Emily’s Neighborhood

We were asked earlier to write a blog entry on advice for the incoming first-years. Done.

A couple of things have occurred to me during the first weeks of summer school, though, that I think bear saying.

First, where most of us come from, we are used to being able to portray a teacher as someone who is probably not rolling in money. We tend to start with, "Oh, I'm a teacher ..." in those conversations emphasizing that we're tight on cash. 

Take a look at the demographic stats on median income for the town where you teach. Jackson: $30,414 (That's for a household. Males: $29,166, females: $23,328. Per capita: $17,600) Household for Panola County: $26,785. Household in Greenville: $25,929. Per capita income in Greenville is $13,992. In Leland, where most GWHS teachers live, per capita income is $11,681, household: $25,678. (From Wikipedia, most figures from 2000 US Census. Things have most likely gotten worse.) You'll be earning about $31,000 your first year. Yes, the cost of living in Mississippi is lower than where you came from, but you'll soon find out that applies mainly to housing and real estate taxes (which you most likely will not pay). Food, utilities, and gasoline are in-line with most of the U.S.

Especially for those of you living in small towns, please remember that you are basically a guest there. You (hopefully) will join a church or other group to involve yourself in the community, but you're in Mississippi, and unless your Mama or your Daddy is from your town, you're a stranger, a guest, until your grandkids are married there.

As a guest, it's rude to poor-mouth in front of people who know you're at the top of the local economic ladder, and most likely know (or suspect, no matter what the reality is) that you are partially bankrolled by your parents who sent you to your pricey private liberal arts college where you didn't even learn how to change a tire. Believe me, this is how you are perceived in your town until your neighbors know otherwise. They know you're there to "help" but be aware that the sense of noblesse oblige is very strong, and very offensive.

Second, please Google yourself from a computer where you are not logged in. Your students will do this. Your administration might.

When they find this, on an unprotected page that also contains your photo and your full name, as the fourth item on the search results, you're gonna have some explaining to do:

The culminating project for Innovations in Education (EDSE 610) was to design a model school district from the ground up, using prescribed budgetary and student population parameters. 

The full proposal is available as a PDF.

I focused on an integrated, interdisciplinary curriculum; grouping students into smaller two- or three-grade facilities; and a year-round schedule. Based on my experience with my students in the Delta, I also included a 2+2 program that accommodates both a meaningful vocational program and a college prep curriculum.

In the college-prep program, students work with an advisory teacher to develop and implement a final senior interdisciplinary project that incorporates at least two subject areas. Core curriculum teachers are given advisory periods during the day, and students are expected to present a portfolio. Elective courses in the senior year are designed to support the project. An internship can be incorporated into the project, but cannot be the only component. 

The 2+2 program allows students who are not planning to attend a four-year college an opportunity to get a jump-start on their careers by taking some classes at a community college. There are four strands in the 2+2 program: Health Care; Business and Trade; Agriculture; Technology. The district reimburses the community college at a cost of $1500 per student each year.

The school operates on a year-round schedule with 4 three-week seasonal breaks to maintain academic continuity and reduce the scheduling problems for working and single parents.

Assignment: Twelve hundred words. I have 1,200 words. I spilled just over 9,000 of them into my portfolio. I probably have a few left. 

What I can’t seem to find is exactly the right 1,200 words. How can something so small sum up something so huge? It’s just a tad more than a word-and-a-half for each day of these two years. There were days, surely, that deserved more. And there were days for which there are simply no words available. 

I thought about harvesting my 18 months of twitter feeds.

Here are some words: 

desire restless anticipation trepidation fear good-bye mountains valleys highway truck wondering welcome hello ice-breaker dormitory roommate swelter rookie dawn preposition cheese-toast tickets chocolate-milk strong companion baloney vis-a-vis home lost interview jesus horror solar-plexus creek cotton dread classroom gin cardiologist crawfish referral theft duty framework cremation wait alone inhale exhale femoral neck rain morphine resignation abandon reunion plucky permanence shelter adrift anger flood roster prayer betrayal love stop doing evil redundant nutella blood history chicken-spaghetti obamaobamaobamaobama gimme gimme hopeless exhale inhale vascular event snow-peas mentor commitment vodka moths coloring squirrels reflection inadequate peace

Sometimes words become arranged in such a way that they begin to tell a story. 

