“Superstar,” an art teacher once said, in reference to me in the classroom.

Sometimes I hear it ring in my head in the morning while I’m washing my face, brushing my teeth, and looking at these life-worn eyes. Every minute after that is in preparation for some upcoming performance, maybe even a battle. I watch Sportscenter in the morning, or maybe some NY1 so I can get the weather and the latest on the news, so I’m ready for any inclement weather. I walk down the streets while it’s still a shade dark even now, humming a song that hopefully congests the channels to my foremost thoughts, where the negative ones often invade and parade. I’m often my own worst enemy, and if Lucifer exists, he plays awful tricks in my mind, with worst-case scenarios replaying throughout the little piece of time I have to unwind, really.

The cold, orange and beige benches of the subway do nothing for my enthusiasm or lack thereof to go to school. Traveling 40+ minutes on the train, I have no choice but to play the most inspirational tracks I have. The last track I play on my iPod before I get near the school building rings true to so many of us who give more than a real percentage allows: “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve. It’s the anti-wrestling theme song. Whereas before the gym, I choose “What You Know” by T.I. or “Ante Up” by M.O.P., I choose the more subdued and slightly more vulnerable tones of the one-hit wonder.

But I also find it fitting because in my random bits of utter humility, I often wonder if I deserve all the acclaim, praise, and blessings I’m thrown. I should just stick to the job description and not what it inherently means. I shouldn’t take on any more than what I’m actually paid to do nor should I pontificate too often on developing the human side of the kids. I shouldn’t focus on the aesthetic of our occupation, and possibly developing the young ones into older and wiser ones, helping them arrive at their own conclusions about what success looks like but also guiding them and showing them alternatives that might work to their benefit. I shouldn’t seek to inspire, and follow the advice of those who say, “Well if you don’t inspire them, believe me, it’ll get done.”

I also know that I facilitate a special role for these kids, whom have grown more attached to me and my energy as the year’s gone on. Some of my more turbulent kids have made almost 180-degree turns in favor of focusing on the positive. The males especially have taken a liking to me, because finding a male teacher who understands their struggle in the school system has become increasingly difficult. The female students have taken a liking to me strictly off my ability to translate math for them, and them feel part of a usually male-dominated conversation. The whole school gets snippets of this energy through my efforts with Penny Harvest and math.

“You? YOU!? Psh, you’re a superstar. Please. The kids really like you, they love you and respect you, and you can tell by the way they talk about you, and how they follow you. Every kid’s always going to be a little tough, especially in this school, but you? No, you got it.”

If you say so, lady. With 30 school days left, the lights are definitely on high …

jose, who won’t be writing tomorrow because of the big Glow In The Dark concert with Lupe Fiasco, NERD, Rihanna, and Kanye West …

The first question I got asked was from Frumteacher, who looked forward to me answering these questions:

Two requests for you to delve into, Jose:

1) What made you become a teacher?

2) How do you feel when you stand in front of the blackboard?

Most of you are privy to my Vilson Manifesto in which I detail, and divulge, my purpose as a teacher, and how I wish to do this for as long as I possibly can. And it’s been linked over and again, in blog carnivals and other articles, possibly passed along through friends and family, and maybe even printed out as an inspirational post, most of which I’m grateful for.

But this weekend, I had a mental lapse.

Like so many of us going through these days and time, the pressure to maintain oneself while the weather gets warmer and the kids get ready to levitate off their seats is building to steam-pot proportions. No sense of relief comes to me from knowing that I have a conference in a couple of days nor that there’s realistically only a couple of months left until the school year’s over, and I’ll get to truly reflect on my position as an educator.  Despite my years of teaching now, I can’t help but second-guess myself just a little. While I understand that it takes more years to truly grow into that master teacher, my idealist visions for entering the profession have come into conflict with my utter confrontation with reality. I can’t dream up ideas without understanding where they came from much the way I can’t argue / discussion something with anyone without understanding where that reasoning comes from.

But I became a teacher for this: I have the necessary temperament for the job, I come from where my students come from, and without the teachers who so readily became educators for me and many of my brethren, I wouldn’t have been the man I am today. The idea of paying it forward is alive and well in me. That’s why I keep ruminating on the roles of our former Civil Rights leaders even when others find it cliche, or why I might deviate a little from math with my kids, and have these moments of second-guessing. If someone asked me that giving it my all was what I would need to cause a revolution, then I have no reason to go there.

