So for those of you who do not know, 420 became a slang term for smoking weed back in the 1970′s. There’s actually a really interesting – and funny – article here for those who want to learn a bit about the “history” of the invention of this name.

Tuesday was April 20th… i.e. 4-20.

Colleges struggle with students showing up at 4:20 p.m. on 4-20 to smoke a blunt and then go back to whatever it is that college kids do at 4:21 when they are stoned out of their minds.

Thousands and thousands of college kids do this, mind you… all across the nation.

But attendance on Tuesday was down in my classes/at my school on Tuesday, April 20th. And why?

When I innocently asked Tuesday, after taking role, “Where is everyone today?” one of my kids said, “Do you know what day it is?”

I do… but I didn’t put it together until then. (It was still early in the morning and I don’t really think like a 420 disciple.)

And being that we are on block schedule, I see my kids every other day. That means that on Thursday I will see the Tuesday absentees… and when I do see them, won’t I also be seeing them in a new light? I mean, I know kids smoke pot – I smell it in the halls quite often. However, ditching school to honor the Gods of Ganja?

For those kids on the fence for grades, don’t I now become all the more less likely to “cut ‘em some slack”?

Of course, I might end up wrongly assuming that Kid X was off getting high on Tuesday when they were home with a sore throat (from too many BONG LOADS!) but the fact is, how can my own assessment lens not be at least slightly tainted by such blatant ditching to go get blazed?

Besides, I took role well before noon. 420 doesn’t begin til 4:20.

Don’t pot smoking teens even know how to tell time anymore? School ends at 3:00 p.m. Why miss a class that ended well before 10:00 a.m.?

I know, I know… 420, Dude.

420

Arrrgghh!

Testing season is coming up — and if I am ETS (or another test-making company of like ilk) that means, it’s time to pop the bubbly.

Why? Because we are about to become a nation of bubble test takers and that means, cha-ching… cash is gonna be flowing into the coffers of the people who make these tests.

It’s like being a pumpkin salesman during the month of October — business is good.

But here’s a question. As far as I can tell, every corner of the world of education has seen the current budget crisis play a major role in their operations. At my school district, we RIF’d around 20% of the district’s teachers.

Across the state, we’ve reduced services to kids, cut out extra-curricular activities, started charging parents fees to allow their kids to play sports and so on.

But have the test takers reduced their prices for us?
Have the bubble test makers given us a break on cost?
Do we get a volume discount for literally lining up millions of customers annually?

My school is out of copy paper… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?
My school is out of toner cartridges… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?
Major school districts are literally shortening the school year whereby they will be providing less instructional hours to our most needy kids in order to make ends meet… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?

Pop the bubbly if you make bubbles… cause it’s boom time in a land where so many others are going bust.

It’s good work if you can get it, right?

A few random thoughts on school now that I am back in action…

–They should plan for a vakay after a person’s vakay so that folks like us can have some time to rest up after having taken a vakay. Recovering from hard work is tiring.

–How come the kids that were the talkers in class before Spring Break return to school as, yep, you guessed it, the talkers in class but the kids who were the motivated and diligent students before the break return to school looking as if they just want to lay their head down on a desk and take a nap?

–Why do so many kids clamor for vacation before it hits yet complain about how boring their Spring Break was once they return?

–Lots of teacher smiles and “Hello there, good to see you,” salutations between faculty members in the halls today. By day 3 this week — after a good staff meeting and a few memos from admin — I wonder how well these pleasantries will hold up.

–A recent article says that 84% of teachers in the state of California hold unfavorable attitudes towards NCLB. 84%? I am shocked. Who the heck are the 16%… that’s what I want to know?

– During the holiday, I enjoy the taste of coffee. When school is in session, I survive off its caffeine.

Here are the books I have coming out over the course of the next 12 – 18 months…

Daddies Do it Different

This is my first children’s picture book, inspired by recognizing that, as a father, “Mommies do it one way… but daddies do it different.” A funny, very warm book that just poured right out of me. Dedicated to my daughter and wife.

Nerd Girls

Inspired by the fact that I am so sick and tired of the way that so many teen books for girls are about a bunch of rich snobs who think they are all that, I wanted to write a book that was much more like my experience in working with middle and high school teens. And the fact is, most kids are nerds.

And most kids are funny.

And most kids are awkward, unsure, confused and just struggling to make their way through middle and high school.

And most girls love to laugh.

Nerd Girls is a comedy for the rest of us, the ones who were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth, who don’t always have the latest and greatest and most expensive clothing. The ones who actually are nice, real people – the kind that are real friends.

But wow was this a fun one for me to write. And it’s going to be a series. These girls are such dorks… they make me laugh just thinking about them Yet they have such heart.

