School Suck

My kid is 12, soon to be 13. He does well in school, doesn’t ever have homework that takes him any time to do, which frees up time for him. He is enrolled in every honors class that he can take this year, along with any of the afterschool stuff that being a GATE kid provides. His last foray was something he didn’t really want to take–Slam Poetry–but it was fun and got him to try something that wasn’t really in his comfort zone.
Today was a late start and there was data. Teachers found out that somewhere around one in every three freshmen received a D or F at the semester in English. Keep in mind that we have four sections of Honors English, so if you take out those numbers, it’s even worse.
On the sophomore side, about one in every four students received a D or F in English.
Obviously, when you receive an F, you need to make that up into a passing grade. The option that we’re thinking about is having the failing student repeat the entire class with a different teacher. It’s my 18th year at North High and I’m not sure this was ever an option. 90 more days in a seat in a class with younger students for a failed English class. And how fun are those classes going to be, with older kids being spoilers for the ones who haven’t taken the class yet?
Summer school and Hamilton (the adult school that uses Odysseyware, which is supposedly hard) were the two other options.
There was no Opportunities for Learning mentioned. They are one of those complete-the-packet schools that students can attend online and in-person. Many classes are offered–some of them are even AP and Honors. Kids are starting to figure out that this option exists and have taken advantage of the free tuition for high school students.
Pacific Coast High School wasn’t mentioned either. It offers online classes. Some of the other schools in our district tell their students about it, which is how I have heard of it. Our school does not mention it.
There’s El Camino College, but I’m not sure how they deal with F grades, if they transfer or count for high school credit in a remediation sense.
But here’s my problem–I have a kid who’s 12, soon to be 13. He’ll be going into 8th grade next year. After that, two high school teachers have no idea what to do with their kid. Do we home school, supplement with El Camino, and see what goes from there? One kid we know who went down that path is now at Cal Tech, a school that no one from North High has attended out of high school.
There’s going to high school and supplementing at the above options. We had a student years ago who graduated as a junior and entered college as a junior because she had accrued so many JC credits. She was nothing more than an average student, but entering college as a junior while graduating high school as a junior is anything less than average.
There’s early entry programs into college.
There’s always the CHSPE, the California High School Proficiency Exam. Any tenth-grader and above can take the test, pass it, and be a high school graduate. College can start right after that, though at the JC level.
Do I want my kid in classes where a third or quarter of the class is getting a D or F? Is that the way it is at all schools? He certainly doesn’t have much work now, which suggests that the rigor is less than tough. Are we dumbing it down to meet in the middle and letting kids get A’s for only doing above average work?
It’s going to be a hard decision, but I think we have a year. Options.

Today is the start of the 4th quarter. 10 more weeks to go. For some, I don’t know why we are still doing the dance. For others, they are/and have been doing great all year. For me–I’m tired.
Yesterday I hurt my back, which had me limping around school today. It’s painful, but more annoying than anything else, for there are many positions where it doesn’t hurt. Needless to say, though, it makes me feel old.
My students are good at that, too. Here I was, hipster that I be, ready to talk a little 13 Reasons Why with my kids, since it’s one of the only things they seem to care about. However, even though they are watching/or have watched the show about people in their age range, they just don’t seem intellectually curious about the media in the show.
Not a lot of new Lord Huron fans, even though their song is featured prominently in a slow dance scene that plays in more than one episode. Lots of blank stares on that one. Surely the days can’t be gone where you hear or see or experience something new and, because you initially like it, you do a little research and find out more.
I had a student today mention that they played Ultravox on the show (I think it was “Europa”), which was great to hear after all these years. He’s the same student who knew some of the pivotal scenes (we’ll leave the description at that) from the movie Deliverance.
And, no, not everyone has to be a hipster, or know stuff, but you’re watching the show anyway. Doesn’t anything resonate enough to make a student seek more?
Gah.
We started Macbeth today for sophomores. We’ll be done in two weeks. I wish it were even quicker. Never have I understood the reasoning behind spending forever on a book–you don’t read a book by yourself and take forever. Same in school. Why spend months on Macbeth when we should just play it straight through, have some discussion, see what they learned, maybe watch a movie version. and move on? People in Shakespeare’s times didn’t go see one act one day, then another act, then do a worksheet. You know?
We also started Bowling for Columbine in APN Senior English. That movie never gets old. As dated as it is, for it has to be about 15 years old as a movie–and it’s the week of 18 years since the Columbine shooting–it still shows a country obsessed with violence and race and social status. It’s awful to watch in parts, but that’s what makes it good.
47 more days. Thanks, Bill and Mike, for taking care of this week, and giving us all something to talk about forever.
And now, a minority opinion in a room filled with people who have lots of stuff.

