Is it just me, or does everyone else, when getting ready to attend a faculty or department meeting, prepare themselves for these stellar events by figuring out what they are going to read just in case the meeting devolves into a complete waste of time?

Is it just me, or does everyone else think that all these face piercings that kids today wear look like they really hurt when initially installed?

Is it just me, or does everyone else think that student desks should be more comfortable considering how long we are asking them to sit their butts down in them?

Is it just me, or do other people have students who feel that homework is an educational option — and if they only turn in 65% of the assignment, these kids feel as if they should get 65% credit. (Well, when they go to McDonalds and order french fries and the container is only 65% full, do they let the fry cook tell them, “Ah dude, that should be cool, right?”)

Is it just me, or do other teachers have what seems to be thousands of students in violation of the dress code every single day?

Is it just me, or does everyone else, think it’s short-sighted and childish that things like voicethread, animoto and other web tools like me.com are blocked from my access by the school district’s firewall as if they are insuring student safety by holding onto archaic internet policies?

Is it just me, or does everyone else feel as if it’d be nice for the local business community to step up and offer some real support to their local schools through internships, professional leaves days for the employees to come speak to us, financial support, and so on?

Is it just me, or does everyone else think that there are a whole lot of things that could use re-thinking this year… but know that they are going to be shelved until next year… where we’ll know we need to re-think them again… but we’ll shelve them again til the year after that cause there is something always more immediately pressing than planning for a better future when it comes to running schools.?

This is interesting… an engineering student (yes, a graduate student in engineering) not understanding the concept of an automatic sliding glass door.

And so he SMASHES THROUGH THE THING HEAD FIRST!!

Now at first, I thought, well, the guy is just an idiot. Except, then I realized, don’t we often try to solve a lot of our problems in schools in much the same manner — especially in the realm of NCLB. I mean when they don’t know the answer, instead of asking the people who might know, pausing, being contemplative, and the such, the powers that be just SMASH RIGHT ON AHEAD figuring that the consequences of having done so will be less formidable that the consequences of NOT having done so.

So on one hand, I see a Pakistani graduate student who is, let’s face it, kind of an idiot. On the other hand, I see an exemplification of educational symbolism in this day and age which drives me bonkers. I mean when I look up and see how we are treating our ELLs, our students with special needs, our children who are dealing with so many socio-emotional issues on the home front (and on and on and on) and witness how we make virtually no accommodations for these students and simply drive home the mantra of Test! Test! Test! well… it’s like smashing our heads through a glass door figuring “Hey, I gotta get out of this building, don’t I?”

When an A student plummets to an F student, when their attendance drops off a cliff, when their demeanor changes from one of youthful, sunny, brightness to quiet, somber stoicism you just know something is wrong.

Jennie (not her real name) just hit that nail on the head. So, as I always do, I pressed her to find out, “What’s up?”

Turns out she was walking around our school about 2 months ago long after the day had ended, iPod in her ear looking for a private corner to read one of the books for my class (the irony of that it was the book Speak is just too thick) when 3 boys — she is not even sure if they went to this school — tried to rape her.

“Tried” she said. (Yep, it happened on campus — we have a really large facility, lots and lots of nook and crannies.) But she also mentioned she had “surgery” a few minutes later in her disjointed description so a part of me fears that they were successful. Details were convoluted to say the least and I am not going to go deeply into them because really, what the F*&% difference does it make? A young girl, a student of mine, was violated.

Stories like this used to break my back. And they still do but I have matured enough to realize that the pain resides with the student before it does with me and so I recognize that my role is to best serve the needs of Jennie as they stand now and not wallow in the moral implications that events like this have for me, personally, or society at large. And so I did my best to say some very encouraging things, offer all a bunch of resources (counseling, therapists, police, etc…) and so on.

Let me tell you, this girl Jennie would make any parent or teacher proud — and the fact that sexual assault is so prevalent in American society is something that just rips me up. I mean when she told me the story, she did it from a perspective of blaming herself. About how she shouldn’t have been walking around alone long after most folks were off campus, about how she should have known better and so on.

