T-minus 10 weeks until Year 2 begins

Topics covered in this ridiculously long post: end of year, 8th grade week, conversation with football coach about student achievement, TCAP writing scores for my 8th graders, thoughts on racial implications of Iron Man.

Two days ago, on Friday the 23rd, students left Hickory Ridge Middle School for summer vacation. Some left around 3:30, others left at 9:15pm. Unfortunately, I left at 9:15pm too. As the culmination of '8th grade week', we had a prom for the 'graduating' 8th graders that went from 6-9 pm. Being that gas prices have soared and I live 15 miles from school, I decided to stay at school until the end of prom. My last day at school turned out to be the longest day of the year - I got there about 7:45 and left 13.5 hours later. What a dedicated teacher I am!!!

I was ok with staying so late at school because it's the last time I'll need to do so for a while. I was also ok with staying late at school because our dances are so ridiculous. Watching young black kids dance is a sight to behold. They do things that white kids can't. My three favorite songs of the night - 'Crank Dat', 'Get Silly', and 'Talkin Out Da Side of Ya Neck'. I saw some new variations to Soulja Boy's smash-hit dance that just had me cracking up. The kids have so much fun dancing - way more fun than I think anyone ever had at dances I went to in middle school - that it is enjoyable to watch. It also made me jealous that I suck so much at dancing compared to them.

On Thursday of 8th grade week, my school held a 'promotion' ceremony that most students / parents / teachers were calling a 'graduation'. I sat next to the CDC (special ed) teacher, who's an understandably jaded person when it comes to MCS, and we discussed the reasons / implications of this ceremony being called a graduation. She observed that 75% of these kids won't have a high school graduation, and that this is really all they've got. I'm not quite sure about those statistics, but her point stands that some of these kids and families won't have much to celebrate 4 years from now. She also mentioned that this ceremony is typical of the low expectations of MCS - moving to 9th grade is seen as some great accomplishment (mostly by parents and the students) rather than a taken-for-granted-step towards something bigger. Both of her thoughts resonated with my TFA tilted brain.

That Thursday afternoon I had a discussion with the football coach about 'tracking' students for different life paths - college prep versus vocational stuff. Not sure how this discussion came up during dismissal, but I think it might have been started when he shared that most of his class would only score 50% on his 6th grade social studies final. Coach and I are on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. He's a middle aged, white, Republican, veteran teacher, who grew up in the sticks of Arkansas and earned everything he's got. I'm an idealistic, change-happy, yankee, rookie TFAer whose inexperience in the teaching world means that I still think I can make a difference.

After Coach said this, I countered that tracking would inherently place black and hispanic kids, like those in our school, in lower tracks, while the white kids living out in Cordova, TN (a Memphis burb) would be placed in the higher tracks. The asst football coach (a younger, white, U of Memphis grad, whose political leanings are somewhere in between) had joined the conversation at this point and added that black kids come into school with a hugely disadvantaged vocabulary and are already 2 academic years behind white kids. Coach knows that I'm TFA, but he surely wasn't aware of how trained (and convinced!) I am to challenge these exact ideas.

Basically, I contended that it is possible to catch these kids up and that teachers at our school aren't working hard enough to do so. I used one example of a teacher that both of us know is full of shit and doesn't do a lick of teaching to say that there are certainly others like her at our school and throughout MCS who are not working their asses off to catch kids up. I also shared the success of TFAers at Kingsbury High (Karl's school), where 4 first years run the math department. They improved scores on the diploma-deciding Algebra I Gateway exams by 30 percentage points to 93% passing. Coach was trying to say he'd be able to focus on catching kids up if it wasn't for the 'knotheads' (behavior problems) in his classes. I said, those teachers at Kingsbury have as many knotheads as you do, but they're doing it.

Coach and his asst then decided that either they are exceptional teachers, or there is something going on with discipline at Kingsbury. I responded, the thing going on at Kingsbury is that they have 16 TFA teachers, who even though they have no formal training, and are first years, are making these huge improvements. By this point it was 3:30, and we started walking in, but I think I won that particular argument.

Afterwards, his comments got me thinking - either TFA teachers are actually exceptional in their abilities and work ethic, OR, the teachers in MCS are really that terrible that a bunch of rookies can come in and do their job way better than they can. Coach conceded that MCS teachers aren't willing to put in the effort that we put in and don't have the same work ethic.

On Monday of 8th grade week, we went to see Iron Man in a rented out theater. The beatiful 'Paradiso' and luxurious stadium seating - tons of leg room and nice, loose backed chairs with a good, springy recline - was a welcome change from teaching kids. I had thought I was going to stay and hold classes for 7th graders, but I got a call over the PA early in 2nd period to report down to go with the buses for the 8th grade trip.

Early on in Iron Man, when Robert Downie Jr. shared the screen with Gwyneth Paltrow, I couldn't help but wonder how the black and hispanic kids in the audience interpreted the racial makeup of the cast on screen. Terrence Howard, a Philly boy, was the only black guy in the movie, and was in a supporting role at that. After rarely seeing white adult males in or out of school, here these kids were watching white actors throughout the movie. Karl likened it to a grade full of white kids going to see that Christmas movie about a black family that came out last year (which, hilariously, I have no idea of that movie's name). I think it just really highlights the racial separation that still exists - black and white people are still so unfamiliar with each other and culturally divided.

I also thought the portrayal of the Afghani rebels in the beginning of the movie would have a negative impact on the way the mostly black audience would react to middle eastern people in real world situations. There's one Saudi Arabian student in the 8th grade class, and I felt like he could be a recipient of these negative attitudes. Combined with war-on-terror based portrayals of the middle east, I am fairly confident that these black students do not have an unbiased way to interact with people from the middle east.

Thursday I checked out my students' TCAP writing scores from the state exam they took in February. 4 of my students passed the exam with a score of '4', and 10 of them scored a '3', one point below passing. I think these scores of '3' are slightly ludicrous, considering a girl who wrote in a giant block of text with either one period or many incorrect periods got the same score as multiple students who craft good sentences with clear paragraphs. There's one girl who I thought would get a 4 that did not, and then 3 kids I thought had good chances of getting 4s that did not.

The end of year joy has not quite hit me yet - I still have one day of clean up / close out at school and I have my TFA end of year conversation. Today I am doing my best to take advantage of free time by completely wasting it. I've been surfing the net, writing this post, sleeping in, and sitting in a chair for basically the whole day. Pretty nice, but I'll enjoy it more later this week when Brittany comes down and we start the trek back towards Philadelphia through Atlanta, Charlotte, and DC. Should be a great way to leave Memphis and really start my summer!