Posts from — November 2007

I got some updates on Penny Harvest at my school:

So far, the 8th grade has collected a good 150+ pounds of pennies. The 7th grade is at 250+. The 5th grade (a 4 class grade) is at 100 or so, and the 6th grade is almost at 400. In other words, we’re kicking butt and taking names. I understand it’s a big school, but even by floor standards, we’re doing very well. We’re at around 1.5 thousand dollars, or 30 sacks, those of you keeping track.

And this is all without the experience of doing this before, and with a primary job of teaching math. I’m thoroughly excited about what we’re going to do next for the group. We’ve been pushing hard to get people to bring in their pennies by that final date, and a lot of it has been me going to every floor to every homeroom teacher and asking them how they’re doing. I’ve also been rocking that stylish penny pin, so everyone is reminded, even when I’m not talking about it.

There’s a lot of things I’ve learned from this process, most of which is that if I’m left to my own devices, I’m much more productive than if I have a micro-manager all over me. I just can’t wait until after Phase 1 so my Penny Harvest Team and I can really make things happen without the stress of making sure every homeroom and every penny is accounted for. This hasn’t been anything short of a positive experience, though.

I’m going to have to write something positive tomorrow, too, or Alisha’s gonna have beef with me. Peace …

jose, who’s still got that Across the Universe Double Disc on heavy rotation …

p.s. - For my baseball fans, those of you who’ve been searching for A-Rod around these parts, notice I haven’t said anything about him. Here’s why. I’ll stay mum until a decision happens one way or another.

As some of you know, I had an assignment in which we wanted to make 1 million stars and fill up the wall with that many stars. I set up the project by reading the book How Much Is a Million by David Schwartz and Steven Kellogg, and telling them that we’d be attempting to do as one of the facts stated: fill up seventy pages worth of stars, which I calculated to around 12,500 stars a student. I explicitly stated in the aforementioned post that I knew the kids wouldn’t get that far, but just to believe that they could really encourages them to do so. (Eventually, we’ll make it to 1 million, but they don’t know it yet.)

One month later, we have almost 60+ pages full of stars from the kids, and they’re really nice. But of course, as the latest trend has been, certain people want to squash even the sweetest of fruits just to say that they could. I won’t go into specifics, but let’s just say that we still have this pervasive theme of discouraging imagination and creativity in favor of rigid indoctrination. We shouldn’t have higher-ups coming in my room in front of the kids and basically crushing all the encouragement I’ve been giving the kids about their accomplishment, especially when it was my idea and I never got any assistance for said project.

And even when there’s the slightest hint of creativity from the higher-ups, it’s not done to achieve anything but as a facade to look ingenious. I look at what we did, and not only did it really pump up the kids, but it actually helped with a few of the math state standards, so I was essentially preparing them for the test without teaching to it. On the other side, we have people trying to emulate popular game shows on their computers but it has little to no relevance to preparing them for the test, and it’s taking away from our common planning, where we can be … planning in common … or whatever that was supposed to say. Y’all get the drift. I was also able to tie this in to Penny Harvest, and if all goes well, we’ll be able to observe what a 100 million pennies looks like in Rockerfeller Center.

But it’s just another footnote on how even within our own communities and people who share certain commonalities with their students can still be myopic enough to crush kids’ hopes with a lack of courtesy and encouragement. You can have all these slogans for student success, get great remarks from outside officials through your quality review, and get a great letter grade from NYC’s khan himself, but until we can effectively change the thinking our children have about their school environment and how they perceive their world, we’ll continue the endless cycle of mental and emotional abuse many inner-city children continue to endure and feed into.

According to the estimations of Schwartz and Kellogg, it would take approximately 23 days non-stop for someone to feasibly count to 1 million. Sounds like a little, but it apparently takes a lot longer to get our kids to believe that that’s possible. And even longer for everyone else to believe that those kids can believe that.

Thoughts?

jose, who has an issue with the institution and not the individuals who crushed the fruit to begin with …

Before I continue, a big shout out to Right Wing Nation, for linking me on the Carnival of Education. And a special shout-out to Dan, who not only made me this great poster, but also linked me to a dope discussion on using rap in English (ELA) class. His comments on the post in particular gives him major props. Tell him Mr. V sent you.

