She was a seventeen-year-old girl in middle school. Small and awkward, she spoke little English, but she was learning fast. I’ll call her “Pilar.” She was pregnant and she wanted an abortion. Her mom wanted her to keep the baby. The school social worker was supporting the girl. I was trying to get out of the middle.

Dad had fled the scene. He did not want a baby and he’d put enough miles between himself and the situation so that no help could be expected from him. I think he’d run to Mexico. This girl was standing alone. She was the only child at home, a home that consisted of Pilar and mom. She had no intention of talking to any girlfriends. I thought mom might make my student decide to have her baby or cause her regret to regret her choice later, but this girl knew what she wanted. She wanted to finish school. Back in Mexico, Pilar’s own father had kept her out of school until she was eight years old, when mom had seized her as part of a messy divorce and run away, eventually to the United States. Pilar was so grateful to finally get to go to school. A dream student, she listened attentively, asked many questions and did all her homework.

Pilar had also seen friends and neighborhood girls have babies and she’d watched them leave school. She wanted no part of the teenage-mom life. Home with a baby when you could be in school?

Whether you are pro-choice or not, my student made a remarkably courageous choice with only a social worker she could barely understand for strong support. I laid out the information to help with her choice as best I could, but I did not steer. I did try to keep all parties talking to one another.

Pilar did not have a baby. She did finish school. Given her mom’s push against the abortion, I found the steadfast resolve of this immigrant girl stunning. She never wavered.

When discussing America’s current educational struggles, I believe we don’t spend enough time on the issue of teenage moms lately, in part because the current trend seems promising. Nevertheless, we still have many teenage mothers and these moms frequently fail to finish school. Their children may then arrive at school without knowing letters, numbers, or shapes. When a girl has two or even three children before she is twenty, flashcards or educational games rarely enter the picture, forget money for Gymboree or kindermusik classes. These children’s children have fallen full academic years behind their peers when they start kindergarten if they don’t attend preschool.

(Yes, we are pushing academics too young and too hard, but that’s another post.)

When Pilar finally does have children, I’d bet there will be flashcards, online math quizzes and webquests. There will be trips to the library and to museums. Homework will likely be finished before the videogames begin.

Eduhonesty: Teen-age births have been declining in the recent past.

(http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/reproductive-health/teen-pregnancy/trends.html)

From the same article:

Characteristics Associated with Adolescent Childbearing

Numerous individual, family, and community characteristics have been linked to adolescent childbearing. For example, adolescents who are enrolled in school and engaged in learning (including participating in after-school activities, having positive attitudes toward school, and performing well educationally) are less likely than are other adolescents to have or to father a baby. At the family level, adolescents with mothers who gave birth as teens and/or whose mothers have only a high school degree are more likely to have a baby before age 20 than are teens whose mothers were older at their birth or who attended at least some college. In addition, having lived with both biological parents at age 14 is associated with a lower risk of a teen birth. At the community level, adolescents who live in wealthier neighborhoods with strong levels of employment are less likely to have or to father a baby than are adolescents in neighborhoods in which income and employment opportunities are more limited.

Teasing out the many factors influencing educational success can be difficult, but being born to a young mother tends to be a negative, if not inevitably so. In terms of our efforts to level the educational playing field, measures taken to lower the rate of teen-age pregnancy appear fairly successful. TV shows such as “16 and Pregnant”, which began airing on MTV in 2009, and “Teen Mom,” aided by high school programs in which students carry around realistic babies for days, have taken the teen-pregnancy trend in a promising direction.

We have a win here, if a win likely to disturb those who are not pro-choice. I thought I’d use a post to highlight this win. Pilar graduated last year.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chicago-20150601-story.html
This link goes to a story about a diabetic, single Chicago dad who may need to cut his hours at McDonalds if he receives a wage hike to $15. I recommend this story, a tale for our times of interwoven, government assistance programs. The article caught my eye because dad sewed his daughter’s black lace, junior prom dress for her.

