It is a wednesday

Key pieces about students: 1. They are incredibly proud of their ethnic origins. Not all of them explore all of their ethnicities, this is dependent on if their parents are involved in their ethnic communities. However, in various conversation that I had with the students, they often asked questions about history and cultural information on the different cultures. 2. All of the students who participated in my project labelled themselves as multi-racial, mixed, black and white. They often admitted that what they said was contextual. One of the things many of the students dealt with on a nearly daily basis was the question "What are you?" or "Are you mixed?" This is not news to anyone who reads up on mixed identity. It is a broken refrain, because we want to categorize things. It is part of our nature as a way to make sense of the world. As I and others have said before mixed people challenge this and make people uncomfortable. 3. The students in my study the high school they attend is relatively supportive and the students did not report any experiences of overt racism and I observed none. That said, I observed teachers repeatedly single out certain minority students for behavior I observed all students regardless of race or color. Students brought this up as well. As well, I observed and heard stories of repeated micro-aggression both from students and teachers. I would even argue that the questions in point 2 above are micro-aggressions that these students experience every day. 4. Not all teachers participate in this subtle acts of institutional racism, but because micro-aggressions are so subtle and seem so innocuous, but build up over time, everyone is complicit. I think that the onslaught is so constant for most minorities that you build up a wall of tolerance and begin to not pick up on the smaller ones and only see the more overt ones. When I talked to students about how people spoke to them and gave examples, students were more able to see these occurrences, not only toward them but also toward other students. So, I am sure that some would argue, that by my bringing the issues up I am creating them. That is why these types of isms (these do not only happen to minority students although some other groups deal with much more overt discrimination) are so institutionalized, they are hard to identify. While I have been sifting through my data, I asked myself the same question, am I making mountains out of mole hills? So I set out to understand the concept better, as I saw it as something that would be integral to my thesis. The notion of micro-aggressions first came into play in the lat 1970 when a pair of academics looked at small racial assumptions in television ads. They found that these were very real and quite frequent. 5. While I was in the school I had teachers who wouldn't go on record come to me and tell me that they observed frequent and repeated acts of discrimination with minority students. I certainly observed over the course of the year that a few students I knew were punished much more harshly if they were not white, either suspended and or expelled. I also heard teacher vehemently talk about how they disliked students who had transgressed school rules, even on things that are not acceptable but incidents of typical teen boundary crossing tests.

So now on to thoughts.

I just noticed that people are actually looking at this blog. I don't think about it too often, but now that I might be able to get a real audience. I spend so much time thinking about mixed race issues, even though I myself am not mixed race, just bicultural. I am starting to understand this experience as a bicultural one. Students who are mixed often fit in, don't have a hard time finding a social group. Just like their family it is some place where they feel welcome, where they don't stand out. They live in homes that experience the same joys and sorrows that other families do. I am not sure if black and white mixed race people grow up in disproportionately single family homes, with white mothers. My experience many of these children do live in single parent homes. But then statistics show that more and more children overall grow up in single family homes. As a society this is still seen as a bad thing. Instead of finding ways to support women and men who find themselves alone with children, society vilifies people for being that way. We make it hard to live on a single income, hard to maintain health insurance, hard to find safe and stable place to live. You have to work hard to find a good school for your students, and then when you are working to make ends meet you struggle to find time to make it to school functions for fear of loosing your job. Then we knowingly bring children in to a highly racialize culture where people don't treat brown people fairly. so what happens when they are labelled in this world by the color of their skin. This color makes them stand out since brown comes in many shades, but they all get the same label. We have labelled everyone of African American origin black. But this belies the cultural differences that exist between communities. Instead we have a notion that there is one monolithic way to be black or white. Yet, as many researchers in race studies note, whites have the ability to pick an ethnicity. You can be Irish, French, Danish, because you can trace your ancestry. You weren't ripped from the soils of your land and enslaved, if you survived the horrific voyage across the ocean. Once you reached the "New world" your family, language, culture was sublimated and ripped away, so that everyone became one "morass" of blackness (I use this term deliberately, as white slave holders didn't think of their African slaves as people but as chattel, but this is far from how I think of people in this culturally diverse nation). Yet historians have found and witten about various cultures that have developed around African American groups, people who have held on to various traditions, like for instance the Gullah or the various metis and creole cultures across the southern parts of the US. Furthermore, this blanket grouping implies that new cultural norms and expectations are not formed in communities. Yet we use terms like Minnesota nice to describe the polite but distant way that people living in Minnesota interact. Or that New Yorkers are brusk and direct. Historically Africans created communities for themselves that have withstood the test of time. Some of their cultural developments gone mainstream, for example hiphop music has changed music as we know it. Whites have adopted high fives, using the word man just to name a few examples. So how does this connect to the mixed race students and individuals. Well, one of the problems faced by researchers of this topic, is that mixed race individuals do not form one cohesive group, but then again neither do blacks or whites as per the arguments above. Mixed race people are as diverse as any other group in the US.