I can tell you why I came here. I had spent almost 20 years surrounded by, and arranging, words about education. I had raised a daughter and seen what happens when a child’s mind is engaged and nurtured. I wanted to find the peace that comes with balance, and my life was heavily weighted to the side of fortune and prosperity. 

Fifty stalks, one put aside, divided between my left and right hands again and again gave me these words:

There has been sacrifice. And I fill these small bowls every day. Some are broken. 

I can tell you what I thought I knew.

I’m still haunted by leaving my first school. As I said at the time, the reasons I left are the reasons I needed to stay. I count it as a failure. The school where I teach now is still critical needs. The administration is still woefully disorganized. Decisions are made without regard to their outcome. Money is wasted. All of the things that go into the making of a failing school district are here. 

My central quandary remains: What level of sacrifice is made, and whose sacrifice is it? Was SDHS so hopeless that I can ultimately help more children by teaching in a district where more children will take advantage of my teaching, and benefit from what I do? Or is it more noble to find the one among those who are most deeply lost?

The highest notes are hard to hear.

I come back again and again to the popular ethical dilemma of the children on the train tracks. You know the one: There are several children playing on a train track, and you see an oncoming train. You can throw a switch and divert the train, saving the group of children, but the diverted train will kill a single child playing on the branched track. Do many children die because you do nothing, or do you actively cause the death of a single child in order to save many? 

And I never know the answer. But some nights I wake in a sweat as the train itself is bearing down on me. 

My wealth of virtue seems inadequate.

And then there are the words about my life.

In the past two years I've spent more time in hospitals -- in emergency rooms, cardiac ICU, neurology ICU, and orthopedic recovery -- than I've spent with my principal. For that matter, I've spent more time under general anesthesia than I have with my principal. 

My mother's heart surgery during my first month of teaching; my own accident that took me out of school at the end of March last year; and my mother's recent stroke last month have all taken a toll on my energy and stamina. It’s taken a year to be myself again and recover both from the initial shock of teaching in a critical-needs school, and from the physical trauma of my accident.

There’s almost no way in which MTC has not impacted my life. Not being in my 20s with the safety net of “going home” beneath me, my commitment to this change was a serious one. I have nowhere to land if I fall. There’s almost no aspect of my former life that I recognize, apart from the furniture in my house — and the moths have made major headway on my Turkish wool rugs.  For the first year I lived, breathed, ate, and slept teaching and planning. I’d like to say I am more optimistic about the future now, but I’m not. I’m more resigned, though, to the concept of slow change. I’m beginning to understand the intricate complexity of the dance of race, poverty, privilege, and history. I’m beginning to get the barest glimpse of just how much I still don’t know. I do know that I no longer believe that our present system of social services helps lift generations out of poverty.

We have code words, too. Like poverty.

I’ve had conversations with several of my fellow MTC’ers in which we lamented that we are now racist in situations where we wouldn’t have been before. I’ve felt the very strong effects of reverse discrimination. At one time or another I’ve heard at least three of my colleagues say that they didn’t come here to hate, but feel hate every day.

We come here with love in our hearts.

I met a man who worked for 40 years without ever taking a day off except holidays. He usually had his allotted 30-minute lunch at Tony’s Grocery, a little market lunch counter in Mayersville, a town of about 700 people on the levee in Issaquena County. He’s worked and paid his taxes. But every day at lunch he’s ridiculed for paying those taxes by men young and old who spend their days sitting on buckets or going fishing. This is the legacy of poverty. This is why there is still hate.

Here are some words: 

crazy check earned income credit obamaobamaobama now we’ll have freedom

I came here with love in my heart. It’s still there. 

I’m staying on, at least for a third year, and probably beyond. I live in Mississippi now. So this doesn’t feel quite like an ending. My relationship has been less with MTC than with Mississippi. I know we’re gathering for what is probably the last time tomorrow. 

But I will continue to gather Mississippi. 

Twelve hundred words. Let me show you them.

First-years (get used to the name), I'll be meeting you soon, and working with some of you during your Holly Springs summer school training. There's a lot we'll do, but there will be much left undone, and much that no one can teach you during summer school. Some things just need to be learned on the ground, no matter how much we tell you beforehand. 

You'll probably learn far more than you'll teach during your first year. You might not know that until you reach the midpoint of your second year. I'm not saying you won't teach much. You'll teach a lot. In fact, it's kind of all you'll do for a while (see below). 

