As you know, being a high school English teacher at Lynwood has been my life for years and years and years now. And truly, I love it.

Which is why I am taking a leave of absence from my classroom. Simply put, the demands of my professional life have outstripped the ability for me to meet all of these demands in an excellent, balanced, sane manner… and push has come to shove.

For the past years – ever since I was named California’s Teacher of the Year 2007 – my life has pretty much been a stay up til midnight, wake at 5:00 a.m. and work-8-hours-on-a-Saturday type of experience. All while criss-crossing the country year round speaking at conferences and doing Professional Development for schools when I can squeeze it in. Naively, I guess I thought the load would eventually lighten.

It hasn’t. In fact, it keeps growing.

Shockingly, I do not seem to be able to sustain this pace and, when I think about it (and my family), I realize that I don’t need to have a stroke/heart attack/breakdown to grasp the idea that I am burning the candle way too hard – and have been for quite a long time now.

Yet, there are other factors as well.

Clearly, we are suffering from a crisis of demoralization in education today and it my strongest belief that teachers need to be better supported with higher quality tools, strategies and materials that have been proven to work.

Teachers teaching teachers is a solution that makes sense to me. And the need for teachers to have available more PD and better PD is, to me, a glaring national need.

As mentioned, for years I have been speaking at conferences, providing PD for school districts and so on, flying all over the country working to share best practices and provide real solutions to fellow educators as they seek to improve their classroom craft. And each time I have done so, I have bounced back to Lynwood High (often on late night flights) to wake up bright and early to teach at a full-time pace.

To say the challenge has been exhausting would be an understatement. Keeping up with such a powerhouse schedule, all while writing books year round (I have 4 new titles that will be out in the next 24 months) as I strive to remain a dedicated dad and husband has rendered my life out of balance. Yet oddly enough, it’s paid dividends for Lynwood High.

Big ones, in fact.

A little backstory: Two years my school principal asked me to reduce my teaching load to 4 classes and then use the other time in my day to do some T.O.S.A. work for him. (Teacher on Special Assignment.) I turned him down. Why? Because hey, I gotta work here and, as every good camper knows, well… you don’t poop where you eat (i.e. you don’t staff develop where you staff).

But he nagged at me and tugged at me and cajoled me into buying into the greater good of doing PD for our own ELA staff at Lynwood High, taking a greater leadership role on campus, and so on.

So last year I said I’d give it a go. I taught 4 periods and accepted the TOSA challenge. My assignment: share my best practices with our 9th Grade ELA staff and have it pay off in terms of data. That’s right… we needed higher test scores.

Now, it’s no secret how much I detest the current bubble test mania that has swept the nation in a lunatic fashion. (We are digressing into a, “If they do not test it, why should we teach it” world. So dumb!) I find the bubble tests to be poor assessments of both our student aptitudes as well as inferior instruments for determining how well a teacher is actually performing at their job – and I have said so a zillion times over. Standardized bubble tests don’t hold a candle to portfolio-based growth model assessments that incorporate a dimension of Project-Based Learning.

But our school was placed on California’s 100 Worst Performing Schools … by the powers-that-be in Sacramento in 2009. And NCLB had demoted us to such ugly depths (I think it was to level negative 14,123) that essentially, they were threatening us with firing everyone on staff, closing the school, having the state take us over and every other draconian measure you could imagine.

Would I help? Would I teach our teachers? Not full time, mind you. Not even close. I would still teach 4 full-time classes of freshman English. (I’ve taught all grade levels of high school but getting more kids off to a better start at our site has been my thing as of late.)

Between the guilt, the appealing to a higher calling, the fact that I believed I could actually help a great deal if I was given the liberty to meet the challenge on my own terms in my own way without any district or administrative interference (indeed, I sometimes suffer from delusions of grandeur), I accepted the TOSA assignment for a year.

And yes, I got blowback like mad from some “peers”. In the Math and History Department. (Go figure. ELA was totally receptive, but some folks in Math and History brought me to the doorstep of getting mired in the nonsense of nearly filing grievances. Just ugly stuff. Amazing how petty people can be.)

Well, we just got our test scores back for the CST (California State Test, the core element which enables the powers that be to bring the sledge-hammer down on our heads).