Death and writing time.

So yesterday I found out from Joan, that Julie B died last week. I have been hit really hard by it. I never expected, it maybe I feel bad because I hadn't talked to her in a long time. I let the money thing get between us. Not that I feel like I owe her. Maybe I do feel that way. Now on to my writing. I have been stuck quite a bit. Mostly because as Hrafn put it I keep looking at the forest, and not writing about the trees. If I work on the trees then the forest will come. So I need to write the trees. A story about each of the kids at least. Although I think there are more than that in the data. I made the survey for the parents. I think it is fine, so I am going to send out the emails. I really want to be done with the paper, so I can do something I am more interested in, like teaching and writing for real. I don't want to be an academic, it is too lame, the games people play. They are so disconnected from the real world. People like D.Ch. who fly into a country tell them what they need to do to fix their ed system based on a month long observation, inaccurate statistics, interviews with people in the system who have stakes in it. And we can't even create an equal and strong education system for our own students and we think we can make recommendations on how other countries should improve education. This is of course one of my long standing objections to my academic department. But I am realizing that this is more true across the U. I don't think that there are many intellectuals to be found in the academy. Most people are too concerned with their own small field of research and not much else. Another thing is that I don't feel like I have accomplished anything beside raising Tay. I want to write articles, but I don't trust myself enough to get out there. I feel tired all the time. And nothing seems to help all the time. I don't feel like it is my allergies or that it is my depression, but it could be. I haven't like anything I have written either. It feels all old and tired, like everything has been said. Oh ho, this is depression. I need to get more physical activity and the sun lamp going, it is keeping me from working on my writing.

So that was from last week

I have been thinking about a few things that seem to be key:

1. Students are not insecure or worried about self identity internally.
2. The insecurity becomes evident when questions are posited from the outside.

The pressure to conform to the greater societal norms is extensive. Here in the US people want individuals to fit into neatly defined boxes that they (John Q public) can then supposedly understand, yet we as people are becoming increasingly complex. We have multiple personas in daily life and in the virtual worlds.
We know we are not one-sided nor have we ever been, yet often research and general social expectations make it appear that we are that one dimensional. So when the idea of mutli-racial identity or rather when multi-racial individuals started demanding to be noticed, it set off all kinds of shock waves, both in the social arena and in the academic arena. But I digress, often in the literature regarding mixed identity there is a discussion of how people with mixed heritage are unstable and often depressed. The discussion is often focused on it being an issue with internal self knowing, rather than the struggle with external pressure to conform to the wider social expectations.
Who wouldn't feel depressed when asked "what are you?" and then in answer you say I am black and white, native and white...(just to name a two) and the questioner answers back "No, you're not." My first reaction is who the fuck are you to tell me what I am or am not. That doesn't even begin to address the insult of the question "What are you?" Many of the students I interviewed reported saying "Human" when asked that question. Personally, I like my son's answer, when I asked him what he said: "I'm white, honky; I'm black niggah."
Students are very clear and direct in their answers when asked "How do you identify yourself?" More often than not they reported varying their answers depending on context, but the most frequent choice was "I am biracial or mixed race." But we of course can't leave well enough alone, we push onward and insist that they pick one. Oh perhaps not the parents, but certainly the school that gets more federal funds for disadvantaged and minority students, or teachers who assume things based on dress, language use, body language or just based on skin color, or friends who say something negative about one of the cultural or ethnic groups the student belongs to. Now extend this to daily life, where you know who you are, but no one wants to believe you or people want to "correct" your perception of self. Despite this pressure to simplify students are solid in conception of self, but it would certainly explain some of the depression reported in young people, that is of course along with the normal depression experienced by teens.