In my teaching career, I have dealt with so many single parents who juggle work and parenting as they try to help their children prepare for an easier life than the one dad or mom is currently living. I don’t know the backstory here, but I know dad made the choice to be there for his girl.

I also know these are tough times in many neighborhoods. I think I will run with this topic for awhile.

Where do classrooms go in the summer? Some lucky people get to leave their books and posters, knowing that they will return in a few months to pick up where they left off. Many of us are not so lucky, though. I won’t be back regardless, but I can’t leave my room for my successor. My successor is supposed to be upstairs. I’ve hardly ever been lucky enough to repeat a room and, when I did, painting was scheduled or Promethean boards were being installed or something. So I fill the car. Students carry boxes to my car. Family members and I cart my walls, drawers and shelves to the basement.

The basement’s quite a disaster at the moment. My photo only catches the entryway.

If their test scores and/or grades are low, my school’s students will be placed in an extra English or math class next year in place of any elective. While others take art, these students will be remediated. Scores indicate these students have not mastered fundamentals and thus require extra help.

I wish we could embed those fundamentals into a fun elective. I am concerned that we will push some students out the door, especially since unfortunate comparisons will be inevitable. What “Manny” will see is that school seems to be much less fun for him than for “Henry.” Henry gets to take art. Henry receives good grades and gets to go to the special lunch for kids on the honor roll, the lunch where kids can use electronics. In contrast, Manny will attend an extra math class. He may be going to a special lunch for kids who misbehave, where he does his homework or other academics, since disciplinary problems go hand-in-hand with academic struggles.

Eduhonesty: I am altogether in favor of special perks for students who are doing well. Incentives work sometimes. I have had students putting in extra work and hours to get to that electronics lunch. They don’t care about honor roll, but they do want to be part of honor roll lunch where they can use their phones and play sports after they eat.

Still, I strongly suggest that we take time to try to view the world through the eyes of those kids who are nowhere near getting to sit in that special lunch. If we are trying to save these kids, we need to remember that when school becomes too grim, some kids are going to head for the door, not the next tutoring opportunity. Manny’s secret mantra may become “I’m outta here. ” If he chants that mantra enough, he will make it happen.

He’s unfortunate enough to fall in that Hispanic category, too, a gray line that’s been falling but that remains above the other ethnicities recorded in the government’s chart.

Regarding yesterday’s surprise visit: Left to my own devices, at this time of year, I’d normally be playing math jeopardy or bingo. But, no, I was frantically trying to complete the week’s lesson plan which required presentations by a fair number of unwilling students. Bilingual students may benefit from class presentations (one-quarter of the rubric points on the team’s rubric), but they definitely don’t like them, with a few exceptions who are either towards the top of the class or are simply natural hams who crave an audience. If I’d been doing my own thing, I believe we’d have looked great, as we often do.

Eduhonesty: A perfectly awful ending for a perfectly awful year.

P.S. O.K., it wasn’t a perfectly awful year. That’s hyperbole. My kids and I had a great day today. We’ve had lots of great days. I love those kids. But really!? A surprise visit from a coach on the last real day of instruction? When I am retiring? The world of teaching has become so strange.

P.S.S. The actual feedback from that visit was entirely laudatory. I can definitely be my own harshest critic — a problem in these feedback-laden times.

Another coach popped in today, once again at a relatively unfortunate time. I had one of my lowest math students trying to present his project. I followed up with the only student who finished her project but had not yet spoken, not allowing her to take a “D” and skip the presentation as she requested. This student hates to speak in public, in part because she speaks almost no English. The Dean had just been in with a suspended student, collecting that student’s work, a student had thrown another student on his back only a few minutes previously in the hallway, and it was near the end of the day. I can’t give my class great attentiveness points. I was allowing a couple of kids to work on their presentations on the Chromebooks, too, since they had to finish and present today. The grades are due tomorrow. The room was a disaster, since we are throwing out binders, papers and other detritus from the closing school year. Some of them had tossed out their used math workbooks and one had torn up the cover of that book in the process, leaving the pieces on top of the garbage. Sigh.

