A Generational Curse

Here are a few interesting statistics I read today about the drug problem in Rochester, NY. In 2008 there were 752 lbs. of marijuana seized, 71.8 lbs. of cocaine seized and 215 grams of heroin seized. There were 136 fire arms seized. There were 870 drug related arrests made. There were 396 search warrants served. I read these statistics in the City Newspaper...September 23-29 edition. For the most part, these events occurred in the neighborhoods where my students live.

Is there a connection between the above drug statistics and my students? Many times, I fear. Speaking of drugs and their use and abuse...this morning I had quite an experience with a five year old boy who had not received his medicine for the day. I must say something about children and meds. I think it is a tragedy of the highest order that so many young children need to be on meds. Something is seriously wrong in a nation where so many people need to self-medicate...either with illegal drugs or with drugs to alter a child's behavior. I understand there is an appropriate place for meds but my class experiences are often altered profoundly by them. My little five year old sits quietly and is pleasant, responsive and does tasks as assigned while seeming to enjoy the lesson. Today was different. When I greeted him at the door...he shot out of the classroom like a bat out of Helena. I needed to retrieve three other students and he was long gone before I could blink. I lost him for several minutes but he ended up at my table located down the hallway. He was, however, underneath it. The lesson commenced and he promptly picked up an orange crayon, looked at me, screamed and snapped the crayon in two. Within minutes he had clambered up onto the chair and then onto the table. He was up and down during the duration of the 30 minute lesson except for the brief moments when he ran over to the wall and kicked it, rolled around on the floor and made snow angels and ran out of the door to stand briefly in the rain in the playground. He quickly returned to the table and scribbled madly with the broken orange crayon all over his work, his neighbor's work and the table. He attempted to eat the crayon and ran it all over his lips like chapstick. When I announced that I would have to let his teacher know how his morning had gone, he glared at me, screamed and ran down the hall to glare through the windows at another class. He turned around and ran right back and commenced slashing wildly with the orange crayon on his paper and the table. I informed the other students that they needed to ignore him and finish their work. Considering that they are five years old, I think they handled it fairly well. Toward the end of the lesson, a social worked strolled by and I asked if she could take him. I left him with her and I can only hope that a phone call was made home to inform the parents that they must either provide the medication or keep him at home. We shall see.

From one angle, I see the humor in all this. I have been teaching long enough not to fall apart because a five year old is out of control. I actually laughed when at one point he looked at me and said, "My Mom prays to God for me". I closed my eyes briefly and pictured that praying Mom. I appreciate kinetic energy, multiple intelligences and experiential learning. However, in this case, the kinetic energy is border line atomic, the intelligence of the person who did not give the medication (prayer or no prayer) could be questioned, and experiential learning is fine until a student violates the rights of all the others in the classroom to receive an education. I do not know why this particular family does not give this child his medication. I will tell you what I have observed over past years. When children come to school without meds it is usually due to the following reasons: the parent(s) do nothing about obtaining a new supply when the dose is finished; an older sibling takes the drugs for personal use or to sell; the parent(s) oversleep and let the child get on the bus on his own; the child comes to school and is given an emergency dose by the nurse but the dose does not take effect soon enough.

Many parents abuse illegal drugs before, during and after pregnancy. Many home environments exist with chaotic schedules, loud music or domestic violence and blaring television. My students end up needing drugs to calm down so they can learn or they need the drugs to develop "normally" after fetal drug and alcohol poisoning. Our mayor stated recently that Rochester is experiencing a generational curse and I would concur. It is a curse which starts before the womb and affects childhood, education, mental and physical health, the neighborhoods and eventually the prison system.

This little five year old is a sweet and sensitive and intelligent boy. He has so much potential. We shall see how things go tomorrow.

Blind and Naked...Part II

Today I watched and listened. Here is what I saw and heard. Early in the morning, I observed the boy who never wants to go home. He does not want to go home because he has been molested by a neighbor and now the neighbor and the Mom are friends and all is well, or so we are told. He ran down the hallway with a look of fierce determination on his face. He ran away from a para-professional who chased him with an equally determined look on her face. I watched as he turned the corner and exited the building. It was 9:45 a.m. He was on the lam earlier than normal today because it is Friday and the prospect of spending an entire weekend away from the security of the school is too much for his little heart and mind to handle.

I observed three new students in a dual language classroom. They are sweet children, but with cognitive issues and possible learning disabilities, they should not be part of a program which requires them to do everything in two languages. These three students were tested last year and it was determined that they needed to be held back or kept out of the dual language program. They may have even required special services. Why then would they be placed into a challenging program which requires students to perform in two languages? One might be surprised to discover that numbers of bodies in a classroom are often more important than what is best for the students. Apparently the numbers in that classroom were too low. That is the teacher's conclusion. It is my conclusion as well. Those three students are boosting numbers. Whether or not they thrive academically or socially remains to be seen.

