Goodbye, Leticia

My heart broke today.  A friend and former colleague told me that one of my former students committed suicide.  She was 17 years old.

 Leticia joined my multicultural lit. class for the 2nd semester.  I actually had a handful of kids who joined the class in the middle of the year, but she was the one who stood out the most to me.  I can't tell you why she stood out from the rest, but she did. 

My first impression of Leticia was not favorable.  She looked and behaved like an angry cholla.  Wearing droopy, tan carpenter pants and a plaid over shirt, she would sit in the back of my class and attempt to not fall asleep.  She wasn't disrespectful, nor was she disruptive.  She just didn't want to be in a class in which she not only had to read, but discuss what she read, as well.  When called upon to answer a question, she would either respond grudgingly or say, "I don't know."  She would also either not turn in her homework, or turn in homework that was only half completed.  But she had lovely handwriting. 

I can't remember exactly when she started to actively participate in class.  I wish I had paid more attention to what we were talking about that sparked for her.  It's so hard to see what sparks for individual students in a class of 30.  Especially when they all spark on something different.  But one day, she actually started to ask questions. 

I loved when my students ask questions.  I loved when they answered each other, too.  I'm not talking about who did what, when, and where, but why.  I loved when they talked about character motivation, whether they were right or wrong or just blowing smoke to try and score points.  When someone can speculate on motivation, they can connect with the character and story, and that's the first step in appreciating literature.

Let me explain something before I go on.  I taught at a college prep school for low income students, predominately Hispanic students.  School was not a priority for most of my students.  They were at our school because their parents wanted them to be there, they were unsuccessful at the public schools in the area, they were misfits who were looking for a better atmosphere, or because our school was closest to their home.  Most of the students were far below grade level.

Our school had a fabulous Early College Program (ECP), but almost all of the students who were in my class had decided that college wasn't for them.  I taught juniors and seniors, and by the time I got them, they had either flunked out of the ECP, or they never had the desire to be in it.  It didn't matter.  My goal was to try to prepare them in case they decided after they graduated that they did want to go to college.  I knew most of my kids would not only not go to college, but they wouldn't ever open a book to read for pleasure.  I had a small window of opportunity and only a minute chance of changing this.  

So, when I talk about my students starting to ask questions and have conversations about the literature, you can see how exciting it was for me.  When a student like Leticia started talking, it made me want to do a happy dance at the front of the class.  Now, I'm not saying she started talking post-modern lit. theory, but she did start to engage.  And at the same time, she started to smile. 

I like to think I won her over with my engaging personality and my intellectual prowess, but I think it was actually the fact that I would dance and sing and tell stupid jokes and crawl on the floor along the front wall to illustrate "The Yellow Wallpaper."  In other words, I think she liked the fact that I was crazy.  That's okay.  I wanted them to see that literature could be fun; it could be crazy.  I think she got that.  I think she saw someone with a passion, and seeing that, her spark started glowing.

By the time we reached our unit on Asian lit. near the end of the semester, Leticia was a completely different person.  She still had days in which it seemed she would rather be home sleeping, but she had many more days in which she talked, laughed, smiled, told jokes, answered questions, told me about herself, rapped, made fun of me as I acted the goofball.  She became one of the lights in my classroom.  She still looked exactly the same, carpenter pants and all, but she wasn't the same taciturn child who walked into my room in January. 

I remember when she told me that she wanted to be a DJ/Rapper.  We talked about how hard it is to break into the music business.  I told her that no matter how hard it was, if it was her dream, she should follow it.  After all, how would she know if she could do it if she didn't try?  She then asked me why I didn't become a singer (remember, I used to sing in class.) I told her that I had the opportunity once, but I chose not to take it.  I wanted to finish college.  The opportunity never came again, but I was okay with that, because I'd rather sit with a bunch of people and talk literature.  It was a lot more fun being at the front of my classroom than it ever was on stage.  She gave me one of her patented frowny-faced nods, and that was that.

I haven't seen Leticia since class ended last year, but I've thought about her several times.  She made fun of me once when I demonstrated my superior rapping abilities by singing the song "Buffalo Girls" from the eighties ("you got mad skills, miss.")  It makes me smile every time I think about it.  I'm smiling right now.  But I'm crying, too.

Leticia committed suicide because she was bullied.  She was bullied because she was gay.  This lovely, talented, sweet, tough young woman couldn't take any more. She gave up, and it makes my heart hurt.  I don't blame her for giving up.  It's hard to be different, and teenagers are not equipped to handle the kind of pain she went through on a daily basis.  They shouldn't have to.  I remember being a teenager.  It was hard.  It was ugly.  It was brutal.  And I wasn't an "other" like Leticia was.  If it was that hard for me, I can imagine how much more she struggled.