1–it’s the usual snarky dialogue that is spoken by 40-yr-olds, not kids. If students had this much knowledge of thing to be snarky, I would drive fast to school and up the cynicism levels to 11 (a reference that everyone in 13 Reasons Why would understand, but not any of my students).
2–it’s too pretty. Yes, the lead kid has a scar, and people get beat up and raped here and there, but can somebody have some acne? Even the wrong side of the town is pretty nice.
3–the actors are ancient. This is just one reason why they don’t need Clearasil. The one kid who looked young actually was 19. The other sophomores and up were 20 and up. Guess they got held back in snark class.
4–it’s 11 hours plus. Granted, the time element gives it more validity than an Afterschool Special, but that’s a lot of time for the payoff.
5–it’s a rainbow of colors. There are some black folk, home Hispanic folk, and an Asian is the star basketball player. Only one Jeremy Lin, people. If you’re going to include everyone, then the Indians, Native-Americans, Eskimos, Filipinos, Sri Lankans . . . you get the picture.
6–you will get really tired of characters being told they have to “listen to the tapes.” Even though everyone except TWO people have.
7–you will get a false sense of hope for music. Did you know that Hispanic disc jockeys in this town spin Lord Huron for their slow dances? Well, they do. My students listen to rap and EDM.
8–you will get a false sense of hope for work ethic. The two leads both work in a movie theater.
9–it’s too tame. For a show that revolves around high school–and, in this case, the David Lynch clean version of its seedy underbelly–kids have parents and cars and live in houses. They do cuss a lot, and there is the raping and hitting of people, but then they get in their cars and go back to their houses.
10–these kids know stuff. There’s even a Bukowski reference.
11–it’s cute how all the disparate kids mix together, but disparate kids don’t mix together. I get it–the dead girl brings them together, but that wouldn’t last long in real life. Stoners don’t hang out with hipsters, unless they’re stoners, which they’re not. Kids trying in school and going to Harvard don’t hang out with jocks. Come on. Go to any school during lunch and look around.
12–parents have no clue. Hey, folks, when your kid shrugs, or gives you the big eyes, and says it’s not a big deal, it’s a big deal. Your kid suddenly starts listening to a Walkman? You better believe I’m going to know what’s playing on that sucker if that’s my kid.
13–it is predicated on the fact that most everyone knows what happened, are in a small enough town, and everyone keeps the secret. Really? There’s tapes of a dead girl giving her 13 reasons why, the male lead starts wearing headphones everywhere, and only his parents question him? It is assumed that 11 others heard the tapes before him. They’re cassettes. Didn’t that raise some eyebrows when a bunch of high school kids were listening to a cassette (and we already ruled out the mixtape of rap music, since the soundtrack is void of it). No parent, no counselor, no teacher, and not one student blew the whistle on this? Only one person can keep a secret, and that does not apply here.

But 13 Reasons Why, despite all of the above, does do a few things right. The best is something that Freaks and Geeks always did well, which is show how awful high school is. There’s the cliques, the awkward periods, the sexual tension, and those kids you remember from high school that you didn’t like very much. The dead girl is pretty, articulate, works, has parents, seems to get along with people of all shapes, sizes, and sexes, yet she kills herself. And she’s one of the likeable characters.
And, as a teacher, a parent, and a human being, even I often forget that students can be having a terrible time in life. High school isn’t always the best place to work things out when students are in a bad way. Our current principal used to talk about that fact during faculty meetings–that we have to be kinder because we don’t know how bad some of our students have it. We are old and understand things (kind of), but I have students who can’t navigate a grammar worksheet and don’t have the skills or life experience to defeat the adult world.
I will not be nicer in class–everyone gets the treatment–but I know my students can always come to me. Whether I help or not, I will be honest. And, to end with some snark, if they come to me I could play them some Lord Huron and the world will be better. Maybe I’ll have Kendall Jenner send over some Pepsi just in case.

