Moving Mountains

There are some days when I sit back and look at my surroundings and look at the people I know and love and think:

I just want to teach high school English in OKC public schools.

I want to have my weekends and summers off. I want to be able to randomly drive to Dallas or Houston to spend quality time with my family. I want to be free to go places and experience things.
And I want to be a cog in the system working for change in a small way, in a way teenagers need. I want to move one mountain, one stone at a time, not join with a large group of people to shift the entire course of the Rockies. Just one mountain. And I've got a lifetime to move it by myself.

And then I talk to a lady in Build-A-Bear. Sweet lady who looks Hispanic and whose daughter looks either Hispanic or Middle Eastern. She comes in an average of twice a month and never drops less than $100 on her four-year-old. I thought she was insane at first, because that's way too much money on children's toys. But this week she came in twice - Monday and Tuesday - and said some things that made me look deeper.

Monday she told about how they had "cut back" because her daughter wasn't treating her toys like she was grateful, like they were special. Very observant. Much less materialistic than I had originally thought she was. Tuesday they come in and she is wearing the same clothes - and a woman who drops dollars like she does has plenty of clothes to change into. She looks tired, sad, sick, or all of the above and she's doing a ton of sniffling. She looks at me almost apologetically and says, "We just came back for the jaguar. Just the jaguar." Her daughter starts running around looking at the things she likes and trying to decide if she has them at home already (because she's got half our store). I ask her if she is okay. She says she's been sick.

The lady sits down in a chair looking ready to wither and starts talking to me. She was surprised that I understood everything her daughter said. She said I must have kids. I told her no, I just love them and love to listen to them. I said I taught two- and three-year old Sunday school for a couple of years and that I want to teach high school English. She says I'll be great. After some time passes she says, "You should teach at Cassidy."

If you know me or have read my other posts about teaching, you know that I have NO desire to teach preppy, rich, white kids. And Cassidy is more preppy, rich, and white than almost any private school in the metro. I had to reign in my thoughts before I said, "Oh hell no!"

Instead I said, "Well, I've always wanted to teach in public schools. Private schools, especially Cassidy, are kind of..."
"Snotty?" She put in. I nodded appreciatively. She continued: "I don't ever want to be hateful, but some of the parents there are very elitist even toward my family." And we proceed to have a whole conversation about rich, snotty people and how she doesn't want to be one, how she doesn't want her daughter to be one, and how she's not sure if she wants her daughter attending that school past elementary. She is afraid the other kids will hurt her. And I can completely relate because that's how it always was for me in private elementary and junior high school.

She isn't from Oklahoma. Wherever she lived before, she attended public school in what she referred to as a "Mexican ghetto," likely the same kind I want to teach in. She said it was scary and she doesn't want her daughter to go through that either.
I worried over her and the reason behind her sniffles and weakness and day-old outfit until they left.

I stood there wondering what I could have done more to help. I had wanted to hug her but didn't know if that was okay.

And then I thought: I'll have to do something more than just teach high school English. But I don't know what it is yet. Right now, the Build-A-Bear Workshop will do.

Education and Testing - for Advanced Comp

My best friend, Jen, and I are both teacher candidates. She goes to Emporia State in Kansas and wants to teach high school and college math, while I'm here and want to teach high school and college English.

Yesterday we were talking about our classes and we came across the topic of multicultural students and their disadvantages in the classroom. In both of our programs (and hopefully most programs across the nation) teacher candidates are required to do their internships/observations/student teaching in at least one school with a majority minority students or where a majority of the students are of a low socioeconomic status.  She and I were discussing how strange it is that so many teacher candidates struggle through those placements because they want to teach in middle to upper-middle-class suburban predominantly white schools. 

We talked about the various struggling school systems in each of our areas. Jen mentioned that in Kansas there are a lot of Hispanic immigrants and a high demand for English Language Learning (our ESL). We got to talking about standardized testing and how kids who don't speak English as their first language categorically score low on those tests.  I told her that I would love to teach ESL but don't have time (to stay in school for it). She said she thinks there should be separate tests for native speakers and ELL/ESL students. I agreed with her during our initial discussion, but then after talking to my mom about it, I realized that I don't know if that's the best solution to the problem. 

Of course, most of we teachers and teacher candidates believe that standardized testing is too rigid for many students and some entire districts. But, that initial problem is compounded when there is a language barrier. According to the Center on Education Policy, Kansas test scores for 10th and 11th graders in reading went down from 2006 to 2007, but went up in math. In Oklahoma, all of our scores went up. Sounds like a good thing, right? Until you look at the Oklahoma City (mostly urban) Public School district. According to our state department's district report cards in 2003 and 2009, "minority" students and boys score unsatisfactorily in reading, with the exception of Asian students, who excel with the Caucasian children and the girls. The majority of all races of students score unsatisfactorily in math, with the exception of Asians. U.S. Grant High School, an almost half-Hispanic school (according to Public School Review), has been on the list of schools that need improvement for four years running.

I don't know what to do about the problem. But some of us need to put our heads together and figure it out.