Oakland’s new alternative school: a haven or a dumping ground?
By Katy Murphy
Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 3:28 pm in safety and discipline, school reform, small schools.
Staff at Oakland’s new alternative middle school have learned many things this year, through trial and error. But, perhaps above all, they came away with this: When you put 90 adolescents with educational, emotional and/or behavioral challenges under one roof, you’d better be ready for them. Really ready.
But the Alternative Learning Community wasn’t. And, from what staff have told me, it didn’t take long for the kids to catch on. Although the year had its redeeming moments, some have begun to wonder whether it’s such a good idea to group struggling students together (with the intent of providing more services and one-on-one attention) to begin with.
“Some of the kids have succeeded, in spite of the chaos,” Simone Harvey, a sixth-grade adviser, said. “You wonder, sometimes, if it really makes sense to take all of these kids who have the same problems and put them in the same place.”
Does it? (You can read the full story here.)
photo by Laura A. Oda, staff photographer
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June 16th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I would be curious to learn the average number of years, and type, of teaching experience that this staff had. Were most of them newcomers to the teaching profession?
June 16th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Five out of the seven original teachers started the year with one year of experience or less. And ALC Principal Dennis Guikema, while an experienced alternative education teacher, was relatively new in his administrative role; from what I gathered, he was not known to have a particularly effective or consistent approach to discipline.
Guikema (pictured above) said that it was unrealistic to expect a new teacher to be successful in such a setting, but that there were few incentives for seasoned educators to take the job.
“This is the toughest environment that anybody could teach in,” he said.
Do other alternative schools have exceptionally young staffs as well?
June 16th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
This is an interesting story and I hope there will be more coverage of the alternative schools. Somebody has to work with these populations and their families. Yes, you don’t get the best or most experienced teachers and staff, yes you will see more younger staff and more staff with something to prove or a need for adventure… That goes with the territory.
I wonder to what extent they have installed male authority figures..
Good for all of them. I hope they keep on trying until they find a formula that works for most of the students. The school has to be somewhat unconventional and think out of the box.
I think they need to keep control of the basic discipline issues and decide what students they absolutely do not want on the premises (Firestarters? Psychopathic kids? Intermittent Explosive disorders?). At some point if they are not careful they might get saddled with certain kids that could take the whole place down.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I helped start ALC. The school offered no real pedagogical system that would lead middle school students forward. Administrators would blame staff for such shortcomings. The students were the ones who were shorted. 7 teachers, 5 Advisors, 3 MSW clinicians and three other important staff members worked for the school to deal with less than 80 students (It didnt start with 90). But the lack of planning coupled with the principals incompentence destroyed any potential. I left because I felt that the school was a dumping ground. Working in what ALC staff called the ‘war zone’ became very tautological.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I am part of the original staff at ALC and have survived this year with a little more than indelible optimism. While I have many criticisms of how the school was run and have communicated them openly, I think it is all too convenient to sensationalize the school’s issues at the expense of communicating why we have significant numbers of children at this particular end of the spectrum in the first place. As the quasi centerpiece of this focus on what I consider, my school – my emotional and professional education – I would like to offer a perspective that, coincidentally, didn’t get much space in the article or the blog.
I would’ve liked to hear that these kids are a product of their environment and the difficulties that we’re presented with at ALC are emblematic of the conspiracy of circumstances and the trauma of this population. It would have been fair to contextualize these students with what is happening in Oakland in terms of crime, drug abuse, illiteracy and more specifically, the fact that the Oakland Unified School District’s porous nature allows many students to slip through the proverbial cracks.
It bothers me that this article gravitates towards hamstringing these students in a self-fulfilling prophecy while painting the staff as naïve and short of breath. I posit that the people who were involved in this project knew full fell that we had the bare minimum of resources and that the gravity of the sexual, emotional, physical abuse, crime and violence and well as a lack of academic and family support, demands more than what we were so generously provided with.
We asked for a lot more, all of us. And admittedly, I was one who questioned the efficacy of grouping all these children with similar issues together, however, it is hard to imagine that anyone would offer an alternative. Apparently, this is the best we can do. I would like to know what people, which families, which administrators are going to get behind me on mixing problem-labeled kids with the mainstream darlings. What reasons do people with “normal” kids have to force them to mingle with the rabble?
So dumping ground or not, if putting them all in one place is the only way ANY of these kids are going to get some real attention and, albeit painfully, highlight how much, as a society, we have neglected them and their families, then who is responsible for demanding more than this?! Who is holding themselves accountable to this population? Who is delivering whatever resource and unconditional regard necessary to these children? Who is throwing all their ability, compassion and advocacy into this bottomless pit of ALC students? Only ONE group of people: the ALC staff and principal. And unless someone else is stepping up to provide more for these kids and to ruffle some feathers, placing them where they are set up for success – with other unambiguously successful peers – highlighting the shortcomings of the school is a moot point because it is self-evident that the lack of significant power and ALC’s [limited] scope breeds incompetencies.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Javier,
It is reasonable for the leadership to take some of the responsibility for the school’s rocky start, however I don’t hear you taking ANY responsibility as someone who helped start the school.