In front of a classroom, I can make that happen, even when it’s all very subconscious. I’m not directly saying that being able to solve two-step equations is how my students will become the greatest people they can be, but my ability to transmit positive thoughts and affirmations of their own ability to work will have positive effects on their own self-esteems as well as my community, and I sincerely believe that. When I’m up there, I’m a stage performer, but I also have to get up there and give the most convincing performance I can day in and day out, or else I risk losing my audience.

Nevermind that I curse out in real life, and really, I’m a bit disorganized. I also don’t always think carefully about what I might say, and I’ve sometimes said inappropriate things to different people. To wit, I’ll even let out some nasty sarcasm at someone testing my gangsta. Yet, I know how critical my job is, and if, as an educator, you don’t have a belief in the importance of your career, then you’re probably the reason why the rest of us have to justify why we get summers off, tenure, and health benefits.

To wit, everytime I have a poetry performance, I have similar routines to what I do before I teach (or when I was in some high school musicals): I look at myself in an imaginary mirror and rap along to a little Talib Kweli or Rage Against the Machine, or sing along to some Juan Luis Guerra, Hector Lavoe, or just let U2 aurally serenade me until I’m a few steps away from the school building. I’m going to rock the crowd as hard as possible, make sure everyone in the building is listening to what I’m saying, maybe even get a little feedback after my performance, and hope somehow that whatever I’ve said resonates with the audience. If it didn’t, I gotta go back and work on my rhymes once more …

jose, who’d like to thank his girlfriend for just listening while I rambled and sobbed over some coffee before I came back to Earth …

p.s. - Maybe I’ll post a bit of that rant on Thursday while at the NCTM Conference in Utah. We’ll see.

p.p.s. - As a poet, should I be hitting y’all up with more poems? It is National Poetry Month after all. Hmm …

I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I won’t wait, I don’t wanna wait
I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I won’t wait, I don’t wanna wait
I won’t wait til it’s too late …

On Sunday, I spoke a little about how I often see myself as an inspiration to the little ones in my class, especially my boys, who hardly ever get any examples of people to look up to. Past my coarse and firm exterior as a disciplinarian resides a man who really understands the power of someone else telling you that you’re going to be alright. Maybe in many ways I earned it academically or because I got lucky, but the teachers and principals I had looking out for me usually made sure that I stayed on a successful road.

But more recently, accelerated teacher programs practically chastise teachers for becoming too emotionally involved with the students, because there’s a fear that 1) the teacher won’t understand or relate to the child 2) the teacher will become far too fatigued at the end of the day to become a real human being and 3) they won’t represent the program they’re in as professionals. The jargon some of these heads speak in often denotes an implicit hatred of the children, preferring to speak about them as statistics and not as humans. That attitude trickles down to the principals, administrators, and even some teachers, who would rather run around trying to find ways to pass their students so they can improve the schools’ overall grade rather than keeping that academic rigor that’s so necessary.

So then as a teacher, I’m often stuck in between. When I first came into the world’s greatest profession, I was encouraged to inspire and challenge, but then chastised for my idealism and investment. Thus, I did the only thing I knew how to do since high school: rebel. I rebelled against the misconceptions of my person, against those advisers who treated my qualities as setbacks, rebelled against my parent’s wishes for me to get into some cubicle writing C++ with a banana in my left hand, and rebelled against the kids, because their thoughts (I want to do better) and their behavior (not really) are independent of each other, but not independent of the zillion factors outside of a classroom I can control.

Even on a day like this, when I had to detach myself from the situations in my school, I only find myself getting more excited to have that special secret handshake with my little gentlemen, to tell the girls that they need to act like they want to be strong, independent women someday, and furthermore, delve into statistics and at some point, make them understand the real-world relevancy of it all. I want to have awesome discussions with fellow teachers about the children we teach, with some administrators about ideas we can implement for next year, and even sit down and think about how I can become that master teacher people keep hallowing.