Feeling down and whiny today

So I have finally gotten rid of a massive thorn in my side. But the effort I expended to help this person and then to get her out finally. So now the apartment is all fixed up, and I am happy to report that I can get back to being productive. I will be listening to my interviews over the next few weeks taking notes. I hope I wasn't too leading. I am feeling a big let down from the fucking work. I guess I work more under pressure, so I am going to try and set time lines and get things done. I don't know what to start with except listening and picking out things that seem important, then finding similarities, and differences. I have some ideas. Things like feeling out of place, being pushed around or excluded. What if anything can I get from the different family situations. Make a point of the middle of the roadness of the students, ie they are not the top students or the worst students.

Email to a cousin

Hi Liz,

I was just reading up on various ed strategies and realized I had not really learned about KIPP, I kind of knew of it, but wanted some specifics. I read a paper on how it is successful in increasing grad rates from high school, but that they are not so successful in college.
How do you feel about the whole paying them for learning. I mean that is kind of like work, but learning is so different from work, what happens when they are not getting paid for their school work? Also what happens in schools went the leader moves on?
I like the anti-bullying policy and ways to counter it although the one strike policy is a bit much.
My dissertation is on identity development in teens, focused on multiracial teens. What happens in their school experience. Many schools have very strict discipline policies, without any corrective measures. Some how that just kind of seems to support the school to prison pipelines for minority students, rather than looking for way to help the student understand their error and learn better ways to behave and interact. School is naturally a social place, it is perhaps the primary way we inculturate our next generation, And given how schools are white power arenas, the skills for cultural success need to be taught in schools, by not giving chances to change and improve that door is constantly slamed in students faces.

Beginning of the summer.

So I have wrapped up my year at the local high school and have taken off a bit of time from any analysis, work or thinking from the most part. But I have found myself explaining what I have observed and how students are perceived and present themselves. I have had a few ideas for chapter headings Chapter 1: Introduction Who are we?; Chapter 2: Difference makes it all better; Chapter 3: I am not the spokesperson for whateverness.
I have been thinking of how to write up vignettes and what types of ones I want to write. I want to start with descriptions of the students, teachers and school. Maybe 2 pages per each. They need to include physical descriptions of the students, character descriptions, family. There should be a description of the school day. And this is all outside of other pieces of the puzzle as they fit together. I can start writing these pieces as I go through the analysis.
One of the things I would like to do with it is get some small papers to post on my academia site. Plus I have to write stuff about me and about tay. Those pieces can be the first article I write I suppose. It is interesting how much of this generates thoughts about my experiences in Iceland as a child or the way things worked after I had tay and was dealing however obliviously with the way this society treats minorities and those who dane to have children or live within the minority communities. Now I worry that i see too much race in things. Do kids talk about it. Kat was saying yesterday that her son never indicates what racial group his friends are in. She think is it is because it just isn't an issue. But that makes me wonder if we are glossing over something that is still such an important issue. If equality was no longer an issue, then graduation rates and drop out rates would tell a totally different story.
So what is it that I am studying? I am examining how the school experience plays out for students who have parents from different racial backgrounds. When I began planning the study my initial intention was to only select students of European and African American heritage. But after spending time in the school, it became clearer to me that just selecting such a sample was not really representative of the students in this one school. In just identifying the students, which I did using the following methods: Teacher or administrators other students and through self revelation. More often than not you can tell who the mixed race children are, or so I thought. One of the young men I included in the study was only identified as multiracial by a cousin who is also part of the study. The cousin informed me the other boy was actually mixed African American and Native American. I had already formed a good relationship with the student so I invited him to join the study. So the final selection of subjects included students who are European American, African American, Native American (multiple different tribes, Hawaiian American, Israeli. I realized as I gathered students for the study that there were so many varieties and mixtures of races and cultures that limiting my sample in such simple terms as black and white was not possible.