The math scores at Lynwood High flat-lined, for the most part. (Actually, in some categories, the lion’s shares of the math scores were up 1%). Science was up a bit in Biology, but down in Chemistry. World History had 0% growth but U.S. History showed some solid gains.

English Language Arts “blew the roof off of it” (to quote my principal).

I was charged specifically with providing TOSA services to 9th grade teachers. (If I recall, there were 14 other educators in the room at the start. We’re a Title I, Urban High School with well over 4,000 kids on campus.)

Now, I don’t know how much you may know about the way state test scores work, but essentially there are 5 categories: Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, and Far Below Basic.

The 9th grade ELA scores for 2010 at Lynwood High…
· Doubled the amount of students who scored in the Advanced category, a 100% increase from the year prior.
· Increased the Proficient category by gains of 82.4% from the year prior.
· Reduced the amount of students scoring in the Below Basic and Far Below Basic categories by approximately 25%.

As my principal says, “The numbers don’t lie.”

And this was done in a school besieged by budget cuts, administrative turnover, and immense district turmoil. (Don’t ask. Just google it if you really want to know, but I warn you… close your eyes. Some ugly, ugly stuff went down in our district last year. And of course, it’s always the kids and the good teachers who end up being the collateral damage.)

Essentially, the ELA scores look like a clear anomaly on the school performance data charts.

And when the gains of all of English are taken into account (9th, 10th and 11th grade; the rest of the department started coming into my room at about the halfway point of the year based on the good word of mouth other teachers passed along as to what was going on in the 9th grade meetings) it looks as if the English Department of Lynwood High has practically carried our entire school from being on the 100 Worst Performing Schools in California list to a list that says we made it to safe harbor because we met our AYP and API growth. (Those scores won’t be official til next week and we might miss some sub-groups so who’s to say… but we bounced, and high.)

Now, was it me who did all the work? Of course not! This is our department’s triumph. But what I did do was clear out all the administrators from putting their fingers in our ELA pie and I went about sharing best practices and providing all the other teachers with lessons plans, pacing plans, PBL projects, curricular goals and real materials that, well provided a win/win scenario for the kids (they actually found meaning and engagement in the work) and the teachers (they actually found excitement and rigor and the path to authentic student achievement in the lesson plans).

Indeed, the Lynwood teachers in the ELA Dept did the work. What they needed was
1) the tools 2) the PD as to how best to use the tools 3) the support to implement the tools and 4) the inspiration and belief that we could actually accomplish our aims.

All of this is a long-winded way of me saying, I am not sure right now how to best spend my professional energies. But perhaps, I can help other teachers and other schools get better results without resorting to mindless drill-n-kill worksheets that worship at the altar of the bubble tests as if these inferior assessments are the end-all, be-all raison d’etre for the existence of schools in America.

And not one time did I crack open the textbook. Scores of six pound, deflavorized doorstops went unused on this journey. (Alas, we can’t get the ridiculous amount of money we spent for these things back. And wow, could we use that HUGE amount of cash now. Have you any idea what we must have spent on those things?) We used real books and primary source documents the whole time.

And so, the time has come for a change. But the thing is, people ascending to tackle new challenges in our field is actually quite commonplace for many, many educators.

Some people go into administration and become principals. Others go on to become district coaches. Still others go straight to the loony bin, by-passing all the intermediaries. (Clearly, an option for many of us worth considering.)

Me, I have arrived at the determination that I might just very well be better able to serve the needs of our schools, teachers and students from a different position.

Becoming a fierce advocate for Professional Development is where I am going to start. I mean when I see teachers being kicked around like half-smashed piñatas at an 8 year old’s birthday party by the media, I often think to myself, “I wonder if those teachers were ever properly prepared to succeed in the increasingly-more demanding world of being a modern day educator?”

Let’s be honest, our graduate programs and colleges and universities are doing the best they can (saddled as they are with bureaucracy) but are they really preparing teaching graduates in a soup-to-nuts fashion to excellently meet the demands and rigor of being a real school teacher for the rest of our careers?

Of course not. Because they can’t. It is preposterous even think they could. Teaching is a profession where one must perpetually evolve. Learning the craft does not stop with professional certification yet these days, with district budget problems and cutbacks, PD has been relegated to slightness at best, unavailability at worst.