Makes me ashamed. Of my school. Of my city. Of my state. Of my nation. And the thing is, today was a day whereby I started with a ton of pep in my step, a day I was ready to really teach from the rooftops. And now… well how am I supposed to feel?

In so many ways, this incident is not about me and I feel selfish for feeling so hurt. Then again, when something like this happens to any kid, a part of our collective hearts simply sinks.

Some people are already on summer vacation. Some of us are still in the salt mines. Yet no matter where we are, this stuff stings… and when-oh-when will this nuttiness stop.

In Karma I trust. That’s where I take solace. At some point, in some way, at some time, karma… it gets us all. I think this belief is at the core of where I find the strength to go on and not leave the teaching profession. I mean I love teaching, but this stuff kills me.

State testing ended last week but school doesn’t end for me until June 26. This far-too-easily sets itself up to be an educational dead zone, a time whereby teachers can simply fluff through the last few weeks of the school year and count down the days til summer.

And the truth is, the kids kind of expect us to do this. Well screw that! Unless each and every kid is being courted by Harvard, there’s work to do. (And even if they were being courted by Harvard, there’d still be work to do.) Besides, what am I going to do, show The Lion King for the next month?

Now don’t get me started on our math department. (Okay, that was a cheap shot. I mean we certainly have a few extremely hard working folks crunching numbers down the halls, but still, ask around… there are some peeps…)

Anyway…

So a student named Laura just came up to me in class after I assigned our final year end project. We’re going deep into propaganda with an Animal Farm and The Giver unit I am just starting right now whereby my students will write, produce, star in and direct their own 30-60 second commercials before we say hasta la vista to this section of their academic journey. (BTW, these projects are going to be wicked. I’ll be sure to post some as they come through but seeing as how we now have more tech tools available than ever before, I am fired up about how cutting edge these things are going to be… or so I hope.)

However, Laura just asked me about timetables for the project. Well, her vocab wasn’t as sophisticated. She didn’t use the word “timetables”. Her exact words were, “When’s this due, by June 12, cause I’m going back to Mexico then?”

“Like, for the rest of the school year?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“But school isn’t out until June 26th. Do your parents know this?”

“I dunno.”

“What about your other teachers? Have you told any of them this yet?”

“No.”

“So it’s May 27 and you are going to be leaving in 2 weeks and you haven’t spoken to any of your teachers about small little academic things like missing finals or anything like that. When were you going to tell them/us?”

“I dunno.”

“Laura, let me ask you a question,” I said trying to remain composed. “Do you think that leaving school 2 weeks early is going to impact your grades?”

“I dunno.”

“Laura, let me ask you another question. Do you think a person should ever be paid full time wages for part-time work?”

“I guess, not really,” she answered.

“Laura, I think you need to go think this through a bit more. Maybe have a discussion with your parents, your other teachers and so on… and then create a plan. I mean you can’t just leave school for the summer whenever you want.”

But the thing is, she can. And probably will. This happens every year to teachers like myself. It’s a scene that has played itself out many, many times for gobs of teachers in California, Texas and so on. Matter of fact, it’s so common that I literally pilfered the scenario from my real life as a teacher and used it in my latest YA novel The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez, a book about a teen latina who is literally and figuratively caught between both two worlds and two cultures.

But in fiction, I get to solve the problem with a-learn-from-your-mistakes-inspirational-and-happy-ending. As a real teacher, I don’t. Laura and her family are going to make their own decision about when summer begins and my input probably will not carry much weight.

Aaarrgghh!! If only they could see what I see. School is a life-raft in America and we have got to get more of our kids to recognize how fiercely they need to clutch it.

A quarter is 9 weeks long. 2 weeks early means Laura will only have completed about 78% of her required attendance. And Laura is, at best, a C student in my class, so if you do the math (75% of 78%), she’s gonna be at about the 58% mark minus taking her year-end finals.

Extrapolate that across the board in all her classes and she goes from being a C student to an F student.

