students who had made the most progress, students who did excellent work, students, who had  outstandingly positive outlooks.  One of the sub-headings of the school is the quotation: "scholars, artists, warriors."  The artists, of course, are recognized for their superior artistic work.  The scholars are recognized for their high grades.  The warriors are recognized for their efforts.

In addition, students are sometimes asked to "give an appreciation" of something in the class or of people at their table who have helped them be productive in their studies.  Occasionally these are written and passed in to the teacher.  More often they seem to be verbal, uttered to the other three students seated at the table.  At times classes have what are called "circles."  During these sessions, which last from a half hour to the entire period, students are asked to comment on a number of things.  They have the option of opting out and simply not joining in the discussion, and many of them make this choice.  But sometimes participation is very high, as it was just after the end of the shooting incident on campus that I have described elsewhere in this blog.  At times during these circles they are also asked each to give an appreciation of someone or something that they like.  This topic stimulates a great deal of participation.

When a student comes into each class. they enter from outside, from the recess ground.  The practice is that the instructor stands by the doorway and greets each one of them, often shaking hands with each student as he or she enters.  In the morning "boost" and "crew" periods in the classroom where I have been working, either the students greet the instructor at the door or they go over to him at his desk or wherever he may be and say hello to him.  Unlike the high school where I substituted, there is no such thing as anonymity at this school.  At the high school, which had several thousand students, it was possible -- and probably still is -- for a student to attend classes, not participate or participate minimally, and have no relationship with one's teachers.  You would become known by face and name to your teachers primarily if you either were such an outstanding student in papers and exams that you had to be noticed or if you misbehaved so badly you disrupted the class.  At my middle school, however, most of the staff knew you by name.

When a substitute comes into a class in high school, at least in a high school with a thousand or more students, the students feel more or less rightly that since the teacher cannot identify them by name, they can carry on and misbehave with impunity.  The setting in my middle school was quite the opposite. After a few months, having worked numerous times in most of the classes, I began to know most of the students.  This made all the difference.

But just to be sure, yesterday I got a copy of this year's yearbook, which has pictures and names of every student in the school.   True, the eighth graders will be off in high school -- and will probably learn very quickly that they can misbehave without consequences -- but this year's sixth and seventh graders will have been promoted, and will still be there.  I'll know more of them better, and that will help.

We Shall See What We Will See

Yesterday the principal made an announcement to the students which alarmed a few of them and probably delighted a few others, too.  Buoyed by the success of the changes he had made and the new practices he had instituted at our school, he had accepted a higher position in our school district where he would have the opportunity not only to remain in touch with our school, but also to institute many of the practices he had instituted at our school in other schools.

My paperwork appears to be fine, I was told in an email I received yesterday from the personnel office, and it appears that my application to work in the same school again next year will be accepted.  A new principal, a woman, has been appointed for our school's coming year.  Our departing principal spoke of her in glowing terms.  She visited our school twice in the last two days, and no one has sounded an alarm.  She seems to be very competent and well-liked according to every indication I have seen.

But will our school remain as good next year, or will it get even better ?  Or will its quality decline ?  As the heading of this entry states, since I will be there on the spot and will report, we shall see what we will see.

At first, a cultural question came to mind.  Since the present principal of our school, a man, has had such close relations with students' families, will our new, female principal be able to maintain these relationships?  I know very little about Hispanic culture, but I suspect that a man automatically has an upper edge, more of a respected and commanding position than a woman might have.  Upon reflection, I don't think this is going to make much of a difference because the interface between our school and parents is usually with the mothers of the students' families.

In the wake of this announcement, another came to me this morning in private between the teacher I have been working with in our morning boost and crew periods and myself.   He, too, is leaving our school for a better position in San Francisco.  He has been enrolled in an elite course of study at U.C. Berkeley, recently finished his thesis, and saw an opportunity to move up more into administration, which is what he has been aiming at for a number of years.

I cannot blaming him for wanting a better situation for himself and his family.  Our school district, like most these days, would happily keep an extraordinarily talented teacher at as low a salary and as low a position as possible.  But here is an extraordinarily gifted teacher who commands great respect from both other faculty members and the students, and he is going elsewhere.