And so much of it just stinks! Can I tell you how much worthless PD I have been mandated to sit through over the course of my career? It’s why I got into providing PD in the first place… because I thought people deserved better than what so many of these charlatans were providing.

Plus, I gotta wonder if a fire is really being lit under anybody’s butt to change the course of this clearly foundering educational ship right now. I mean look at the circumstances under which my peers at Lynwood are expected to function this year. It’s just nuts!

And I don’t even think it’s the School Board’s fault because the economic shenanigans of Wall Street (can you say sub-prime?) was the fuse that lit this keg of dynamite in the first place. When you have no money, you have no money but still, at what point does a job become untenable?

Plus, Lynwood is not alone. Go to Baltimore, Oakland, Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta (can I stop typing now?) and you will see story after story after story of the same thing.

The teachers are the good guys, the ones standing our ground giving our best. And yet, we are being blamed for all the ills of today’s classrooms.

Today’s teachers need a deep and frequent drink of Professional Development to meet the demands of a changed world and evolving schools. Yet, if we are able to even eek out a few sips of quality PD over the course of a school year, it’s almost as if we are the lucky ones.

This must change.

The truth is we all wear many, many hats as a classroom teacher these days. (Perhaps even too many… but that’s the job, right?) From academic taskmaster to surrogate parent, from rigorous instructor to compassionate counselor, from behavior management specialist to test preparation maestro, we teach hard skills such as the content area standards and soft skills such as the critical nature of being a young person of high character and resiliency. We manage attendance, staff meetings, parents, bullying, tolerance, hormones, homework, federal mandates, district requirements, administrative memos and papers, papers, papers.

All for a salary that, for many of us, requires there to be a second income in the household.

Yet still, we love our work (when we remember why we took the job in the first place).

Nothing beats our highs and nothings crushes like our lows. We are not cubicle people; we are living, breathing dynamic souls starving for sustenance to sustain our spirits.

Of course, I might not be able to make manifest my highest aspirations for our profession but you know what… I am gonna freakin’ try!

Thus begins the next step for me.

BTW, the downside, I must admit, is scary. After all, when you decide to take a stand for something, people inevitably take their shots at you – it’s like the American way. But the upside will be great for our profession if I can actually make the impact to which I aspire.

We need more PD. We need better classroom tools. We need someone with no political aspirations (I ain’t runnin’ for nuthin’! And that’s official!) to call the Lemons in our profession Lemons. (Why folks are defending weak teachers who game the system when it just hurts all of us is beyond me. And as a teacher, I know that when these folks are “sheltered” it ends up falling on people like me to do more to carry their water – as if I already don’t have a difficult enough job.)

But most teachers – and I mean MOST – are not Lemons. We are professionals who need an empathetic, intelligent and helping hand because we are being ridiculously swamped. We deserve more assistance, we need more support and we have to craft a situation whereby we can obtain these essentials without the buffoonery of bean counters standing in the way of us really reaching today’s real kids.

To be totally honest, I am not sure how I even got into this position of potential influence in the first place. And I certainly never intended to write a manifesto when I sat down to type this up today. But somebody who is not beholden to any political agenda has to start speaking up for what makes common sense.

I mean, sheesh, when I think about the stances some people are taking in the arena of public education, I just have to scratch my head and say, “Uh, hello… like WTF?!”

(Not that I have any strong opinions about the quality that kids and teachers deserve or anything.)

God’s speed to us all this year. The next stage for me now begins and I thank you in advance for your good wishes.

One last note: Clearly, I am incredibly lucky to even get this opportunity… and my writing career is what’s going to be paying the bills for me this year. (Did I mention this was an unpaid Leave of Absence?) So indeed, I am extremely fortunate to even have this opportunity in the first place. With new books of fiction coming out, new BookJams being released and people emailing me to come do speeches for their conferences or PD for their districts at a clip that exceeds anything I ever expected, well, like I said… I am certainly the humble beneficiary of good providence. My aim is to (borrowing a line from Google which I am not even so sure is totally true) “do good”.

Doing high-quality, valuable work for teachers, kids, literacy and schools is my aim and I have a sense that once I regain some personal balance in my life, I might be able to have a greater positive impact outside my classroom at Lynwood High… as opposed to in it.

(But damn, I am going to miss the kids this year.)

