The Sub Stories

The father of one of my students was murdered last week. I can’t imagine going through that at such a young age. When he came back to school, it was as if nothing had ever happened. I heard him mention the upcoming funeral but with no more emotion than any other weekend plan. I don’t know if he is that much more emotionally stable than I am or if maybe his father wasn’t a big part of his life but I was shocked. For a couple days I couldn’t talk to him without actively trying to suppress the murder that was dominating my attention.

Just today I found out about another one of my student’s home lives. De’Andre was raised in New York until his mother and grandfather were gunned down in a robbery attempt. Grandma spent all of her money getting him out of New York and chose Orlando as a destination because of how Disney looked on TV.

Not surprisingly, these kids aren’t great students. It’s hard enough to convince a student that learning about the scientific method is worth while when they plan on having a long healthy life.

The current “Value Added Model” (used to determine wether a teacher is effective or not) uses all sorts of variables like past test scores, reading level, etc.. to predict how much a student is expected to learn, but one factor that is legally prohibited from being included in the algorithm is poverty. Can we as a state/country come together and recognize that poor people have different set of struggles in life that make learning incredibly harder? I hope so, especially because without doing so teachers are incentivized to go to the rich school districts and away from where the help is needed the most.

If this sounds depressing, it’s because it is.

I had hoped I could delay this day until years from now. A quarter of the way through my second year, I have given up.

Today the department had our tri-weekly “Data Chat”, where the science teachers bring in the data from our common assessments. Common assessments are exactly what they sound like. Every three weeks different teachers teaching the same material administer a shared test. This serves the purpose of identifying a particularly good or bad practice or way to teach a certain concept. We come together and the principle looks over the data and evaluates how we are doing.

My students had the lowest grades of the 6th graders. At first thought this reflects poorly on me, but if you take the time to realize that one teacher has two advanced classes, while some of my kids can’t write much more than their name, it should become a little less clear cut. Then when you realize that I didn’t let my student’s use their notebooks on the quiz but the other teachers did, it should become even less reflective. Then when you realize that the student’s transfer in and out of low-income schools on a daily basis and that kids taking the second quiz aren’t even the same kids that took the first one you should throw away all the papers and realize that you have to look deeper to identify effective teaching strategies.

When I mentioned some of these factors, the boss wasn’t all that interested in my excuses but wanted results. The main point that I took away from the meeting is that I have to artificially inflate my grades to be a successful teacher. I have to teach my kids science in the off time between fulfilling state and county mandated practices.

In college you always imagine being the one to stand up and say “No, this isn’t right”. You don’t realize yet that the people you report to are just trying to cowardly cover their own asses with numbers to give to their superior. If you can’t give them the numbers they are looking for then you will be replaced by someone who will. Killing teacher tenure ensured that everyone plays the game for their whole career. No one will be in a position to stand up for what’s right without putting their job on the line.

Fuck.

I’m not sure if this happens with other teachers or not, but I catch myself being astonished that 6th graders don’t know things that I consider to be common knowledge. This is more of a statement about myself than the students.

In my engineering class I briefly referenced the International Space Station. Not only were my students unaware of one of humanities greatest accomplishments, but Aronde made the mistake of saying it “sounds boring”. It took me by such surprise. I had just found out that he wasn’t aware of the ISS which was a travesty in itself. In my mind, I had arrived at one of those moments that teachers strive for. It’s when you get to watch students get their minds blown away by learning about something amazing for the very first time. Aronde reminded me that I care about this stuff more than a lot of people, especially poor black 12 year olds. Not only that but he got to me even more because he put his face at the forefront of the apathy/willful ignorance that I feel is holding humanity back in science.

I asked about his weekend plans. “Prolly gonna watch TV and play Call of Duty (a video game)”. I took on a slightly too agressive tone and said “Your life is lame. LIVING IN SPACE beats everything you’ll ever do. Doritos and Xbox. That’s what you want your life to be? You… lose.”

He didn’t respond, but I suppose theres not a lot to say when your lack of accomplishments and goals have been aired out to your peers.

He wasn’t nearly as offended as he should have been and I reeled back my rage. I spent the rest of class trying to explain the rest of the little that I know about living in space to the rest of the class.