I’m not big on shouting people or establishments out. Psych. On a glorious Veterans’ Day in which I don’t have to work, I got my Across the Universe Soundtrack Double Disc (really good) and Jay-Z’s American Gangster (great) playing on full rotation, I shouldn’t let incidents like the one on Sunday affect me in the least. But frankly, it’s my blog and it’d be a disservice to you all to not give some insight into what happens to me all too frequently.

I just got back from rewatching American Gangster (a great and well-directed movie, might I add) with my girl when we figured we’d eat at some fine establishment around the Madison Square Garden area. We chose the Brother Jimmy’s on 31st and 8th. I had my eye on a Shrimp Po-Boy with some sweet tea (the North will never do it better than the South, but fuck it).

And usually, when I go to the Brother Jimmy’s on Amsterdam Ave. between 80th and 81st, I never have any problems. My friends and I (an assortment of different backgrounds) sit down and get great food and good customer service. Even on a really crowded night, when all you’ll have in the restaurant are Whites from the area getting drunk after work, we never get anything less than their best effort. I’m personally a very patient person to begin with, so it’s not hard to please me. Just treat me and my friends with respect, and make sure the food’s good and we’re set. I also tip well, just as an aside. However, that Sunday night po-boy was not to be.

We walk in there, and at first the hostess isn’t there, so we start watching a little of the Cowboys-Giants game and talking a little about the movie. Again, same demographic, different street. My girl and I are both Latinos and everyone around us wasn’t, but the Upper West Side Brother Jimmy’s gave us a good impression, so we thought nothing of it, and I was hungry as hell.

3 minutes pass by and a busboy, a tall, young Black man, comes up to us and tells us, “She’s sitting people and taking calls from customers. She’ll be right with you.” 5 minutes pass after that, and I said, “One more minute, and we’re gone.” By then, I started getting a headache. My girl was ready to leave, but I said, “They might be understaffed, so I understand.” A minute passes by, and the busboy notices what’s up, and he says, “I just told a waitress upstairs and she said she’d sit you right now.”

He waves us over, and we go upstairs. We notice a young blonde typing something at the cashier, so I’m thinking she was probably in the middle of doing that when the busboy asked her to serve us, so I understand. As soon as she sees us, she acts like she’s still working the register (I know what a blank screen looks like), she stutters a bit and looks around for something to do, and then says, “Oh, here’s the hostess. She’ll sit you” and not in a very nice way.

Wow. She could have just sat us down and get us a menu like most other restaurants do. We then notice the brunette hostess sitting another couple, and they move from one table for some reason to another. Weird but OK. The hostess then looks at us, looks around, and then gives us the same table the first couple rejected.

I didn’t understand why they rejected it until my girl went to the restroom. Why did I look around and see barbecue stains all over the table?! No waitress, no attention, and no water while we picked our appetizers? By then, my headache might as well have become a full-blown migraine. We waited a total of 10-15 minutes on a not-so-busy night, got a nasty look from the waitress and the hostess, AND got a dirty table that someone else rejected because of the same reason?

I was so heated that I actually came up to the busboy and told him, “How do you work here?”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean, not to say anything, but look at me and look at her. I ain’t that mad that we had to wait that long, but then to get the looks we did upstairs? And then a dirty table? And not even a glass of water or any hellos? I mean, I don’t want to see the manager myself, but pass the word along ’cause that’s fucked up.”

He nodded and gave me a handshake. I hopped across the street to the Thai place across the street, and we got served immediately. Even in New Orleans, where people talk about how overt the racism is, we never got anything but great service from every restaurant we went to. We got a couple of funny looks in the restaurant, but we always got seated right away by hosts of all backgrounds and all times of day.

I was so visibly livid when I left the restaurant, it made me want to holla. I’d love to give the establishment excuses for their crass and unprofessional behavior, but there is none. I haven’t had anything happen to me in a while, but I recognize the incident for what it is.

jose, who won’t say it’s racism, but …

p.s. - Don’t hate on the one on the West Side (81st and Amsterdam Ave.). Unless I hear otherwise, it’s much better than the Midtown one (31st and 8th Ave.).