The longest short school day

Some how today was one of the longer observation days at school even if the day was shorter than usual. In the first hour it was just crazy. The kids are out of control. They so clearly dislike the teacher and the room is just so out of control that no learning is happening. I feel like every time I talk to DR I am tattling, but I feel terribly for the students. They of course make it worse because they are getting in their own way. CW is angry and sullen, doesn't want to be bothered. I told KW that I would be following him after break. I wanted to talk to CW but he just doesn't want to talk. Khal. was in class, sitting in back, quiet as usual, to bad he is in the class he is so quiet and studious. I will enjoy following him. He is cute and wants to learn. I found out WKT is on an IEP. So he might not get in too much trouble for the incident. Yes I have not written about it yet that I know of. On Monday two boys, WKT and CD made an explosive and put it in the locker room. This was not the first time they did this this year, but last time they were not caught on camera. This time they were. So both boys got suspended for at least a week, but what they did was a felony so they could be taken to court. I would like to get in contact with the two, but not sure how to do it. Also got a new student today Brittany she is a 9th grader. Her mother is afam and her dad is euam. She said that she has a not so great relationship with her grandmother. she has a number of half siblings, all of her father's children are mixed, and one of them did something bad or wasn't successful and so she feels like her grandmother judges all of them in the same fashion. She also mentioned she had started a discussion in her English class. I will have to ask her about that more.
RPT had a plastic mouse today. I made some comment about how hungry I was and how it would really hit the spot. He said something about that being like me and not surprising. BS was sleeping in class. KA asked me what he should do about the first hour class. Izzy was happy to see me today as usual. Nothing big on that front. I was so tired toward the end of the day that I can hardly remember what happened.

Daily thoughts

I had lunch to day with a good friend and colleague of mine. It is always lovely to have someone to talk to about my research. I know that a lot of people are interested in my topic but it is hard to read peoples real interest. My brother is patient and listens. My son like the stories that I tell after I come home from a day of observations. But I only truly have 3 friends that I talk to in depth about the research. You know who you are and thank you for taking the time to listen to me babble on about my little buddies at SW.
I didn't go in last week, the school had make up testing for the state exit exams, and most of my students have not completed the grad standard. This in of itself is rather telling, but there are more and more things that have popped up that sadly mimic what you read in books about the modern education system. One thing that I struggle with is the notion of silence. The high school is quiet except during passing time and at lunch. In the classroom there are constant reminders to be quiet and listen. For me that seems so oppressive, I know I am old and used to much louder and busier environments. (I got in trouble while teaching at the college level for having a loud classroom). Where did knowledge production and learning become synonymous with silence and stillness. I don't think that rooms should be loud or too chaotic, but these are still children, they are on the cusp of adulthood, these are the last moments they will ever have to be children in their lives, at least until they are old. Soon responsibility will knock at their door, and for some students it already has. A few times in the office students have come into register address changes because they are living on their own. I am so amazed these kids are still going to school, what a hard and strong thing to do. (I am not surprised that these children exist, I have housed a few in the same situation.) There are homeless (highly mobile) students, who have a support system in the school.
I am hearing a lot of different things from the teachers I am meeting as I follow students through their school day. First, thing I have to say is the day is physically and mentally exhausting. When I get out at 3.30 I just want to take a nap or watch tv for hours and turn off. I know I am focusing pretty hard, but the kids do this everyday. Six hours of sitting still in a room listening to others, focus on learning. No wonder it is hard for them to be good but 5th hour (after lunch) let alone during the last period of the day. Then they are expected to go home and spend more hours working, and if they are involved in after school activities if they get home before 5 it is amazing. Some kids get up at 6 am to take 2 or more buses to get to the school.
Yesterday an English teacher told me that there was a significant difference between the academics in the AP/IB (Advanced Placement/International Bac) programs and the "regular" classes. She felt that the classes were not "regular" at all but mostly remedial. Often students can't borrow the required books from the library, because they haven't returned other ones, or have a big fine. Many of them can't take the books home, if they do they don't do the reading for class. She mentioned that the last book they had read Sherman Alexie's "Confessions of a part time Indian," a large portion of the book had been read out loud in class because of the students who didn't have the book or didn't read it. Yesterday they walked down to the 'Media Center' the modern word for library, to pick up Othello. The teacher then had them work on skits based on the 4 primary themes of the play without any discussion of the play itself. I liked the focus of active learning with the students. She went over a list of vocabulary words. Only one student consistently shouted out answers, most of the students didn't bother to pay much attention. This room was not nearly as quiet as other rooms I have been in, but there was work going on, while they were chattering and laughing. The teacher circulated to make sure people were staying on task.
Most of the rooms are over crowded with desks, not leaving much space for reconfiguration and movement in the room. In some classes I know that is good, but there is even space in math to change the seat configuration. Most math rooms have paired desks, or orderly rows. So far all of the math teacher have been guys. Both of the history teachers were male as well, the language teachers are women, the English is a mixed bag. The math teacher I observed yesterday was actually quiet good with the students exploring their thinking on the math and going over the solutions carefully, discussing different ways of solving a problems, showing the students the theoretical basis for why there were different ways to solve the problems. Delving into the more depth are of math. The teacher I have been in contact with regarding WKT, has been really negative about him without my having even met him. The geometry teacher last week, who works with KW and TF told me that KT was not working at all, had given up. In the English class yesterday he acted the same way, like none of this mattered. The geometry teacher also said that TF had no ability to remember problem solving from one moment to the next and seemed to have relied too much on tutors who did the work for her. The dance teacher talked about the way there was a divide between the black students and the mixed race students. That during a review of a performance the black students had dismissed the mixed students as not counting as black students while dealing with the topic of AfAm ballet dancers. I noticed at lunch that TF was sitting with a group of darker skinned girls, while IP floats around to various people, she is a touchy feely girl, hugs and pets everyone even me. Her friends tend to be more white, but not always. The sports guys hang with the guys from the team, it reads a lot like a play book.