It’s been said that we are the change we are hoping to see. Well, I’m tossing my hat into that ring.

Hey, you only live once, right?

I’ve been in my current classroom for more than a decade now. And across the hall from me has been one of the most fantastic, supportive, wonderful teachers I know at my school.

She’s retiring this year. After 34 years teaching English at Lynwood High, she’s hanging up her spurs.

I am sad.

School, of course, will roll on. It always rolls on. As teachers, we like to think that we are so important, so critical, so essential to the success of the campus – and in a way, we are.

But in a way we are also not.

I am happy for my friend across the hall. Really happy. A new adventure begins for her in less than 2 weeks. (I scored her chair – nice!). But for me, a bit of the rock-solid foundation that has always been in place for me will no longer be there when the 2010/2011 school year begins.

That unsettles me.

Life is change and those who best adapt, most prosper. I get that. But there are some changes I think I’d rather not make.

Losing the person to whom I feel most close on campus represents an unfillable hole for me next year.

Melancholy is the order of the day. I am thankful, but I am sad.

How much should I, as a teacher, be expected to do between 8:00 a.m and 3:00 p.m.?

And don’t those expectations change depending on what is going on between 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. in a student’s life?

Some kids come into my room ready to learn. With the tools to learn.

And some don’t.

Some need me to be play the role of their parent, their advisor, their taskmaster, their shoulder to cry on, and so on.

Others just need me/want me to be their “English teacher”. (And by that I mean the person who guides them in skills pertaining to advancing their abilities in the realm of Language Arts: reading literature, writing, discussing philosophy, applying 21st century skills, that sort of thing.)

If I only take on the role of being their “English teacher” (as I define it above), am I being derelict in my duties?

If I take on more than the job of being their “English teacher” am I over-stepping my boundaries?

I don’t know. And worse, I am not sure where I can turn for a credible answer.

After all, the state standards, those things I have been hired to teach (and which are supposed to instruct me), speak nothing of showing empathy for a student who, for example, just learned their favorite uncle was sent to prison for a decade. (A recent event in my teaching day.) On the other hand, if I allow this event to be an excuse which exempts the student from working in class, where does that leave me?

This is what is so silly about bubble tests: they do not take into account the ingredients which make up the stew. They just assess the stew… and then the finger gets pointed at teachers as if we are the only chefs contributing.

In fact, I’d say while we can most certainly be one of the most important contributors, we’re not number one. Not by a long shot.

What goes on between 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. in a student’s life greatly dictates what goes on between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. ( I gotta give a shout-out to JoAnne for raising this point in response to a previous blog post of mine!)

And anyone who tries to tell you that it doesn’t is trying to sell you something. And in my opinion, none of this is “excuse making” as some hard-liners would have you believe.

To the hard-liners, I think karma should give them a migraine headache and see if they can perform their job at the same ability as they would without the migraine.

That’ll learn them some compassion for “mitigating factors in performance”.

BTW, Happy Cinco de Mayo! And for those of you who can expect low attendance on either May 5th (getting a jump on the partying!) or on May 6th (too much partying to get to class), remember, the bubble tests don’t care… so STEP UP!

Are we ready to wade into a chat about Arizona? In case you hadn’t heard, immigration has been an issue on their voters’ minds as of late.

Let’s see if I can try to at least introduce what is going on without inserting any incendiary personal opinions into the conversation at this point.

Then again, do I really need to? Look at what the Wall Street Journal tells us is going on.

Arizona Grades Teachers on Fluency
State Pushes School Districts to Reassign Instructors With Heavy Accents or Other Shortcomings in Their English

So what this means is, if I have this correct, is that (I pinched this line from the Huff Post): “the Arizona Department of Education has told schools that teachers with “heavy” or “ungrammatical” accents are no longer allowed to teach English classes.”

Can someone please define what an “ungrammatical” accent is for me?

Face it, this thing is going all the way to the Supreme Court.

The law, which makes it a misdemeanor to be in the United States without proper documents and allows law enforcement officers to stop anyone and demand proof of citizenship, was signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week.

Jan Brewer has been portrayed as a Nazi and she’s been portrayed as a governor who is right-minded about her approach to immigration policy.

All I know is, if they start going around checking English teachers for ungrammaticalisms, I be thinking me’s might have to start proofing the blog I write for for much more better grammaticalistic correctness than I already has tried to do.