I feel totally comfortable around this teacher for I know him to be extremely intelligent, gifted in human relationships, brilliant in his teaching.  His loss may well be a greater loss to next year's students than the loss even of the principal.  And I, a minor cog in a bunch of much larger wheels, know that I almost certainly have a job at this same school next year, but that I will be working with some other, at the moment unknown, teacher.  What's that going to be like?

As I have learned in life, all things are temporary.  Sometimes we do not understand how good they were until they are gone and we look back.  For instance, we do not remember what pleasure it was to sit and drink coffee with one's wife until she has passed away.  Then we look back at the memory with sadness and appreciation.  As for next year at school --  we shall see what we will see.

The students I am dealing with on a day-to-day basis comprise an interesting mix.  If you have ever surveyed humanity and felt that you'd already seen it all, you have to be wrong.  I learned that when I acted as tour manager in a travel business years ago.  Now in school, however, I am exposed to a constant variety of different student personalities.  They challenge any teacher trying to teach effectively.

For instance, there is the kid in one of the classes I usually work in who clearly has gang aspirations.  I'll just call him Jose.  Yes, like almost all the other students in school, he is Hispanic.  He has dark black hair, cut relatively short, a light-skinned complexion that shows just a hint of swarthiness, and handsome features,  He walks like a gang member, a sort of manly swagger that projects self-assurance and might even project a little bit of threat except that he's still too young -- 11 ? --  to threaten anybody.   He doesn't wan't to do his class work.  He sits at his place and stares off in space.  We have a custom in our classroom as kids come in of greeting them, either shaking hands or giving what I call the Black fist bump.  When I was new, this kid refused to say "Hello."  He didn't keep it a secret that he disliked me.  This reminded me of the way kids in high school often greeted new substitute teachers with a cheery smile and a comment that, "You know, we hate substitute teachers."  To that one I learned an immediate counter:  "If I wanted love, I'd get a dog."

So the hostility of this kid, though surprising at first, made me wonder what kind of issues he had at home.   In classes like these, kids bounce all kinds of emotional hangups off the teachers.  And once you let them know that they are getting to you, that they are successfully pushing your buttons, its all over.  They will do their best to torment you in every way they can imagine.  Hard as it is, you must keep your cool, be both firm and understanding, and insist that they follow the rules.

In the roughly six months I have been at this middle school, I have had highs and lows in the esteem of the students.  At least three of them, in different classrooms, probed openly hostile when I was assigned to me to help individually in a particular class.  When the teacher asked me to sit down at their table, I was told openly and bluntly within 15 seconds, "I don't want you to help me," or "I don't want to work with you."  My reaction has been to say, "No problem," get up, and go to other students in the class who need help.  There is no shortage in this school, which is primarily Hispanic, of students who need help with a variety of subjects, especially English.

I get asked all kinds of questions by the students.  The most common one is, "How old are you?"   I have been asked if I was alive during World War I,  or during the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln.  The most hopeful thing about these questions is that at least they have heard of World War I and Abraham Lincoln.  I am by far the oldest person at the school.  I think the next oldest person is about 55, twenty years my junior. This coming Wednesday is "Wear a Funny Hat Day."  I think that instead of wearing something from the South Pacific, where I lived and worked in various countries for many years, I shall wear my baseball cap that says, "Don't Forget My Senior Discount."

Washington, D. C. for Middle School Students

One of the amazing programs our middle school has is a trip to Washington, D.C. for about ten selected students.  The students must go before a panel in order to be chosen for this trip.  Funds come from a variety of sources, but very little comes from the students or their families themselves.  A few months ago we started CafeUPA, in which students make coffee in the teachers' lounge and then deliver cups top faculty members in their classrooms early in the day.  Each cup costs $2, and the wake-me-up in the morning is well worth it if you are a caffeine addict like myself.  Proceeds, which are modest, go to help finance the trip.  Corporate donations and other funding help pay for airfare, hotel accommodations and transport within Washington, D.C. itself.