I observed the sixth grade bathrooms today. Although it is only the fourth week of school, both of the urinals are broken. This appears to be deliberate. It takes strength and determination to wreck a brand new urinal in a brand new building. In the other bathroom, someone took multiple paper towels, soaked them, dripped and flung water everywhere and then plastered many of these paper towels all over the brand new walls. This means extra work for the custodian and some minor destruction of brand new property.

Today I read a memo from our union president. We are working without a new contract. Some of the issues are school safety, student discipline, classroom sizes and teacher lay-offs. It is hard to maintain school safety when a small child can quickly exit the building onto the street in order to escape going home. It is hard to maintain student discipline when some students feel free to wreck urinals and throw paper towels everywhere. It is difficult to teach well with "maxed out" class sizes. Research, after all, shows that students perform better in smaller classrooms. Laid off teachers mean that fewer adults are available to run a building successfully. These are just observations, of course.

The Blind Lead the Naked

I work at a dual language school. A dual language school provides students the opportunity to learn another language and to complete grades K-6 as they achieve academic and oral language proficiency in this second language. English speaking students take a number of core classes in Spanish during their K-6 experience which allow them to reach a 6th grade level of Spanish academics. Simultaneously, the Spanish speaking students receive half of their education in Spanish (to maintain their first language) while they learn English for academic and social purposes. The theory is that both groups will exit sixth grade successful in both languages. Theory is a wonderful thing. However, when theory leaves the paper on which it is written and enters the real world, unpredictable issues arise.

Our students exit and enter our dual language program for a number of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with what would be better for the students academically or socially. Sometimes, they enter because a school needs to boost numbers. It is not politically correct in educational circles to claim the following but I am going to say it anyway. There are some students who cannot handle academics in two languages.

This afternoon I observed a poster drawn by a sixth grade girl and on it she had written that one of the hardest things she was dealing with was the death of her older brother. I do not know the details of this death, but so many of our students lose family members to street violence. Emotional pain like that makes it difficult for a child to succeed academically. Other students have difficulty with cognitive issues and learning disabilities. Others struggle with ADHD, extreme social dysfunction and violence directed toward themselves and others. Many of these students should not be placed into a dual language program. They need to experience emotional healing first and then they can work on success in their first language.

One little boy struggling with behavior, attitude, effort and academics in a non-dual language class, magically appeared this week in a dual language class. He had been relocated by some well-meaning and mis-informed person somewhere in a higher echelon who decided that a dual language classroom experience might be a better place for him. Perhaps he or she envisioned him rising to a new challenge. Perhaps he or she thought he was bored. Perhaps he or she thought this dual language theory could be applied to any child with behavioral issues. Perhaps. Did this new placement change anything? Apparently not, for this week the student is doing exactly the same thing in the new classroom. Now that there is a second language challenge added to the student's day, I expect that he will continue to struggle at an even faster rate. Any expert questioned about his behavior in the future, may be tempted to say, "Well...you know it is a language issue..."

Signs of Autumn

I asked a group of first graders this afternoon if they knew what tomorrow was. One little one piped up and announced, "Tomorrow is the first day of Fall". I was elated and surprised that someone this young understood. Usually when I ask that question I get answers ranging from "Friday?" (when the next day is Tuesday), to "my birthday", to "Christmas, Missy?" or "snow". There are a number of time and space concepts that elude a large group of my ESOL students annually. Days, weeks and months are all thrown together into a vague jumbled time warp. The same thing happens with cities, states and countries. There is no clear understanding of the difference between state and city. You can forget about the refinement needed to distinguish between country and county!! The only thing that wedges tightly in the brains of my little ones when it comes to Fall is...you guessed it...Halloween! Sure enough, as soon as this little girl announced that tomorrow was the first day of Fall, she added quickly that Halloween was almost here and she already had her costume...a ballerina dress! I asked her if she had gone shopping over the weekend. She looked at me blankly and then asked, "You mean the day over there and the other day over there?"...waving with her hand pointing backwards to indicate the weekend. Then she said, "No, my Mom bought that the other days over there", pointing wildly again. I did some quick calculations and said, "You still have 41 days until Halloween". A teacher observing in our room laughed at me and said, "Boy you are on top of that date". I have to be because of the obsession my students have about Halloween. They are counting down the days with anticipation. We ended the class by waving goodbye to the last day of summer and welcoming in the first day of Fall. If too much Halloween candy is the only bad thing that happens to my students this year, we shall all be blessed!

Foot in Mouth

I was teaching figurative language this week to a group of fifth graders. As English is their second language, they were amused to hear phrases such as "down in the dumps", "tie the knot", "give me the brush off", and "foot the bill". There was a lot of laughter and many hearty attempts at trying to figure out what those strange phrases meant.

