Soul searching

Everyone gets to a point where they have to do some hard thinking about whether or not they're doing the right thing with their life, whether their talents are being exercised, whether their relationships with colleagues and friends are fulfilling, and whether or not they need to make a change.

I'm at that point again, and I didn't think I'd get her this quickly.

I'm not sure I spent much time describing the group of students I have now, but the short version is that this 6th grade class makes the juniors I had last year look like saints. All the tools I have to get these kids on track make minor and incremental changes in their behavior, so getting the class to act the way they should is going to be a long, long process, one I'm not sure we can complete in the 10 weeks or so before I expect to leave the charter school.

But that's a fight I think is worth fighting and one I think we can fight successfully. The 6th grade teachers are a good team of dedicated and talented people who I like working with. The problem is with the administration.

The begining of the end came last Monday. I came into work to find an email from the principal, saying that said she wanted two of us teachers to change classrooms. It was simply three sentences, ending with "Make the change by Friday."

She's concerned about the behavior of the classes and getting them back in line because they simply aren't learning much. So are we.

Instead of sitting all down and talking about the problem and at least talking about possible solutions and what we need to do differently as teachers, she just assumed that changing the classrooms would make the change and said "do it."

She even invited us to talk about it, but when we talked about it she said it was not at all negotiable, even after we expressed our concerns.

This came after a week and a half of me waking up every morning and really feeling like I didn't want to go to work, most of it because of apprehension about the administrators not backing us up very well when stuggling with a kid.

I really had to think hard about it, but in the end I decided that the writing is on the wall and it was time for me to bail out before I ride this one down in flames. Two teachers have left in the last three weeks, and I think that only one or two of the remaining teachers are at all happy.

In the end, it came down to money. See, I'm only making about $15 or $20 a day more than I would as a normal sub, and I'm putting in about 14 hours of work every day. I started asking myself "Would you trade that $20 every day for less stress, and shorter hours?" The answer is unequivocally yes. YES. Emphatically YES!

If I thought that I was fighting the good fight and had a chance of winning the fight and that we were all part of a team working together I'd probably stay. To be honest, I desperately want the sense of achievement that comes with overcoming such a huge challenge, particularly since I wasn't fully successful last year. With the disconnect between teachers and administration, I don't see that happening here, not before my contract is up.

I resigned Thursday. It was only my respect for my colleagues (and a healthy dose of guilt) that made me decide to complete next week too.

So I'm looking again. If anyone knows of a job in a good school, or a cute blonde with good hands, send them my way. I need a job and I still need a good back rub.

...but it just don't work on you

That's how the chorus of Got My Mojo Workin' ends:

I got my mojo workin'
but it just don't work on you

Muddy Waters was one of the masters of mixing self-depricating lyrics into songs that have become anthems of virility and power. After listening to Muddy shout "I got my mojo workin" three times in a row with the band echoing the line, I'm not sure anyone really lets the punchline sink in. At first it sounds like a proclamation of male prowess, but in the end it's a song of lament and lost love, like a lot of blues songs.

The "it just don't work on you" part is what I've felt like for a couple of weeks now. It seems that so many promising things have come and gone so quickly now that I feel like I'm on a downward slide.

1. I interviewed for a teaching job that sounded incredibly promising: a half-year position in a high school, full salary and benefits, and lots of time to prepare. It's not often that I come out of an interview feeling like I had a job in the bag, but I really felt like it this time. A week later I found out that I didn't even make the second round of interviews.

2. A girl I was interested in is evidently not as interested as she thought she was, and she fell off the radar a couple of weeks ago.

3. The new job is really not working out and I'm seriously considering an exit strategy.

The job is the worst part right now, probably because it's also the most stressful and time consuming. Once again, I was thrown to the wolves to survive on my own. While I'm forming alliances an friendships with other teachers, it is not yet turning into anything that I would count as an improving work environment. The kids are beyond disrespectful a lot of days, the administration is slowly becoming less and less supportive, even slightly combative, and I am so stressed that I'm having to concentrate awfully hard on enjoying what little free time I have.