Students do a fascinating variety of things.  They visited about half a dozen different museums this time, and ALL the major monuments.  They had a private meeting with our Congresswoman during which, it was reported, they asked a lot of very intelligent questions.  These kids are being taught at an early age to think.  They are probably doing better than most high school students would do.  We are very proud of them.  I was told by a faculty member the other day that they have the highest math scores of any middle school in the city.

I Made a Student Cry Today

I made a student cry today.  It wasn't intentional, and I certainly didn't expect it.

M is a kid who is always horsing around and carrying on.  But I think his problem is that he is so intelligent that he gets easily bored and causes an uproar because he wants something interesting to do.  He does it cleverly, just coming up an inch short before he gets a referral to the office.  But if you sit in one of his classes and watch, you discover that most of the time he isn't paying attention.

I have had interactions with this kid for the last 5 or 6 months, so I feel I have gotten to know him well.

We were talking about climate change.  We are having a 5th and 7th grade EXPO this coming Wednesday, and he is supposed to be able to stand up and explain to parents (including his own, I hope) what climate change is and what causes it.

We went over just what climate change is and what some of the causes are, and what some of the results will be.  He asked a number of very intelligent questions and understood immediately what I was telling him.  Based not just on that, but other conversations we have had, I said to him, "You know, you are not just an intelligent kid.  You are a VERY intelligent kid.  I think your problem is that you are so intelligent that these classes bore you. You have to realize that with your intelligence, there is nothing you won't be able to do or achieve later in life, if you study hard and get good grades."

As I was talking to him, I noticed tears welling up in his eyes.  I have a feeling no one ever told him before that he is intelligent and can achieve things.  Maybe a few years down the line he will still remember our conversation.

A Problem Student

At the high school I had previously substituted at for several years:

I am not good at discipline.  That's why I changed from being a substitute teacher to being an intervention specialist, where a main teacher has to deal with discipline problems.  One of the students I encountered in a five-day assignment was a freshman with black hair cut almost in a bowl cut.  He was slightly swarthy (not African or African-American), had fine features, brown eyes and what seemed to me to be intelligence.

He started right away as a discipline problem, wandering around the classroom, not doing his classwork (a Xeroxed chapter from a workbook about physics that had blank spaces where answers to questions were supposed to be filled in). We had a few brief conversations in which he revealed that he is from Yemen.  His father was in the Yemen military and was back in Yemen, so the student was living with his uncle. He volunteered that he is from Yemen at the beginning of our conversation.

Somewhere in the midst of this conversation, and without relevance or previous mention, he said something or other about Israel. I look Jewish.  My father was Jewish racially and culturally.  But I wasn't going to get drawn into a political discussion with this kid, who was engaging in a diversionary tactic to avoid schoolwork, which I was insisting that he do.

I explained to him, since he was engaging in eighth-grade behavior, that he was no longer in primary school and had graduated to secondary school where certain more mature behaviors are required. He refused to do his work. At the end of the period, he took his workbook pages over to another student, copied the answers, and handed me the paper after about two minutes of writing.

I took no disciplinary action the first day because I wanted to find out from other teachers how he behaved in their classes and what they thought about him.  But I did note on his paper that he had co[pied it, that I had seen him do this, and that he shouldn't get credit for the classwork.

One teacher in ESL (English as a Second Language) told me the girls strongly disliked him and tried to sit as far away from him as possible. She also told me that he had complained to another teacher that a particular bit of information -- she didn't specify what -- was contrary to Islam."

My classroom was set up containing rows of desks facing a portable blackboard and with another area behind the blackboard containing chairs and desks, tables, computers and the teacher's desk. If I placed myself properly I was able to see most of what went on in the classroom from a position next to the blackboard

In the next class, I told that as he knew that the day before he had wasted his time wandering around the classroom and that he had plagiarized his classwork, so I was going to require that he sit at a table behind the blackboard while doing his work, and that he was NOT going to attempt to use a computer. He objected strenuously. His protests were punctuated here and there with something I could only characterize as little animal noises. Bizarre ! Special Education candidate ?

At this point, after he had tried to disobey my instructions several dozen times, I told him I was going to write him up for disciplinary action based on his refusal to do what he was told to do, and on his general insolence, disrespect and rudeness to me as a teacher.