Never let it be said that a positive post doesn’t come from me.
Today, after cleaning up my room a little more–Spring Break is so nice and quiet that I actually got stuff done–I went to Mongol King with my two teaching neighbors. Hell, yeah, Mongol King. That’s Mongolian Barbeque for those not in the know. Look it up; I do not want or need to get into those specifics.
Without the pressures of school and all its time constraints, it was nice to have a tasty lunch and talk about SCHOOL. It’s different when school’s not in session, though. We told stories, laughed, talked about the ridiculous aspects of our jobs, and were only serious for a little bit. And we ate a lot of food, and hung out for over an hour and a half. At school we get 30 minutes to shove down food (and maybe go to the bathroom).
Three things were determined today–
Mongol King is good.
School is not as good as Mongol King.
We all must do what we must do to get through the next 10 weeks (and have plans).
First things first–time to go on Ebay. Hate to spend money, but some things are worth it. I’ll post a picture when our shipment comes.
Got to have something to look forward to, since I won’t eat again today.

Ayahuasca is a big deal these days. Some call it DMT, but that often doesn’t involve a shaman. Look it up–some documentaries on it are so fascinating that teachers at our school show them. Hey, the shows were on NatGeo, offered interesting perspectives on PTSD and the mind, so how bad could they be? Long story short, ayahuasca/dmt gives its user an out-of-body experience.
Sometimes in teaching you have an out-of-body experience. You look out at your class, ready to talk about a book, ready to delve into a lesson, and they are not looking at you. Some are rushing the work that is due, others are looking elsewhere–there’s not a lot of sound in some of these scenarios, which makes it even eerier–but hardly anyone is ready for you. Some of the people ready for you don’t want to disturb the silence so they adopt the poses of others. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode where everyone is in on it, except you.
That was today. I tried talking about Cry, The Beloved Country. And, we should have had plenty to talk about because students had to take notes on Part 3 (the last 60 pages of the book), write out 10 questions, and answer three of those questions. You take some notes, write some questions, and answer them, so it is assumed that you and I will have something to talk about for the entire period. We may even run out of time.
Not the case. And, I stared out at them–one class quiet, the other disruptive with turned backs here and there–and didn’t exist, for we had nothing to talk about.
It happens now and again. I don’t like it. Cry, The Beloved Students. The young people who used to read so happily and fervently have now gone to their phones, to YouTube, to social media, to Buzzfeed, to anything and everything that will satiate their constant desires, and will never come back.
My readers, for there are some, will have to wait for the others to return.

I used to kid around back in the dark days of teaching. Those were the late aughts, the years when our economy was tanking, the sky was falling, home prices were battling the stock market to see who could hit new lows daily, and pessimism was found everywhere. In the classroom, it meant that I had over 40 students in classes and that good teachers were fired.
Oh, I’m being too harsh. I need to soften that language. They didn’t get fired–they just weren’t a part of our school the next year. PThey were given pink slips. Many teachers received them. Some got to stay and some had to go. If you were the last in the hiring door, you were the first out when cuts just had to be made. Things were grim and it wasn’t very pleasant.
But I used to kid around that we should get a sponsor for our school. No money in the state or district anymore? No problem. We’ll just become Pepsi High School, home of the Colas. Goooooooooo, Pepsi! Yet, I wasn’t kidding–we lost good teachers and our classes were ridiculous in size. I had over 200 kids total in a day and former classrooms were now storage facilities for desks and other school equipment.
What’s more shameful in the long run–having Cola as your mascot or losing good teachers and being overcrowded in the classroom?
Pepsi made the rounds yesterday and today in my classes. They just came out with a two-minute-thirty ad for their product that featured Kendall Jenner. Many young people of all colors were walking down streets, holding signs, in protest of something. Cops were standing watch, Kendall gives one a Pepsi, and the crowd goes wild. Whatever. I’ll post it at the end here.
The big deal, and the reason I showed it in class, is that it got pulled. People complained for a number of reasons–corporations promoting themselves poorly, Pepsi exploiting the Black Lives Matter movement–and when people complain, and things get dicey, companies pull their ad. I can understand the rationale of people who were offended by the ad (a simple Internet or Twitter search will give you numerous examples), but I also don’t think Pepsi set out to offend people. But they did, and the ad is gone, complete with Pepsi’s apology to the American public AND Kendall Jenner.
These are teachable moments for me. These should be teachable moments for all people. Opinions matter, though the minority opinion is getting harder and harder to voice these days. Only a few of my students had seen the ad until I showed it, though. I know it’s only a Pepsi ad, and it’s just Kendall Jenner, but it really set off a firestorm of opinion.
There were so many opinions going in the last few days that many looked past the Sarin gas that Assad is using on his own people in Syria. My students now know of that genocide, too.
Sometimes, you can’t wait around for articles to annotate if you want people to know what’s happening in that real world.https://youtu.be/dA5Yq1DLSmQ