I need two things most right now: a couple of good, healthy meals, a good back rub from someone who cares (I'm partial to blonde girls, but the blonde part is negotiable), an extra day or two of rest, and a couple of good days on productive projects. Lord knows there are enough guitar projects in the basement to keep me busy for a while.

I need to recharge for a bit, focus on some me stuff, and then go back at it. Problem is that I had to pick up a Sunday job to help pay for the trip to Chicago for my Grandmother's 90th birthday party, so there's hardly enough time for the minimum amount of rest now.

Perseverence. It will pay off. That I'm sure of.

And I know we don't end sentences with prepositions.

Got my mojo workin'

A couple of weeks ago a friend wrote to ask why I hadn't posted to the blog in a while. I'd had this nagging thought in the back of my mind that I ought to post something, but the honest truth was that I wasn't feeling all that excited about teaching and didn't have a heck of a lot to say.

Not being offered a permanent job after doing a one-year leave feels like being kicked back down to minor league ball, even after batting .300 and hitting a few home runs in your rookie year. I guess sometimes you're just not on the right team. (Forgive me the baseball metaphor, but my hometwon Cubs are in the playoffs and I’m pretty happy about it.)

I spent the summer in a bit of a funk (and not the James Brown kind of funky). My car broke down and needed to be replaced, so instead of spending the summer working on guitars and lazing around with the dog, I spent it working as a temp in a cube-farm doing IT work. It was barely enough to pay the bills and there wasn't really anything redeeming about it. I had to work hard to get out of bed every morning to get to that job. Going into the new school year without a new teaching job just fed that funk a little more, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling some anxiety about my teaching career starting to slip away.

I guess my penance this year was to spend most of September on the bench before getting called up again. I was finally able to land a long term position covering a maternity leave, and in the first week of the job I feel like I've already been able to shake any doubt I had in my abilities as a teacher. These kids are a tough crowd (more about them in another post), but there's no doubt in my mind that I'm making big headway with them every day. I had to take a day off yesterday to interview for another job later in the year, and the first two people I saw were a pair of girls who are the toughest cookies in their class, and they were almost happy to see me this morning. A few days ago I could sense outright hostility, so I'll take almost happy from a pair of 12 year olds. The third person I saw was one of the administrators, who told me that my presence was missed yesterday and that he can already see behavior improvements from my classes, who started to slip again in my absence. If that ain’t success, I don’t know what is.

Thanks, Mark, for letting me know that you missed my presence too. I'm back, and I feel like I'm already kicking ass.

Faith

I started this school year armed with only two things that could really help me survive: Faith that it is possible to succeed where so many others have failed, faith that I am strong enough to do so, and faith that hard work will bring a bright future.

For the first week of school there was just one poster on the wall, just one word, really, and I wanted it to be the only thing the kids saw on the wall the first time they stepped in to my class.

When I inherited the room it was full of junk and had boring old English-teachery posters on the wall. I contemplated leaving all that junk for my successor, thinking that cleaning out a bit of old classroom junk is a right of passage for working in roo, D30. In the end, I thought better of it.

One of my deep-seated insecurities is that I won't leave an impact where I've been and that I won't be missed when I'm gone. So I left that one poster on the wall, partly in hope that it will inspire the next person to turn on the lights in D30, and partly so that person knows what kind of teacher I am.

It's a homemade poster, black ink on a stark white background, with just one word as bold as I could make it:

BELIEVE.

Principal(/le)s

Ending the school year with a test of your ethics is one hell of the way to end the year.

Stephen was a senior and needed a passing grade in my class to graduate. Passing would have been simple; he just needed to get his research paper done. The same paper that he had every day of class for a month to do. The same paper that I offered to help him with after school many times, and the very same one that he refused to do. He did complete his research paper for his 12th grade English class, and at one point tried to submit a copy of that paper to get credit for my class.