This week, I’ve decided to focus on my girls because, 1) I’ve been reading Pandagon far too much and 2) sexism is still alive, simple and plain. Unfortunately, women are still making 77 cents to the dollar of a man, and even in this state, which many consider to be a beacon of liberalism, we have 80 cents to the dollar. Even at the same job, the ratio is still far too staggering. Corporations and the economic world still views women as those that need to be the ones raising the child, in the kitchen, and preparing their man a newspaper. The problem isn’t just economic, but psychological, physical, and institutional.

For instance, it disturbs me that we still have people referring to themselves as pro-life (when they’re really anti-choice and anti-woman), and that many people’s votes for this Reich hinged on this issue, even though they disagreed with him on everything else and may have even called this man anti-Christian. For one, I don’t see these people as pro-life because whose life do they care about? I don’t think it’s appropriate to tell a woman what to do with her womb when it endangers her health and well-being. Also, many women (and young women for that matter) tell me not just stories of coat-hangers and killer pills, but about the grueling, emotionally taxing, and expensive abortion process. Most of the women I know who’ve had one didn’t want to have one, but had to for fear of their health and / or the embryo that might come into this Earth.

Plus, it should be an option for women because it’s their womb. And usually the people who make the decision about these wombs are men, all of whom will never experience anything close to a menstrual cycle or the labors of labor. Women should be able to rely on us for protection and support, but many of us spend our time reducing them to our play things and sidebars in our life’s great made-for-life movie. In a day and age where women are more than 1/2 of our population (and easily 6/10ths of our college population), we can easily debunk the (sexist) theory that women are inferior.  Most of the employees in our first professional environment (school) are women, yet they’re often pegged for stupid.

Yet, we still see them as them and not us. We still have rapists saying “She was so hot, it was like her body was calling my name” and “she shouldn’t have worn that if she didn’t want to have that happen to her.” We’ve been imparted views (on both sides) that women are supposed to be beautiful or else they’re ugly. They’re put into extremes that aren’t (dare I say) humane. To put some perspective on this, even in Hollywood, where everything’s bloated, liberal, and absolutely perfect, the highest paid actor is Brad Pitt with $62 million and the highest paid actress is Jodie Foster with $27 million dollars, almost 2.5 times less.

And frankly, it’s a hyperbolic microcosm of what America’s going through today. For many, there seems to be a sense that women are easily dispensable and men, while they won’t always shine, they’ll always dominate what goes on behind the scenes. They’re the aggressor, they’re the protagonist, and whenever a woman shows some strength in character, she’s compared to a male counterpart or has male qualities, an absolutely absurd idea. It’s obvious when we read through our Cosmos, Vibes, Kings, XXLs, and the other popular publications that we’re constantly fed images of what women are supposed to be, even subconsciously.

So when I think about that in the backdrop of my job, I don’t wonder why it is that little girls often believe they have to have sex to boost their self-worth and esteem. Girls become very aware of their sexuality in the wrong ways very early on. From the dirty uncle who keeps trying to have the little girl sit on his lap, the dude at the grocery store who keeps giving her sweets, hoping she’ll return him the favor, or even the co-worker that slips something in her beer when she’s not looking. With 73% of these rapists being someone whom the survivor / victim knows (28% being a relative or a boyfriend/girlfriend!), we can only surmise that rape happens more often after the person’s gotten to know the burgeoning rapist. In these people’s minds, women are nothing but play things.

Yet, I don’t advocate for abstinence or any of that mess (recent studies have shown that abstinence only programs have done nothing to curb the trends of teenage sex, so I can only imagine what it’s like for adults), nor do I think women and men should stop expressing themselves sexually. We should, however, use caution when we address someone as a “bitch” or a “ho.” When we belittle someone by calling them a girl or a wuss (women included), those are negative connotations attached to women.

I’m not here calling myself Mr. Ethical, but we have to make an effort to have true equality amongst race, gender, sex, and class, word to bell hooks.  True equity comes when we don’t just talk about what we’re going to do about inequality, but be about that change.

jose, who wonders why someone searched “How old is Jose Vilson?” on Google. TALK TO ME! (ha)

p.s. - I got a huge boost today from voters to the Weblog Awards 2007. Thanks a million for everything, mi gente. It’s my first year doing this, so humble I am.