If I was going to craft a list of the top 10 books of the 20th century in our nation’s English classes, the ones that have most shaped, informed, been taught, and so on, I have a feeling The Catcher in the Rye would make the list.

Today we note that the author of that work, J.D. Salinger, passed away yesterday at the age of 91.

I always really liked the fact that Salinger was a so-called “recluse”. Especially since in this day and age, the rush for media attention on behalf of every Tom, Dick and American Idol Harry kinda irks me. I mean here’s a guy who has sold about 250,000 copies of his book a year every year for about five decades. (Wow, right?) And yet, his last official interview was in 1980.

How much do I wish that Ann Coulter’s last official interview was in 1980, huh?

And Salinger’s last published work was in 1965. But do you think he stopped writing? Personally, I don’t. Does that mean someone is sitting on a few manuscripts that might be genuine treasures?

Does that mean that Salinger had a bonfire filled with manuscripts we’ll never get to read. Or better yet, assign theme papers about.

Discuss the theme of angst and rebellion evidenced by Holden Caulfiend in the novel The Catcher in the Rye and illuminate why the protagonist’s nervous breakdown represents the breakdown of the modern American family’s sense of genuine intimacy. And be sure to use MLA format.

Sheesh! Teenagers everywhere should be kneeling that he never published again. It saved them mountains of 5 paragraph essays!

Maybe a grandkid will inherit a bounty of books written by his grandpa that will one day see the light of day? And maybe, what we got is all we’ll get.

Was he liberated by his success or a prisoner of it? Probably both.

Either way, as an English teacher I just hope someone is going through his attic. After all, there are essays to assign!

I am all FIRED UP for Philly! The truth is, I just love NCTE. It’s simply a home-run experience every time I attend the annual conference and I always leave a better teacher as a result of having made the trip.

Why? The people. It’s that simple.

NCTE provides me a chance to be in the same room with some of the best minds in the world of English Language Arts. I mean where else can you go to hear Carol Jago, Kylene Beers, Jim Burke, and on and on and on and on? (To even start a list like this is to risk leaving people off of it but trust me on this one — the BEST and BIGGEST and MOST BOLD thinkers in our field will be in the City of Brotherly Love determined to share some of their brotherly/sisterly love with everyone else. It smokes!)

A search of this year’s program is tortuous though. I mean I want to go see this, but then I want to go see that and then I am scheduled to be over here but I really want to go over there as well… and on and on and on.

(A little shout out to Carol Jago for that one, too — as the prez, I guess she gets to get mentioned twice in this post — and her “team” of course… can’t forget them. So many people work so hard for so long to put this event on that I gotta give the unsung heroes need a shout out, too!)

BTW, have you ever seen more rockin’ authors made so accessible to dweebs like me gathered in one place? Look, when it comes to writers, let’s be honest… I am a bit of a groupie. Jeff Kinney, Sharon Flake, Junot Diaz, Gordon Korman, Tracey Kidder, Laurie Halse Anderson, Sharon Draper, Patrick Carmen… I could type for hours!

And they all sign books in the Exhibit Hall. Where else can you find that?

Ah, the Exhibit Hall. (Deep breath!) Can I tell you how much I love that part of the conference? I get to shop and browse and dream and think and weigh and consider — and get free stuff! (Yep, just work it, people… that’s how it’s done… work it!) I swear, the NCTE Exhibit Hall is like an amusement park ride for English teachers and I wish we all got to take it more than once a year.

Of course, at the end of the day it’s the other “real teachers” like me that I get to meet from across the country that makes it the most special. The workshops may fill my brain but chillin’ with English teachers fills my soul. Attending NCTE is a chance to listen and learn and exchange thoughts, ideas, gripes and possible solutions with so many other “front line” educators that it never fails to create in me a sense of real professional camaraderie. (And how rare is that?) NCTE is a feast for the human teaching spirit and unfortunately, I believe that our profession is, in a way, suferring from a crisis of morale. But those who attend NCTE get that shot of teacher juice which energizes, refreshes and reinvigorates them — and it just can’t be bottled or obtained in any other way.

You wanna know how I always feel when I leave NCTE. This kinda decent writer I once ran across probably says it best:

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more!