During finals week he handed me a different paper. His assignment was to research an artist and their impact on the world, but the paper was on the history of the Ford Motor Company. It didn't read like his writing, either, but without being able to prove plagiarism the only thing I could say was that I didn't believe he wrote the paper for my class. After his earlier stunt, I was suspicious that he wrote it for a history class, or that another student did.

The next morning I arrived at school to find the dean waiting with a message: "The principal wants grades in this morning. And you know she wants him to pass." I filled her in on the details and why I didn't think it was going to happen for the kid, and she asked "Is this a hill you want to die on?"

"I knew in February I wasn't wanted back, so how more dead can I get?" It didn't matter, really, the paper didn't credit any sources so it counts as plagiarism by default, and the kid got an F. Two days later I found the paper he copied.

And you know what? I want to think that in other circumstances my answer would have been “Yes, I believe the kid plagiarized and I believe we fail as educators if we pass him>”

As much as I would rather not have ended the year failing a senior, it felt good to be in a position where I could stand up for what I believe in without political pressure from a boss. It's just possible that the kid will someday learn that the only way to earn what you want is to do what's required to earn it, and that there's no easy way out.

So what do you do with it?

I had an interesting conversation with another teacher during the graduation processional. We saw Mike, a kid who managed to turn himself around during senior year and graduate on time. Before this year he had a GPA of something like 1.5, but this year he turned it around and earned a 3.7. That's one hell of a change, and I'm proud of him for it.

This teacher and I talked about what changed in him, and I told her that his counselor told me I had a big part in it. At the time it surprised the hell out me because Mike is a really quiet kid and I had no idea I was so motivating to him.

It started with two things: a positive attitude in the beginning of the year, and a Jimi Hendrix poster. The kid loves classic rock and is learning to play guitar, so Jimi was enough to get him to want to talk to me.

The other teacher asked "What do you do with the posters?" I asked what she meant and she said again "As far as curriculum goes. So what do you do with it?"

"Nothin'."

This caused her to give me an intensely quizzical look. There are legions of educators who believe that every nuance of every classroom experience needs a direct tie into the curriculum, and she's one of them. I don't believe that's the case.

It's about creating connections. Personal connections. The kids have had their fill of curricular connections, and sometimes you have to let academic concerns go for a bit and make them believe that your classroom is a cool place to be. If you can do that, you can open doors for the kids who struggle most with a traditional curriculum.

I'll never see Mike or any of the other handful of seniors in my 11th grade classes this year again, but I'm proud of every one of them, and it feels good to know that I helped get them ready for the rest of the world.

May Day

Note to self: finish all the important stuff by May 1st. The kids are just about checked out by now, and teaching anything new is real tough.

Walkin' Blues

Woke up this morning...

A dirty little secret of mine is that sometimes I don't have a lesson planned for the day until I'm dressing for work.

Feel round for my shoes...

It's idiotic, I know. But some days I need to be in the process of preparing to go to work before I can get my head in the place it needs to prepare to work. There are many times I sit at home and my mind is so separated from the context of the school that I just cannot think of useful lessons. Even worse, there are some days that I actually need the students in front of me to do so. It's a personality flaw, I know.

You know 'bout it baby, had them old walkin' blues...

One day last week I finally found the seed crystal that formed this idea as I was singing in the shower. We've been reading the play Fences, and one of the themes mentioned in the book is the idea of a dissatisfaction and wanderlust, particularly among black men in the post slavery world. The walking blues. The title of one of my favorite Robert Johnson songs.

I grabbed the guitar along with my briefcase and lunch on the way out the door and spent the commute rehearsing the lines. Next thing I knew I was tuning up as the kids filed in. I spent a quick couple of minutes reviewing the lines from the play talking about the walking blues, explained what it means in more concrete terms again, talked about the song for a minute, and launched into it.

I don't know if I've ever played to a tougher audience, but it worked. One of the classes liked it so much that we did it again, making it a sing along, and a couple of students in my other classes are asking me to bring the guitar in again. It's been a good week.

Connect.

All is not lost

In spite of my frustrating first year, there is a lot of positive stuff happening as I plan for the future.