At this, he tried to exert what amounted to blackmail. He told me that he was going to tell the administration that I was prejudiced against Arabs. I told him it wouldn't work because people at the school know me better.

In this class there is another young man from Yemen who looks quite different. The two of them have highly similar names. They were both trying to play name confusion with me by giving different names for themselves, but I had solved that by getting a school printout of their record, which had a photo of the student.  I could tell each student's identity.

I did, indeed, write this student up for disciplinary actions. I also told him that if his bad behavior continued I would call his uncle. The last day of the five-day period I spent substituting for this science teacher, because we had covered a little more ground than necessary, I gave the class a 21-question quiz based on the week's material. All questions were true or false and students had merely to circle the correct answer. Some of the students did quite well, getting only one or two questions wrong. This particular young man, however, scored at about 50%, a score he would receive if he had just randomly answered.

Because of him and his fellow, I have had to think a lot about prejudice.  Where is the line between fairness and unfairness in dealing with kids like this ?  Had he not stated that he was from Yemen, I would never have thought about it.  In another post I'll discuss more about this subject because all teachers have negative feelings about certain students.  It is just something we have to deal with.

CREW Period at Middle Schoolclassrooms.

Following "Boost" period, described in the post below, we have a 35-minute "crew" period.  While "boost" consists of 10 - 12 students, "Crew" has fifteen or more in it.  Students use this period to ease into the normal school routine, to get some food (free at the school cafeteria), and to learn a few everyday things not normally discussed in regular classes.

During one of the crew periods, the teacher in charge had put up a number of signs on the room's walls.  They read "technical school," "junior college", "four-year college", "graduate school," etc.  The discussion we had concerned education, and where one would prepare for the career one wanted.  If you wanted to become an auto mechanic, would you go to a four-year college ?  If you wanted to become a software engineer what kind of institution would you attend ?  Where would you get the education you needed to prepare you for the life you wanted ?  The teacher asked questions and asked the students to go stand under the appropriate sign for their intended vocation.

The seed of the idea that students are going to go on to high school and then to college is planted early on in the minds of these middle school students.  Understand that most of them have parents who may never even have finished high school.  And one can guess that because the student population is drawn from one of the poorer sections of town, almost no parents have any idea about what college is about, and certainly no experience with it.

[I think back to my own upbringing and the fact that not only did my brother and I grow up knowing about college and what was involved in getting into one, but that also the only question in our minds was not "Am I going to college?" but rather "Which college will I be going to ?"]

Also on the wall is a large sheet with questions written on it that students in the class have asked:  "How long is a class period at college ?"  "How many students will there be in a class ?"  "How many classes will I have each week ?"  "What are classes like in college ?"  These are answered by the instructor as the questions come up.

And now comes one of the most amazing programs this middle school offers:  the "College for All Program."

I know of no other school that offers a program like "College for All."  In this program, students who have been on excellent behavior and who have signed permission forms from their parents, are taken on a special trip that visits a number of college campuses.  These include the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of California at Santa Cruz.  They overnight down south, the boys in one motel or hotel, the girls in another far across town.  A number of faculty members accompany them everywhere.  One of the highlights of the trip, too, after viewing the University of California at Santa Cruz is a visit to the Santa Cruz.  During the trip, students meet regular college students, occasional members of the faculty, and other college personnel.  If the college is in session, they actually sit for a while in selected classes just so they can experience what they should expect from higher education.

The point of all this is that it strengthens the conviction in students that they will definitely go to college.  I contrast these middle school students with those of the high school where I taught for several years and which is described in earlier posts in this blog.  These middle school students depart from the 8th grade knowing a lot more about college than most students graduating from the city's high schools.

A program such as "College for All" obviously costs a lot of money to operate.  Somebody has to pay for the chartered buses and the hotels or motels and the food.  And since the students' families are extremely poor, they certainly cannot ship in anything but perhaps a small amount of spending money.  So who foots the bill ?

Mostly corporations.  Some one somewhere in this school -- and I haven't yet learned who -- operates an outreach program to solicit donations from corporations.  There may be other school soliciting money from corporations in the area, but I have not heard of any.  In addition to corporate donations of money, the school holds a raffle each year.  Tickets cost $10 each.  Prizes range from a giant screen TV (donated by a corporation, I am sure), to microwave ovens and a host of other excellent prizes.

