Why do I so deeply enjoy helping kids who are no longer my students? I mean, it’s more work for me, right? And it’s not like I already don’t have enough to do. But still, when former kids come in and ask me for stuff, I always try and help them out — and I do it happily.

I guess it’s because I like to see them. I mean we build such close relationships over the course of a year and then, once summer hits, we all disperse into a thousand different directions. That feels normal. But when the school year starts back up again, I miss those relationships. I miss those kids. And they grow so much — and change and get taller, and lose their braces and so on, it’s just nice to see. My students, well, in a way it’s like each of them is a story in progress and I always want to know more about how things are unfolding in their lives. And of course, when things are going well for them, I am glad to see it.

Yet often I don’t see former students when things are going well for them. More often I see former kids when they need something.

Some need a schedule change. Some need to chat about something personal. Some need advice, a smile or someone to talk college football with. (GO USC TROJANS!) And some just need to feel a real connection with a real adult on campus.

I guess I live in perpetual empty nest syndrome. “How come you don’t call? You don’t write?” I become like a nagging mother with kids that have gone off to college and only touch base when needs arise.

And the thing is, I’ll take it… cause it’s better than nothing.

People who work in schools moan and moan all the time about how “the kids don’t read” but you know what… the people who are moaning aren’t really reading either. At least they’re not, in large part, doing the professional reading necessary (IMHO) to stay up to date with what’s going on the world of literacy and language arts.

I’ve got administrators screaming about how we need to make “data-driven decisions in the English Department” but these folks aren’t reading what I consider to be some of the best, most useful, most insightful books about the world of ELA Instruction — works that are replete with not only data, but reflections upon that data so that the reader/teacher/educator can make methodological decisions based on something other than “I am doing this because it came from above — and I must always do what comes from above — where it appears they simply pulled it out of their butt” mentality.

Here’s a list of a few books NOT read by the folks who are barking at my department with orders as to how to improve, of course, our test scores:

Readicide
Holding On To Good Ideas in Times of Bad Ones
The Reading Zone
Disrupting Class
A Whole New Mind
I Read It but I Don’t Get It
Why Students Don’t Like School
Outliers

Now I could go on. And please do not ask me how I know that most of the top-ranking folks have not read these books because I’ve surreptitiously tested them in my own nefarious ways. However, the point is not to embarrass anyone. The point is to question how can anyone taking on the challenge of improving ELA in the 2009/2010 school year really be considered seriously if they haven’t done this type of reading. (And yes, I know there are more titles as well.)

Sure, it’s hard, time-consuming and dense. But not having the time is, to me, just an excuse. I mean me, I teach, I write YA fiction, I blog, I spend good time with my family and I try to exercise… but I also read! Why? Because I find it absolutely necessary to the development, implementation and application of my professional craft. And I am not drawing an administrator’s salary, either. I do this as a regular ol’ classroom teacher.

So when these folks come to me with “strategies for success” that seem to have ben taken right out of some field book from a Master’s Class in the 1990′s to deal with the problems we are facing in the here and now, I just gotta shrug and say, “Yo, before you open your mouth, open a book, huh?”

So it’s the first day of class this week — I am teaching ALL freshman this year in an attempt to try and get a whole host of kids off to a good high school start with the ambition that a good leap out of the gate will help carry enough positive momentum for them to really see things through and graduate. (And graduation rate is a percentage we’d really LOVE to improve ’round these parts. Seems 50/50 isn’t quite what the state is hoping for in terms of odds.)

So my little angels are sitting there in third period, about 5 seconds after the bell rings, in a combination of freshman-ic fear, hope, excitement and “HOLY HORMONES, woulddya look at how big this place is — and these other kids are” type of silence. They are waiting for me to begin and no matter how much I smile and try to be warm and welcoming, they still are some of the quietest little mice on the planet. Things are just way too new for them around a huge urban school like this and very few ninth graders come in on Day 1 carrying much of an attitude.

Oh, they’ll grow it — that’s for sure — but on the first day of school it’s pretty chill.

Anyway, two girls suddenly walk in my room and take a seat a wee bit after the bell has sounded. And one of them is pregnant. That’s right, she’s pregnant.

Now, I’ve had students get pregnant during the school year (happens all over the country) but I’ve never had a freshman walk into school the first day of class already in her 2nd or 3rd trimester.

Of course, everyone tried not to stare… but they did. So she took a seat, I smiled and said “hi” to both the girls and that was that.

Then 3 minutes later as I am butchering names while calling role (I swear the attendance sheets should be spelled phonetically) the two girls who walked in late stood up, came up to me and asked, “Is this 12th grade?”