First, my students started a petition to bring me back. It won't get anywhere, but it's really touching that I have students who care enough to do something like this. Unfortunately, only high regents scores could save my job, and even these guys admit that probably won't happen.

It helps that I'm not being fired. This is simply a one year contract that's expiring.

A friend is completing her first year at a small school that she loves, and she's put in a good word for me with the superintendent. She said that he's excited to hear from me, so that's a good, solid lead. It's a long commute, but it's rare to hear a teacher who actually loves their district and the administration, so a commute would be a small sacrifice. And it may help me that they have no male English teachers there now.

I also found that I have 4 people--including a principal--who want to write letters of recommendation for me. That will say a lot to other districts as I apply for new jobs.

So all is not lost. I have a solid resume, solid references, and a solid year of experience behind me. I'm not too worried about the future right now.

I'm gonna miss this place

This is something I've been keeping to myself for the last 4 months. Schenectady City School District has elected not to invite me back for another year.

The whole review process this year has been very frustrating for me. It seems that no one is willing to tell me what their expectations were until after they thought I wasn't meeting them, and by then it was too late.

I don't want to go into too many details, mostly because I don't know if I can describe most of it without sounding like a disgruntled employee trying to lay blame elsewhere. I certainly made my share of mistakes, though I honestly don't think any of them are much worse than rookie mistakes to be expected of a first year teacher, and I don't think that any of them are things that the district couldn't reasonably expect for me to better next year.

There are a few things about the review process that really bother me, though. The biggest is that my coordinator never said anything that would indicate that she was unsatisfied with my progress until she made the final report. Her final report also included a few things that were factually incorrect, things that she wouldn't have a way of knowing even if they were. The most frustrating thing about this is that these were items that she and I talked about. She wrote them in her draft of my interim review but removed them from submitting the final draft to the district. Somehow they reappeared in the year-end evaluation.

The final bomb, though, was a statement by my principal. "Eric has not shown the level of dedication that we expected for his job." The reason this bothers me so much is that it would be hard to show any more dedication to my job. I'm after school with students nearly every day, I've given up almost all of my personal life to survive this first year, I support a bunch of student activities, I make calls to parents more often than 90% of the teachers in the school, and by the time the report was made I hadn't taken a single sick day.

So I asked the principal how she determined that I wasn't dedicated enough, and she said that she wasn't satisfied with my planning.

I will admit that I have a long way to go with my unit planning skills. I even asked my principal if she knew of any other teachers who had plan books that she liked that I could use for a model. She named a few teachers, so I went to them and asked, and every one of them told me "I haven't done those since grad school." When I told this to the principal, she simply said "That's because they're at a higher level than you."

So it's evident that the principal just doesn't like me, and no matter what I do I just won't be able to please her. There's some speculation that she didn't like the fact that they only interviewed male teachers last year, and she might have decided not to like me before I even came into the building. Who knows. None of that's really important, the bottom line is that I'm not coming back.

It's frustrating, for sure. And to be totally honest, I'm a little disappointed in myself. A district like mine is some of the toughest teaching there is, and I took more than a little bit of pride in being able to do it. Though there were a lot of days I didn't want to get up and go to school, I found the strength to do it anyway, knowing that the work I was doing is important and that there were kids there who valued my presence.

I'm gonna miss this place.

The test

Luis is a likable kid. A big, lovable hispanic teddy bear. He likes to please and is fast with a smile. He's also very sociable, and since academic work is a struggle for him he gets distracted quite easily.

Thanks to the work of his regents prep teacher, he passed the English regents test with a 70. That's a pretty good score around here, so you'd think he has pretty decent language skills.

That is, until you saw the quiz he took for me last week. All he had to do was find an example of a simile, a metaphor, charicterization, setting, and conflict in the play we've been reading. He was allowed to use his book and his notes, but still only managed to provide an example of a simile. Folks, there's a page in the book labeled Setting! The setting is described in every scene, as is a brief characterization of each character. We talked about the similies and metaphors in class. This the sort of quiz that a student with the most basic skills should be able to pass easily, but he bombed it.