Final draft

Since the civil rights movements in the 1960s, the multiracial population, in the US, has risen by 500% (Currently there are 6.1 million mixed race people in the US). The election of our first visibly multiracial president makes this gap in knowledge about a newly acknowledged portion of society, a field, which needs to be explored. More and more social figures espouse mixed race identity. Tiger Woods is usually the first to be mentioned in this context, but others notable figures like James Waters and Kerri A. Rockquemore belong to growing group of writers, academics and researchers focused on biracial identity and experience.
My thesis uses critical ethnographic methods to examine the myths surrounding mixed-race identity, its instability, mulitracial social unfitness and the tendency to label all students mono-racially. I examine how multiracial/ multiethnic high school students construct identity in school settings by looking at how race, socio-cultural norms and economic status affect students' development. The project seeks to give these students voice and to gain a deeper understanding of how they see themselves and how they understand other’s perceptions of them. It explores the implications of identity for academic achievement, post high school aspirations, and students social environment. I hope to not only gain insight into students' thinking regarding their identity but to engage them as integral researchers. By developing a deeper understanding of who they are and by explaining to others who they are, the project develops students’ self-authorship, by encouraging self-reflection, discussion and reflective writing.
An individual's identity is constructed from many pieces, including gender, race, family structure, and the student’s home neighborhood, and the culture of the schools that she attends. The time students and teachers spend together affects student maturation, intellectual development, social skills, academic achievement and identity development. Since students spend the largest portion of their waking lives in schools it is important to understand how they see themselves as budding adults. Current research on mixed-race minorities focuses on how they perceive themselves and believe they are perceived by others. As their identity matures and they develop a cohesive persona, understanding students perceptions and perspective in educational contexts and the impact this has on self-identification and success is still a developing field of inquiry.
This project includes an auto-ethnographic component since as both a researcher and a parent, I work to understand cultural issues related to ethnicity and race. Growing up in a mono-racial culture as a bi-cultural child, I struggled as an invisible outsider. The skills I developed as a child and an adult carried into my research interests leading me to combine auto-ethnography with ethnography. My interest in understanding the US racial divide began when I became the parent of a mixed-race child; the US racial divide is not normally experienced by a European American. However, my real wake up call came when my son began having academic issues in school. I realized that the problems he had been experiencing were not due to a deficiency of his home life or his ability to learn, but rather, based on how he was perceived in his school community. The parents of other mixed race children described similar experiences supported this conjecture. Suspecting a much greater problem, I decided to study this at an institution level. By focusing on multiracial teen identity, this project seeks to inform educators, administrators, researchers and parents on how students experience school, which can help to develop more appropriate educational environments for all students. Ultimately, this not about race or social fit, but developing a better and more just environment for students regardless of race, creed, color or gender.