The Math Class Problem No One Ever Talks About

Actually, this title may change… to Bonerville Middle School. Why? Because that’s what it’s about, a boy who gets an erection in math class… and gets busted.

But the thing is, it’s not a sex book. It’s a comedy about the fact that about a zillion 8th grade books every year get these uncontrollable woodies that Pop Up out of nowhere – and Boner Management becomes one of the most important areas of their life.

Prepare to laugh at Bobby Conner, a kid who is absolutely tortured by the perpetual popsicle in his pants.

Cinder-Smella

I re-imagined the Cinderella fairy tale as set in modern-day New York City with a protagonist that has very stinky feet! Yet another inspired by bedtime rituals with my daughter. Fun, fun, fun to write.

Why I wrote Hip-Hop High School

In a way, Hip-Hop High School might be my most meaningful book, at least to me. Why? Cause it’s a book about heart. A book about tenacity. A book about life kicking you in the pit of the stomach and bringing you to your knees and forcing you to ask yourself, “What am I really made of?”

In my own life, I have gone to some dark places. And unnecessarily so. I took myself there as opposed to simply having these things thrust on me.

In a way, some of us become our own worst enemies – especially as teenagers – and the question becomes, am I going to live this way forever or am I going to dig myself out of this hole and do something to help myself.

It’s a stage in life when we realize that other people, our parents, our teachers, our friends, no one else can do the hard work of “living properly” for us. Each of us has a choice and there is no “not deciding” because, as the song goes, “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.”

Push comes to shove for all of us during out teenage years in some way shape or form. This is what inspired Hip-Hop High School – and the sense of inspiration, hope, and so on that is woven into this novel makes it one of my own personal favorites.

You love each of your books as if they were your child. (In a way they are.) Hip-Hop High School was a triumph for me on so many levels. I proved to myself that I was not going to be a “one hit wonder” and instead was capable of writing a second novel. (And until you actually do it, you never are really sure.) I proved that I could tackle some of the most meaningful, hard-hitting issues in a way that felt good to me on the inside. I proved to myself that I belonged at the table of YA authors and that it wasn’t just a fluke that my dream of becoming a writer one day had actually come to fruition.

Hip-Hop High School has inspired lots and lots and lots of kids and it’s a book that I am glad has found an audience but this title, maybe more than any other, proved a whole heck of a lot to me about me as a writer in a way that not many people know – and would never be able to know by simply having read the book.

Why I wrote The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

After Homeboyz came out my career ascended to a whole new height. The popularity of the title mixed with the accolades mixed with the attention and awards moved me up “to the next level”. And then one day a group of girls, Latina students of mine, came up to me and asked…

“How come you don’t write a book about us?”

The Hoopster, Hip-Hop High School and Homeboyz all had African-American characters as their protagonist. Why? Because I aspired to get my students to read through writing books for them, books where they saw their own lives directly reflected on the page. But at Lynwood High, a growing portion of the student body was Hispanic – and my girls felt a little cheated.

When these Latina students hit me with this question, I immediately felt bad. As a teacher, you never want to play favorites between your kids and this was a group of really awesome girls, students I tremendously enjoyed having in class. Additionally, racial tension between brown and black kids on campus has been an issue for years and years (The race riot scenes in my book Hip-Hop High School and The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez are fictionalized accounts of race riots we have had on campus) so being fair and balanced in aspiring to write a book for all of my students, so that the Hispanics had the same feeling of “my English teacher wrote a book for us, too” instantly became a high priority for me.

And then I asked the question, the one which turned out to be the fuse that lit the dynamite.

“Well,” I said to this group of Hispanic teenager girls. “What should I write about?”

If you know anything about teens, you know that asking a teenage Latina to talk can be a dangerous thing because, once asked, they are going to talk and talk and talk and talk.

Lunchtime in my room. After school. They talked and talked and talked and I just listened and listened and listened. That’s when I saw a few incredibly common threads between so many of my Latina girls. (Note: These are simply my observations from our conversations – please don’t get all politically correct on me for being honest or go cuckoo with emails to me about matters of race, gender equality and so on. These are broad strokes here – case by case, of course it can be different)

1. Boys were treated better than girls in their home/culture. (i.e. Machismo is still alive and kicking.)
2. Girls were outperforming boys in school, really stepping into their own and coming on stronger than they ever had while the boys were lame.
3. Girls were caught in the crosshairs between serving the family and getting an education as if the two were mutually exclusive… and mothers from the prior generation who had made the choice to value familia first and foremost were often applying the most pressure to follow in their footsteps and be homemakers as opposed to independent, well-educated women with professional careers.
4. First generation immigrants (illegals and legal – I teach both at my school) often were the bridge to the English speaking world for their non-English speaking parents, of which there are millions in America. The daughters, even ones as young as 8 or 9 years old, were the official translators for parents who had never learned English – even if they had been in America for more than 10 years. They may have immigrated, but they did not assimilate.
5. Sexual molestation was a HUGE problem… and it was incredibly under-reported to authorities, other family members and so on. Teen Latina girls were being sexually abused at a far greater rate than I had ever imagined. It was, tragic to say, “common”.
6. Today’s young girls are smart as a whip, ferociously determined and a whole lotta fun to be around. They really do LOVE to laugh.