John F. Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” I counter, “Ask BOTH what your country can do for you as well as what you can do for your country.” Let’s have an exchange. Teachers like me can’t do it alone, though. We need to have assurances that we’ll have just enough freedom to implement the curriculum with our own flavor but still have enough focus to meet state and national standards for education. We need to have enough resources and support to keep on keeping on. Most teachers don’t work shorter hours because we’re lazy, but because we need to correct homework, plan lessons, go to outside professional developments when our own school’s PDs aren’t adequate for our growth, and because unlike every other profession, we also have a harder time extracting ourselves from our professions.

In turn, I personally can’t promise that some teachers will follow me, but I can promise that I’m going to do my best to hold my end of the bargain: elevate your child to a higher level than when he or she first met me, and work as hard as possible to make that happen. If it means we’ll be protesting on a Wednesday (3/19) at City Hall for more funds for schools, or making a little noise around the edublogosphere (because we really are all we got), or telling that little boy or girl to get back to work or they’ll face serious and appropriate consequences, then so be it. One thing’s for sure: I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I won’t wait, I won’t wanna wait …

jose, who wants to show you in so many ways …

p.s. - Pencil tap to Alicia Keys’ “Tell You Somethin’ (Nana’s Reprise)” …

Let me ruminate a bit.
I like being personally invited to events. I like being messaged or called out specifically by people. I like searching for my name and seeing my web site first on Google, and any references to me making up the majority of the search results on any major search engine. I like when people say “please” and “thank you” when they address me, and when my kids see me in the morning, despite however they’re doing in my class behaviorally or academically, I expect them to say “Good morning” or “good afternoon” and not at their leisure. These interactions are as natural to me as me expecting warm water when I turn the lever to “warm” in my shower.

Of course, these interactions don’t always play out the way I like them to, and that’s when I get a little peeved. With the increase of impersonal greetings and interactions, it’s easy to feel like my achievements aren’t being recognized. I’m not self-centered, though some people say I should be with some of the events that precede It’s also easy to lose sight of my goals, and why I’ve embarked on the “mission” I have. Maybe it’s because I’ve also grown a little pride in myself, resuscitating pieces of me that lied buried deep in my person because of the multiple insecurities I’ve suffered through for a few decades or so. I’m good now, but any little feeling of personal slight or disregard often gets my mind going.

But then I think about all the wonderful feedback, my growing readership, and the positive attention I do get from the people in my inner circle, and I’m grounded again. Today, at the bar, I was having a conversation about U2 with an Irish co-worker, wondering if they’re still cool in Ireland. She told me that indeed they were, and they’re looked at as inspirations. Even to this day, as popular and sometimes aloof as they are, people still catch members of the band drop by the music store with no bodyguards and no pretenses. Granted, that would never happen with the likes of a Jay-Z (in Marcy, BK) or a Diddy (Harlem, USA), but it’s good to know that even a band whose leader has demigod-like tendencies still has a good sense of their place in the world.

And if they can keep a good head on their shoulders, then this fan of theirs can probably do well for himself, too.

jose, who wonders what people do to keep grounded in spite of their lofty goals …

Can we get one more day on this glorious vacation? No? That’s unfortunate. I was just getting used to hearing the sounds of nothing in the morning. A few notes:1. I can’t contain it anymore. I tried, Eva, and it’s just not working. I’m going to the Kanye West concert in NYC! My face absolutely illuminated when I got the pre-sales tickets I wanted. I even went ahead and passed the code along to some friends so they could share in the experience. See you all in May.

2. I know I’m a math teacher because, when I’m on the elliptical machine reading the time remaining, I start to compare the minute and second timers, and answer if they’re relatively prime. For instance, at 14:28, they’re not relatively prime because they have a common factor of 14, but a few seconds later, at 14:15, the numbers are relatively prime because they only have a common factor of 1. Sick right?

3. Speaking of which, JD knows how to write carnivals up. Check his version of The Math Carnival here, where he features 2 of my posts (humbled, really I am).

4. Getting back from Miami with maybe a total of 8 hours of sleep over the last couple of nights, I knew today would be equally as dizzying. I also found myself profoundly motivated to make things happen. It’s a mix of seeing my father healthy again but in an interesting situation, my godsister losing her life to a suicidal maniac (which I spoke of before, but I refuse to go into detail here for obvious reasons), and just having a better understanding of the time I’m given … or lack thereof. It’s a sense of urgency that transforms normal people into legends, ordinary groups into championship teams, and blank pages into hallowed pieces of literature.