I have no idea what these bullies said to her.  I have no idea who these bullies were.  I have no idea how long she had been bullied.  I have no idea if I could have helped her had I been there.  What I do know is that this shouldn't have happened.  But it did happen.  It keeps happening.  It will keep happening for as long as people try to force belief systems on other people. 

In my classroom, we talked a lot about discrimination.  All kinds of discrimination: racial, sexual, gender-bias, religious, political, and on and on.  I encouraged this, even built lesson plans, many lesson plans, around discussing discrimination, marginalization, and the effects on society these negative things have.  I did this to try to stop what happened to Leticia.  I did this to try to create a generation of people who accept a person for their individualities.  I did this to try to help create a world in which love is the guiding factor, not hate. 

But how can one teacher in a small school change the world?  How can the students take such a teacher seriously when they see the courts upholding someone's "right" to discriminate against another person?  Why should they believe a teacher when members of their own government show them how to hate so much more effectively than I can show them how to love?  How can they feel safe to be different if someone can legitimately bring a bill to their state senate that says homosexuality should be a crime, and everyone convicted should be put to death by firing squad?  Why would they believe anything I say, when society is actively showing them that it's not okay to be a person of color, a woman, LGBT, non-Christian, etc.  I'll tell you how. 

I can't. 

Goodbye, Leticia.  We failed you.  I failed you.  And I'm sorry.

 With love,

The Crocheting Cat Lady

 

 

 

 

 

Hot Topics = Hot Button (Common Core Standards)

Okay, my friends.  I'm going to weigh in on a rather hot topic right now:  Common Core.  I keep seeing videos and articles going around the internet that argue Common Core math is destroying our young people.  Every time I see one of these, I have one of two reactions.  I either laugh and say, "What a moron" or I get really angry.  So today I'm going to discuss why I have these reactions.

 Let me remind you that last year I taught high school English.  The school I taught at was a charter school that was in the process of adopting the Common Core standards.  Because of this, we were very focused on studying them and learning how to apply them.  Each department in the school met weekly to discuss the implementation strategies.  We even had workshops in which outside professionals came in and helped us navigate these new standards.  So let's just accept that I have read the standards, and I'm not just blowing smoke out of my rear end, m'kay?

 Let's start off by talking about why I have the moron reaction to the anti-Core fanatics, especially when I see the video of the Arkansas woman "destroying" Common Core.  It's quite obvious that these people have never actually read the Common Core standards.  Let me explain how I know this, and why I'm willing to bet everything I own on this knowledge.

 For those of you who have never read a teaching standard, I'll explain them a little.  Teaching standards have been in place for years and years and years. Pretty much for as long as actual schools have been around.  For a long time, they were determined by each township that had a school.  Then they started to be governed by specific counties.  Eventually that evolved to the point that each state was setting standards that encompassed every school in the state.  That's what I grew up with .  (I'm betting that's what most of us grew up with.) 

 A teaching standard is a benchmark, a learning goal that a child is supposed to reach before he/she can be forwarded to the next level of learning.  For example, a child must learn to count before he/she can be forwarded to learning how to add and subtract.  No method of instruction is introduced, only the benchmark that must be reached. 

 Common Core is the next evolution, in which every state has the same benchmarks at the same grade levels.  Speaking as someone who went to 4 different elementary schools, 1 junior high school, and 3 different high schools (in different states,) this is very beneficial.  I don't want any child to experience what I went through: changing schools to discover you have completely missed part of your education because it was taught in a lower grade than the school you just left.  (You know the less than/more than signs?  Yeah, I completely missed that when I changed schools once.  It took me years to figure them out, because no one thought to question whether I had actually been taught this lesson.  They just assumed that I had, and that I was just particularly thick!  Instead of giving me the lesson, they marked the answer wrong and moved on. Standards that are the same across all of the country would have eliminated this misunderstanding.)

 The Common Core standards are really not that different from most of the standards that the states individually instituted previously.  In fact, they surpass many states' learning expectations.  Rather than dumbing the standards down to match the lowest state expectations, they actually raise the standards up to match the highest.  (I was surprised to see some of the suggested literature for each of the grades.  Several of the texts suggested for study  in the lower high school levels were texts I didn't study until I was in college!  But don't get me started about my high school English education.  Let's just say that I didn't develop a passion for the subject until I was much, much older. )

A method of teaching, on the other hand, is a way for the teacher to impart the knowledge needed for said student to reach that benchmark.  For example, the method of teaching I learned concerning multiplication included boxes, dots, and counting.  (2 X 3 would be 2 boxes, each filled with 3 dots, count all the dots, the answer is 6.)  It worked really well for me, not so well for others.  Another method of teaching was memorization of the multiplication tables, which I also had to do.  It also worked for some, but not others.