I'm saying that no matter how much you teach, your own learning curve will be enormous. You'll learn your own limits, your strengths, your weaknesses, and you'll discover parts of yourself you never knew about, and might let go of some parts of yourself you don't need anymore.

First, try to always see your students as individuals. A classroom dynamic is the embodiment of the "one bad apple" idiom. You'll be amazed at the difference the presence or absence of one or two key knuckle-heads can have on an entire class. Don't listen to us second- and third-years when we talk about fourth block as good and second block as bad. We're just a bunch of cranky old burnouts. If you fall into the trap of seeing them as a group, it will be a very long year or two. Find something to like about each student -- or most of them anyway -- and keep that in mind on your dark days.

Second, make some time to explore your new home state, and get some perspective. If you're in Jackson, spend a weekend in the Delta. It's a world apart, and like no place else. (We love company!) You'll never complain about a lack of places to go or things to do again. You are so fortunate to have suburbs around you where there are stores, theaters, and things that aren't literally falling apart. Just imagine living within a block your school building, where everything is broken or abandoned, 24/7 for months. That's kind of what living in the Delta is like. We drive 2-plus hours just to be able to go to Target or get ice cream. I was never a fan of the suburbs, but lately it feels like a trip to Disney World just to sit on a bench (that has all of its slats and four legs!) in front of the Apple Store in Ridgeland. Seriously. 

Which leads me to... If you're in the Delta, try to get to Jackson or Memphis once in a while. I know it seems like a lot of driving, and you're really busy. But here's the thing: Your school, and the Delta environment can suck the life out of you. Going to Jackson or Memphis gives you a chance to get out of the "third world" mentality. Get some ice cream. All of Mississippi is not like the Delta. You'll come back refreshed and able to appreciate the weird quirky charm and beauty of this place. 

See you soon.

P.S.  So, last year, I was in a really different place -- specifically, unfiltered due to serious pain meds. I still agree with everything I wrote, but it was a lot to lay on the new kids. You might want to read what I had to say toward the end about being organized, though. 

It took two years for her to get pregnant, and she was half-way around the world when it finally happened. She came home, for the careful care needed for a high-risk pregnancy, and to prepare for another foreign assignment post-delivery. 

We had shared a common tribulation. In the years since, we had carried out impossible missions infiltrating enemy territory; sung on stage in smoke-filled Vietnamese bars; packed up; packed out; backed up; backed out; lived in hotels; rolled cocktail parties through the streets in a vintage van and a leather-lined limo; chased sails at the edge of the desert. 

We knew the power. Of certain parts. Of the alphabet.

Her mother had made quilts for the children of all her siblings, but now she was not well, and in a faraway state, no longer connected to her own children on some days.

It seemed like such a simple idea at first. Five women. Sixty inches. Four months until delivery. But no equation is simple. There are variables. There are drunk drivers, crushed hands, dissertations, thousands of miles, surgeries, trials, law suits, insertion and removal of biological hardware, glucose levels, new jobs, bad jobs, sick spouses, sick parents, strokes, thesis deadlines, craft anxiety, and Indian food. 

And 161 knots.

But in the end, each of us had managed to stitch a piece of herself into the whole. We never know what we're really a part of. Doves of peace, bluebirds of happiness, robins for compassion, and six rabbit fish who will always swim together . 

And the river flows on. 

Carrying each individual drop to exactly where it needs to be.

Imagine for a moment that you read on a seventh-grade level.

This is question 14, a typical question on Mississippi's 80-item multiple-choice Subject Area Testing Program state-mandated test. It's preceded by a five-line excerpt from a poem that substitutes the word vow for promise in its first line as a possible revision. The four distractors (what we call the ABCD choices in test-world) suggest ways that the word vow might or might not affect the mood or tone of the poem, along with several iterations of possible author's purposes. Passing the test is required for high school gradation.

You are a high school sophomore who has most likely passed your English classes by memorizing rules and learning by rote; taking multiple-choice tests that involve simple identification or recognition. You sometimes get confused about which is the adjective or noun in a sentence.

You are largely unable to read silently for more than 10 minutes at a time. Perhaps you simply know how to call words. Most of the test reading items are poetry or nonfiction about such topics as bat-keeping or igloo-building. Most are three to five pages in your 8.5 x 11 test booklet.

You probably had Hot Cheetos and Gatorade for breakfast. Or perhaps for dinner, and then skipped breakfast because you were too tired, because your mother asked you to get up at 5:00 to iron the uniform she wears to serve at the Piccadilly.

