Teaching journal 9/3 - 9/26

"Hey mister, have you ever seen a chicken?"

Tuesday, September 5

The day after Labor Day , all the AVID teachers take a pull-out day to discuss plans. 

As a reminder, AVID is a program developed in San Diego stands for “Advancement Via Individual Determination.” Its main intent is to get middle-of-the-road kids or first generation students college-bound. It teaches students how to become students, providing organizational skills, study habits, note taking skills, and leadership qualities. When implemented with fidelity, it’s successful. But we’re not implementing it successfully. 

One reason for this is because it’s previously been an elective aimed toward kids with a drive to succeed. This year, my school has forced all freshmen to take it as their English credit, and forcing a kid to take AVID is intrinsically against the principles of AVID (the Individual Determination is something you cannot really squeeze out of a kid who doesn’t buy into it). 

Another reason AVID is not going well is because the majority of teachers have not been properly trained to teach it. I learned that I was going to teach AVID a week before I started. I’m sort of learning alongside the kids, which makes every day an act of performative bullshit. Fake it until you make it, I think, as I fall into a bottomless black hole every second period.

But I’m really starting to warm up to my freshmen—even though they often drive me nuts, they’re a fun crew and they seem to respect me (but oh man there are some characters). I might prefer the excitability of those kids to the unrelenting disengagement and apathy of the juniors in my American Lit classes. 

I was relieved about the AVID pull-out day. Finally, a chance for all of us to get on the same page, and maybe get an idea of what the fuck I’m actually supposed to be teaching. 

But no. It ‘s clear that, while everyone wants a unified curriculum, everyone also just wants to do their own thing. We planned for what we would do the next day, and nothing else. One teacher didn’t even bring their computer to the meeting, and when they were reminded that we do a lot of stuff on the computer—including sharing our calendars—they were like, “you want me to go all the way back to my room?”  

I miss having a team that works well together. That has now become the biggest downside of this new position. All the teachers I work with are kind and supportive when I ask for help directly, but it’s generally very insular, and as a new teacher in a new environment, it’s lonely. 

Monday, September 9

This week, progress reports go home. This isn’t a report card—and I repeat this to kids many times—but this is the week that kids who’ve done nothing for four weeks suddenly care about school. 

I was burnt out for personal reasons, so I used a lot of this week to give kids opportunities to finish assignments they haven’t completed yet. As a person who spent an entire past career based on deadlines and stress—and look how that worked out!—I always accept work for full credit (I mean, unless they’re constantly fucking around during class time). A lot of them scrambled because they play sports and need to keep their grades up, most rose to the occasion.

But will they learn from this and do work on time in the future? Probably not. 

Wednesday, September 11

A boy slapped a girl in class today. 

It was the beginning of the period. I had yet to take attendance. The door was closed but not latched, and the slapper was running up to it to avoid a tardy. One girl—who had previously been friendly with the boy—ran up to shut him out as a joke. A struggle ensued as he pushed his way in, and I heard him say “This is how a bitch gets slapped” and then the unmistakable sound. 

“You need to go to the office. Get out of here,” I said. 

“We were just playing around,” he said. 

I told him to wait outside while I spoke to the girl, who had put her head down on the desk. When she looked at me, there were tears in her eyes. 

I ended up having to call security, who escorted the boy away. The girl kept her head down for the rest of the period. Later that night, she wrote me an email that said, “Sorry for not doing work in your class today. I felt embarrassed and ashamed.” 

However, earlier in the day, a freshman who used to be in AVID class—super nice kid, but could not focus or stay in his seat—came into my classroom at lunch. 

“Mr. Bradford, my math teacher is going to call my parents because I was talking,” he said. “I’m scared.” 

“Has he called them yet?” I asked. The kid shrugged. 

“Maybe just apologize to the teacher. That actually goes a long way.” The kid thought about it. I could tell it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he stood up and said he was going to try. 

He came back a few minutes later and sat down quietly. 

“Did you do it?” I asked. 

“Yeah.” 

“And?” 

“He’s not going to call my parents.” 

Thursday, September 12

The slapper didn’t show up to class today. According to my roster, he wasn’t suspended, but I imagine he was probably feeling some shame, too. 

But another fight nearly broke out. In this particular class, I have a lot of students with high needs: IEPs and behavioral issues. One time, I was taking attendance and one of the kids wasn’t present, but next to his name it read “Juvenile detention center” In fact, I’m going to just assign this kid the name “B” right now, because I’ll probably be talking about him a lot. 

Today, there were three kids huddled around each other, goofing off and suddenly one of them stands up and starts yelling at one of the other kids: “Come on, motherfucker! Let’s go!” 

How or why this sudden temperature shift occurred, I don’t know, but I was on them quick. 

“Listen,” I said, in a low voice. “I had to call security on someone yesterday. I don’t want to do it again. Don’t fuck with me today.” 