“I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven
When I awoke I spent that on a necklace
I told G_d I’d be back in a second
Man, it’s so hard not to act reckless
To whom much is given, much is tested
Get arrested, guess until he get the message
I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny
And what’d I do? Act more stupidly …”

Kanye West - “Can’t Tell Me Nothin’”

With those few bars, he evokes the questions and fears of everything that comes with success, whatever your definition. On the one hand, you have him finally reaching his dreams, updating and personalizing another scribe’s dream as his own. On the other hand, he understands the pressure and pitfalls this success leads to, even if its unintentional. All this drama that successful people go through can either make or break them, as cliché as that sounds.

In all honesty, I wonder if this latest series of events that have laid themselves on my path is just a way for the spirit around all of us to substantiate future successes, like the way we prefer to watch / read biographies of people who’ve had grand success but also the most crucibles along the way. Even if this was the case, I’m the only one who could fully understand this movie, because I write like hell, but due to circumstances out of my control (and I suspect others’ too), I’d take some things with me to the grave.

But I’m feeling as ambitious as ever. I’m driven, and that’s what’s important. With all the naysayers and doubters I’ve had in my lifetime, even within my family, I’ve kept a cool head, calmly reminding myself that actions speak louder than words, and say, in the immortal words of Mr. West, “Wait ’till I get my money right …”

jose, who talks with so much emphasis …

Cold Stone Creameries, Saturday.Michael Jackson blaring through the stereos above while some kids dance to it.

I’m chillin’ with my girl, scooping up on Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some and bragging to his girl about being a thriller in the sack.

A trip afterwards to the Virgin Megastore, and along the way, me giving pound to a dreaded VJ by the name of Sway while “The Bridge Is Over” by Boogie Down Productions played outside.

Stupid and simple moments like these make me believe that life has a purpose, no matter what the purpose was, and if it doesn’t, then let me not ruminate on its existence and use the time to live it to the fullest.

George Clooney helps me think on this some more through his role as Michael Clayton in the movie with the same title. On the one hand, we will readily sell out the next human being for millions beyond our necessity. On the other hand, we have people who will risk death (and life) to uproot these deft villains of human rights and liberties. Are these villains simply that evil or is it because they’ve ascended so high into the economic stratosphere that they’ve lost the ability to do the things normal people do, like breathe?

Naturally, this message became clear right after, when my girl wanted to have a little late-night conversation over at the Europa Cafe near Times Square. At first, we were a little wary after seeing all these Black and Latino youth surrounding the area in packs, something we hadn’t seen in that specific area since we started dating.  Then, it became especially weird when the front of the cafe had a line of dudes in the front, and I had to cut right through them. They were in some hostile formation I recognized from my own neighborhood. Something was amiss.

After sipping on my hot chocolate and her on her tea, we noticed the cafe closing at 1am, again unprecedented, but they seemed to be in a rush to move everyone out of their establishment. A busboy guarded the door, letting no one in while we heard sirens go off. A few minutes later, we heard more sirens go off, and as I turn and peek into 42nd St., there’s a blockade formed by the police. Imagine: one of the busiest streets on Earth completely emptied of anyone but cops. My first thought was, “We need to get to a train.” Then it became, “Fuck that; we need a taxi!”

I turned around, and the same boys and girls crowding the area had friends whose hands were bloodied. One young man had his hands completely red, and I did my best not to stare.

BANG BANG BANG!!!

Shots go off, and I immediately get into hood mode. I take my girl into the taxi, and we ride off into 34th, and I literally yelled at the taxi to move as quickly as possible.  The first thought that crossed into my mind was, “Why does this happen, even in parts where no one’s causing any problems?” Then it became more about the teenagers themselves, and why even in those settings, they were still prone to violent behavior? Is it because that’s the only way they’ve been taught how to act or because they have such a lack of self-worth that they have no problem even ridiculing how they’re going to shoot someone to death than keeping that promise?