I feel like I just took pop quiz #6,232 for the year and I’m pretty sure I failed to pass with flying colors. I’m not sure I passed in any form. Every other hour of the day would have been better, mostly much better, but that “pop quiz” has to be the perfect example of my luck for this year. Just like some of my kids taking the latest unexpected or overwhelming test, I am sure I looked sad. I felt sad.

I suppose I should appreciate my luck. Unlike my kids, I do have options. I can drop out of school, for example.

Eduhonesty: Oh, wait! I am dropping out. Retirement seems like the best plan at the moment. I am so done with pop quizzes.

The end of May always brings questions like this. Do we have stuff to do? Yes, we are going to work. We still have stuff to do.

“It’s not over yet,” I say, channeling Princess Leia in Star Wars.

So far, no one has done a Han Solo on me — “It is for me, sister,” Han Solo replies. — but I’m clear that a number of students think they’re done. One tried to go home with his mom after playing in the band at the high school graduation until I pointed out that he had a 20 point math project due tomorrow. He called his mom and settled in for the hour and a half remaining in the school day.

This cake is all but baked. The grades are almost all in. Everybody’s in a good mood. Even the failing are in a good mood, since they know the district does not plan to retain anyone. I give pep talks. I discuss higher education options. I push reading. I feed them red licorice. I liked it when I discovered they had made up their own candy and chips schedule for the week and taped this to the wall. A more alert teacher might have noticed the snack chart sooner, but I left the chart up. I support individual initiative.

Eduhonesty: A pleasant day was had by almost all as we researched math concepts on the Chromebooks, their music playing in the background.

I’d like to share a quick explanation why 82 minute, bell-to-bell instruction may not be such a good idea. I have a small, white remote. I am not good with small, white remotes, or keys for that matter. The start of this year was rocky. For one thing, for the first time ever, my students were being bombarded with tests, many of them academically above anything those students had ever seen before. They were unhappy. I was unhappy. They took out their unhappiness on me for some weeks, stashing that remote a couple of times among other incidents.

Fortunately, we made our peace. We’re a team now and have been for most of this year. I love those guys. They know I am trying to teach as fast as I reasonably can. I help as much as I am able and I provide retakes. For much of the year, I’ve driven an hour on Saturdays to make sure they received the tutoring they needed. They now realize the tests are not of my doing. So we’re fine.

They help me find my remote. They help me keep the classroom clean (mostly) and they volunteer for many tasks that make my day go smoother. But if they didn’t like me, my students could make my life nightmarish. I’ve seen it happen in more than one classroom. One year, a kind, soft-spoken, first-year teacher had gum put in her hair multiple times. Calculators were thrown out her windows. She never made it to a second year. I taught Spanish a couple of years ago and I was so glad to see the end of that year. One class, in particular, resented the pace created by the 304 page curriculum. I can’t blame them in the sense that we did almost no fun projects — we had no time with all those pages to cover — but that class was miserable and they made me miserable.

Eduhonesty: Kids push back. They don’t just march because we say march. They need to know why they are marching. They also benefit from having a rapport with their teacher. I know one can teach without that rapport but I don’t want to try. If we do nothing but push, push, push academics, we lose enormous amounts of time to passive resistance. In my experience, taking a few minutes to find out what everyone did over Memorial Day week-end results in a net time gain. The fact that I care that a kid visited her aunt makes that kid much more willing to work when we do buckle down.

Under PARCC, all materials on the wall with any academic content whatsoever are supposed to be removed or covered. My walls were covered in paper.