We’re reading Unbroken in my three sophomore classes. You know what that statement really means by now, right?
I read the book years ago and am reading it again now. This time around it’s not as interesting because I know how all the harrowing situations work out for Louie Zamperini. Still, it’s a bestseller and a good page-turner. Not everything in an English curriculum needs to be literature (pinkies out) and Unbroken offers a good opportunity for kids to get back into the habit of reading for fun. Gosh darnit, I wrote the word fun again.
Before I write what you already know I’m going to write, I must qualify that students still do read for fun. I have many that have forsaken their phones for books. I see them reading all the time in class. No student is ever really reading any classic literature, BUT they are reading something that interests them. We often talk about the books after class. I’m interested because I like seeing kids read, have a 12-yr-old that still can turn pages, and I want to know if any of the titles would be suitable for our district. My logic is simple–no matter what kids read, they are getting something out of it. If they don’t read, they get nothing. 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Ask singers and artists about that.
One of the things I dislike about teaching English is selling the books to kids. How tiring is it to keep saying, “I love this book” or “It’s great” or “Millions have read it and loved it and so shall you”? Read it or don’t.
But Unbroken is a little different because Louie Zamperini’s story is a Torrance story, and I teach in that district, and he went to a neighboring high school, and he was kind of a big deal. He lived to be close to 100, people really liked him, and they made a movie of his life and the book. That alone should be enough–hey, there’s this book about this Torrance guy and I live in Torrance so lemme see about how good this stuff is. Because, in all my years of teaching, there has been hardly a negative word said by students about the book.
This year, Unbroken is assigned to ALL sophomores. We’ve already been over the kids-don’t-read deal. However, one of my students loaned me the movie. The MOVIE. Those were the salad days of high school–if you read, or if you didn’t, you got the movie to compare to the book or to give you info you didn’t already know. It’s a break in the action, a day you’re glad there’s a snack in your backpack so you can watch a movie and have a little food. Everybody wins.
I will merely write that, at one point during the movie, only six students were watching. Louie Zamperini, the Torrance Tornado.

Today was a late start AND a scholarship meeting. Needless to say, Gillian Hart and I were present as was another teacher and three counselors. Six people to represent our entire campus. And, yeah, that’s not a very good number, but if kids want a scholarship, perhaps they should advocate for themselves and apply for many. There’s this weird thing called the Internet that has a HUGE amount of scholarships for every shape and size. Get out there and get them.
I write that because the world isn’t fair. Great students don’t get into college while less-than-great students do. Same goes for scholarship money. When you only have a small number of teachers deciding fates, the money goes to the students that are known to those teachers. Unfair? A little. I have students who are amazing this year who have received no scholarship money (there’s been quite a few opportunities, too) while others who may not graduate have been awarded and rewarded. It doesn’t make sense, but Camus would argue that life does make sense.
If you want something to happen, make it happen.
I want tardies on late starts to go away, but that just isn’t a priority of our school right now. The teacher next door to me had 17 of 34 at the 8:50 bell, while the other teacher next to me had 20 of 28. 25 tardies out of 62 kids. Hallways were filled with kids. One of them was running, though. Perhaps others will follow.
High school offers all these advocates for kids, from friends, to parents, to teachers, to counselors, to all the hired help that are there to ensure success. So often, though, no matter how many people are in the students’ corners, it comes down to the student to get things done. As I wrote previously some other day–it’s those students who get things done that get overlooked. We fall for flash and potential and forget about the grinder. I don’t want someone with flash and potential building a bridge that I have to drive across daily.
We supposedly taught kids how to write an argumentative paper this last quarter. Most of my kids left themselves out of their own texts, even though personal experience is never discouraged. Are we removing students so much from their own lives that they can’t and/or won’t advocate for themselves?
Will they write appeal letters to colleges who wait-listed them?
Will they challenge grades when a clear teacher error is present?
Do they actually want to drive a car? because many kids wait until they’re 18 to get a license (and they really don’t want one at 16).
Take a stand, people, because your advocates are tired of doing it for you.