These notes – and others – are what inspired The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez, a book that has been exceptionally well-embraced by Hispanic readers, boys and girls alike. My own opinion as to why boys like this book so much is because of the cultural validation. In this novel I worked exceptionally hard to move beyond stereotypes and illuminate the beauty of the Hispanic culture. Latinas are a remarkable people, unique and distinguished, and the pride so many teens feel in seeing their culture portrayed in a positive light – despite it being “and warts and all” book – has really won over scores of young adults.

Last thing about The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez that I should mention is that I never in a million years would have been able to write this book without genuinely listening to my students. When you read the book, I take the reader deep into Mexico, a Mexico that a white guy like me could never really know firsthand. It truly took a latino to shine a light on this private, inside the culture world and I can’t tell you how many comments I have had from Hispanic readers who say, “how did you know this.”

It’s because real people illuminated it for me. From the code-switching language (my students proofed the Spanish that is peppered throughout the text) to the quirky little aspects of life as an American Latina who is caught between the two worlds, two cultures and two completely different sets of expectations (based on gender), without the real voice of my students, The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez would not have any real voice at all.

Why I wrote Homeboyz…

As many know, I am an inner-city high school teacher in Los Angeles at Lynwood High. It goes without saying that I love my kids and love being an English teacher but Los Angeles is a city plagued by teen violence and many, many, many of my students live in a community that is poisoned by gangs, guns and drugs.

Students at our school have been shot. Murdered. Killed. And tragically, violent teenage death has become so common in urban America (especially when it comes to minorities killing other minorities; there are virtually no white students at my school) that when this sort of monstrosity happens, it doesn’t even make the newspapers.

Owch!

Worse, it feels as if there is an entire segment of the media that profits off of selling young kids the idea that gangs are cool, sexy, fun and adventurous. They’re not. Gangs are violent, anti-social and deeply hurtful to many, many people – and no one gets hurt more so than the young kids who get caught up in these street gangs. Therefore, when I see major record companies and multi-media conglomerates “selling the gangsta lifestyle” to our nation’s kids in order to make a buck, I get angry and frustrated.

The fact is, becoming embroiled in gangs – real gangs, not wanna-be stuff but real gangs – ends up one of pretty much two ways for young people. Kids go to jail or kids go to the cemetery. Of course, in music videos and the such, it all looks like a pumpin’ party. But go visit Juvenile Hall or prison – I have, many times – and you will see that the reality is an entirely different story.

It was this idea that was the spark which inspired me to write Homeboyz. I wanted to do a book that stripped away the false romance, that peeled away the pretend glamour, that didn’t buy into the bullshit that gangs were a just a life of non-stop partying.

Homeboyz is raw. Homeboyz is gritty. Homeboyz is a tragedy.

And Homeboyz has also been my most popular book. It’s won awards, it’s turned on thousands of readers, it’s got people talking about turning it into a feature length movie.

But probably, the thing that is most rewarding to me is that Homeboyz has been “that” book, the one that teachers everywhere have given to kids who swear they don’t like to read.

I’ve got boatloads of emails from people all across the country telling me the same story over and over.

I’ve got this boy (it’s inevitably a boy) and he wouldn’t read a thing. But he read Homeboyz and loved it! It’s the first book he has ever read cover to cover.

That to me, is just flat out awesome! Homeboyz has achieved cult-like status in certain circles, a fact which makes me really proud.

I work hard at trying to provide learning opportunities that can be fun. For sure it’s a “special sauce” in my teaching methodology because I deeply believe that people try harder – and that there is more “stickiness” to education – when students are actually enjoying the work they are being asked to do.

Fact is, figuring out how to marry meaningfulness to rigor through “fun” is how I spend a lot of my prep time for lessons. Making school “enjoyable” is not a dirty word. (Though you wouldn’t know it if you look at the textbooks, the bubble sheet tests, or even the content standards. Sheesh, could they be more boring? Particularly the bubble tests. It’s like they overtly seek to disengage students as if triumphing over the dread of the content being tested is a academic skill for today’s kids.)

In my estimation, discounting the element of “enjoyability”, “meaningfulness” and “pleasure” is an Achille’s heel in ours school.

