I Leap into Oblivion

I'm trying to type quietly so I don't distract the five students who are hunched in too-small desks over test booklets. Those bubble-in answer sheets must look like Magic Eye optical illusions to them at this point, three days into this I-LEAP test. My 9th graders with learning disabilities and mild mental disabilities are giving everything they've got to this test. All week I have been fighting off the bleak knowledge that it won't be good enough. All week I have been searching for ways to protect them from realizing the same. I preach reality and the real world all the time to my students; now, suddenly, I have my fingers in the dam, trying to prevent reality from leaking into this room.

These five students have worked very, very hard this year. Between them all, they have fewer than 5 absences. That's including the young lady who has lived in six different towns since the hurricane. Four of them have done their homework faithfully since August. All of them are active participants in their classes. Several of them have gone from being nearly expelled last year to having a clean discipline record this year. The others have never been suspended. The point I'm making is that these are five good students, five kids who have held up their end of the education bargain.

The other side of this reality is that none of these students are going to pass this test, nor will they pass it in 10th grade or 11th grade. They will not get a high school diploma at the end of their 12 years of good faith and hard work. They may or may not get a "certificate of achievement" instead--a piece of paper not recognized by colleges or most employers--depending on a state decision in the coming months. Their parents have signed papers acknowledging this, and the students have been told about it, coated in plenty of sugar so that the abject injustice of it doesn't fully sink in. If it did, they would probably stop coming to school--and how could we persuade them otherwise? As much effort as it takes for them to do what they struggle to do--read and write--every single day, what is the incentive, the reward, the carrot at the end of the stick? When it comes to students in special education, we only have the stick. We believe that they will fail, so we don't even have a meaningful reward for those who make it. We prod and we preach, we teach the same standards and we give the same tests, but we expect failure, and it's hardly surprising when we get it.

You probably think I'm pessimistic and cynical, and that I have given up on my students. I believe--and desperately hope--that this is not true. I have not given up on their ability to excel, to grow by giant steps, to build fulfilling lives, to be leaders in their communities, to leave their mark on the world. That's what we work toward every day. These students have pulled themselves from a 1st or 2nd grade reading level up to a 4th or 5th in the past 8 months; that is remarkable growth that results from remarkable effort. A test on a high school level, however, is just not within their reach, yet.

I'm not blaming the test, and I'm not saying that students with special needs shouldn't be held to high expectations or tested. The problems are farther- and deeper-reaching than that: The problem is that they enter 9th grade on a 2nd grade level. The problem is that they do the same worksheets from the same textbook for all 4 years of high school science, that neither they nor their teachers have access to a reading or math program that meets their needs, that their "Individual Education Plans" all look the same, that they are bored or confused in most of their classes, and have been for the past 10 years, that they have never been asked to read a novel or write an essay, never been taught algebra, never used the scientific method to investigate a real question. The problem is that I'm sitting here writing on a blog with a circulation of 4, instead of raising my voice and fighting. The problem is that nobody knows what to do about it.

The kids are still hunched over their test booklets. They have brand-new, neatly sharpened pencils lined up next to them. They have packed granola bars and little bottles of water in their booksacks for sustenance, as if they are on a long and demanding hike. They are, I suppose, and I'm their guide--and I have no idea where this trail leads or whether we are anywhere near the right path. Every year during testing week, I can't help but feel like we've been here before. We've spent the year walking in a very long circle, and we are lost in these woods.

three minutes worth of writing

...because I have to do it when I can do it, even when I have to leave the house in three minutes to accumulate more bruises on my legs playing the most ridiculous and addictive sport ever created. So this is a freewrite, first draft, completely random, please forgive me. Playing ultimate twice a week is literally the only time when I am not shaky with anxiety about school. I don't know why I'm not handling stress this year, but I'm not. Maybe I've never handled the stress of teaching very well, only it took a summer of returning to my self, stripped of anxiety, to see that this state of existence isn't normal. I keep thinking if I get a little more organized, if I find a better system for this, if I reteach that, it will all come together. And things do come together, but I am too quick to dismiss them. Woe is me. What a wanker. Enough of that. Now I've used four minutes, I'm going to be late, and I haven't even told you about the light-up frisbee and headbands we got for our night games. And all I can think of is "would my students be able to find the main idea of this paragraph?" Would I, halfway through teaching that lesson, admit to them that there actually is none, or would I bluff my way through it? How much of my day is spent bluffing? Why am I not stopping writing? Why in the world am I going to post this to be read? Gotta keep the blog alive, I guess...I'm off...