FACT: You yelled at the students and frequently got frustrated at them sometimes cussing when dealing with them.
So when you lay the blame on the principal and administrators and seek to protray yourself, all the staff and the students as lambs, remember your own performance as an advisor and include your shortcomings along with your incredible strengths that you displayed with you adviosry curriculums and intense interest in the students that I still respect and find admirable.
However I have to call you on your stuff when you ignore your own incompetence. You of all people should be coming with a higher analysis other than the same old, “bosses are bad, workers are saints” rhetoric. You have your own agenda in bashing ALC’s leadership and I won’t put you on blast but when you take open, public shots at a school you were so invested in, I am disappointed. I was disappointed with Katy’s article but she has no reason to be fair and objective. She is selling newspapers. You on the otherhand showed up to the graduation and still care deeply about the students. It’s a shame that you unwittingly contributed to the demonizing of our students without noting any critical context of the conditions that contributed to a school like ALC being necessary. No mention of why 94% of the students are black boys and girls. No mention about why there was not one white student in OUSD qualified to attend or referred to ALC, not one. But there is no mention of racism or inequity or your favorite, injustice. I wish you the best bro but you got to step your game up.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Actually, Macheo, I do have plenty of reason to be fair in my reporting. I suppose it’s convenient to assume otherwise — I am part of the much maligned (often, deservedly) `mainstream media’ after all. But I actually do take pains to present the realities of the city’s schools as honestly as I can. Sometimes it’s an inspiring picture; sometimes it’s not.
I hear what you’re saying about the larger context, the societal problems that make schools like the ALC necessary. But, unless I’m mistaken, current and former ALC staff aimed to improve the lives of their students through a different educational model — not to wait for society to change, or to use those social ills to explain why a school such as the ALC could never be successful.
Otherwise, why open the school to begin with?
Everyone I interviewed talked about a “lack of structure” at the ALC — a shortcoming which they believed was undermining the potential for the success and well-being of its students. It was a serious concern, and one they were working to address.
It would be a disservice for me to gloss over such structural weaknesses and their consequences. Don’t the students deserve better?
From my point of view, no one with whom I spoke was “demonizing” the kids. I don’t believe the article, although it described a general disorder at the school, presented the students as one-dimensional, either. (A teenager communicating with a bullfrog on an outdoor education trip is hardly a detail that would lead to such a generalization.)
I do realize, however, that news stories don’t have the space to convey the complete picture of any situation, which is why I welcome you and others to fill in the gaps in this forum.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
“I would like to know what people, which families, which administrators are going to get behind me on mixing problem-labeled kids with the mainstream darlings. What reasons do people with “normal” kids have to force them to mingle with the rabble?”
I honor your enormous committment to these kids. However, is there any need to bash other students as “darlings” and mock them as “‘normal’”?
You chose to work with these kids and get paid for it, both in money and in the satisfaction of being on the frontlines, etc. That doesn’t mean a parent should feel guilty if they don’t want their child to be in an unsafe or chaotic school environment.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Thank you for saying that, Cranky Teacher. Here’s a question for you.
One day, I asked a middle school teacher how many difficult-to-manage and inclined-to-be-disruptive kids it takes in her 30+ student classes to completely destroy the environment for the rest of the group. She said, “About three would do it.” Her answer made me start to think about numbers and balance and if there is some way to judge what percentage of high-need, non-compliant, disruptive kids a typical school (or classroom) can tolerate before their presence overwhelms what teachers are trying to do, and destroys learning for the other students.
My hypothesis is that there is a tipping point, I just don’t know what it is. Of course, there will be variables in terms of teacher skills, the presence (or not) of an effective school-wide discipline policy, etc. but what would be a reasonable range?
June 30th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Sharon: I would think the range is enormous.
Great curriculum and great teaching, given some time and support, can make ANY class run smoothly.
The rub is gettin those key things in place!
Average teaching and average curriculum with average support only work with middle-class kids.
August 6th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Interesting discussion. I would simply say that if the school had built a real pedagocial structure, one that was applicable to these students, we could have seen what ALC could have become. I never remembered a staffer not agreeing with this fact. The potential was enormous. I think Fred Brill is brilliant institutional engineer. But the complete negligence of building a pedagocial structure destroyed the potential ALC had and it quickly was thrown into a state of constant institutional chaos. As a result, admin blamed “objective causes” and the limitations of teachers and advisors. But what is very problematic is, the lack of such structure actually reproduces the racial and class inequalities the students are already subjected to. And to deny this fact is to be an accomplice with such injustice. How could someone argue that the fact that 94% of these students being black justifies the lack of structure? And the sad thing is, if a real structure was built in ALC, it would have had the opposite affect of breaking down such systems of inequality that is so built into Oakland schools. But I think a deep nihilism that permeated in certain key people fostered a shallow careerism and acceptance of such chaos and inequality.
20 year old Gary King Jr. slain by OPD, has a painting that reads something that is applicable to this discussion, “The Children of Oakland Need Justice.”