The "College for All" program is just one more example of the innovative way this school makes every possible effort to provide the students with as good an education as possible.

What Intervention Specialists Do

I decided a year ago that I was burned out being a regular "substitute teacher."  I was tired of walking into a class of high school students, and having someone in the front row look up at me brightly and say, "You know, we hate substitute teachers."  I was tired of trying to keep order, with kids occasionally trying to shoot dice in the back of the room for money.  I was tired of babysitting.  I heard about the position of Intervention Specialist, which pays less than that of substitute teacher, but which leaves the discipline to the regular teacher in charge of the class.  At the age of 73 (now 74 as I write this), I decided I wanted a job with less stress.

I have been an intervention specialist in three different schools.  One of them, the high school I described in the earliest posts on this blog, had a class of severely impaired kids who needed one-on-one or one-on-two tending.  There I was put in charge of a Korean young man who could not speak, and who could barely put shapes in a cut-out board.  He spent about half his time standing up and sitting down.  Another intervention specialist, a truly marvelous man, had taught him to be able to go to a faucet, turn it on, get himself a drink of water, and turn it off.  If you had seen this student yourself -- he was about 17 -- you would consider what this other intervention specialist had achieved with him to be just a little short of a miracle.

In another school, a middle school, I worked with a teacher and several other intervention specialists in a classroom with about a dozen kids.  We had a definite schedule, and almost every day went the same.  We met their buses as they arrived at the school, wheeled them (most were in wheel chairs) to the dining room, got their breakfast and placed it in front of them.  Some students needed to be fed.  Then we wheeled them across the playground to their classroom, where they learned basic skills intended to make them as independent as possible.

Sometimes we took them out of the classroom to places of interest.  For instance, a branch of the public library was located in the same neighborhood, about three blocks away.  We pushed their wheelchairs to the library, helped them read or get onto the library's computers, and generally allowed them to amuse themselves, with an occasional assist from us.  Then we wheeled them back to the classroom.  About once a month we took them on a major field trip -- would you believe bowling ?  We took them on the Bay Area Rapid Transit train to a station a few stops away.  Then we maneuvered them from the train level via elevator to the street level below, and pushed their wheelchairs about half a mile to the bowling alley.

In the bowling alley, were located bowling frames -- metal contraptions that the student could place a bowling ball on, then release it.  The ball rolled down the metal tracks to the floor and onward down the alley to the pins.  The trick here, of course, was that the metal tracks had to be aimed precisely in the right direction so that the ball continued on a straight path to the center pin.  If the metal track were not aimed accurately, the ball would simply go into the gutter.  After an hour or an hour and a half, which usually included some time for the students to eat the picnic lunch we had been provided with when we departed the school, we wheeled their chairs back over the half mile we had wheeled to get them to the alley in the first place, maneuvered them into the elevator at the public transport station, got them onto the train, and took them back to the classroom.

My biggest challenge with these students came with one of them who needed to learn to cunt to ten.  Over and over and over, we started counting. . ."One, two, three, four, five, six . . ." And then the student would stop.  Despite the literally hundreds of times we went through this exercise, he was never able to say "seven."
Once I said seven, he was able to resume and count all the way to ten.

Once in a while we took the kids to a nearby supermarket and had them buy the ingredients for smoothies or other classroom treats.  Some of them were quite able to give money to the cashier and receive change.  This may sound extraordinarily easy, but remember that these kids had to learn it because someday, if they were not institutionalized, they would need to be as independent as possible (they would probably stay in a group home as they matured), and that included being able to shop for themselves, at least for treats.  We take this independence for granted, but without this simple ability, the student grown into adulthood would not be able to take care of him or her self.

I often thought about these students and wondered what they had in store for themselves after their parents died.  Would a relative be willing to care for them ?  I think everyone working with them had the same thought many times, over.

My First Stick-Up

I've told you that the school I am currently teaching in isn't in the best of neighborhoods.  Earlier I wrote about how at the beginning of the day one car came racing up the main avenue chasing another car and firing a gun at it, then the two of them veered onto school property and finally left.  Meanwhile my class and I spent about 45 minutes on the floor of our classroom, away from windows and behind a two locked doors.