This is why teaching to the test gives a false impression of student success. The kid gets a 70 on a state test but barely shows competency in class. The prep teacher has developed a great system of teaching directly to the test and makes each task very formulaic. She just doesn't give them any language skills.

She's not the only teacher doing this. In fact, most teachers teach directly to the standardized tests, just because they want to get their tst scores up.

So what is the value of the test? Everyone--and I do mean every one--knows that most teachers teach to the test instead of teaching the critical thinking skills that students will need to be successful on any test. Anyone who denies this is lying.

As far as I'm concerned, the test is just about worthless. It doesn't measure competency, it doesn't accurately measure how students in one school compare to students in another school, and it eats up huge chunks of instructional time. We spend 10 days each school year just giving these tests, and about 1/4 of the rest of the year trying to prepare for them. That's too much time wasted.

Here's the one thing that tests do well: Tests provide an easy metric for politicians to use to support whatever agenda they have concerning education. That's it.

Old school

Gary skipped class for 3 days straight and was 10 minutes late when he finally came.

And then he made a call from his cell phone. In class.

"It was business Mr. G."

"I don't care if it was the Pope, the President, and your mother on a conference call. You do not use your phone in class."

He hasn't done it since.

Breakdown II

Shalonda was having a tough time getting to work on her paper. She surpised me when she chose Miles Davis as her topic, and I was excited because I knew I could help her make the link to 60s rock & soul, and from there to hip hop. I dig Miles and was excited that some of the other kids would get some exposure too.

It's not unusual for her to have a hard time getting started. She's not a good student and is very social, so when faced with something hard she starts goofing off. After a couple of minutes she just put her head down.

I went to talk to her to help her get started, and she just said "I can't concentrate today, I've got bad problems." After another minute or two of talking those tell-tale tears snuck by her defenses, and pretty soon she and I were out in the hall while she unloaded.

She's pregnant. Again. She had a miscarriage 6 or 8 weeks before. This time her biggest worry was that her dad was going to kill her because she promised it wouldn't happen again. Like most kids, she was convinced that her life was over and she had to drop out of school, and I kept telling her about all the programs we have to help her stay in school. She wanted to keep the baby, the daddy didn't want anything to do with it, her dad was pissed at her, and she doesn't talk to her mom. She's in a tough spot.

She didn't know that there are programs that guarantee her money for college, AND an apartment, AND acceptance to a pretty good college (I can't remember which one) if she just graduates high school and stays in the program.

For a little while, we had a breakthrough. I was able to convince her that every decision she makes has to be about the baby and how she can best take care of it, including graduating high school so she can get a better job, and maybe go on to college.

And it worked. She sat down and got right to work. She needed a lot of help, but for the next two days she seemed motivated to succeed.

Fast forward four days: She came in after a long weekend and blindsided me with a great big hug, saying "Mr. G., I'm not pregnant!" She started bleeding over the weekend and thought she was having another miscarriage so she went to the ER. Turns out that her period was three weeks late, but that she wasn't pregnant.

Crisis avoided, and now she's back to her usual nonsense. She has done almost no work and earned an F for 3rd quarter, and I'm pretty sure she won't pass for the year.

Be the teacher the students need you to be

One of the old timers in the school laid it out for me today. "In order to get their respect you have to prove to them that you're the alpha dog and you're not taking any shit from them."

Apparently, the first step in establishing yourself as the alpha dog is to put your desks in traditional rows and columns and make a seating chart based on alphabetical order, except for moving a few problem kids. I'm not sure that the actual rows and columns are important, but what is important is that these kids see that as a structure with known rules, and anything more progressive is seen as a new system that needs to be tested.

Problem is, rows and columns fit me about as comfortably as high heels. At 6'2" with size 14EEEE feet, you can imagine what an awful fit that is. I spent just a minute looking at the classroom after arranging the desks and cringed. It just ain't me.