NCTE reminds me why I love this job. It rejuvenates my batteries and inevitably, I return from the conference just thrilled by the idea of returning to my classroom.

Get there if you can or try to link in via social networking, their website, their twitter hashtag, the blogs, whatever.

It’s an important event for the profession — and for our communal spirit.

NCTE has got the WOW factor… and I am so FIRED UP!

See ya in Philly.

Is there such a thing as an English class that doesn’t read a single, real, whole book over the course of the year? I mean I know there is. Some places — WAY TOO MANY in fact — have the The Lords of District Oversight that Ban the Reading of Novels in English Class

That’s right, they mandate that NO NOVELS be taught.

It’s all excerpts, pieces taken from anthologies, worksheets, scripted programming and… biggest of all, practice tests to prepare for the real tests.

Am I the only one who thinks this is nuts?

Every good English teacher I know uses real books in the classroom. From Crime and Punishment to The Outsiders to The Skin I’m In to Old Yeller to Hatchet to The Great Gatsby to The Pearl to The Lord of the Flies to Animal Farm to To Kill a Mockingbird and on and on and on, real books are part of the fabric of what makes for, in my estimation, the essential, core constitution of a real and effective and meaningful ELA class.

When exactly did that stop? (Don’t worry, I know. It’s rhetorical.)

So the question is, forgetting even my own prejudice towards the use of real books (prejudice because 1) I love them and 2) years and years of experience tell me that they work as my BEST tool for accomplishing all the literacy goals both I and my school district have for our students) am I the only one who believes we need to re-double our efforts to start fighting for primary source authentic literature (i.e. real books) in the classroom?

Because real books are under assault from the bean/bubble counters.

Could you teach an entire year as an ELA educator without being able to use one real novel? And if so, do you think that by doing so this would be a methodology that best serve the needs of your kids?

The Lords of District Oversight that Ban the Reading of Novels in English Class are a menace to the very fabric of our discipline… and isn’t it time that someone stood up to them and explained how the emperor has no clothes?

And a tiny wanker, too.

Sorry, just had to get that last “little one” in. Get it? Little one?

Basically, I have little idea what to do in the classroom. The more guidance I am provided, the less clearly I understand what I ought to do. And I have a feeling I am not alone.

Am I supposed to teach my kids how to properly punctuate an appositive phrase? Yep. And how do I know that? Because it says so right there in the English Language Arts standards.

So, am I supposed to teach a kid that they should live their life with a sense of passion and purpose? I’d say yes, but how do I know that being that this is not listed anywhere in the English Language Arts standards?

Maybe I shouldn’t mention it to them.

I am supposed to teach imagery in literature? Uh-huh. Why? Because it says so right there in the English Language Arts standards.

But am I supposed to teach a kid to persevere when times get tough? I’d say yes, but again… it’s not anywhere in the standards.

The standards ask me to teach symbolism, capitalization and the organization of ideas in an essay. Does that mean I ought not to teach loyalty, fairness, and compassion?

See this is where I get lost. If I only teach what the standards tell me to teach, then that means I am going to have taught my kids how to properly punctuate an appositive phrase, identify imagery and symbolism in literature, apply proper capitalization to appropriate words in a sentence and how to organize ideas for an essay.

However, if I only teach what the standards tell me to teach, that means I will not have taught my kids to live their life with a sense of passion and purpose, to persevere when times get tough, and to be loyal, fair, and compassionate.

Now I am not sure about the parents of your students, but I have a feeling that if I could offer my parents a choice whereby I could teach their kids to live their life with a sense of passion and purpose, to persevere when times get tough, and to be loyal, fair, and compassionate or teach their kids how to properly punctuate an appositive phrase, identify imagery and symbolism in literature, apply proper capitalization to appropriate words in a sentence and how to organize ideas for an essay, they are going to OVERWHELMINGLY choose the former. (I know I would.)

So if I blindly follow the standards, I am a dummkopt. And if I toss out the standards and teach things I feel are tremendously important to know — yet are nowhere in the listed content standards of the state — I am a rebel deserving scorn who is operating outside the confines of the curriculum.

And so, despite all this guidance, I really have no idea what to do… other than follow my own best professional instincts and play the hand I am dealt as best as I can as each individual situation arises.

Hey… isn’t that why they hired me in the first place?