Honestly, today’s professional development didn’t do anything to make me a better teacher, and I’m pretty sure I have a ways to go before I become a good one, and I probably could have been a better teacher if they just let me do what I needed to for the children. Fuck it, I’d rather be teaching.

Speaking of which, last week, many of my kids went trick-or-treating for Halloween and got huge bags of candy (just as a point of reference, I don’t have children of my own, so I usually refer to the ones in school as mine). They came back with loads of candy; I haven’t seen anything like it since my own youth. M&M’s, Snickers, lollipops, gum drops, Nerds … it’s as if Willy Wonka reigned supreme over Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse for just one day.

But during class, one of my 6th grade girls (who should be an 8th grader and we’ll call girl A) pulled out and flashed something unexpected to one of my other 6th-should-be-8th grade girls (girl B): an NYC Condom. At first, I thought it was candy because they were completely hi off the stuff, but I recognizes the black wrapping and subway colors from the wonderful Bloomberg ads around the city and said aloud, “Whatever it is we have right now, if it’s not related to math, then please put it away.”

I didn’t see it again, but I still had that itch in the back of my mind. So we went downstairs to take class pictures, and I got the opportunity to talk to girl B when girl A and another friend left to run an errand for one of the parents present. I had a sit down with girl B that went something like this:

“I know what I saw in the classroom. Now, you don’t have to discuss it if you don’t want to, but as your teacher, I do need to address it because I saw it in my classroom. Remember that, if you’re going to use it, don’t let whatever it is you do become who you are. You have a bright future ahead of you, and I don’t want you to endanger your future by taking too many of those risks. You can make your own decisions, but I’m asking you to be careful.”

She giggled and said, “Yeah, it was cold and I was feeling it, so I had some fun, so yeah …” I just reiterated what I said, and told her that this conversation didn’t have to pass to her friends, who I was sure would be back in a few minutes.

Before Halloween, I already saw that student as an intelligent young lady. She really seemed to just need the motivation to channel that energy. She was left back twice, so the school system was already going to fail her. Now she has a chance to at least graduate high school by 21, and college in her twenties, too. However, she struck me as insecure from the moment I met her, and that’s unfortunate. She’s not the most girlie girl in the class, but she’s probably one of the most sensitive. Even though no one’s done anything to her to tick her off, I’ve already seen shades of what could happen should someone rub her the wrong way.

And unfortunately, when you don’t have much confidence in yourself, you start to make decisions that aren’t in your best interest. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with teen sex, because I know despite me, it’s going to happen. As older and hopefully wiser citizens of this Earth, we do have a moral obligation to direct our children in a positive direction. Frankly I can’t tell girl B that she’s making the right or wrong decision, but I can help her think about the possible outcome for her acts.

It’s especially empowering for a man like me to tell that to her. Because of the male-dominated society we live in, young women don’t often hear men who want them to make informed decisions about their sexual behaviors. So many men want these little girls to become women really quickly, and usually for the worst intentions. Women in any public school have a wide array of women that they can turn to in their time of need, but they hardly see men of any distinction or success that they can trust.

Plus, I already had enough restrictions on that kind of talk without feeling like there’s a lawyer knocking on my classroom door. What can I do but what comes naturally to me? Where was the woman in her life to have this sort of conversation with her, too? Frankly, I didn’t ask all of that because I was more trying to address a situation that happened in my classroom, but it turned into a teachable moment of sorts. Sometimes, when there’s no alternative, I just make the best informed decision I know how to.

After I told her that, she just looked at me as if to tell me, “Wow, you’re right. I needed that.” But she didn’t have to. She’s too young to verbalize that.

jose, who still has tons of work to do …

I have this one girl in one of my classes who’s awesome. She’s one of the sharpest students I’ve ever had as far as math. She’s funny, too, because she’s better at math than most of the people in the room. She’s got these big brown eyes that, even when I’m not talking to her, move along to wherever I go. At first, I thought it was another student crush; I’ve amassed a few of those in my early career.  But when I looked back at her, she didn’t try to look away. Today, I think I found the answer to why she does that.

