A Problem Like Maria

How do we improve public education?  Strains from The Sound of Music fill my mind..."How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?"  The answer depends on who you ask.  A public system, dominated by a union system that protects mediocrity and discourages excellence is the problem.  An administrative structure that too often protects its own power at the expense of other stakeholders is the problem. Helicopter parenting is the problem.  Ineffective discipline resulting from a culture that wants everyone to have a trophy and no one's inner child to be wounded is the problem.  And yes, bad teaching.  Lazy teaching.  Exhausted, overworked educators who are dispirited and all-too-often compromising their own high standards because the system won't reward it anyway.  That's also the problem.  It doesn't happen to all of us.  It certainly doesn't always happen to most of us.  If you are a teacher, the day chronicled below will be familiar, and hopefully illustrate the complexity of the systemic problems we face in educational reform:


8:17 AM, an American classroom
Papers are piled up in precarious towers on your desk.  The angry red light flashes on your classroom phone.  You know it contains at least one parent who has to speak with you urgently, and if it has been 24 hours since the first call, that same parent may have already left three messages and called the principal by now because "You don't return phone calls!" 

Your email inbox has seven new messages in the past hour because your district has now linked your gradebooks to all students and parents.  Unfortunately, the same district has not educated parents about the codes in your gradebook system.  Therefore, you will be explaining to the first of three parents that the zero in his son's column is not counting against his grade and isn't even a zero really because you just haven't finished grading the essays.  It's just listing the assignment.  He should know this, but the projector for the Powerpoint presentation by the principal on Back-to-School Night wasn't working properly, so the parent doesn't know not to worry.  He logs on to his son's grades, sees zero,  and hits send before he exhales.   God bless him.  He cares.  The system doesn't.   

But emails and phone calls must wait because Danielle Drama in first period has broken up with her control freak boyfriend yet again, and while her friends comfort her in the bathroom, you have to quickly email her parents (divorced, so two emails) and set in motion a CPS report because her sister told you before class that Danielle mentioned wanting to kill herself  last night.  She won't.  She's just sad, confused, and in love with a guy who texts her seventeen times before first period.  She'll eventually dump him when she goes to college and realizes she deserves better, but for now she's weeping in the bathroom stall and texting everyone she knows that she "just can't take it anymore...she'd rather be dead." 


As a teacher you don't have the luxury to ignore this.  Drug use, violence, suicidal thoughts--these things have to be reported.  You must do a Tag-You're-It on someone else in the system.   It's not just school districts that get sued, but individual teachers personally get sued, and as a colleague of  mine likes to say, "I'm not losing my house for you or anybody!" 


Maybe some do brush off  these comments, but you know, conscientious teacher that you are, you couldn't live with the guilt if you were wrong.  You also know your district would (after consulting with their lawyers on speed dial) dump you like a hot, uncaring teacher potato if you knew she said the "S" word and failed to alert Mom, Dad, her counselor, the school psychologist, and the campus police officer.  Paperwork must be filed even if she and Bruiser are already back together again next period. 


Oh wait, the counselor with the immaculately clean desk (except for her heel marks and Starbuck's ring) has just sent a new student to your class of 38.  This student comes highly recommended:  a 1.3 g.p.a., an expulsion hearing scheduled, and here in mid-September, he has already missed seven days of school.  A quick glance at his current schedule shows that he has two "academic" classes in a schedule of seven.   He hands you the schedule change and slouches into the last empty seat in the back row with Spicoli and the cast of Half Baked.  You've not been given a courtesy call about this new arrival ahead of time, so you must now stop just as your class starts to share examples of how they use ethos, pathos, and logos on a daily basis without even realizing.  The art of persuasion is important when they want something from parents, teachers, or friends, and it doesn't hurt that it's also California Content Standards 2.1 and 2.6.


You were listening to the sweet girl in the third row who usually doesn't speak.  She says she only makes logical appeals with her father when she wants something because pathos wouldn't work on someone who thinks it's weak to cry at funerals.  We learn more than parents realize.


Listening to her must wait.  You will now have to send Newboy out for his textbook which requires writing a hall pass.  If you don't write a pass, the campus security agent in his shiny electric golf cart will drive Newboy right back to your doorstep and demand answers.  "Why didn't you write a hall pass?"  In the time it takes to return him, question you, wait while you write a pass, and return to the goft cart, Newboy could have gone to the library, checked out The Grapes of Wrath and already be heading to the California border with Granny's corpse tied to the jalopy.  This logic wouldn't reach golf cart security, so you won't bother to demonstrate the art of persuasion for your class. 


However, you will use this incident right after the golf cart leaves to return to your class discussion of ethos, pathos and logos.  After all, even the most frustrating moment is a teachable moment.  But that will have to wait; you can't even send out your newest arrival to the library just yet.  You must first try to put in a quick call to the counselor, who never answers her phone,  in order to discover the careful, logical reasoning for adding a 39th inmate to the insane assylum that is your class today.    You leave a voicemail, and just as you're about to return to Sweet Girl, Row 3, the phone rings. Parents are usually (not always) prevented from calling you during class, but anyone in the front office can ring through to your room.   

Counselor (in a sunny voice, feet firmly planted on desk):  "Hi, sorry to interrupt you.  Can you talk for a minute?"