Yesterday morning I drove to school as I usually do, but I made a stop at a convenience store/gas station about four blocks from the school.  I got some breath mints (these days unless I have something like breath mints my breath would curdle a cup of coffee -- and yes, I do go to the dentist), some tortilla chips and a sandwich.  I went up to the cash register counter and found standing in front of me a fellow with his back towards me.  He was in the process of reaching over the counter and snatching money that Mr. Singh, a Sikh who always wears a dark blue turban and who customarily takes that shift, had placed there, evidently on his orders.  This customer turned around and looked at me from about four feet away, and pointed a gun at me.  He snatched up the money, shoved it in his pocket, and then dashed out the door.  He jumped on a bike and pedaled up the street as fast as he could.  I ran outside, quite a ways behind him, to see him turning a corner onto a side street a block away.

This was my first real-life stickup.  All the others I had seen were on CSI or the like.  This was also Mr. Singh's first stick-up, too.  This morning I stopped back at the same store.  As I walked in, Mr. Singh and I greeted each other, and I said, "Do I dare come in here again at this time ?"  We both laughed.

Is It OK to Cut Yourself ?

In the normal course of being an intervention specialist, I am asked almost daily and sometimes several times daily to take one or more students to the library.  There, distractions are few.  Students with problems concentrating are better able to focus on their schoolwork.

A few weeks ago I was asked to take a young lady in the seventh grade to the library to go over some math problems with her.  She was a pleasant-looking, Hispanic, young lady, with lustrous black hair, a slightly rounded face, and a beautiful smile.  Dressed as students at this middle school are required to dress, she wore tan pants and along-sleeved, green sweatshirt with the school name across it.

I had seen her laughing and smiling and joking around with other students in the classroom she had come from.  But when we were alone, she seemed troubled.  We started on the math problems.  After three or four minutes, she stopped and asked me:  "Do you think it is ok if students cut themselves ?"

If I had had my psychiatric wits about me, I might have asked her in a very non-judgmental way, "What do you think about it?"  My reaction, however, though non-judgmental, was to reply that I didn't think it was a good thing to do.

As we talked, she pulled up the sleeve of her sweatshirt.  There, carved freshly into her skin, was her name.  She said she had started doing that a while ago, and that some other students did it, too.  If she had not mentioned the therapist, I would have immediately reported the situation to the school nurse.  But she made it clear that she was talking to the nurse already, and also "getting therapy."

We chatted a bit about her life.  She, six other people and a dog lived in a single room and shared a kitchen with other people living in the apartment.  Her father was an electrician.  He could not get much work, however, and was barely able to pay the rent and buy the family food.  What worried her the most, however, was that her father was going through some sort of immigration proceedings, and ran the danger of being sent back to Mexico.  "If they deport him, what's going to happen to us ?" she asked.

With these things hanging over her head, I did not know how back in the classroom she managed to smile.

How My Day Goes

My day as an intervention specialist goes in a fairly predictable fashion.  One day I go to one selection or teachers' classes, the next day I go to a somewhat different selection.

The day starts with "Boost," where I spend about 30 minutes.  Here the instructor in charge and I sit between different pairs of students as they do sets of math problems from packets of Xeroxed sheets.   We are there for several reasons.  One of them stems from the fact that these students all have educational disabilities.  Many of them simply have trouble focusing on their work.  They may do one problem, then start staring off into space or watching other students.  Our job is to draw their attention back to their work, to keep them "on track."

They are working in pairs.  While one is actively doing a math problem, he or she is supposed to be explaining to the other how it is solved.  In sitting between them, we watch the students' work and try to catch wrong answers as they are being produced and to bring the attention of the student to these problems and have them do recalculation.  The sheets have about ten pages stapled together and as a student progresses through the packet, the problems become progressive but slowly more difficult.  What is unusual here is that the students are graded at the end of each half hour session not by the number of problems they completed, but by their interaction with the other student in their pair.  Did Student A actually talk to the other student about mathematical solutions ?  Did they have any eye contact with the other student, or were they just mumbling to themselves ?  The theory behind this is that if the students explain problems to each other, they will learn better.