As much as I don't like this, I'm going to give it a shot. It's entirely possible that the teacher I've become so far isn't the teacher my students need me to be. And if that's the case, it's entirely possible that this isn't the right school for me. I'm certainly not giving up on this gig, but it's something to think about.

I realized recently that everything I know about teaching is based on the idea of a group of kids who are at least somewhat obedient and cooperative, if not actually enthusiastic to learn. Most of my students are in the other camp. There are a couple in each class who are enthusiastic about learning and a few more that are cooperative, but the majority are there just to get credit or because they get in more trouble if they skip.

In any case, the old dog is willing to take me under his wing and has already given me concrete advice I can put into action immediately, so I'm going to stick with his program and modify it only after I really figure out what I'm doing. Most of the other advice I've gotten has been somewhat vague, and rather than hearing "Eric, you need to do ______ to get the results you want," I hear a lot more of "maybe if you tried _____ it could help, but it might not so you might just have to figure out something else."

As the old dog put it: "Eric, first we're going to work on classroom management. Then, after you're really starting to get that, we're going to work on classrom management. Finally, after you've really mastered classroom management and you can I both think you've got it nailed, we're going to work on classroom management. You can have the most brilliant lesson plan in the world and know your literature inside out, but until you get these little bastards to jump when you tell them to, it doesn't matter because they won't hear you."

There may be more brilliant methods to do this gig without having to be the alpha dog, but nobody seems to be able to tell me what they are or how to make them work, and I know for certain I'm not going to survive if I keep trying to find them by experiment. Not with this population, anyway.

So for now, I'm going to learn to be the alpha dog.

"Experts" redux

Schenectady High School is being audited by the state, in part because of our consistently low scores on the English tests mandated by NCLB.

There are rumors that part of the reason we're being audited is due so the folks at the state capital 20 miles away won't seem like they're biased only against the schools in New York City. I've always felt that the people in the trenches have the least perspective and least accurate knowledge about this sort of thing, and that teachers rarely understand the politics that go on at the administrative level, so I really have no idea how true this rumor is. It probably doesn't matter. We're being audited, and that's that.

We're being audited by a team of people that does not include a single teacher or administrator. If you can explain how this team of people is qualified to judge the quality of work we're doing and suggest meaningful changes, you're a better (wo)man than I.

No Test Left Behind

NCLB has one basic premise: every child can and should perform at their grade level. Period. An implicit premise is that in order to make sure that this is happening, we need to test the hell out of them. Standarized tests. Every kid can and should pass the same one.

Here's the problem: it's bullshit. All of it.

If you've worked with kids, you know right away that they can't all perform on the same level, and that some kids just don't get it even after you exhaust every method you know to help them. Doesn't matter whether it's writing or spelling or math or sports, some just cannot meet expectations.

So it is with tests. In New York, in order to get a standard diploma each kid needs to pass a big test in each of the 4 core subjects, plus one or two other subjects. That's the deal, if you want a standard diploma, you pass the Regents test. Period.

But.

Too many kids fail. They're easy tests to fail. A 3 hour test has a couple dozen multiple choice questions and a lot of reading and writing. If there's 20 multiple choice questions, you need something like 13 or 14 to pass the test, assuming that they do well on the written sections. Not a lot of room for error there, not if you're a struggling student.

But.

You can't just fail kids because they can't pass the test. Too many would fail, and that would mean there are big problems in the school that we're not equipped to address, so things get fudged. First, they give the hardest tests in January, but if kids fail they take an easier version in June. If they still fail that one, they can take summer school and then take an even easier test in August.

And then if they still fail, they can qualify for an even easier version, given in components, one at a time.

See the pattern here?

Go back to the basic premise of NCLB. Are all of the kids performing to the same set of standards? It's obvious that they're not.

So what is it that we're doing? I mean, besides stigmatizing the writing and analysis process by associating it so heavily with a test, and teaching to the tests and hurting our chances of developing creative and dynamic thinkers, what is it that we're doing?

Vote with your dreams, folks, not with your fears.

Breakdown

this was started almost 3 months ago, i don't know why i didn't finish it off and post it then. -e.

