the whit

As i recall, i was a whole lot more timid about jumping on these crazy trains last year. guess it was because i was such a newbie and had only been exposed to some pretty basic scenarios so i hesitated a lot and didn't always feel like i should pick up everything that came down the line.
This year i've lost alot of my subfinder inhibitions and i don't even hesitate--as long as it involves a classroom setting i'm all over it. Guess it's an entire summer of ups-ing that has me thinking variety is the spice of life. And really it's not like i gotta run the whole show anyway...

So i decided to get in on some middle school action to round out the end of the week.
i had no idea what to expect since it's been awhile since i've been around kids this age, but i recall them as being rather boisterous and incapable of sitting still for real long. i could say that my memories are still accurate, but i forgot what it means to be on the cusp of adolescence.

It's kind of a nice break from jaded teens though. 14 year old girls are something else though, and i pity them as i too knew how it felt to be trapped in a room full of immature boys. ;) Either way, they're pretty different from older teens, mainly in that there's even less of a sense of cause and effect relationships, and they're not as cohesive as tenth graders...they still segregate by sex alot more socially than they do later on in high school.

Working in all these different schools is kind of mind boggling for me sometimes. there is SUCH a difference between every school, and a huge difference between schools in upper class communities and lower class communities. It's like night and day. Funding formulas can't even begin to address the inequities that occur here. I defy someone to tell me that the kids at Marshall are getting even remotely the same educational experience as the kids at BHS. Just as my Junior high experience was nothing whatsoever like the kids I spent time with on Friday.

My jr high school was located in a pretty rough neighborhood, in a largely segregated school where the vast majority of kids were doing the free or reduced lunch thing. And it wasn't the clean and sparkling wonder that I spent time in on Friday. My experience was substantially different from what these kids have. This school was spotlessly clean, unbelievably orderly, well-maintained, and the kids appeared to come to school well fed, wearing clean clothes and more or less prepared for a day of productive activity.

What got me thinking of all of this social inequality was the Ron Saxton ads going in the background everywhere since it's nearly time for elections. He was blathering on about all the usual Republican ideas about education...and I do hate to be uncharitable but (since I spend more time in public schools in one week than Ron Saxton has probably spent in all of the past year), I tend to think he's spouting the same load of crap that Republicans everywhere spew. I would still feel this way even without help from Savage Inequalities.

If you have made it this far, you may be wondering if I do have a point...What do I think is the answer? Well it would sound like socialism, but let's face it, your economic resources overwhelming predict your chance at school success. Until someone seriously proposes wage parity, I don't want to hear one more fucking word about "test scores", "AYP" or "failing schools" because we all know that the real cause of all of these things goes back to the fact that the rich will always come out ahead of the poor in all areas of life: health, resources, school success, jobs, whatnot. But according to Republicans like our friend Ron Saxton blaming the poor for their poverty is still in style.

Back to the middle school classroom, one thing i really dug about this school is all the posters in the halls reminding of the rules and their catchy acronyms. The other thing I think the school does well is giving the ILC kids small but frequent breaks to go outside and let off some steam after long periods of math and reading and such. It really seems to help them if they have these outlets during the day and they seem to focus a whole lot better for having them. Stroke of genius. If it was my school to run, I'd mandate them for all of the classes...