After "Boost" comes crew.  Most days this lasts from 8:30 a.m. until about 9:05, but on Wednesdays, when the school day is shorter and the number of classes reduced, it lasts about an hour.  During this period, many students come from the school cafeteria where they can get a free breakfast,  They bring their breakfasts with them, and spend time eating and socializing for ten or fifteen minutes.

Each student has a day planner which, when open, shows a full week of activity.  In this class, the instructor-in-charge and I circulate around the room, making certain that each student has had his parent or guardian sign at the bottom of the previous day's entries.  Later in the day, the first thing each student will do upon entering a classroom will be to copy the homework assignment from the board into his or her planner.  This system has several advantages.  First, the student is accountable to teachers at the beginning of every class, because the teacher makes certain assignments are written down.  Second, it automatically involves the parent in the educational system.  They can see what the assignments of the day are, and they can use this information to make certain their child has done homework.  Third, the use of the planner serves as a concrete reminder to the student of just what he or she is accountable for.

The instructor-in-charge also has an opportunity to explain many things to the students.  For instance, today the instructor spoke about why the students are required to wear green sweatshirts with the school insignia on them, and khaki pants.  The green sweatshirts and khaki pants are regulation uniform for this school because the area around its location is heavily infested with gangs.  Wear blue or red and you're in trouble.  You won't be able to pass through certain neighborhoods.

The instructor I'm working with has seen all the gang life possible because he grew up in a part of Los Angeles where gangs were very common.  He also became a football player in college,  He has the kind of tough, athletic bearing one would expect from a football star,  In the morning as each student enters the classroom, he exchanges a Black fist bump and a "Good morning ! How are you ?" or some such greeting to each kid.  Some of them have their own special fist bumps, moving their hands around in special ways, and he knows every one of their specialties and follows along with it.  He has great rapport with them, and a great sensitivity to each student's mood on any particular day.  He's also an incredibly intelligent person, with a wide range of knowledge that he feeds in bits and pieces to the kids during what is called "Morning Crew" period.

Crew is about 40 minutes long, and the kids arrive ready to show their notebooks, their papers from the previous day signed by their parents or guardians, and their pens, pencils and marker.  Yellow highlighting is required of the kids in most of the school's classes.

The school seems finely tuned to the needs of the students, right down to their ethnic preferences.  At the beginning of crew, those kids who didn't eat or want breakfast at home can get it free of charge just before Crew, so they can bring the food with them into the classroom.  While they are eating, the instructor-in-charge reads school announcements and gives small talks about behavior the kids are encouraged or discouraged from engaging in.  He does this with a sense of humor and compassion, yet a sternness that the students like and respond to.  I sure wish I could handle students the way he does.

I have enormous admiration for this particular instructor.  He is studying for either a masters or a Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley these days, with the eventual goal of becoming an administrator.  I would rather see him get a much higher salary and stay where he is, where the kids respond to him, and where he is changing lives in a direct fashion.

An Interesting Experiment Across Continents

When I was in a teacher's class several weeks ago and the students were studying malaria, she made an interesting side comment.  She said, "Wouldn't it be nice if the students could talk to someone who had had malaria to find out more about it ?"

Because I have been to West Africa three times and have a number of real African contacts there (I say "real" because I don't want the reader to think that these are with French or British expats), I had a good reply.  I have been tutoring a few African students in math and English via Skype, I said, and I could arrange this.

I have a friend who runs an internet cafe in Tema, a small city right outside and abutting Accra, the Ghanaian capital.  When I discussed this prospect with him, he suggested that I talk with one of his friends, a teacher at a nearby private school.  He put us together on Skype and we had some great conversations.  Yes, the teacher said, they would be very interested in having some of his students talk with some from our school.  We fixed on a time and date, and actually made it happen.

Typically, our students asked questions like the following:  How do you know when you are coming down with malaria ?  How often have you had malaria ?  What do you feel like when you are going through a malaria attack ?  Do people die of malaria ?  How long does a malaria attack last ?  What can you do or not do when you have malaria ?  How do you catch malaria ?