Tomorrow is a late start. Almost every Tuesday this year has been a late start.
I look forward to getting to school early–actually, it’s the same time I get to school every day, even though I do not have a first period–and sharing ideas and lessons with my colleagues. I know some people think that is sarcasm, but I never shy away from creating lessons, tests, questions, or anything else our department can, and does, use.
But tomorrow is also going to bring a horror show. At 8:50, when the bell rings to suggest that first period has started, hundreds upon hundreds of students will be outside their designated classes. And, since they are already tardy, they will not hustle to right their earlier wrong. Mind you, this is 50 minutes later than school usually starts, and many of our students do NOT walk to school, so they have that extra time to get to school on time. Parents who drop students off, given this reprieve of time, will not take advantage of it.
Now, perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic. Surely, this can’t be the case. We’ll see.
The other tragedy that will occur tomorrow is that my students will not have read. Once again, they will have had almost an extra hour to knock down some pages of Cry, The Beloved Country. It will not go well.
Now, perhaps I’m . . . Wait. I already wrote that.
One of Oceania’s mottoes in 1984 is Freedom is Slavery. Tomorrow, we are going to give almost an extra hour of freedom to students, and we might as well imprison them with it. This freedom from school could be spent doing all kinds of good things school-related–catching up on work, reading, homework, getting ahead on anything. This freedom could see them hanging out with friends, eating some breakfast, sharing a laugh or two about something that ISN’T related to school. You know, just kids getting together and talking.
Okay. On another note, I cut my hair this weekend. My students saw me in the hallways and commented on it. They commented on it in class. Some asked if I got a haircut (pretty easy to tell) while others were taken aback when I told them I cut it myself, with some help from the wife. There was actually a little dialogue today about my hair.
And that’s about hair. Imagine the things we could talk about if we all read the same book.

Ah, the march through March. It’s not the prettiest month when considering education from the teachers’ points of view. There are no holidays, yet many late starts. There are no student-free days, but, this year, we got to have WASC come, which I hear was great, since I’ve never seen them. Ever. Been there 18 years–never seen WASC. Hey, I can find a rubric online. Send them my way and we’ll synthesize and annotate with the best of them.
There are 53 days left, yet this is the end of the quarter today. If the quarter is half the semester, then the semester would be 106 days. Since our school year is only 180 days . . .
But I digress.
March is a wonderful opportunity to spend a month with students and see their progress as we get time to teach them with only the pesky interruption of weekends. It’s a time to gauge their abilities and coordinate and align with them in an attempt to better everyone involved. It’s the month of multi-cultural days, where we realize that our cultures are all in this together, that many share similar histories, and that, even though it may not jive with our current beliefs, we should be tolerant, at the very least.
March is also the time when great students get rejected and wait-listed to colleges and universities while watching lesser students get into the same schools. No rhyme or reason to the selection processes. Universities don’t have to say why you didn’t make the cut–you just didn’t make the cut while someone who isn’t as good as you did. A fact of life. Good to learn it now so you can be prepared for future disappointments.
I try to read and do work in March. We read so many books and poems and wrote essays and poems and open letters and TESTS (scary, right?). March lets students do the thing they need the most–practice. I tried assignments that failed miserably. Practice. I trotted out assignments that had always been adored in the past, but now were not so much loved. Practice.
Let’s put it simply, for all teachers (and maybe some students) to understand. If every month were like March–a month filled with only days of school and no holidays–we would all be out in early May. That’s a tune most of us could march to these days.