The next moment is crucial.  Wait, no it isn't.  The next moment is endlessly variable.  And the moment after the next moment is completely predictable.  No matter what you say:

A.  You (voice dripping with sarcasm):  "Why sure, I can chat!  This is a great time!  I mean I'm just doing this thing called teaching.  You've heard of it?  It's the reason for the building you're sitting in with the clean desk upon which you're resting your feet."

B.  You (voice strained with increasing frustration):  "I can't really talk right now.   After the interruption of the new student you sent without warning, I now have less than twenty minutes to convey the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos to my class, so they will understand how to mark examples in the article I am giving them to read for homework.  It must be read for homework if I have any chance of getting them ready to write their scheduled in-class persuasive essay by Friday's long period, which they must write because it is the glorious "Benchmark Day" that occurs to the fanfare and flourish of the administration.  In fact, I also need that day, so I can have one solid hour to grade three or four essays in the Leaning Tower of Pisa on my desk, in order to complete progress reports due to my principal by next week for all of my 205...no, wait for it...206 students! I can't talk right now! The educational clock is ticking! Can it wait?"  [I do realize the irony of chewing out Clean Desk Counselor after telling her I can't talk, but there's only so much a girl can take.]


C.  You (calmly, but back to sarcasm):  "Oh, no problem.  Let me just discuss the unannounced student here in front of him and the other 38 while they silently stare at me through our conversation.  I'm sure no one will figure out who I'm taking about, and I'm sure I'll feel completely comfortable asking questions about his g.p.a., expulsion hearing, and personal life."


It doesn't matter.  A, B, or C will all be followed by this response, or something almost like it:  



Counselor:  "Oh, well it will just take a second.  I know your class is huge, but he really has nowhere else to go in his schedule.  He was in Mr. _____'s class, but you're so much more easygoing, and they had kind of a personality clash, so I just thought this would be best for him."


Counselor-with-feet-on-desk (that's her Native American name, don't laugh) is no dummy.  It takes years of practice to achieve the sheen on that empty desk. 


She knows you won't use the f-word in front of students. 


She knows you love students, so you won't pitch a fit about the fact that they are slowly dying from lack of oxygen due to the number of bodies exhaling in here.  It's quite possible mating is going on.  You wouldn't know, as there isn't any space between bodies anyway. 


She knows you will swallow your anger and save it for an email later that she can just delete. 


She knows that you know that Mr._____ of the personality clash fame deliberately clashes in order to shrink his class size. 


She knows you do not engage in this practice. 


She knows it's often the lowest g.p.a.-pot-smoking-anger-management-needing-heading-for-multiple-felonies losers who are your favorite students when all is said and done. 


She knows you are a squishy mommy-person at heart who may howl and roar, but in the end who will acquiesce for the sake of the kids.  (Think:  Reverend Lovejoy's wife on The Simpsons:  "Think of the children!").


Even apathetic stoner boy with the 1.3 g.p.a.  needs someone to stop shuffling him along and just teach him already!  Therefore, your response is equally predictable.  You sigh dramatically and make some sarcastic remark about needing more desks, but you laugh, so your colleague doesn't feel too uncomfortable.  You politely end your conversation in favor of returning to Sweet Girl in Row 3.  You do this because it's easier. 


Because that counselor's desk will always be swept clean.  Because you really want to hear how Sweet Girl used logos to convince her Dad to let her go to the midnight showing of Twilight last Friday.  Because you want your students to have a relatable example to tie to this abstract Aristotelian concept.  Because you want them to understand their homework, write well-argued, polished essays on Friday, and, most importantly, persuade others when necessary.  Because you want them to enter adulthood with competence and confidence. Because what happens in this stuffy, overcrowded, chaotic, room is important!  It's the beating heart at the center of democracy's most important system, and you are too busy keeping the heart beating to do much else.  You just let it go, like you have to let so many things go in favor of the faces in front of you.

Because Danielle Drama has returned, puffy-faced and hiccuping loudly for attention, and she needs to know that you think what she does here is important.  She needs to know that she is important, that her thoughts and persuasive skills matter.  She might need them when her hovering jerk-of-a-boyfriend tries to convince her in a few months that she's nothing without him and that no other boy will ever want her.  She will need to know logically why that doesn't make sense.  She will need to know emotionally why this is unfair, cruel, and simply not true.  She will need to realize her own ethos...the expertise, trust, and value she has to offer the world, so she can dump him once and for all. 


Stoner boy may never rise above his g.p.a. and achieve great success.  Sweet Girl may never volunteer to speak in class again.  Danielle may marry her boyfriend and live happily ever after with unlimited text messaging service.  You don't know. 


You do know teaching in a public school in America may not be humanly possible...at least to the standards you expect for yourself, the standards the students deserve.  The problems are systemic.  Would a phone call to stoner boy's Dad about his recreational activities help?  Probably not, especially since another teacher at lunch will inform you that his Dad is in jail on drug charges.  Ahh, the proverbial apple and tree.  Would a rational discussion about unprofessional choices change the Personlity Clashing teacher or the relaxed counselor with not much work?  Nahh, they are who they are.  It is what it is...That, by the way, was a staff motto where I work, coined by the leadership, no less.  That, and "Suck it up!" and "Do more with less!"  It's morale boosting mottos like these which make me wonder why more people don't go into education. 


 It's a terrible, wonderful mess of a place, my profession.  I don't have the answers, but ask any teacher, and we know the problems, whether we're in the trenches today or temporarily a...


Teacher Not Teaching