Today, my assistant principal asked teachers to complete a chart that included the data in the first four columns. But of course, that only tells half the story. Administrators are fond of quoting a conventional wisdom that if a certain percent of a teacher's students are failing, it's the fault of the teacher, not the students. That might hold true in some schools. But we aren't teaching in some schools.

In a recent publication on the crisis of school attendance, the U.S. Department of Education reports that about 8 percent of students are absent on any given day in U.S. public schools. "Chronic absenteeism" is defined as missing 10 or more days in a school year. Note in my chart that my school uses a 4x4 block, with essentially an 89-day school year. For perspective, simply double the days missed per student to extrapolate for the typical 180-day year.

A November 2008 article from the TCPalm (a regional newspaper of the Port St. Lucie area in central eastern Florida) reports that Florida defines chronic absenteeism as 21 or more days in a 180-day school year.  A Johns Hopkins study labeled Port St. Lucie -- with 14.5 percent of high school students "chronically absent" by their standards -- as a "dropout factory."

But enough about averages. As I said, I teach individuals. Here (click to enlarge) are the individual absentee (Ab=absent, T=tardy) statistics for two of of my classes this semester, in which we've had 41 instructional days so far. (Total figures are slightly different from those on the big chart due to a recording lag.) 

You get the idea. I have some very successful students, and I have some abject failures. This English II class, for instance is skewed by students 4266 and 2008. While student 1510, not surprisingly, has a 102% grade for the first 9-week term. Only one student is failing this class. Seven of the 14 in the Learning Strategies are failing. 

What I do with these data, I honestly don't know. 

My worry, with the school budget cuts and impending staffing cuts, is that teachers with lower failure rates will be given preference when contracts come around in April. You might not be surprised to learn that many teachers pass students along to avoid looking like they can't teach, and/or to avoid filling out the failure documentation paperwork. I guess I can use these figures to support my case for renewal.

Also:

Last semester, the district pass rate for the English II state-mandated test (required for graduation, and used in rating the schools' AYP) was 35%

My students' pass rate was 48%

If I include students who missed passing by 1 or 2 points, my pass rate goes up to 58%

So I'm doing something right, and at least the students who show up are benefitting.

Meanwhile, could someone with a numerology fetish please explain why I continue to fail a 7-1-7 pattern no matter how many students or which classes I teach? 

[ASSIGNED: READING RESPONSE]

If my hair is on fire, but I'm standing in a bucket of ice water, I will be -- on average -- comfortable. Talking about medians and averages in income, human development, education, or health paints an equally skewed picture of reality, and certainly not one on which policy can or should be made. How can we effectively discuss individuals living lives of "choice, value, and dignity" unless we discuss individuals?

A short aside: While none of these statistics is likely to come as a huge surprise to most of us in MTC, it's fair to say we are not the intended audience. The audience for a such a report is policy makers, many of whom probably have a one-dimensional view of rural life, poverty, and the unendingly complex role of race in a place such as Mississippi. And while we're at it, let's go ahead and acknowledge that we're really talking about a few specific regions of Mississippi here. As one of our guest speakers said in a first-year class (sorry, I can't remember who or exactly when) if we subtract the Delta counties from Mississippi's well-being statistics, while still not exemplary, our state falls in the lower third of the nation rather than dead last. Ahead of a dozen or so other states that do not suffer the same indignity. Sure, there are pockets of urban poverty and its attendant woes in and around cities such as Jackson or Greenville. But that's true of all states with urban centers: Chicago, Detroit, Newark, Oakland, etc. and it's mitigated statistically, much like my flaming hair, by the suburbs and viable smaller towns. 

In the Delta, a place ever haunted by extremes, there is no average. Almost no one exists at the median.

So, all that being said, what do we do? I think we need to start by looking past the averages and medians. Using such figures gives the false impression that there is a gradation. Living and working in Washington County, the seat of the county group that has some of the highest white and lowest black incomes, and lowest HD index, I see the results of a cluster of wealth, a cluster of poverty, and a huge gap in the middle. That gap, that missing middle, is the story of individuals, not averages. And there lies the problem with reports such as this. They spent a pretty penny on gathering facts, paid a designer five or six grand to produce a book that is probably printed on glossy premium paper, and we can pat ourselves on the back for bringing these issues to light. Like we didn't know this already in our guts?

And then what? "What will it take to improve Mississippi's ranking on the AHD Index?" What, indeed? 