“Uhm, lemme see you schedule,” I answered. “Nope, you’re in the wrong room.”

And they left, the pregnant teen having to cross the front of the room a second time parading her little bundle of joy twice for all to see in a space of less than 4 minutes

Talk about an icebreaker activity for the new fish in the tank. Sent a “hope that ain’t me one day” chill across the skin of every girl in the room.

Sometimes classroom lessons just appear out of thin air.

Meeting all my students is always a great thing. I truly enjoy it every year. But there’s a part of me that knows deep down that if I had looped and stayed with my kids from last year for a back-to-back year of teaching the same kids for another academic turn, I would be spectacularly more efficient to start the school year.

I’d know names, proclivities, dispositions and so on. And they’d know me. We’d cut so much of the “learning curve” out — the one that took me many months to really get my hands around in order to feel really good about ALL of my kids. It actually seems as if it would be a keen move to have more teachers loop to ensure that that by week 2 of school, things are roaring at a high level and classes are well beyond the “tell me your name again” type of barriers that are inevitable every new school year.

Plus, there’d be fantastically greater accountability for summer reading and projects. (i.e. I assigned it last June, it’s due the first week of September, don’t pull any of that “My teacher never told me,” nonsense out the excuse bucket.)

On one hand, I like getting new kids. I like the new faces, I like the fresh energy and I like the new smiles. (Plus, I like the fact that I get to see the new smiles after having cracked some of the same jokes I’ve cracked in years prior — but hey, if the textbook companies can recycle short stories and lesson plans year after year, I can certainly plagiarize my own corny back-toschool comedy, right?)

Looping just seems like it would be so much more efficient. I mean it’s not like I didn’t end last year without wishing I could get to more things. And it’s not like the “data” about student performance wouldn’t be more meaningful considering I spent a year helping to generate it. The connections I made with parents, the kids learning my style, my tolerance for shenanigans, the way I expect their to be FUN as well as RIGOR in the classroom (cause the 2 are most definitely not mutually exclusive.)

I mean I spent a year with a bunch of students that, in a way, might best be considered groundwork, preparing them to be really successful this year.

They ar the seeds I planted for another teacher to harvest, I guess. But there’s a part of me that feels like I might be the best farmer for last year’s kids.

Yep, they may get sick of me — and I, them — but I do think I’d wring a heck of lot out of ‘em. And I do think that looping would save a lot of teachers valuable time in the classroom.

Am I loopy for thinking looping is a good idea?

I’d never heard of H.R. 1895 until very recently. Now that I have heard about it though, I wonder who in their right mind is not going to want to support this thing.

H.R. 1895 is also known as The Stand Up Act. Here’s what it’s all about:

The Safe Teen And Novice Driver Uniform Protection (STANDUP) Act would establish minimum standards for state graduated driver licensing (GDL) laws, which are proven to significantly reduce death and injury among young beginning drivers and those who share the road with them.

See vehicular accidents are the number one killer of teens in our country. Number one! And the fact is, teens are more likely to crash than any other demographic group of drivers. Like it’s not even close.

Matter of fact…

–Teen drivers ages 16 to 19 have a fatality rate four times the rate of drivers ages 25 to 69.
–Sixteen-year-old drivers have a crash rate three times more than 17-year-olds, 5 times greater than 18-year-olds, and two times that of 85-year-olds.
(These stats come from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — but I am also cribbing a bunch of info from the website they built to support this law.)

I could go on and on pounding the table with data, the horror stories of lives cut short, tales of my own students who passed away in car accidents (or of friends when I was in high school) but it would be superfluous. I mean, do any of us not fear for the safety of teens when they get in a car… especially when they get in the car with another teen driver, getting a ride home from a “party”?

Here is an overview of the STANDUP Act as taken from their website:

States must meet the following requirements under the STANDUP Act:

–Three stages of licensing – learner’s permit, intermediate stage, and full licensure – should be used
–Age 16 should be the earliest age for entry into the learner’s permit process
–Nighttime driving while unsupervised should be restricted during the learner’s permit and intermediate stages, until full licensure at age 18
–Driving while using communication devices (cell phone calls, texting) should be prohibited at least until full licensure at age 18
–Unrestricted, full licensure should occur no earlier than age 18
–Passengers should be restricted – no more than one non-familial passenger under age 21 unless a licensed driver over age 21 is in the vehicle – until full licensure at age 18

H.R. 1895: it’s the thing I never knew which I now know I want to support.

And as an English teacher, the connections to Tears of a Tiger are self-evident.