Well, there’s always summer school, right? Oh wait, she’s gonna be in Mexico. Hmm… now I teach in a school with over a 45% non-graduation rate and Laura is gonna bail out on the last two weeks of her freshman year of high school. I wonder how this is going to play out when the numbers get crunched in 2012?

Another student of mine came back from suspension today.

“Hey Zeke,” I asked. “Tell me, why’d you get suspended?”

“Fighting.”

Zeke is an A student in 1rst period, a good kid. Sure, he dressed like every other kid in California. Wore a hoodie sweatshirt, clothes with some giant brand names on them, baggy pants and an occasional baseball cap. But underneath the clothes (and who among us should ever be judged by our clothes?) was a solid student who wrote well, read all the books I’d assigned, possessed a good work ethic and had a nice, soft-spoken demeanor. Thus my next question.

“You got into a fight?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Right out in the hall at lunch.”

“Dude, you couldn’t just walk away? You’re smarter than that,” I said.

“Naw, Mr. Alan,” he answered. “See a dude was messin’ with me. Him and his friends. And the dude challenged me to go one-on-one right there.”

“Like I said, just walk away,” I repeated.

“Naw, that ain’t how it is, Mr. Alan. See his boyz said that if I didn’t go one-on-one right there then they’d all jump me.”

“Jump you? When?”

“Whenever they could catch me. In the halls. At lunch. After school. I didn’t have a choice.”

I paused. In a way, it’s true. He didn’t have a choice. I mean coming to an adult to “snitch” on a kid for threatening to beat you up isn’t how problems get solved in the real world for students in America’s schools today. Doing that just seems to make matters worse for kids, not better. Of course, I wish it wasn’t that way, but if Zeke had come to me, could I really protect him? Could security? Could the community? Nope. He knew it and I knew and we all know it. Zeke was a boy faced with a man’s decision: either stand up for yourself in the face of tyranny or live in fear with much worse consequences to be meted out later if ever you get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Is it squashed?” I asked wondering if the one-on-one fight put an end to it.

“Yep,” he answered. “We went one-on-one, got busted by security, I got suspended, and now it’s over.”

Zeke was back in class working towards keeping up his grades. The other boys, I have no idea. And what did it all start over. I didn’t even ask because really, what did it matter. Some boys just like to fight and pick on the weak.

“All right, just try to keep safe, okay dude,” I said to Zeke.

And then he looked at me and we made eye contact. His face had a simple resolution to it, a resigned, matter of fact, this-is-the-way-it-is for kids like me look. And though he didn’t say it, I knew he was thinking it.

“What else could I have done?”

And when he walked back to his desk, I asked myself, “And what would you do, Mr. Alan, if the tables were turned?” Does a kid like Zeke really have a choice but to fight?

Just another day at the office, right?

I love when the media tosses numbers around because they can make people look either brilliant or foolish. For example…

Check out this great story, the tale of Sharron Pearson. Sharon is the first student from the Los Angeles school to be accepted by Oxford Tradition. She has a scholarship but figures she needs $2,500 for airfare and other expenses.

That story resulted in this story, a follow-up about, you guessed it, Sharon Pearson, the first student from the Los Angeles school to be accepted by Oxford Tradition. (The money came a flowin’!)

Makes your heart kinda go all weepy, doesn’t it? People are, I believe (actually I have to believe this otherwise I couldn’t press on in this world) fundamentally good.

But as I said, when the media tosses around numbers it can also make us look foolish. Take for example this story about our impending college graduate shortage.

Do you wanna know why there’s no hyperlink to a feel-good follow up? Because right now, my faith is a bit low that numbers like the ones cited in the story are going to spur enough people into action. I mean the Governator keeps slashing the education budget as if it’ economically prudent in the long term to short change today’s kids in terms of funding their education and the resistance we see being offered to his ideas is feeble at best.

Makes us look pretty foolish, doesn’t it.

Obviously, there are a heck of a lot of people working their tails off so that we don’t end up in an “I told you so” nation… but don’t say they never told us so.

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.