Eduhonesty: Over Memorial Day weekend, I came back to a larger picture on the issue of walls. I have been adapting, adapting, adapting, until I’ve reached the point where I frequently don’t even notice the changes I am making in order to fit into the New Educational Order. The fact that I did not hang the Twilight posters this year passed without much notice. A few, former students remarked on the barren quality of my walls at the start of the year, but my current students had little basis for comparison. Most had never spent time in my former classrooms. They’d never seen the cardboard R2D2 stand-up I have used to hide cords behind the computer. They did not miss my Harry Potter or Twilight posters. They did not know my Star Trek posters were still wrapped in rubber-banded tubes.

All this year’s posters are academic or character-based in orientation. I support various math facts, the periodic table of elements, and the need to work hard on academics. I managed to slip in a couple of diversity posters. No one can complain about posters of jelly beans or Frederick Douglass supporting diversity. But in response to administration emails and a coach’s negative comment about last year’s walls — “What are those things for anyway?” — I kept the room simple this year. I’ve taped up enough student work to keep the space from looking barren, but I believe my walls are emblematic of the garbage compactor walls closing in on teachers. I’ve tamped down manifestations of my interests and my personality because those manifestations always seems to be wrong for one reason or another.

In this time of no puppies, when Assistant Principals tell teachers to remove their wheaten terrier from any PowerPoints for fear of distracting students from bell-to-bell instruction, I decided the safest move for my walls was no move at all. Other than obvious essentials such as the order of operations, various math facts and the story-problem-solving formula by one of our contracted partners, I mostly left the walls alone. I did create a word wall and another mathematical operations word wall. Toward the end, I tacked up a few laminated writing strategies and snuck in a few pictures. I’ve never had so much empty space in a room, however.

In the past, students always seemed to be enthusiastic about my walls. We made connections over those walls. We discussed the Avengers. We talked about Harry and Ron. We reminisced about Dr. Seuss. We debated Edward versus Jacob in Twilight and the strange attraction that vampires seem to hold. I bought used copies of the books that inspired these movies and passed them on to students.

I recently took a survey for the University of Chicago. That survey asked if I had had time this year to make connections with students. Well, yes. I always make connections with students. But, this year, I was always felt as if I might get in trouble for trying to do so. The words bell-to-bell instruction were thrown at me more than once by the man who wanted the terriers out of the PowerPoints. Those words came up in emails and staff meetings.

I don’t know who these people are who think that twelve- to fourteen-year-old kids will work nonstop all the time through 82 minute periods without break. (We teachers took the occasional class water break or stretch break anyway.) Even adults need breaks. Every time I hear about another school district eliminating recess and taking away more lunch minutes, I wince. Who are these people? Do they remember what it was like to be a kid?

Eduhonesty: For the record, kids are not miniature adults. Anyone who does not recognize this fact should not be working in education. Also, teaching is a relationship game, and student effort is frequently directly related to the strength of the teacher-student bond.

P.S. I looked around my room this morning and I’ll admit it’s not so bleak as the above post would make out. A small, tasteful, Severus Snape magnet is stuck to my filing cabinet. I do have a matted picture of a dragon that says, “It was a dark and stormy knight.” Stuck on the wall near my desk, I placed a small, matted copy of the dead parrot speech from Monty Python. That dead parrot has followed me for nine years now, the green in the photo long faded to shades of yellowish-gray. My room sports a small picture of Darth Vader in Micky Mouse ears, and a Guardians of Galaxy calendar. I hid that calendar during my evaluations. I mean, how can you trust anyone who objects to your using the word “minions” because the word has “connotations that do not convey what we want for our students.” Ummm, my students are unaware of those connotations. They loved Despicable Me and the sequel. They are happy to be my minions.

But I look around the room and I realize that personality and interests will out. I have owned my cinematic favorites, even if I did briefly stash the Guardians calendar. I can’t remember if that evaluation fell on Gamora or Drax the Destroyer, but I’d have had to stash that calendar in any case. It contained weaponry. Admittedly, that weaponry was being wielded by a mutant raccoon, among others, but, as far as the calendar went, I decided it was better safe than sorry.