Because I like to use the internet to spread probably ludicrous rumors...

A small buzz around the school towards the end of this week?

That Dr. Andres Alonso is on President-Elect Obama's short list to be Secretary of Education.

LOL?

or

Hmmmm.....

As far as my opinion goes, the jury is still out on Dr. Alonso, but I sure hope he sticks around to see what he can accomplish here.

Busy times

Despite the day off on Tuesday (which, to be fair, was such an emotional rollercoaster that it wasn't exactly relaxing), I've been exhausted all week. Now that I sit down at the end of the day, though, it's not hard to see why. This is what I've got going on this week:

1. Grades due on Friday. Thankfully, they didn't give us a time they are due. Hopefully 3:30 will be just fine.

2. Outward Bound, which I organized but am sadly not participating in, is on Friday. I've ran applications over to the facility, organized a school meeting with the instructors, called parents, and, tomorrow, I'm carpooling nine kids over during my first period class, assuming I get a little bit of coverage.

3. We're trying to plan a unit together with the Social Studies department. I've become the point person on the English side, and the point person on the Social Studies side just had a baby, so it's a bit of a mess. The unit is supposed to start Monday. I was called this evening about having an emergency meeting with the guy whose wife had a baby and all the rest of the Social Studies teachers at 7:55am tomorrow morning. It should be a really cool thing when it happens (they're teaching the cultural aspects of the epic, we're teaching the literary aspects), but it's taking some work.

4. I'm trying to finish up Romeo and Juliet so I can move on the The Odyssey. It means really tight, a little bit rished lessons. I prefer slow and steady.

5. Classes all across the city for my required Reading courses. I'm getting home after 8pm most night.

So, yeah, exhausted. I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow.

Teaching in an Obama world

Pretty amazing being in school today with students so excited about national politics.

I didn't do anything different, except briefly ask students if they watched all the returns. Most did, some shared stories about crying or moms or grandmothers crying, some wore buttons or t-shirts. We talked for a while about witnessing history and going to see the inaugeration, about high expectations for Obama and the fact that now he has to meet those expectations, and then moved back to Romeo and Juliet.

I hope I can organize some sort of trip down to see the inaugeration. Could be easy - just jump on the MARC train and head down. It's probably going to be a big mess down there, but if I'm not driving and each adult is only responsible for a few kids, then it could work. I would even consider taking a personal day so I can do something like that; otherwise, I'm guessing too many other teachers would want to do it and substitutes would be an issue.

As a citizen, I've never voted for a politician before that I really trust to make sound decisions regardless of the situation. I've never voted for anyone whose thoughtfulness and reflectiveness, combined with his knowledge of the Constitution and communities and education, make me excited about the direction of the nation and its people, even as times darken around us. For those reasons, I'm thrilled at the victory of President-elect Obama.

However, as a teacher, my support has a different tint. From a policy standpoint, I expect a smarter No Child Left Behind, and am excited about the ideas about service in education that I have heard from Obama. However, the real excitement comes from a more subjective view - I teach primarily African-American students, and they are students who have often been beaten down by life. Most are below the poverty line. Many do not have stable home lives. And while most will be first-generation college students, the vast majority don't understand the connection between hard work now and future earnings later, and most just don't see education as the path to upward mobility that they should. The pull of the violent streets, or the pull of having a child young like their mother and grandmother before them, and the pull of instantaneous easy money all tug at them insistently. Seeing Barack Obama, a brilliant, bi-partisan and inclusive politician, ascend to the Presidency from humble beginnings, through grit and determination and inclusiveness and hard work, can give them a sense of hope that they might not have had before. They no longer have the excuse that they shouldn't try hard because society won't let them succeed anyway; rather, they see that hard work is a mandatory part of success, and that anything is possible.

Now, Barack, you can't let us, or them, down.

Wouldn't it be funny if a teacher thought it was Pajama Day at school when it really wasn't?

It's Homecoming Week.

As such, we have theme days every day. I try to show school spirit and participate. Last week, I saw the flier, and immediately registered the fact that Pajama Day was Monday. This is always one of my favorite days, because it's so darn comfortable to wear sleep pants to school! So I did, as I have for the last eight years.

Oops.

I sort of realized as I drove up the parking lot that none of the kids were in pajamas. Hmmm, I thought. That's weird. Maybe just not that much spirit this year. Or maybe the advertising hadn't worked out.

But, it was Support Your Candidate Day, a day to wear political gear.

Oops. Kids gave me weird looks all day. I had to explain myself a hundred times. It was really funny. Totally a thing I would do, too. It was a long silly day, one in which I laughed at myself a lot.

It would be all in fun, except my Department Head was apparently "reprimanded" this afternoon about it. I hope she was kidding about that... my lesson today was tip-top and I literally had 9th graders that didn't want to leave when the bell rang. Yet, that's what I hear in the afternoon... ugh...

Apparently my science teacher friend did the same thing, and I saw a kid or two that made the same mistake. We just didn't get the message that it had changed (in fact, they're scrapping Pajama Day totally, for fear of girls wearing lingerie).

No school tomorrow, for Election Day. For the first time in my life, I'll be voting for a candidate with hardly any cynicism at all.

Slots, again...

I'm about 55-45 on the no side. But still open-minded.

Here is a miniature discussion with both sides commenting, over on the Inside Ed blog.

I've spent a lot of the last week talking to friends and colleagues about the issue. Here is a summary of what I have found:

Arguments in favor of slots:

1. The funds will go to education, which really needs it.

2. Even if the funds are diverted from education and used to patch other holes, the state is in a huge deficit and needs the money.

3. Concerned with taxing a "sin" - why aren't you concerned with alcohol or cigarettes being taxed? The state already makes a whole lot of money on "morality" taxes.