Eventually the discussion moved on to other things rather than science.  Since Ghana is a great football (rugby) power in Africa, and since almost all Ghanaian students play it, they naturally asked if our students play it ( they do).  What kinds of teams do we play against ?  What is our school like ?  What do students do in the course of an average day ?  What do we study ?  How long is our school day ?  What is our life like ? Would we like to visit Ghana ?

The question I found most interesting and that requires a lot of deep thought was one a young man asked:  "What does it feel like to be an American ?"  Readers, have you ever thought about that one ?  I hadn't, no more than I had ever thought about how I feel being white in American society, and what a privileged position this is.

The idea came up that it would be great to have one of our students go there to their school for a while and them send one of their kids to our school, too.  And as I think about this possibility, I know that it could happen, assuming the school district sees it as beneficial to the students.

Our students and the students in Ghana have certain things in common, the most important being that most of them in Ghana and in our city are from very poor families.  But our idea of poverty would probably be relatively comfortable for the Ghanaian students.  Many of them have only one meal a day, sometimes two.   During school days, our students get free breakfast, free lunch, and even a free meal after school if they want these.  In Ghana, there are no free schools.  The kids in our contact school have to buy meals or do without.

The kids in our school come from a very poor section of town.  It is a dangerous area, and kids are advised to walk home in twos or three if they aren't picked up by friends or parents.  More than half the students in one class I was in the other day, when asked if they knew someone who had been shot in the streets, raised their hand.  I don't think life in Ghana is anything like that.

But isn't it an interesting concept -- bringing students from different countries together via Skype ?  If you want to know  more, get in touch with me.  And in the meantime, let's all think:  What really does it feel like to be an American ?

Middle School and "Boost"

I was telling a friend about the school where I am currently teaching and he suggested to me that I should post a lot of details and information about it because it is remarkable.  At the risk of repeating myself, I'll start to give a rundown here.

This middle school is comprised of sixth, seventh and eighth graders, currently about 300 of them.  About 81% of them -- according to posted statistics -- are Hispanic.  I sense that Spanish is the home language of almost every pupil.  The parents who visit the school -- and there are a lot -- often don't speak any English.  Most of the staff speaks Spanish, though instruction is always in English and although great efforts are made to teach the students proper English, including vocabulary and composition.  Eight or nine percent of the students, according to those same statistics, are supposed to be African-American, but in visiting every class in the school I haven't noted more than a dozen there presently who are.  A few students are Asian.  A few are whites.  And as I look around the school with these statistics in mind, I think the current percentage of students who are Hispanic is really higher than the official figures.

Classes consist of anywhere from 24 to 32 students.  The classroom shelves all have textbooks, but one of the things I noted early on is that textbooks are almost never used.  Everything seems to be based on Xeroxed sheets put together by the teachers or possibly gleaned from the Internet.  I know that the teachers meet weekly or bi-weekly to plan their teaching together.  Obviously they are working to meet State standards at a minimum, but I think they are exceeding these considerably.

One of the features of the school is the morning "boost" session.  Not all students attend these -- only the ones whose test scores have indicated serious deficiencies or who have been identified as having learning disabilities.  In the morning boost I attend each day, students spend a half hour working on booklets of graduated math problem,s.  They start with a pretest to see how they do on a particular type of problem.  Then they have about ten pages of problems that slowly get more and more complicated.  Then they finish with a "post test" to make certain they have learned the skills their booklet emphasized.  While they are doing their booklet exercises, they are paired off, sometimes with an instructor between them, but more often not.  They take turns solving a problem, explaining it out loud to the other student as they go.  The teacher in charge of boost, whom I work with, grades their work each day -- not based on how many problems they solved correctly, but on their interaction with the other student in their pair.   The grading system is called "BAME."  This stands for "beginning," "approaching," "meeting," and "exceeding."  The teach in charge goes around the table, announcing which one of these levels each student reached during that session, AND GRADING TOTALLY ON THE QUALITY OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE STUDENTS, and not on how many problems each student finished or how correct his or her answers were.

Students are assigned this "boost" session based on their having done very poorly on normal test scores.  Only a small percentage of the student body attends them.