Well, I survived the first major storm of winter. Twas a record snowfall for this time of month and needless to say, I loathed almost every second of it. At first, the thought of snowball fights, sledding, Irish coffee, Hot Toddies and other assorted winter activities kept me going. But soon I realized that I simply didn't have the right jacket which meant that I had to go out Saturday, in the height of the snowstorm to get one. The North Face was sold out of the jacket in the size I wanted, so was Bloomingdales, and Macy's, and the 5 other stores I went to. Which means that in 10 degree weather I walked several miles underclothed and near the point of death. By the time I got home after 6 hours, I pretty much passed out. I'm never doing that again. Oh, and I didn't even get the jacket so now I have to wait another two days for it to get shipped in from god knows where since the North Face store has to wait for new supplies to come here from Bangladesh. And I don't just mean the store in New York, I mean all of them. But the jacket has fur around the hood which is really all that matters.
My hair had gotten so long in the past few months that I decided to shave it all off today so I could wear a hat without getting hat hair. On the W. Coast when they shave your head, they pretty much do it and round out the back. Here though, it's a whole other story. Hispanics, as they're called here, and Blacks take head shaving to a whole other level. They shave it, round the back, round the widow's peak, straighten the area on your forehead above your ears and shave around the ears. And once they're done shaving it with the electric razor, they do it with a straight edge. It's all very elaborate and needless to say, I look Dominican now. As soon as I was walked out of the store though, the wind and sleet from the rooftops nailed my cleanly shorn head. I almost died. Literally. I sat there for a few minutes just shivering. I thought about going back into the barber shop for a few minutes to prepare but just went for it instead. Cold... I need this jacket.
In other news, school is going pretty good. I lost my entire Thanksgiving break due to illness which means I'm behind in planning but I'm starting to get the hang of it a lot more. Which is simply to say that my average performance now is a lot closer to my best performance a month ago. The kids are still way behind though and they're not making the kind of progress they need to. I've started a small after school program that serves less to teach those kids but instead to change the culture of the general classroom and I think it's working. Kids are clamoring to stay after school now and they're starting to act like they need to in order to do it. Just 17 more days until break and I can't wait.
Lastly, the real reason I'm posting right now is that the Daily News just ran a spread called "Living Well or Living Hell" where they look at premature death and its causes. The place with the lowest mortality rate in New York is in Northeast Queens where most people are white and Asian, the median income is between $54,031 to $67,550 and the top causes of death are heart disease/stroke and cancer. The hospitalization rate is roughly 6 percent in that area.
Contrast that with where I work, the #1 unhealthiest area of New York, and where I live, which is #3. In those two areas the majority of people are black and latino and the median income is $16,664 to $20,606 in the Southwest Bronx and between $17,370 to $26,561 in Central Harlem. Instead of heart disease and cancer the top causes of death in my areas are AIDS, violence, cancer and stroke. The most telling thing though is that instead of a 6 percent hospitalization rate there is a 20 percent hospitalization rate. Bear in mind that most of these people lack health insurance and that many prefer to stay out of the hospital than get the kind of services they get at places like Bronx-Lebanon Medical Center.
This doesn't even touch on the kinds of problems that exist in The Bronx though. Go to Barnes and Noble's Web site and do a store search for the zip code where my kids live (10453) and you'll find there aren't any stores in the zip code. Instead you have to go to the rich area of the Bronx to find anything or you can go to Manhattan which has something like 8 stores all in walking distance to each other. Not only do my kids have to deal with inadequate or missing textbooks in the classroom and poverty that prevents them from getting adequate school supplies (one of my students can't afford paper) but even if they wanted to buy a book, there is no place to go. There are many teachers who take their kids on field trips to bookstores if that gives you an idea of how rare they are.
To go back to the health issue, did you ever remember what school cafeteria food is like? Bet you hated it. Bet it was the worst thing you've ever eaten and you'd skip lunches on the days that your mom forgot to pack you a meal. Well, all of my students need the school's free lunch program. Those that don't like it, don't eat, which means that physiologically they're going to have significant cognitive disabilities when it comes to learning what they need to in my class that day. Say they want to eat healthy? Well, their parents could cook for them however most of them make Dominican or Southern food which isn't very healthy. You can't blame them, that's just what they make. Say they wanted to go to a store to get healthy food. Near my school is a Dominican restaurant, a Dominican Restaurant, a bodega that mostly sells the kids candy, a fried chicken restaurant and a pizza parlor. Walk down Burnside Ave. and what do you find? More Dominican restaurants, more fried chicken restaurants (including a KFC), more pizza parlors and a McDonalds. Not only do the teacher's suffer from the meal choices but most of the kids in my class are visibly overweight.
