MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons
There Are No Angels Here
Today, Friday October 13th, capped off an excruciatingly hard and emotional week. All week we've been at the elementary school where I'm starting student teaching on Monday, meeting with various staff and specialists. I've talked about the school before, but I don't think there are really any words to describe how horrific this school and its surrounding neighborhood is. The irony is that it's a Title I school - meaning the Federal Government has thrown millions of dollars at this school for every conceivable type of help and program you can think of. You name it, the school has it. They have 1200 students (100%) on free breakfast and lunch. The school qualifies for everything. They have a full time psychologist AND a full-time psychiatric social worker. That should give you some idea of the problems these kids and their families have. They have Special Ed teachers, aides, Resource Teachers, Reading Specialists, two full-time literacy coaches, a math coach, a beautiful library stocked with brand-new books. They have a nurse who acts like a small medical clinic. The kids get free glasses, immunizations, medical care, hearing aids, speech therapy, deaf and hard of hearing therapy, hearing tests, vision tests. The nurse does a lice head check every Friday in different classrooms.
I am so afraid of getting lice - there are no words.
The day we met with the mental health experts I thought I was going to run out of the auditorium screaming. The school sits in the center of one of the worst neighborhoods in L.A. County. There is a prominent gang who works the area, although an injunction was put on the gang 7 years ago...but nevertheless this gang runs the biggest crack cocaine business in the entire area. They have ties to the Mexican Mafia. When walking to and from my car, I keep my head down, I don't make eye contact with anyone and I pray no one drives down the street. I've been in Mexico over the Arizona border. I'm now in Mexico again. Out of 1200 students, there are only 100 who are classified as EO - English only - meaning English is their primary, native language. There is one Russian student at the school, one Armenian, two Vietnamese and the rest of are Hispanic descent. I truly feel like I've stepped into the ghetto of Mexico.
The stories the psychologist and psychiatric social worker told us are searing in their brutality. There recently was an 11 year old girl who was raped by her step-father. Incest is very common, as many families live in very small quarters together. Sexual molestation, domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, child abuse, truancy and abject poverty are all the norm for these kids. Single mothers have 4 and 5 kids. I blame the culture AND the Catholic Church for that. The Catholic Church can rot in Hell for telling these people "no birth control." I have no words to express my burning hatred for the Church. Every time the Church says "no birth control" they condemn these kids to horrific lives. Kids are literally starving - they have no food at home. One kid said he didn't do his homework because he literally didn't have a space to do it in. There are two, three families living in a SINGLE - imagine it. Young girls beginning puberty have no privacy. They wear heavy coats in June because they're tired of all the male eyes staring at them.
Believe it or not, there are still truancy officers. They're just called Pupil Services Personnel now. We met the woman whose job it is to make home visits and track down the reasons why kids aren't coming to school. Yes, the schools get money for every child that attends each day, but it's also the law and the D.A. doesn't fuck around on this issue. The families don't answer their door; they're afraid. They're illegal. They're in debt. They're in a shitty neighborhood. One woman told the PPS lady the reason she couldn't bring her daughter to school was that her 18 year old daughter has cancer and is in the hospital and she also has two other kids, one who is an infant. The PPS woman said the infant was FILTHY. She had to teach the woman basic hygeine. A lot of the kids can't or don't know how to clean themselves.
The school is literally the best, safest place these kids can be at all day. Their clothes are filthy; the nurse said some of the kids accidentally wet their pants and when she asks them to put their wet underwear in a bag, the underwear is often too small, and so full of holes it's barely hanging together. There are many charities around the area that bring in clothes for these people. Even the parents aren't immune to the problems; one parent become so suicidal the psychologist put them on a 72 hour hold in the hospital. The kids are angry and threaten violence; one little boy took an ax to his stepfather and the stepfather beat him senseless. Many of the children say things like "I don't want to live" and have suicidal ideation.
The school, acccording to the standards set forth by No Child Left Behind, is failing. It's a PI 3 school - meaning it's a Program Improvement 3 school. It has only two more years to get its API scores up before the State comes in and takes over. They start cleaning house by getting rid of the Principal and the administration first. What really frosts me is that they'll get rid of teachers too - and so many are so bad they need to be FIRED. But you can't be fired because the fucking union is so strong. So like the pedophile priests were shuffled around form church to church to just molest more students, the bad teachers are moved around from school to school to inflict their shitty teaching on more students.
What is the problem here? We decided it isn't money. The government has thrown millions of dollars at the school and the kids are still failing academically. My friend P doesn't think it's the parents or the language problem. I disagree. I do think it's the culture - the family, lack of values, lack of education, the poverty, and coming into a new country and trying to learn a new language via a horrible, horrible, highly scripted reading program the district has implemented called Open Court. It teaches kids pure phonics - without teaching them any meaning or comprehension. So the kids learn English - they just have no idea what they're reading. They sit for hours on end making phonemic sounds. My whole cohort hates Open Court so much and yet for our student teaching we HAVE to do it. On Tuesday the literacy coaches were teaching it to us and I kept asking over and over "Yes, but when does COMPREHENSION come into play? And they just kept saying, "Oh no, it doesn't." Like it's not important at ALL to understand what the fuck you're saying and reading! I can sound out gobbledeygook words all day, but that doesn't mean I can fucking understand it! Who ARE the morons who decided THIS would be good for students?
A friend of my cousin's, who's been teaching high school English at a MUCH nicer school in a much nicer area, tested positive for being exposed to TB. So now she's on all these heavy drugs to make sure she doesn't get it. Fuck the lice - THAT scares the shit out of me.
And today...today was the cherry on top of the urban school sundae. We were sitting in one of the meeting rooms, when a woman came over the PA system and announced the entire school was in 'lockdown.' NO ONE was supposed to leave the room they were in; all teachers had to keep their students inside and keep the doors locked. Our seminar teacher idiotically opened the door and saw two policeman outside. We could hear the helicopters above. I was a little nervous.
Later, I found out there'd been a shooting in the neighborhood. I'm going to go to the police website and see if I can find out anymore information. Oddly enough, I'm not really scared of being shot. I am freaked about being exposed to some airborne illness.
I met my 'master teacher' today. She is really sweet. She seems to be around my age, not married, very nice, caucasian, also an EO (we're all labeled now with these lovely acronyms). Her 5th grade students all said hello to me and said my name perfectly. They seem sweet.
Earlier this week, we sat in the library while the ELD (English Language Development) director talked to us about the different struggles these kids have not knowing English. A class of students came into the library. I was so depressed that morning. I heard the kids laughing. Our site director, whom I refer to as a Stepford wife, went over and told them to stop laughing. It was all I could do not to stand up and yell "LADY! Let these kids laugh. These kids are the only thing that's keeping me from running out to my car, getting in it, driving away and never looking back."
My friend Gena said "I admire you. I couldn't do this." Don't admire me. I don't know if I can do it. I'm scared. I'm mostly scared I won't be a good teacher. I'm scared there's no way to make a difference there. I feel like all they're doing is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I am much more jaded and cynical than the 22 -25 year old girls in our program. But I've got over 15 years of life experience on them. I don't think my life story is going to be "Stand and Deliver." Maybe I am too pessimistic. Only time will tell.
Photo: Cartoon mocking the highly scripted and idiotic reading programs used in many schools today.