That ate at my conscience for a while. I woke up, still a little tense from the previous night’s events. Then Sunday happened, and I remembered why I liked humans again. We’re prone to failure. We cheat, steal, lie, and even make dumb grammatical errors we have no business making. Thus, the best of us try to elevate those situations, even as we wallow in our misery. The best of us fight that feeling to give up on each other, even when we lose ourselves in a greater human cause.

On Sunday, I awoke, went to the gym, and wanted to go to the ALM’s house. I got on the bus, and of course, I would get the bus driver who’d never been on the route in his life. He made the wrong turn, so as he’s trying to get back on his route, we knew what was coming. He surpasses the first obstacle of making that first left. Then he tries to make that second left, and CLANK! The bus (an elongated bus with 8 wheels or so) hits a car in the back. He tries to step out, and CLANK! He hits another car. 7 people depart from the bus, leaving only the brave few.

So people who could have been the fathers and older brothers of the same people in the previous night’s scuffle came out and tried to help the bus driver (a Joel Klein doppelganger) out, and within 20 minutes and a little direction from me, that’s what happened. I didn’t make it to the ALM’s house, but there is the triumph of the human spirit. These men had nothing to lose, and in other situations, they’d laugh or scream at the bus driver for not knowing his route. We jeered him for a bit, but after a couple of car crashes and some screeches, we went into action.

Damn.

Not that these stories had anything to do with the Giants win. We can’t expect people to come from so much high expectation and adversity like Eli Manning, and for everyone to have a Tiki Barber, a friend turned enemy who threw him under the bus at every chance he got, or even a Jeremy Shockey, who attacked him about leadership, making snide remarks. But imagine after everything Eli’s been through, he still found 50+ guys behind him, and some coaches in front, who believed he was their guy. They’d lay out anyone and everyone for him, because as he goes, they go too. If he’s the underdog, then they’d be his fortress. And a small collective of Giants fans who actually believed in Eli since the first day, through his struggles and losses rejoiced at their apparent stubbornness.

After conquering the Goliath that was the New England Patriots, my cousin calls me on the phone, screaming and almost in tears over the win. I yelled along with him, a primal scream acknowledging the weekend that was. Even in the most insurmountable odds, the triumph of the human spirit can prevail. It takes a little ass-kicking and some serious inspiration to make that. There’s no one word to describe how events so contradictory and yet so meaningful meld into a full 72 hours of a human experience.

Heart.

Struggle.

Love.

Triumph.

Yeah … something like that.

jose, who still hasn’t done the “Why I Teach” post, but will get on it tomorrow …

Today was one of those defining moments for my homeroom. For those of you new to this blog, my homeroom is basically a sixth grade bilingual class for all intents and purposes, though legally, they qualify for 100% English classes due to their passing their qualifying tests. However, one or two glances at their written responses can easily tell you they’re not remotely on grade level academically. Most of them are well-meaning children, and I really do have some of the most adorable children ever, but the system really does an injustice to their educational needs.

Many of these academic deficiencies have led to some of the more hard-working students to become a bit frustrated and the less hard-working students to act out their frustrations with their usual demonstrative attitudes: speaking out of turn, cursing and disregarding rules of the class, and moreover, being disrespectful to both the teachers and the students. And it only takes a few of them to ruin the experience for the majority of them, who, as immature as some of them are, still want to learn something and do their best. If I didn’t have the patience to withstand those storms while still enabling those who do work hard to continue working hard, then I might be in the wrong profession.

Of course, I’ve been assigned to this particular class because of my skills in classroom management, Spanish fluency, and instructional techniques. At least that’s what I’m assuming, anyways, because no other class in our grade has this much “need” academically or behaviorally as a whole. Someone had to notice that I’m not licensed in bilingual education; much of what I do is based on my belief in differentiation (to an extent), improvisation, good questioning techniques, and clasping my hands, hoping what I said even remotely scrapes their temples. My informal assessments and questioning periods often go well, to the point where I feel comfortable with their knowledge retention 80% of the time. However, when it comes to tests, which are designed specifically to reflect the work we’ve done, they oscillate between fantastic to “Were you in my class for the last 2 weeks?”.

More importantly, I’m finding that they’re not gelling very well. Seating them might as well be like playing Freecell: I can shuffle and order cards, and have only a few free spaces in which I can move some of these personalities, but if I don’t get the personalities right, I gotta shuffle the cards all over again. This combined with all the aforementioned ails has made teachers scream, curse (in their own private quarters), and even cry (in my private quarters to me). It’s disheartening, but there are only so many old-school techniques we can apply to at least arouse a sense of effort from my students.