The first sentence we read together was "Sam was down in the dumps after he wrecked his car". All my students thought that Sam was visiting the local dump to check on his car or was turning in his car or was looking for parts. We did not get very far with "tie the knot" because no one seemed to know what a knot was. "Give me the brush off" meant nothing to them except that someone somewhere owned a hairbrush. "Foot the bill" caused much laughter. Then, I ran into trouble with the phrase "put one's foot in one's mouth". I got blank stares and giggles. I started to explain by saying, "I put my foot in my mouth when I asked someone how their father was and I found out that their father had died. By saying something unintentionally hurtful, one puts one's foot in one's mouth". Immediately, the student sitting left of me, pulled his yellow shirt up over his face and placed his head down on the edge of the table. I asked him to remove the shirt from his face and lift up his head so that he might continue the lesson with the group. He did so and everyone stared at his tear-stained face. I asked what was wrong. There was no response...just sniffles and red eyes. After a bit, he wiped his face and nose, shook his mop of uncombed black hair, smiled slightly and looked ready to continue.


At the end of the class, I took him aside. "Jose, what is wrong?" I met with silence. I tried again. "Jose, why were you crying?" This time he looked up. I tried a third time. "Jose, did I do something wrong?" He looked at me and said slowly, "You know when you said that thing about someone's father dying"...his voice trailed off and it suddenly hit me like a wave of cold water. How could I have been so very stupid and unthinking? Jose's father had died recently and there had been a tremendous amount of emotional stress and strain on the family. I had bumbled into the raw wound of his pain like a clod, not stopping to think about how careful I need to be about sensitive subjects in the classroom. My students suffer from troubles I have been spared. It is far too easy for me to sail carelessly through the day with my lesson plans, my goals and my optimism without taking the time to stop and look...I mean really look into the faces and eyes of my students.

I apologized and asked him to forgive me. He shook my hand, gave me a smile and moved back toward his desk. I thought about this conversation several days. Some of my most wounded students are some of the quickest to forgive. We could all learn a lesson from their maturity. I know I did. I am sobered by the responsibility to be careful about what I say in class. I am challenged by Jose's example of a generous spirit in forgiving me and I know I need to forgive quickly and often. I am humbled by the kindness of an inner city child who suffers much and struggles much with a difficult world. Let me not add to his difficulty. I am determined to tread more gently through his world and through the lives of vulnerable children.

Moving heavy furniture and other odd and sundry jobs

Oftentimes one is expected to go above and beyond one's job description. It happens to a lot of teachers, I've noticed. The other day as I arrived expecting to begin teaching a large group of kindergarten students, I realized I needed a large table for the hallway. After rummaging around, another teacher and I found two rectangle tables. We asked the custodian if he could haul them from the third floor to the first floor. He replied, "I don't know what to tell you". We asked if he had a wrench to lower the tables to the appropriate height for small children. He replied, "I don't know what to tell you". We asked if he wanted us to take care of the tables ourselves. He replied, "I don't know what to tell you". Apparently he must have reached a point of request saturation. We decided that we would take care of things ourselves. The custodian wandered off to deal with a flood in one of the first grade rooms and to locate and deliver chairs to another room. My friend and I lugged an extremely heavy and bulky table out of our room, down the hall, cross the passageway to the other side of the building and then into the freight elevator. Upon reaching the first floor, we hauled the table out of the elevator, down the hall, around the corner and finally placed it where we wanted it. The table was not the appropriate height. We went back upstairs and did it all over again with the second table. By this time, we were sweating profusely. We needed to locate ten chairs at this point, but had run out of time. We abandoned the project until the next day.

The next day we were back at it, locating all the chairs and (blessed relief!) met a volunteer who sometimes helps out the custodian. He had the particular wrench we needed and he was willing and able to go around and lower the tables. He also showed up to our room with a cart and hauled the chairs down to the first floor. Thank goodness for volunteers! Where would the public schools be without them? My neck and back hurt and I must say that I dislike being in a total lather by 10 am but we were ready to start the kindergarten class! God bless volunteers!

Monday, Monday

An absolutely delicious Fall morning with that September blue overhead and a fresh breeze coming across the new parking lot and through our classroom windows. I was thinking today about how many new and wonderful things there are here this new school year. It is so easy to start looking for all the negative things and to miss the beauty and goodness around us. For example, I have a brand spanking new classroom with windows that work, ceiling fans and new filing cabinets! There is a loaf of fresh pumpkin chocolate chip bread on the counter by our microwave. I am going to start my morning out with a fresh cup of tea. The teachers in the room next door to me are pleasant and chatty and chipper this morning. The day holds promise. I do not expect perfection but I do expect everyone to make an effort. That includes me. I do not want to become the teacher who is the "known complainer" and all around local grump. It brings me down and it brings everyone else down as well.