4. The people who would be gambling are already going to other states to do it, so all that tax money is filling other states' coffers.

5. We acknowledge that it's not ideal, but it's the only thing on the table in terms of bringing any new revenue into the state without raising more taxes on everyone. Without them, there will be draconian cuts to education and other state entities.

6. Sheila Dixon, who somehow has managed to put me strongly in her corner after her decent-so-far tenure as mayor, says that property taxes will dramatically decrease from the revenue of slots.

7. My environmentalist friend tells me that he figures if slots pass, that the horse tracks will be more successful, meaning they'll stay open instead of being bulldozed in favor of development.

Arguments Against Slots:

1. According to Adam Meisner, the language of the proposed law does not guarantee new money for schools, which likely would not get an increase in funding at all. He also discusses a scenario where slots operators realize that with the current tax structure, that they cannot even build or operate the slots without a tax break from the state, and that the said tax break will come out of the pockets of the schools.

2. Public perception - Few go beyond "we passed slots for education," but what if the education budget remains static, or even decreases, despite the passage? I mean, we are headed for dark economic times and this is perhaps even likely. Then, next time teachers or education advocates look to Annapolis for more money, they'll say, "Well, we already gave you slots. What more do you want?"

3. It's taxing the poorest and most vulnerable in society. The poor get poorer...

4. Gambling and all the addiction and pain that can come with it can be detrimental to society, and this is a government-funded addiction possibility.

5. They're advertising as pro-teacher. Is there any evidence that this is a pro-teacher plan? The teachers I speak with are about evenly split. I also was really put off by a misleading flier that attempted to connect Obama to the anti-slots movement.

6. Detroit did the same thing years ago with slots. Funding for education has decreased (because, although money does fill up the education fund, the education fund has been cut) and crime/addiction have increased. I've heard from Baltimore Diary that the same thing happened in New York.

7. That slots simply bail out bad legislators who should have left plenty for the education budget without relying on this source of revenue to work within a budget.

I'm still capable of being able to be convinced either way. Most of my teacher colleagues are similarly up in the air, while others are vehemently in support (one did canvassing for slots (he posted this on my facebook: "From where I sit, including not having enough books again and having new students added WEEKS into the year PURELY for money reasons, I have to ask 'where is the money going to come from?' Think about how forthcoming people and politicians outside of Baltimore have not been sending money our way, even with a court order. I understand that the numbers thrown out there in support may not be entirely accurate, especially with the economy headed down the shiesshaus, but it will bring in something, some of which has been leaving the state already. Now ask yourself: If the slots issue is not passed, where will ANY of the money needed to pick up the short fall come from? As Ms. ________ said to me, 'We shouldn't HAVE to do this!' But I see no other option at this point in time, nor anyone even proposing an alternative other than letting the kids' education, particularly that of the ones in Baltimore, rot") or vehemently against (a colleague told me that addiction is already the biggest problem in Baltimore and this is just something that makes it much worse, and doesn't trust that schools will see any of the money).

Still don't know what to do. I'll be thinking long and hard for the next 36 hours on this. (I can't believe I'm an undecided voter on this issue.)

National Board Certification and Letters of Recommendation

1. It's official: I'm in for National Board Certification. I'm just doing Take One! this year.

2. I taught the Class of 2009 as 9th graders, 10th grades, and 11th graders, and, because of this, I'm writing a lot of letters of recommendation this time of year. I don't mind it, as I kind of like writing them, but they get harder and harder to make sound original as the year goes on. (That's one reason I really like writing them for my baseball players, because they end up being really different.) My most interesting dilemma this year was a young woman who asked me to write her one. I taught her for three years in a row; she didn't impress me with her work ethic last year, and, this year, her mother called me a "lying snake in the grass" because she received a failing grade in the 4th quarter. Still, she impressed me through much of her three years with me, and I'm not going visit the sins of the mother on the daughter, no matter how ridiculous her accusations are. Hers will be an interesting one to write. I try to write one every two days, because, last year, I ended up writing so many during Christmas vacation and that sucks; the deadline for most is Jan. 1. When the kids hand me the letter, I want them to give me a deadline, so that I start working on it quicker. I'm glad for Howard University, which had a Nov. 1 deadline, so I got that out in the mail yesterday and was able to scratch another one off my list.

3. Next week has to be very tight, because I have to finish Romeo and Juliet. I'm taking out a page from both Carol Jago and the Folger, realizing that it's not that the kids know every single plot detail from the play, but rather attain the skills. I'm just sort of assigning Act 4 and Act 5 as homework reading assignments while we continue to do cool things in class. We'll see how it goes. It's a truncated week, with Election Day on Tuesday (no school) and Homecoming Week culminating in the big pep rally on Friday (which will not be a totally academic day).

Halloween as Romeo

Two years ago it was To Kill a Mockingbird, and I played Jem Finch.

Last year, it was The Odyssey, and I played Polyphemus.

This year, for Halloween, the English Department all went as Romeo and Juliet. We had 15 roles spread out, and did scenes around the building all day. The costumes were hard - all the Montagues and Capulets wore opposing colors, and I basically just put a bunch of sayings on my shirt like "Fate Sucks" and "Sprung" - but it was a very active and fun day. We ran all around, deciding when and where to do random scenes. We performed the balcony scene between classes as kids filed around me on my knees. The Mercutio/Tybalt death scene caused all the security guards to run up to the floor, thinking it was real. The Lord Capulet and Juliet monologue also caused a big stir.

A whole hell of a lot of fun. Also the first time I've wore jeans in my career (I just thought Romeo wouldn't wear khakis... I know it seems like I must be super formal for not ever wearing jeans, but I just plain old never wear jeans anyway, so even on dress-down Fridays I wear khakis and a school-related t-shirt).