These are lofty recommendations, to be sure, and well intentioned. But they smack of what journalists refer to as "the no-shit lede." Well, fine then, let's improve the health of African American men. Geez. Why hadn't I thought of that before? Hey, let's improve the quality of public education. Now there's a new idea! Connect at-risk boys to school. Ok, sure. And could you please do something about the humidity, too, while you're at it? And water my tomatoes while I'm in Oxford this June? These sorts of bromides help us feel like we're doing something, but I don't see any substantive information on how these things will be accomplished.

In looking through the full report on the web site, it appears the "What will it take ..." section of the executive summary suggests something the report does not deliver: There are no recommendations, no policy guidelines, no pathways, no suggestions. Granted, the AHDP's stated mission is to "stimulate debate about political and human issues." I'll give them that. But to "empower people to hold elected officials accountable for progress on issues?" Not so much. Without offering policy recommendations or guidelines, how can simply presenting facts make elected officials more accountable? I worked for an education policy non-profit for 18 years. I didn't make policy or set editorial standards, but fish don't create water and they get pretty wet during the course of their days. One thing I took away from my years there is that it's very easy to present facts, to wring our hands, and rend our garments. It's another thing altogether to recommend, create, or enact policy; to live and work where the statistics live and breathe; where averages become individuals; to, you know, make a difference.

It's so easy to point to Mississippi and its glaring deficiencies. It's so facile to point to the gaping discrepancies between white and black, rich and poor, and decry the status quo. But few who have not lived here or have no roots here can ever understand the deep complexity of these issues. They go far beyond simple minority/majority. (In my town, I'm a minority. There is no diversity. My language and culture are marginalized.) 

"Choice, value, and dignity." Easy terms to throw into the wind. Frankly, I find the opening paragraph of the "What will it take..." so full of jargon and feel-good buzz words it angers me. I've sat through enough of those meetings crafting the perfect mission statement that includes every conceivable piece of empty rhetorical claptrap, and can recognize the product.

I made a living producing reports and books just like this. Now I teach children. I teach individuals, not medians.

I've changed my thinking about tests -- exams specifically. Those 90-minute quarter exams I'm required to give every four and a half weeks. The district requirements dictate these exams count as 25 percent of the quarter grade. Yikes. My students, even the best ones, were failing or nearly failing, and I was curving and swerving the scores to jigger a passing grade for report cards of students I knew should pass.

At the same time, I've done away with the infamous Binder Check, that time suck and germ festival all English teachers endure each grading period.

These two decisions are, of course, related. 

As is true of so many aspects of teaching in the Delta, the bad habits some students exhibit everywhere are rampant in our classrooms. Far too many students are easily defeated and will run through a 50-item test in 10 minutes barely glancing at the questions, not reading the passages, and marking willy-nilly on their answer sheet. (Because I teach English II, I am required to give all exams in multiple-choice format to prepare for the state test. ) I realized during a 10-question open-notes pop quiz the other day that if they have their notes they take a much longer time completing the test, and do much better as a result.

I'm standing here watching my second-block class flip through their binders as they determine text structure, author's purpose, the best conclusion sentence, the most effective thesis statement, how to revise a sentence to use an object complement, and the difference between imply and infer. zIf this is the first time they've looked back at those notes and worksheets -- fine. Whatever. The point is that they learn it. When they learn it is less crucial. As long as they learn it before they leave my class. 

So they now have an incentive to keep their binders organized in the Do Now, vocabulary, grammar, writing, and literature sections -- not loose in their backpacks, in their Chemistry notebook, or all crammed into the front pocket of the English binder. If the true purpose of the binder check is to ensure they are organizing materials and able to find what they need (and not to just to provide a free passing grade for otherwise failing students) then this fulfills that case. 

I'll still give a few clear-desk quizzes so I can get true assessments of what they've retained, and so they don't get complacent about working between exams. But I think they'll be much better now about taking those class notes (I don't need to tell you other MTC teachers how frustrating it is to answer for the millionth time the question "You want us to write that?" when I project carefully worded and organized notes onto the whiteboard.)

The perpetual Pig-Pens with their clouds of candy wrappers, random worksheets, and Carmex tubes will not change either way. But now I don't have to touch their stuff.

I now have an Etsy site!

I plan to carry handmade and vintage... since I love both. The photos are of a handmade hat, vintage doll, vintage coat, and handmade doll.

Wish me luck! :)

Teresa