And rigor does not have to be sacrificed at the altar of student enjoyment. (Trust me, project-based learning where kids actually have to “create” something requires far more depth of knowledge and diversified skill sets than choosing A, B, C, or D 75 times in a row.)

But often it seems like we forget the perspective of the kids when we craft our lesson plans.

As a student, I want to sit in the room of a chemistry teacher who “blows something up” in order to bring a lesson to life.

As a student, I want to sit in the room of a history teacher who figures out a way for me to smell the stench of a blood-stained battlefield.

As a student, I want to be intrigued, challenged and engaged. I like surprises. I like experiences. I like it when I like what is going on around me.

And I don’t like it when I don’t. Life is interesting. School can be invigorating. The world is an amazingly complex, interesting and awe-inspiring place.

Don’t let it die on the classroom vine.

Engross your students. Gross out your students. But know that if you want to better reach your students, I say, don’t violate the law of basic kid-ness: they like to enjoy what they are doing.

After all, you catch more flies with honey, right?

So a kid breaks the school rules by say, ditching class, and what do we do? Suspend them for 5 days.

Oh, that really teaches them.

Maybe back in the old days being suspended from school carried a stigma but for oh-so-many of my kids, when they get suspended, it’s like a vacation for them.

Sure, maybe they get in trouble at home. Perhaps their mother is angry at them or what-not… but what we’re inevitably doing is making a problem that much worse by keeping kids out of class.

I say, when a kid violates the rules and earns a suspension, what they should really earn is School Boot Camp.

That’s right… you have a major infraction, that means more time, not less at school working on your deficiencies of both character and academic ability… and you are going to be forced to contribute to both your own benefit and that of the campus at large.

Obviously, we are talking Saturday School here. (BTW, immediately we have a deterrent. Right now, being threatened with a 5 day vacation/suspension is not any kid of deterrent with teeth at all. But make a kid give up weekend hours and you’ll see a newfound respect for campus law.)

Instead of 5 days worth of suspension, I say we given them a month of Saturdays, from 8:00 – 3:00.

The “suspension time” would be divided up into two categories. Personal enrichment and campus beautification.

I’ll start with campus beautification. That’s a euphemism for grab a freakin’ broom, buster… you are going sweeping.

And wiping.

There’s gum to be scraped, graffiti to be removed, trash to be picked up and bathroom sinks to be polished.

You violate the rules of this community, you need to step up and improve the ambience of this community.

That’ll learn ya!

But there’s gotta be academic work, too. Clearly, there is often a link between low academic skills and behavior issues. How about if the suspended student’s learning profile was taken into consideration and if, for example, they showed a lack of proficiency with pre-Algebra skills, they were afforded the intervention needed to help them raise their mathematical abilities?

I know. Too sensible. Send ‘em home, let ‘em meander and pretend we all don’t ultimately pay for it later on once they are uneducated adults.

When you think about it, school suspension makes no sense.
A kid’s time could be used so much more productively to forge character as well as academic aptitude.
A month of Saturdays is a much better approach to trying to snap a misbehaving kid into shape.
I say SCHOOL BOOT CAMP!

So today I wore a Lynwood Knight shirt to school. Am I showing school spirit or am I just a dorkwad? Trust me, this one ain’t all that clear cut.

I mean back when I was a student in high school, I never wore any school stuff. That was for doofs. But now that I am a teacher, I wear school gear.

Fact is, I probably own too much of it. My wardrobe consists of Lynwood Knight sweatshirts, shorts, t-shirt, polos, hats and even headbands. I’ve got classic Lynwood gear (like the senior class sweatshirt from 2002) and just the other day I was thinking about springing for a new long sleeve t-shirt.

Why? I am not sure. My wardrobe is already disproportionally Lynwood-y and now I am going to add to the collection? Why would I do that? I mean let me tell ya, this ain’t Prada.

Of course occasionally I end up wearing school gear and regretting it. Like when you end up going out to dinner with other bona-fide adults straight after the school day ends, meet at a restaurant and feel like the biggest lunkhead on the planet when you realize how nicely other people with real jobs get to dress for their work.

And then there’s my wife. For some reason, she never wears Lynwood clothing. It’s not like I haven’t bought her stuff. She used to smile and say “Thanks.” That was when we first got married. Now she just says, “Why’d you waste your money?” whenever I bring something home for her… which I no longer do.

Ah, the frankness of marriage.

And let’s be honest, don’t some staffers wear just like WAY TOO MUCH school stuff? Really, is it every day gear? Is it every night gear? Is it every weekend gear?

Is it necessary that you wear clothing with school logos on it to the bat-mitzvah of your neighbor’s daughter?

When it comes to wearing school clothing, where is the line of sanity drawn?