They shut up. 

Friday, September 13

I took the day off. 

I left the sub with the Unit 1 test, which covered poems/essays/articles on the concept of The American Dream, as well as the graphic novel The Magic Fish by Trang Le Nguyen (btw, the kids really enjoyed this book, often coming into class asking “can we read the book today?”). I allowed kids to use their notes, books, anything except each other. The test had multiple choice questions, but it was mostly a way to gauge their analytical skills on the short answer portion. Not gonna lie: I felt like this was one of the better assessments I had written.

But when I got back on Monday, I found a note from the substitute that said one of my periods was “next-level checked out”. Some of them just spent the entire 90 minutes staring at the test, and turned in a blank paper. 

Part of me was embarrassed—like, you just shut down if I’m not in class? But another part of me felt validated. “You see?” I wanted to say to everyone who ever thinks ill of public education. “This is what we’re working with.” And I imagine that this isn’t unique to my school. Here’s one of my Republican-coded thoughts: self-sufficiency in American students is in short supply. There was a lot of hand-holding when I taught ELD only because newcomers need that kind of scaffolding to achieve, but they generally have a drive to learn. The majority of gen ed kids just don’t seem to have that drive.

Wednesday, September 18

One of the kids in my AVID class was running his own little candy ring today. He’d bought a Costco box of Starbursts and was selling them off for $2 (or “$1 for friends”). 

Every year, ASB (Associated Student Body) gives students boxes of candy bars to sell to raise funds. It’s a fucking nightmare. Students are not supposed to sell at school, but everyone does. For a few weeks, you’re just watching kids wheeling and dealing during class, getting out of their seats to buy candy while I’m trying to teach, leaving their wrappers all over the floor. 

So, I guess that I’d been numbed to this candy-capitalism nightmare, which is why it took me a while to realize that this kid was selling Starbursts not for any fundraising, but for his own personal gain. 

“You can’t do that,” I said. “It’s illegal.” 

“Why is it illegal, Mr. Bradford?” he asked, indignant. “Why can the school sell candy and I can’t?” The question seemed absurd to me. Why can charity get money and I can’t? But I just googled it on the board for everyone to see. 

“Honestly, I don’t care,” I said, finally. “You just can’t do it in my classroom because it’s annoying and disruptive.” 

“Okay,” the kid said, and then offered me a pack of Starbursts for free. 

Friday, September 20

For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing these little presentations called “Rants and Raves” on Fridays in my Am Lit classes. I basically find two unrelated things—one that I argue for, and one I argue against. I’ve tried to make them light and inconsequential (e.g. for: kindness; against: Tesla trucks. Or for: karaoke; against: roundabouts) to show the kids that you can make a case for/against anything, and in fact, it’s even more fun to build arguments around esoteric things. 

I paired these presentations with Pear Deck so I can have interactive slides where the kids sporadically answer questions, draw pictures, or judge how I’m doing. 

The first few weeks, the kids seemed to enjoy it. But as it goes for anything that’s not graded, they’ve started to lose interest, and during my “next-level” checked out class, there were like four kids asleep, even though I was pretty much screaming my case against Takis. And it was in that moment where a counselor came in looking for a kid, and I could just feel the disappointment radiating off him. “Hey man, it’s the last period on a Friday,” I wanted to say. “I’m just glad I haven’t had to call security this week.”

Monday, September 23

It was Spirit Week, and Monday was “Bring your favorite plushie” day. 

As I was leaving school, there was a kid standing by the exit, and he said to me: “Hey mister, have you ever seen a chicken? Do you want to see one?” It was straight out of Stand By Me, heavy “You wanna see a dead body” vibes. 

“A chicken?” I asked. 

He unzipped his backpack and showed it to me. Inside, unmistakably, was a chicken. 

“Is it alive?” I said. 

“You think I’d bring a dead chick to school?” 

I watched it breathe. Just a chicken asleep at the bottom of some kid’s backpack. 

“It’s my emotional support chicken,” the kid said. 

Wednesday, September 25

Some kid in my Am Lit told me today that the book we’re reading is “boring” and it totally shut me down. Not because I was offended, but because deep down I knew she was right. She’s my most advanced student and from a country that, in my experience, does not sugarcoat their language. 

The book was Tommy Orange’s There There, which I had picked because it aligned well with the “Whose Land?” unit in San Diego Unified’s GVC. But There There is a difficult book: dense with history and allusions, nonlinear plot, episodic, so many characters. As we moved forward in it, I remembered why I was only lukewarm on the book when I had read it a few years ago. And to go from our first book—a YA-ish graphic novel—to this dense treatise on urban Native Americans was a bad move on my part. 

So I’m going to abandon it. One of the most valuable things my guide teacher said (Hi Barb!) was it’s okay to abandon things if they’re not working.