Two weeks ago April couldn't get started on her class assignment. This isn't unusual for April. She's not a particularly good student, though she usually tries hard. Her occasional cooperativeness more than makes up for what she lacks in intellectual ability, and I think that's how she'll be successful in life. Combine that with a bright smile, big blue eyes, and a desire to please, she's got a lot going for her that others don't.

Usually when she's struggling with an assignment she'll either demand help or goof off and talk to one of the boys. This day was different. Instead of any of her normal tricks, she went off in the corner and put her head down. I tried to talk to her and get her to work, knowing it would be a struggle, but hoping that I could at least get her to accomlish a little bit.

I gotta hand it to her, she tried to get started. I don't now whether that's a testament to her desire to succeed, my ability to persuade, or what, but she tried. But then she started breaking down. A few tears sneaked out before she could stop them, and she started making vague references to having done something bad and it forcing her to drop out of school so she could go live somewhere else.

It's best not to ask for details. A student offering information to a teacher is one thing, but a teacher looking for it is another. Unless I actually see evidence of something that endagers a child, I probably shouldn't ask. I do know she lives in a group home for foster kids, and she intimated that she'd done something that would get her kicked out.

And she was panicking.

Like most kids, she thinks that she's alone and that there's nothing anyone can--or will--do to help. I don't know the system well, but I know there are a ton of resources available to her, and there are people who spend all day finding ways to help kids. In fact, one of the things I like about working in an urban district like this is that there are so many different services and resources available, and the needs are so high that there are people who know how to take advantage of them.

After 5 or 10 minutes of persistence I was able to convince her to talk to her counselor, calling ahead to let them know that a girl in crisis was about to walk in and to ask that someone talk to her right away. I checked in with her counselor after school and found out that she spend quite a while in there that day. The counselor didn't ask for specifics either, but told me that there are only about 5 things that can get a kid kicked out of a group home and she was pretty sure that drugs were the problem this time.

Fast forward a couple of weeks: April is going to a rehab center, probably for a month, and her counselor, principal, and teachers are meeting to convince her that a month out of school isn't the end of the world and that she's not throwing her junior year away if she goes to rehab. And we have figure out how to get work to her so she can get credit.

Fast forward 4 days: At the end of the day April walks in with her bright smile, seemingly ecstatic to be back in school. I said that I thought she was supposed to be gone for a month, and she replied "Mr. G, you don't understand. The people there are crazy! I couldn't stand being there." She was all smiles, like usual, but I had a feeling that this kid just took a wrong turn.

She didn't come to school much in the next couple of weeks, and then disappeared altogether.

Fast forward another couple of weeks: I caught her in the hall at the end of the day and asked where she'd been. All smiles again, she said she was just stopping by to drop out because she was pregnant. I tried to tell her that there were a lot of ways we could help her if she stayed in school, but I knew it was a lost cause at this point.

The kid's gonna have to find her own path, no matter how difficult it is. I'm sure I'll never see her again, but I sure hope she makes it alright.

Mr. G's black!

I want you to picture Josh. He's 6' 1" of hip-hop culture personified. Lanky, corn rows, most of his wardrobe consists of Boondocks tshirts. His research paper is on Jay-Z. He's a funny kid, but I wish to God he'd stop dropping the n-word all the time. (Note: It has been explained to me that "n***-ah" is different than "n***-er", but I'm not buying or tolerating it).

Detention in my room has proven not to be all that effective as a punishment because there are always kids that come to work, but they usually wind up goofing around, so the mood was pretty light when Josh showed up to serve his detention and said "Man, Mister G's black!"

I was helping a kid write an essay and didn't think I heard right, and neither did anyone else. We had to stop working while a couple of kids said "Josh, what the hell did you say?!"

"Mister G's black. He listens to all that old soul music, he sings and dances a little bit, and there's a wrapper from Popeye's fried chicken in the garbage. He black! Like he got a reverse tan or something."

That's praise, I think.

The chicken container wasn't mine, but I do love me some fried chicken!