So last week, I just got tired of the madness, and had them give me a homework assignment: 1) list the top ten people you can work with, 2) say one thing you like about the class, and 3) one thing you don’t like about the class. At first, it sounds a little dirty: am I trying to continue derisions and divisions among the class? Will I already fragment the class more than it already is? Yet, there in lies the hook: I get the kids to tell me, indirectly, what makes a great classmate, what they already do well, and what they can improve on. In other words, they do their own self-reflection.

Of course, this morning, after I realized I had no belt on (fortunately my butt held up my pants all day today), maybe it was time to write a letter back in as clear a language as I could explaining those things. After deans and other teachers came to speak to them about their inadequacies, I gave them a math test on squaring, square roots, and interpreting graphs. Most of them worked through it quietly, though one of them acted like he didn’t know what the test procedures were.

I then didn’t see them until homeroom, so I printed my letter out, and gave a personally signed one to each of my students, and said nothing more. I literally said maybe a few sentences: “Take these home and read them.” Something really cool happened just then. They all sat down and read. Quietly. They weren’t concerned to run to their lockers and other minutiae. Like all of a sudden, it was one of the few times an adult addressed them personally and responded to their questions and concerns, and did it in such an intimate way as a letter. I rarely see them that serene (voluntarily anyways).

Tomorrow, when we have the ELA test, I’d like to keep building on this process of maturation for them, and delve deeper than I’ve already tried. But then my question is: when do I get to have these personal interactions with my students without thinking too much about test deadlines and school politics? How can I develop good relationships between the 75% of students who want to behave well while showing the other 25% that their negativity won’t be tolerated any longer? I know I’ve been granted patience and empathy, but that only goes for so long before I have one of those moments again.

That’s the next step. I’ve already suggested, and other teachers concur, that we’d like to have their parents in for a special meeting with their parents as a whole, and how to reinforce what we’re teaching them in the classroom at home. There’s also been suggestions of Saturday school and other methods. As for me, this homeroom is the Freecell game I have yet to solve, but the more I play with these cards, the more cards I start to see fly up in their order. Until then, I’ll be clicking and moving, hoping I don’t have to restart for the umpteenth time.

That’s enough, Mr. V. Please no more today …

jose, who has been tagged to answer the question, “Why Do You Teach?” and will surely give a response in the coming week …

p.s. - I’ve been interviewed. For my burgeoning poets and other artists, read and read away. I drop some gems.

SMACK!

HA HA HA!

Dave Chappelle, I miss you, man.

In any case, I was tagged by J. Dakar, so now I have to come up with 5 things I’d like to tell my kids. If you’re an avid reader of this blog, though, you can probably tell what the first three are:

1. Walk on water.

Don’t be afraid to take risks, because once you become afraid, then you’ve lost the opportunity  to know if the impossible was possible.

2. Freedom is not free.

It’s a play on this commonly known phrase, but I tell my kids that if they want freedom, they have to earn it and fight for it. Never let it go: the fight or the freedom.

3.  Be the change you want to see in the world. 

Word to Mohandas Gandhi. If they want to see something change in their communities, in their living situations, and how people approach them, they have to act like that change. Simple, but not easy.

4. Know who your friends and enemies are.

Unfortunately, kids don’t often have the ability to discern between what’s harmful and helpful to them. Often, their own friends who distract them from their work eventually hurt them while the teachers who they’re used to holding them back actually help them progress in their own lives. I understand the dynamics, but really, the truth must be told.

5. Push hard, and just when you think you’re done, push harder.

Because you never know how far you can go until you’ve pushed your hardest …

jose, who’s happy he didn’t sell his limited edition Yankee jerseys (Jeter and A-Rod plates on the left sleeve)

p.s. -

Currently on rotation:

Jay-Z - “Roc Boys,” “American Dreaming”
Across the Universe cast - “Let It Be,” “I Am The Walrus,” “Happiness is a Warm Gun” (featuring Salma  “Damn Señora” Hayek),  “Across the Universe”
Babyface - “Shower the People”

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 …

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 …