Grant draft very rough

I am applying for the award based on my commitment to working on racial issues in Minneapolis schools. My adult life has been spent working on creating a deeper understanding of cultural issues related to both ethnicity and race. I grew up in a mono-racial culture as a bi-cultural child and student. As a student both in Iceland and in the US, I have struggled with being an invisible outsider. I am racially and ethnically European American, however being both Icelandic and Irish American I have worked to function in disparate cultural enclaves. The skills I developed as a child and an adult have carried into my research interests. My focus on better understanding the US racial divide came when as a young college student I became the parent of a mixed race child. I was forcibly entered into this racial divide that I had not experienced before as a white European American. However, my real wake up call came when my son began having academic issues in high school and after I read bell hooks’ We real cool. Suddenly I realized that the problems we had been experiencing were not due to a deficiency of his home life or his ability to learn, but rather based on how he was perceived in his school community. Then by chance many of the parents who’s children were of mixed race origins began describing similar experiences with their students. I began to suspect that this was a much greater problem and could perhaps be traced at the institutional level. These experiences shaped what then developed as my doctoral dissertation topic.

Currently a doctoral candidate in Comparative International Development Education, I am gathering data. I spend two days a week volunteering in classrooms at a local high school. I have struggled to finish my program, as a single parent working full time on my degree with little support from outside funding sources. My goal as a PhD is to further explore and develop deeper understanding of the racial divide that persists in U.S. schools. My dissertation topic focuses on teen racial identity, more specifically on multi-racial teen identity. In a culture as diverse as ours, the continued reliance on simplified racial categories for understanding and reaching out to students is stunting our ability to help students achieve at higher levels. Over and over again we hear stories of students failing. The Twin Cities continues to have in-excusably low minority graduation rates (50%), yet in the classrooms little changes. For sure there are minority students who do succeed, but my current project has reveled that the average minority student is getting a 2.0 or less, just enough to stay on the basketball team (Observation notes 2.10.2011). Their only desire is to be done with high school and what little enthusiasm they muster is clamped down to follow the set agenda for the day, even when the questions are related to the material and cover things that have previously been discussed. I do not doubt that there is a sincere desire on the behalf of teachers and administrators for the students to succeed. But the one size fits all model is failing. It is failing rapidly, in a time when budgets are getting tighter and tighter, the need include everyone is stronger than ever. We are slipping in status world wide in terms of innovation and college completion. Yet schools is where we hope develop students for an innovative society, and we leave out 50% of the possible population by continuously failing to help minority students, we close down under-preforming schools, bring in business models to educate students, and still show no or little performance improvement. Is this solely tied to race? no I do not believe it is, social and economic class plays a large role in it as well. My research examines how these three aspects affect students who come from largely middle class white backgrounds, even though the students are mixed race. The largest proportion of interracial couples is among more educated groups, yet these students have been labeled as the students who face the most challenges academically. My goal is to expose the myths surrounding the mixed race arguments of instability, social unfitness and the categorical penchant to label all students mono-racially. Chances are any student at teacher encounters, is ethnically, culturally, economically or racially mixed. Just as we say we can’t judge a book by its cover, we can’t judge students by their covers yet we do so daily.
This grant would help me finish gathering my data enable me to purchase analysis software and allow me to spend some time working directly with students so that I can get a more holistic view of their experiences and some space to just write, by minimizing my financial worries. It is difficult to write and conduct research when a student is worried about loosing housing or whether she can pay the heat bill or buy food for her small but important family.