Querencia?

I wish I could say I'd been writing much lately. Instead, I've been spray-painting paper frames for my classroom and scouring thrift stores for a couch that is not quite as smelly as it is cheap. Thank goodness for this little blog, exerting just enough pressure on me to make me at least return to what I've written and find something to post here. This is a little ode to Austin. I'm not sure why it shifts into second person halfway through.

7.2.05 Jo's Coffee, South Congress Street, Austin, Texas

I don’t know whether a magical place is a magical place, objectively and universally, or if different places are magical to different people—maybe meeting a town is like meeting a person; sometimes you just click. In any case, I love clicking with a town. I love the small, serendipitous things that happen; they seem to be the way the town tells you, “I’m glad you’re here.” This happened for me in Berkeley a bit (finding a job three seconds after arriving), and in Santa Fe once (a view from the newsstand, with silent movies flickering on the second-story shutters, peace and contentment coming out of nowhere like a mist), and certainly on our most recent and most indulgent trip to Drake Bay (even the getting there--a plane, a jeep and two boats--was like an arm around my shoulders, assuring me that I would never be bored here).
This ethereal warm welcome happens most regularly for me here in Austin. Sometimes the gesture is elaborate—as it was last spring, when we were welcomed to town by Jo’s Easter Pet Parade, specially designed to amuse the hell out of us, perfectly suited to our senses of humor and of wonder, with drum major and a sousaphone player in musty old thrift-store uniforms leading a bedraggled-but-proud line of two dozen or so costumed pets and their inordinately proud and unselfconscious owners.

More often, as this morning, the welcome is nothing more than a very friendly and instantly warm conversation with a stranger—where he parks his baby right next to you and walks to the counter to get napkins (this makes you feel awfully good—it tells you that in this place, you’re not suspect or freakish, but kind and decent; the world at large and you agree about your character, here—it’s the ultimate gesture of a stranger’s trust in your goodness). This, after your eyes met and you gave your standard smile—you imagine that it’s shy- but-sufficiently-friendly, but you’ve never seen what it actually looks like—and he replies with a beam and a “how’s it going?” that is actually, astonishingly, followed by a pause indicating that he hopes for a real answer. You remind yourself that you have to get out of the habit of replacing “hey” with a “how’s it going,” that lacks this pause and eye contact. So he parks the baby, asking your indulgence, which you gladly give and feel very friendly for doing so graciously. You make lame-but-nice comments about the baby, he asks you what you’re reading; just as he’s spooning applesauce into the baby’s mouth, his order is called out and set on the counter; you offer to get it for him. He refuses, but does a double take and introduces himself, offering a hand to shake. This is a gesture that I love and that I need to master—the gesture that tells a person she has moved beyond small talk and into genuine fondness, that she is the kind of person you’d like to know. Giving your name like a gift to some stranger, pulling them a little bit closer to you, sticking out your hand to be shaken. It’s powerful, perhaps because it is the first risk in polite conversation between strangers: that hand could be refused, one’s name withheld. Maybe your offer to get the latte was the first risk, maybe that’s why it struck him and prompted the introduction. Either way, after that point, you feel comfortable going back to reading instead of chatting, knowing that you no longer need to be polite, only authentic—speaking when you have something worth saying, or asking questions that stem from genuine curiosity.

Soon, with applesauce finished, latte fetched, stroller packed, Tobin & son were gone. Nothing terribly profound, just Austin saying, “good morning, I’m glad you’re here—” which is profound enough, really.

Thanks, Freetaco, for this photo of the exact spot I'm talking about (it was at www.flickr.com). I was sitting at the spot on the
left.