Don't you remember going to school when you couldn't wait for lunch or recess to go out and play? My kids don't have recess and they're not allowed to leave the lunchroom at lunch. Oh, and they only get gym 3 times a week for 42 minutes which is usually cut down to 2 gyms a week because of misbehavior and only 30 minutes of play because they can't walk to the gym without talking. Oh, but that's ok, because when they're done with school they go out and play, right? Wrong. First off, there are no playgrounds. The kids can't go to Roberto Clemente park alone because it's not safe. If they walk around the neighborhood they're going to run into people doing drugs. So, pretty much all they do at the end of the day is go home and play video games inside until they go to sleep. The kids are so desperate for something to do that most of them ask for extra homework. Think about that. They have so little to do outside of school that they WANT extra homework. They also WANT to go to after school and SUMMER SCHOOL because it gets them out of the house. Imagine spending all summer inside because the neighborhood isn't safe and you can't afford to go to summer camp.
Well, with all this extra homework you'd think they would be way ahead academically. Unfortunately, that's not the case. You have to be able to do homework correctly for it to be effective and since many of their parents are either at work or don't know what to do, giving egregious amounts of homework only does so much beyond which it builds bad habits as they do numerous problems incorrectly. But, Mr. K, can't you teach them what they need to know? Well, that would be nice and easy except that their knowledge base is so low that I can't even give them extra work on the things they should have mastered already since they've mastered so little. To give you an idea, they can't count. What does that mean? It means they don't understand why we go 7, 8, 9 and then numbers take on two place values and become 10. But beyond that, it's even more serious. They'll count like this: 97, 98, 99, 100, 200, 300. Yes, it's that serious.
Why is this? I don't really understand how it gets this bad. Part of it may be all the changes that happen in schools with each new reform effort. We use a math curriculumn in my school that assumes that students have used the earlier grade versions of the same curriculumn. Of course, they haven't. This means that I then have to take a curriculumn that's supposed to take one year to complete and I have to stick in other things they should have learned. What happens when it gets to testing time around March? I cut all my losses and start teaching for the test. This means that they only get bits and pieces of important knowledge because the tests are so high-stakes.
A couple points here. One, I like the idea of tests. People are tested throughout life and I want my kids to know that, prepare for that, and be able to do well with tests. I want them to be like Michael Jordan in "winning time." But, I also want them to be respectable thinkers. Let me give you an idea of how we're succeeding at the testing and failing at the creation of scholars. Some of my students do very well on tests despite everything else. They have low expectations, this is true, but many of them get 3s. The scale is 1-4 with 1 as failing, 2 leads to summer school, 3 is passing and 4 is excelling. If everyone gets a 3, they're at grade level and I've done my job. If everyone gets a 4, I'm an excellent teacher who has gone above and beyond the call of duty, sorta speak. So, my students can pass these tests at levels far beyond how they think.
What does that mean? When you teach math you focus on a couple key things: problem solving, basic skills, number sense and spatial sense. A student who can problem solve can combine multiple basic skills in often innovative ways to arrive at an answer. This is fairly high level. Many of my students have good problem solving skills but low basic skills. Others have it the other way around. When it comes to number sense, that inability to count shows how little they understand the number system. This doesn't mean however that they can't do the multiplication algorithm which will get them the correct answer on #23 of the end-of-year test. So you can teach a kid in any of the above categories without really filling out their knowledge base in any one area. For spatial sense, think of this. I can show a student a right isosceles triangle right side up and they'll be able to identify it. If I rotate it 30 degrees, they'll no longer think it's a triangle at all. This shows a lack of the cognitive system that deals with spatial figures. They know the basic knowledge to pass a test but do not have the knowledge base to really think well mathematically.
To date, I think this is my best analysis of the problems we're facing. At some point, kids fall behind and there just aren't the systems in place to catch kids up like there are in richer areas. Similarly, in the better areas there are fewer things that can go wrong. The teachers are better, they can cope if the textbooks come late, there are less family issues, there is parental support (which really helps for basic skills where parents alone can get get a student to memorize their multiplication tables). Here, we have to teach everything. We are the first and last line of defense. When these problems start arise they just compound themselves until finally a teacher has to make a decision. Do I teach these kids to pass the test so that they can keep graduating or do I focus on building a strong knowledge base where the kids will know less things more completely and will have to repeat and deal with the stigma associated with that. Let me tell you, a kid who repeats is immediately extremely at-risk and you don't want to do that unless it's a last resort. So, what do you do?
tim.
Seven in the morning at the 149th St.-Grand Concourse subway station; it's cold, windy - even in the tunnel - and I just missed the train after running up 56 stairs with a bad foot. I didn't want to wake up today. I'm sick. I didn't want to go to work. Life sucks. I get on the train late at 7:15 a.m. and as soon as we get out of the tunnel onto the raised tracks...
Calm, peacefull, angelic snow. A sign, a gift. The subway car is filled with "Ooooooohhhhh" and "Aaahhhhhhhh." I, of course being from Los Angeles, think, snow day. And then, after 5 minutes of wintery bliss.
Cold windy death for 12 straight hours.
But at least I didn't have to deal with a severed human hand like my roommate.
mr. k.