This week and thoughts 20110218

This week I went to a school "coffee" house where one of the students in my study performed. She didn't think she did too well, then last night I went to see another student in the study play basketball. That was fun, I had forgotten how much fun games were. Tay only played a short while and the last team he was on was not so great since the coach preferenced his players (students from his school) over the other students from a different school, even though Tay and his school mates were better players. Ah I have hit my other nerve of late, how I failed to get my son the proper education.
Is it bad that one of the reasons I am writing what I am is to better understand why I failed to get him the help and schooling I thought was good for him. I know for sure that this system is massively broken, so broken in fact that most of the kids I know have gpas under 2.0 and they are fine with that. I listen to students tell me they are not smart and try and get me to buy into that belief. This is after they have just demonstrated that they have learned the needed materials even when they have their heads on the desk, look like they are sleeping or are wandering around the class room. So many of them have told me that they are not good at math and that they hate math. Now I am not one to say I love math, but I do like it quite a bit, and find myself doing little math problems every day. We are miserably failing these students, boxing them up sending them off to community colleges and state schools, terribly under-prepared and behind, to such an extent that it is unlikely that they can catch up to the rest of the world by the time they graduate. We know this and we keep doing the same old same old.
Sit up, stop talking, face forward and pay attention to this deathly boring power point that some educational production house put together to help a teacher who can't keep up, who has so much other work and other stressors that the time she needs to get the work for tomorrow is overshadowed by the time she has to spend on recording and filing and grading what happened today. One of the students got to check her answers and copy answers out of the book. I told her the only reason I wasn't doing anything about it is because by copying the answers she was still learning something and that counts almost as much, although it lacks the development of critical thinking skills. It will be interesting to follow the other students around and see the other class rooms. Better teachers hopefully, although the history (AP) didn't really impress me at all.
One of the the things that really blows my mind is the paucity of books in the classrooms. Are they really so scared that the student will steal the books that they don't have them. Chris We. asked me yet another odd question this week about setting fire to farts. Of course I had a smart response and told him that it would most likely burn the ass hairs off first, at which point Kevin tried to ask the teacher if that would really happen, but my don't you dare got him to stop. Ok so I sit in the back of the room and chatter and make jokes, but they come to me for help and poke me for attention and beg me not to leave. Greet me in the halls, talk to me at games, bumm a dollar from me, like it when I give them chocolate, act all surprised when I know a biggie song or who Ez E is. I have offered to help with class work, especially math, since that seems to be the biggest piece. It is as if there is little actual reinforcement, oh plenty of repeating of work answering the same questions over and over in slightly different forms, but really no active application or learning of the terms. Many of them seem to not want to read the stuff, and I wonder how many of them are functionally literate. I know they read their phones and look on the internet all the time, but that is different and requires a totally different set of skills. No one has taught them how to read a text book, all that money is wasted on these very expensive books that they never read and barely touch. If they are assigned work in the book, they go straight to the work and ignore the previous pages, they want not to have to read them and just get the answers. Again and again they have this disconnect between what they have to do and what they have learned. For example. I had to go around the room and help everybody understand the 3CO2H2O was really CO2H2O CO2H2O CO2H2O. Some how they had not learned that or had missed it. Not really surprising given the teacher. ChrisWe asked me to rate the teacher on a scale, and then rather astutely asked how much of it was the teacher and how much of it was the students. I of course told him that it was not for me to judge. He told me if you are a bad teacher then the kids are going to be bad, if you are a strict teacher and a good teacher the kids will respect you and work for you. It is funny that he knows this but still can't stop talking and asking off task questions and trying to get away with no work. Will asked me if mixed kids were more likely to be adhd, and I said I didn't think so, he also told me he was. I believe it, it is really hard to get him to focus, but when I have him at the back of the room just him and me and Rodney they work hard and do well. Isiah is a bit of a distraction but most days I can get them to settle down and work. Same is true of Kevin and Chris. I am a bit worried about my report with Chris Wa, he is so angry and resentful, and I have annoyed him a few times, by asking him to settle down. He hate the class and doesn't want to be there and is not making much of an effort to help out with the study and class, but last class one of the squeeky girls sat by him and they chattered the whole time and missed the majority of what was need. He gets up and leaves when ever he wants, doesn't seem to get in trouble for wandering the halls. He seems to know how to avoid the hall monitors. A few of them spent much of the time out in the halls. I have to work on Brandon a bit, he is quiet, and sits there, just being distracted. Not like the ones who are constantly seeking attention. Like Chris We and Wa, or Kevin. I showed Carnell a picture of Tay last night and he said your son looks black. He's your right not adopted. And I smiled and said yes. There was a mixed race couple at the game, their son was playing. Honestly I would have been hard pressed to guess he was mixed, but then his dad looked mixed himself, probably about my age a bit older, very light skinned, and with more European features, so the son was literally white and the only clues were the fact that he had thicker lips and course hair. So if the dad hadn't been there then he would have easily passed as a white kid. I think that Sue M. (AP) is slowly warming up to me, not so put off by me. Smith is not interested in race at all, even with the growing population of non whites in the school. The kids are fairly unconcerned overall about race, usually the discussion is done in a joking fashion, although there are some slights like when Kevin told Chris he was not black. Then there are the discussion like with CWe trying to convince me he is black or mixed. And asking Kevin to agree and my asking if he is honorary. Then the boys telling me Markus is Hawaiian and white. OR Rodney trying to convince me he is mixed. I had a really interesting discussion with Chris We, Kevin and Erick about why latinos, somalis and asian sit apart but the Afro Am and white kids mix much more. Chris wanted to know why and thought it was because the other groups were being exclusive, and we talked about how they feel more comfortable in their ethnic groups the one time during the day where they can sit and speak in their native languages and have a communal understanding of each other because they have similar experiences.