I am quite familiar with the way things work in many English classes across the country. But on this point, I am completely baffled.

Is my high school the only one that views English class as the administrative portal through which all the bilge should flow?

For example, today I was greeted with a gigantic informational survey as mandated by my district, an anonymous appraisal of a California teenagers “health”. By health they asked questions about exercise, eating and sleep. They also asked about drug, tobacco and alcohol use. They also asked about bullying, violence and emotional support systems both in the home and in school. It was bubble sheet format (of course) and there must have been 100 questions broken into a variety of sections. It took my kids 45 minutes to complete this thing — in each and every class — and, as was made quite clear to me, its administration wasn’t an option. I even had to sign a student confidentiality agreement promising I wouldn’t take a looksy at any of the answers provided by my kids so that as much veracity as could be gleaned about the “health” of our students could come to the fore.

All in all, I wasn’t really opposed to the survey since it seemed to be something they were going to be taking quite seriously. Plus, they asked a lot of pointed, hardcore questions. And when the results come my way in the year 2012 I’ll be riveted, I am sure.

But why do they administer this in English class?

When it comes to textbooks being handed out the first week of school, we always go through English class. When there are letters to be handed out to all the kids, they always go through English class. When anything needs to get from administration to the kids, they always go through English class.

Is it this way at other schools as well? At least once a month instructional minutes are sucked from my curriculum in the name of English being the prime gateway to all the kids of our school. If English were a narcotic, my department would be marijuana.

Now I know the answer is, at least at my school, that English is the only department that sees all the kids at every grade level. English 9, 10, 11 and 12 — every kid has at least one of these classes on their schedule. With Math, some 9th graders are in Algebra II and not in Algebra I or Geometry; with science, some seniors don’t have anything; we don’t even offer a history class for 9th graders on our campus and the idea of distributing anything but jock straps through PE seems preposterous.

(BTW, do people still use jock straps or was that a 1970′s thing? Personally, I think the modern underwear revolution which provides exceptional support without providing locker room awkwardness is one of the great unheralded advancements in the world of sports. Sorry, I am way off track.)

How come our English classes, one of the most admittedly “core” courses at a school, has its time so henpecked away? They treat my minutes so frivolously and yet they count on my instruction so exceptionally. What gives?

Maybe they read Hemmingway once upon a time and something just kinda stuck: The Bilge Flows Through Thee

I have a love/hate relationship with Open House. I initially hate it because I will have left my house about 6:00 am and not returned home til about 9:00 pm. Trust me, that gets old quick. On the other hand, seeing my kids without their “student” masks on is always insightful and heartwarming. I forget just how adult so many of my students must be. They care for younger siblings, interpret English for their non-English speaking parents and carry the dreams of their family’s deepest aspirations for success in America with them as they try to navigate me assigning them “Dissect the theme of ________ in a well-written essay” for homework many, many times a year.

Sometimes, it’s gotta be tough.

However, I just had a student — male, Hispanic, 15 years old — come into my room with 2 parents and they wanted to know everything. His grades, attitude, attendance, work ethic… goodness were they on me about him. And he was looking at the floor, somewhat ashamed/embarassed. But our conference ended with me telling this student that he was lucky, that there are scores of kids at this school that have no parents coming to see me, no parents asking thoughtful questions, no parents making deep inquiries and really working hard to know what’s going on in their teenage son’s life.

And this student is a good kid. Well behaved, polite, smart, does his homework, not hanging with the wrong crowd (as far as I know but with teens today, does one really ever know?), on his way to college one day.

Yep, lucky. Though he might not really feel it so much now, this kind of involvement, their active engagement is going to have shaped — for the better — his future life.

Really, how many times on this ning have we discussed the importance of parents? And if Open House proves anything, it proves that. I mean the kids who are failing, is it a coincidence that their parents haven’t come to see me tonight? Virtually all the folks who came in this evening are parents of kids who are earning a B+ or higher.

It’s not rocket science. Parents matter!! And meeting the parents of my students is always a joy for me. Goodness, I love Open House.

But I can’t wait for it to end so I can finally get out of here as well. Another long day almost in the books.

Parents, parents, parents. When they are on my side I feel like I can move mountains with my kids. And when they are not, the hills to climb becoming so much more steep.