There is a lot of beauty around us and it is often necessary to start counting one's blessings in order to stem the tide of negative thinking. Blessing number one...We are in the middle of a recession and all of us have jobs. Blessing number two...I have yet to see a rodent in our new building. Blessing number three...We have paper towels! (You really have no idea about the paper towels!). Blessing number four...The secretarial staff is helpful and friendly and I am not sure how they continue to be that way! Blessing number five...I found a decent parking space in the lot this morning. I think five blessings are enough to launch this day correctly. May every teacher in the nation have a wonderful Monday!

Topsy Turvy Frustration

I am thinking today about a child's frustration. I heard yesterday that one of our first graders "spun out" as we sometimes call it and gave the principal, the security guard and the teacher a real run for their money. He reached the bus loop with his class at the end of the day and promptly refused to board. He placed two legs spread eagle and firmly planted on the cement with arms akimbo, backpack dragging off his shoulders, and refused to budge. There appeared to be no way to convince him to go home. As the situation accelerated, the first grader, in sheer desperation, upon realizing that there were a number of adults who were committed to getting him to leave, bolted for the nearby fence and tried to climb it. I am not sure how the problem was eventually resolved but all in all, I am not really concerned about the bus and the fence. I am concerned about the child.

The history of this child is painfully similar to other members of our student body. It turns out that both this little boy and his sibling have been sexually molested (to what degree is not clear), by a next door neighbor. Instead of reporting this travesty, the Mother has decided to forgive the perpetrator and now according to some, "they are all good friends". I have no specific information about the family except that there are profound social and economic problems. I do not understand what sort of relationship the Mother has with the perpetrator. I do not know whether or not the abuse continues and I do not know whether or not the child and his sibling receive counseling. I am simply observing and listening.

After a significant time in the district, I am no longer surprised when a small child does not wish to go home at the end of the day. I lived to go home at the end of the school day. Home meant safety, milk and cookies and a loving family. School was a necessary obligation. The most serious education took place at home. Our bus provided transportation but I only really felt safe riding with Mom and Dad. School provided fairly decent food, but the real food was at home. My home was everything that so many of our students do not experience. I did not have to fight going home at the end of the day.

Our first grader suffered another meltdown this afternoon. He was so upset about going home that upon exiting the school building, he began picking up discarded cigarette butts off the ground and putting them in his mouth. I last glimpsed him being carried back into the school building over a teacher's shoulder. I think about this little child and I think that I would not board the bus either...would you?

Another layer of incredulity

Day three has come and gone in the 2009/2010 school year. The September day was gorgeous with a brilliant blue sky, cool breezes and warm sun. Every other tree at the front of the school showed just a tease of orange in leafy clumps, making a promise that more delightful colors would soon burst forth. Only one child was stung this morning in the bus loop instead of yesterday's three. The bus loop waiting time lessened by 15 minutes or so. These were all good things on day three!

The cafeteria has changed for the better! With recent rennovations, the once cavernous, room with ugly gray walls and government surplus high fat, high sugar, high carb food has been transformed. Now there are hot meals served. We have an actual cook! Lovely colors are displayed on walls and floors and the ear-splitting roar of hundreds of elementary children is muted with special walls. I choose to believe that a quieter, calmer cafeteria will lead to quieter, calmer students. Now maybe we can work on manners. Manners need to be taught and of course this starts at home. Parents should not wait for the school to tackle manners. Manners, are after all, extremely difficult to teach to hundreds of children simultaneously. For example, I would like to see less yelling and more conversation in the cafeteria. I would like children to learn to chew with mouths closed. I would like to see children learn to handle knives, forks, spoons and napkins. More than anything, I would like to encourage children to try various foods before they toss them unopened or unpeeled into the garbage. A colleague of mine wandered through the cafeteria on day three and noted how many fresh and unbruised bananas had been tossed into the trash. Had I had more time that day, I would have gone to the cafeteria and rescued as many bananas as I could. I am not a huge banana fan but I do use them all the time to bake banana bread.

In past years, teachers in our district have been forbidden from salvaging food thrown away in the cafeteria. The reason for this backward policy is unclear. The policy is wasteful and unacceptable. There is something wrong when thousands of dollars are spent on improving a cafeteria and the healthy food is tossed away. There is something wrong when pre-packaged junk food is discarded and a proper cook is hired, yet pints and pints of milk are drained down the sink daily. We need to work actively to promote better health for our children. We live and work in a county with excessively high percentages of childhood diabetes and obesity. Fresh fruits and healthy foods should not be tossed into the garbage. One cannot force a child to eat something but the food need not be wasted. I have every intention of rescuing perfectly edible food in the future. Perhaps I shall deliver several loaves of fresh banana bread to Central Office.