Must be the time of year...

...the sunshine is making me lazy. School feels like it's never going to get out. And, I'm working on a blog piece for Voice of San Diego that will probably never make it to publication because I get into too many politics and name namingness. So, just in case it doesn't fly (or I have to water it down so much it won't mean a thing) here is what I want to say. Here are my thoughts as I reflect back upon the school year that was and the one that is to be.

Well, with little more than a month left of school, I’ve decided to take time and reflect back upon the school year. With state budget cuts, teacher protests, district negotiations, and a general low morale, it’s been a tough year for everyone. And in the words of our district Director of Curriculum, Robin Bellarin, “There will be dark days ahead for teachers.”

From what I understand, the Williams Act started as a lawsuit over the damage done to students’ backs caused by heavy backpacks. The goal of the lawsuit was to make it so that students had a copy of all oversized texts at home and at school, so that carrying these books back and forth would no longer be necessary. But, somewhere along the way the case took a turn for the complicated and somehow, not surprisingly, it is no longer about what is best for students. According to the law, now, all schools must teach the same books and curriculum—any and all books and curriculum that one school teaches, all other schools in the district must use or have access to as well. This seems reasonable enough at first, right? But this is what that will translate to in the classroom….

At my school in the Grossmont District, I teach Lord of the Flies at the senior level. When I teach this novel, my students are put into “tribes” and every day in class we have competitions that range from kinesthetic challenges relating to the previous night’s reading to in-depth literary analysis and interpretive performances of a scene. The tribes compete with one another a la “Survivor,” to be the last one standing. When I teach Hound of the Baskervilles, a Sherlock Holmes tale, I have an investigation simulation—since all the kids want to be forensic investigators like they see on CSI. And when I teach 1984… Big Brother runs the classroom and students have to “educate paroles” to form a “Brotherhood” all while trying find Big Brother and coordinate an overthrow.

I find that the students are much more engaged with the text when I run simulations such as these because the books hold the clues to winning the “game." The novels for which I haven’t developed simulations have much lower test and reading score performances. I’m not saying all this to toot my own horn…. I’m getting to the point here:

At other schools in the district, Lord of the Flies is taught at the 9th grade level, 1984 is sophomore level and Hound of the Baskervilles is not on the list at all. (I could list dozens of other mismatches, but I think you get the idea.) If the Williams Act is actually enforced, I will most likely lose these novels either to a different grade level, or to...the dumpster? Six years of perfecting these simulations and incorporating them into my curriculum will be lost. That’s not only inconvenient for me, but it’s a disservice to my students.

And as far as aligning curriculum goes, look at how well the scripting worked in San Diego City Schools…it didn’t. It was a disaster. The reason scripting is a debacle is because teachers need to care and be excited about what they are teaching. But if we are told what to say and do, word-for-word, then we are entering a world that feels like perpetual standardized testing. It’s boring for the teacher and when teacher is bored, students are bored. And bored = less learning.

To further make my point about how well the state can run the schools, let’s look at how Prop H has been implemented. This proposition started with good intentions—and for that we are grateful! But, it has not been implemented in a safe or competent manner. I have a new high-tech classroom…that will soon be “technically” dead. The fancy, mounted projector has a $100 bulb in it with, at best, a year left of its life. When it burns out in the middle of my power point presentation, or while I’m using my document reader to go over sonnet annotations, who will replace that $100 bulb? Our department budget has been so ravaged we can only afford one bulb per year. Yet we have 14+ projectors about to burn out. They put a new DVD player in my classroom, but it is so cheap it is unable to read half the discs I put into it. And how can I forget about the day my overhead screen broke off its wall mount and nearly crashed on my head—luckily my second period class likes me and yelled for me to get out of the way before it took me out.

The last thing we need in the classroom is more regulations and “help” from the state and district—which is what we will get with the Williams Act. We’re barely surviving what they’ve “given” us so far. (I understand they give us our funding. But they get the funds from the tax payers. And I have a feeling tax payers would not be satisfied with the ways the state and districts choose to spend their money…)

Final thoughts.
Should for some reason we allow the Williams Act to be enforced, what will come of all the books each site will no longer be able to teach? A certain Ray Bradbury book comes to mind…. Indeed, dark days may be ahead for the teachers, but it’s the students who will suffer.