Living the lingering slow death

Two days a week I volunteer in a local high school. I have been there since September. It is part of my doctoral research. I have been helping out in classrooms while I recruit subjects for my study. The school is a classic American high school, as if I had walked into a scene from American Grafitti. Pale yellow walls, grey lockers, plain linoleum on the floors. It is an older school, the main office has wooden counters and some of the rooms have hard wood floors. The classrooms are a mix of old fashion student desks, with one or two computers, a whiteboard instead of a blackboard, a projector, a screen and speakers. Each teacher gets a wireless mic. The student desks and chairs are hard and uncomfortable. Not much encouragement for a student to sit still. At the end of the day students have to help put up the chairs, and let me tell you they are heavy.
This school is orderly, there is not much noise during the day even at lunch time. The only real altercation I have heard of was a fight last week during lunch time between two African American girls. One of the girls was manhandled into the classroom where I help out by one of the hall monitors. Yes they have adult hall monitors, people who patrol the school halls, keep kids orderly, find out why they are wandering around, escort them to class, in a certain way they are the muscle of the school. The teachers can call on them to remove students from the room who are too disruptive. The school also has on police officer on duty. He's a nice guy, but wanders around with a Beretta on his hip.
Various hallways have paintings by students, the whole back wall of the lunch room is a big student drawn mural. The hall ways are crowded with poster of come to the winter formal, join the theater group, see this choir perform. Once a semester there is spirit week, where students wear garb appropriate to the day. Last Tuesday was Zoo Animal day (it was changed from Jungle Fever Day for obvious reasons implied in the term) and Thursday was class color day (red for seniors, blue (baby) for juniors, green for sophomores, I never figured out what the freshman color was, but then who wants to admit freshmanese).
For the first few weeks, each day that I spent in the school, it took me a day to recover from the pent up energy of 1700 hormonally challenged bodies crushed into a school that doesn’t really fit them. Now it makes me smile to drive all the way to the school at 8 am. The smile is not for the school or the building, but the students. The other parents' babies who are on the threshold of adulthood. The boys and girls who want to stay children but constantly try on the suit of grown-upness only when they want. But why do I title this post lingering slow death, because each day I am there, I see students sitting still, finding ways to get out of work, deadening their creativity and curiousity. Ok, I am being a bit over the top. But really, did you all know that because of the electrons in each atom we never touch anything, or was it the classic “too cool to react” scene.
Yes I know I am a geek, otherwise what would I be doing in these rooms. As one of the students says every time he sees me “What are you doing here, when you don’t have to be?” And he is right, why on earth would anyone want to be in the school, any school. What makes you want to get up and be on time when you know you are stuck in classes that make you pretend you are working, pushing paper, writing nonsense, answering test questions that you will never have to recall again. Stuck everyday for four years in walls that suck any desire from your veins to learn. Sure plenty of kids matriculate fine through these walls, but what can they honestly claim they have learned except a scripted set of answers and actions that will presumably get them into the college of their choice. All of us are players in this fake learning labeled public education and we do it with a smile.

A recent article in NYT about mixed identity

Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above

Mpls district investigates teacher license problems at Broadway High | Minnesota Public Radio News

Mpls district investigates teacher license problems at Broadway High | Minnesota Public Radio News

High school student stress

An article Op ed by Alfie Kohn in the New York Times: High school student stress