“Student of the Month” © 2007 Jose Vilson

She’s a spitting image of the firecracker of a woman
I met at the parent-teacher conference
The woman a young, confident lady
My shoulder’s height and only a few years my senior
The little girl stands next to her parental unit
With a wide-eyed gaze
Amazed at the conversation her mother’s having with another man
Though professional, the girl rarely sees a man she cares about
Getting along with the woman in between us
Her stress undresses her oft-coarse hair
Her voice rests under her larynx,
A sign of restless nights
Often misinterpreted for a calm demeanor
Her solemn facial expressions yearn for a more similar
Childhood to the others in class
Intelligent, and fierce with the maths
September’s student of the month
October’s fall into deprivation, depression, and a series of little inner deaths
Her smiles are still authentic but seldom
25 sets of eyes look at me for knowledge
But only one of them glares and stares for life’s answers
Like why I’m one of the few males in her life she can rely on
Why that spark plug of a mother can’t instill some energy in her
Why her father and mother make her daydream of places where
Fathers and mothers can stay husbands and wives
Stay together long enough so she can catch the remaining years
Of innocent smiles and candy coated classrooms
Before she breaks into a world where this teacher and every teacher
Has to release her from this womb, too …

jose, who knows that everything he is not made him everything he is …

A few notes of interest:

- I love e-mails, especially the hate mail. It usually makes me laugh, but this one really made me shake my head. I made a one line comment in response to Liza Sabatar’s blog about the Jena 6, and this guy wants to e-mail his comment to my personal e-mail. OK, I’ve seen this move before, though I’m not sure if he has his own blogs to post all of his comments on. Of course, the subject on the e-mail is “Black Racist,” ironic considering how racist the e-mail was. I reply with another one liner like,

“Thanks for your opinion. I’ll consider it yours.”

That’s it. Nothing but “Hey, that’s your opinion. Let’s move on.”

His first line in the reply called me a “condescending jerk-off” all at once. At least he feels something towards me.

This man has the nerve to tell me how bad Black people and prove it with statistics, and how Whites have made the greatest contributions to society, etc. etc. It was a racist mess. Needless to say I really didn’t read it because he just wanted me to validate his own angst. He needs to go listen to Limp Bizkit and be angry for no reason somewhere else. He’s like the really insecure and often ignored kid in high school who picks on the most innocuous-looking “minority” so he can boost his self-worth.

Little does he know I’m still from the hood. We don’t play that. Plus, I really would like to see more unity across the racial lines, but I also notice that we have a LOT of work to do before we can get to that point. I don’t see things in just Black and White, but apparently some do. More on this later.

- NYC needs a Busboys and Poets, similar to the local restaurant here in Washington, DC. The setup for the one in DC is exactly how it sounds like: a big restaurant with a poetry lounge inside of it. It’s also got a bar and a library / bookstore / waiting area sponsored by Teaching for Change. In other words, it was awesome. I was more in awe that they had that much space dedicated to this effort. Of course, the food was great, and so was the environment. The name of the restaurant is an allusion to Langston Hughes, and I can imagine him actually being proud of such an establishment.

- I finally put some words in that book I’m supposed to write, which from now on I’m calling the WOW Project. The beginning part is the hardest, because you want to give people an impression of why they should read the book without actually giving the whole book away. That’s why I love books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon or 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But we’ll see what happens. Like Sonia Sanchez told me once, I need to create new words.

jose, who has some really good student profiles this week …

update: quote of the weekend -

“Wake up! Wake up! Get your shoes and slippers on! This is Silver Spring, Maryland. Get up! Those of you going to Washington, DC, y’all have a good 15 minutes to get somethin’ and take a break. If y’all come at 15+1 minutes, there’s a few buses right behind this one 1/2 an hour from now, and there’ll be a bus with your stuff waiting for yo, but I won’t be in it. Hurry up, cause I’m trying to get my groove on tonight. I’m trying to get into somebody’s daughter!”

- Greyhound bus driver, this weekend

Yes, I’m always around people who say things like this …

It looks like all the nominations and votes worked. I’m one of the finalists for Best Education Blog for the 2007 Weblog Awards. Pretty cool honor. I’m listed along a few people who have a pretty big reputation, so I’m just going along for the ride. More on that later, but in the meantime, just know I’m bustin’ my butt grading every and anything. Peace.

Update: The polls are open. Vote on. …