 Do you see the difference between the two concepts?  A standard is a goal that must be reached to move forward, a teaching method is the tool used to help a student reach that goal.  So, why do the anti-core people make me laugh?  BECAUSE THEY SAY THEY ARE ARGUING AGAINST A STANDARD, BUT THEY ARE ACTUALLY ARGUING AGAINST A TEACHING METHOD! Nowhere in any of the Common Core standards can you find methods for instruction!  Only the benchmarks!  Funny, right?  Yeah, not so much.

 This leads me to why I get angry.  These people who come out against the Common Core because of teaching methods have not done their research properly.  Anyone who has written a research paper knows the wrath of an English teacher who witnesses poor research!  I am no different.  I get incredibly upset when people use only secondary sources (or tertiary sources) to prove a point.  You have to look at the primary sources, too!  In this case, that would be studying the Common Core standards.  It is the proverbial horse's mouth!  As a teacher, by not providing documentation from the primary source, by only quoting what other people have said about your subject, when I read your argument, it's going to be pretty clear to me that the primary source didn't actually say what you wanted it to say, so you had to resort to perversions of the primary source to make your point.  Not kosher, dude! It makes me angry, and you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

I'm not saying I am advocating Common Core.  I'm not saying I am condemning Common Core.  I see the potential in having a set of standards that encompasses every state.  I also see that while Common Core is a beginning, I don't think it's the ultimate answer to the U.S.'s education woes.  What I am saying is that if you want to create an effective argument, make sure you actually know what you are arguing against.  In the case of the Arkansas lady, I can only say that I weep for the quality of her education.  Because no matter how disjointed and poor my education may have been, it must have been better than hers.  (Really lady, you should be ashamed!)

 With Love,

 The Crocheting Cat Lady

 P.S.  For those of you who want to check out the horse's mouth, here's a link to the Common Core standards.  (Make sure to drink lots of caffeinated beverages.  They're every bit as boring as the old state standards.)   Common Core Standards

 

 

 

2 years? 2 YEARS!

How can it have been 2 years?  When I started this blog, I did it to keep my writing skills from getting rusty.  I was trying to follow the sage advice of my favorite writer to just write.  He said it didn't matter what I wrote as long as I wrote every day.  I'm sorry, Stephen.  I have failed you and myself (and my 4 readers.)  However, the good thing about writing is that you can start again at any time. 

So, here's what's happened in the last two years.  I found a job.  Yay!  I taught junior and senior English at a small charter school in Pueblo, CO (Go, Scorpions!) for a year.  Yup, you read right.  1 year.  That's all I had before budget cuts forced the board of directors to decide they needed to cut one of the three English teachers at the high school.  If I sound a little bitter, well, I am.  I really enjoyed talking about literature with the kids.  I loved seeing them light up when they realized they were smarter than they thought.  It was fun when I hit on a lesson they actually enjoyed.  These moments made the stuff that really sucked bearable. 

Some of the stuff that sucked was the lack of parent involvement, the parents who only became involved when their child was failing and wanted me to make an exception, the students who really didn't want to be in class and decided that none of the kids should be enjoying their learning time, the ridiculous amount of testing that had to be done to prove that I was doing my job, the mandatory sponsoring of an after-school club when there were no facilities or money to make the club worthwhile, and finally, the complete loss of any semblance of a personal life (of course, this was mostly due to the fact that I was a first-year-teacher and was creating two programs from scratch.) 

However, one really good thing came from my very short stint in public education: I realized that I really don't want to be a teacher.  A tutor, sure, but never a teacher.  It's not worth it.  Too much crap, no respect, and the pay is horrible.  Of course, since I've been unemployed since July, I really miss that horrible pay check.  Thank goodness I have a wonderful brother who allows me to live in his house for the price of my cooking abilities.  (Much respect, Jeremy!)

So, that pretty much brings me up to date.  I now spend my time looking for jobs (again,) crocheting, making memory movies for my grandmother's birthday, and trying to help my brother grow his business enough to be able to employ me.  Once again, I'm going to try to keep up with my blog. So, hopefully, you'll be seeing some of my recent crochet and craft projects soon, and I'll keep you up-to-date on my job prospects (still working on that craft supply store) and perhaps I'll start talking about my reading habits, as well.  Until then...

With love,

The Crocheting Cat Lady