Superintendent Smith, can we have a regional response to the mice in West Oakland? Mr. Solar, perhaps one strategy for retaining effective teachers would be to remove rodents from their classrooms.

I brought Williams complaint forms into my room and I have encouraged students to take them home to their parents. When a Williams Complaint is filed the teacher, principal, and district administrators are required to respond. Williams complaint also covers the issue of rats and mice we have at our school as well. This year alone half a dozen of my students have pointed out mice scurrying through the classrooms and the halls. Have any families filed complaints? I don’t know. I do know that I printed off 200 sets of forms on the riso-graph and have handed out about a third of them.

Enough is enough. Students deserve to feel safe from yelling, other students and a principal who refuses to act on their behalf. We waste over one-third of class time with students who physically interfere with the learning of others. The district must be held accountable. Tony Smith must realize that until all students are safe in their own learning environments, learning at high levels will not be a reality. The schools with high levels of learning are those schools where discipline is under control – title 1 schools can be safe places to learn when there is a principal and a district who take responsibility for the safety of all.

I have never been so miserable in all of my years as I am this year. Last year was wonderful! The administrators knew what they were doing, they were supportive and there were discipline policies in place.

This year I have worked nothing less than a 50 hour week. We have to beg and steal supplies, there are ants and mouse droppings everywhere, and the students are allowed to beat the hell out of each other with no consequences other than lost recess.

It isn’t just my class. It’s in almost every class. The majority of the teachers spend half their day yelling at the kids. And I do mean yelling. Yelling is not my style. I started telling the parents when their kids were being hit, kicked, stabbed with sharp pencils and spit on. Told them to talk to the principal about it because my hands were tied when it came to making it stop (the majority of the violence happens outside of my classroom in the cafeteria or on the yard). The principal told me not to let them know their kids were being assaulted unless I could say it in a positive way. ????? Right.

I’m fed up. It makes me ill. I don’t want to watch it anymore and I don’t want to be around some principal that is afraid of losing her job because she can’t handle the student body and do her job. I don’t know how anyone expects me to do my job.

I know I’m being short and choppy here. I’m just disgusted and have been. I’m tired of talking about it getting no support or constructuve feedback.

Thank you for your comments. I, too, am sometimes very frustrated with students and very frustrated with parents. I am mostly frustrated with students who interfere with other students learning.

I happened to be video taping oral presentations last year. In one presentation you could see in the corner of the frame and hear one of the students who continually interrupts learning of other students. Mom consistently denied this happened. I believe she truly believed her child whom she described as a targeted student who just needed additional help and understanding. However, after watching the video and hearing her own child’s interruptions, we had a very, very different parent and a student who was much more attentive to appropriate behavior.

“Why did my daughter get in trouble for needing to go to the bathroom?” asked the angry voice on the other side of the phone. We had no salutation, no small talk, no wishes for a pleasant start to one another’s day. We had my self-identification, then her accusation-question.

“Do you believe that your daughter got in trouble for needing to go to the bathroom?” I replied.

“That is what she told me!” she shouted. Coming through the line, I could imagine hearing her own stories from the first eighteen years of her life. I knew from her daughter that mom was a former student at the very continuation high school now attended by her daughter, the topic of our conversation. I could feel the weight of her experiences with public schools. They were not places of learning. They were not places of curiosity, or investigation. For her, they had been places where conformity and obedience were the values of the institution. For her, they had been places were punishments and rewards were used to cajole and force children into compliance. For her, they were places where nails that stuck out were hammered down. I could hear her frustration, anger and fear. Her daughter was now the latest victim of that same system. Teachers and principals were now unfairly picking on her daughter. For crying our loud, she had only needed to go to the bathroom.

“I believe that is what she told you.” I replied, the smile on my face reflected in my tone. “That wasn’t my question. My questions was, ‘Do you believe your daughter when she tells you that she got into trouble for needing to go to the bathroom?’.” This question caused a long pause and the parent reflected on her question, her daughter’s claim, and the lack of logic therein.

“Well, what is your side of the story?” she asked.

“Your daughter came into class ten minutes late, chatting with a friend of hers who is not enrolled in my class.” I began. “It took me another five minutes to get the friend out of class and heading back to her own. As soon as the friend left, your daughter shouted, ‘I need to go to the bathroom!’ Frankly, I didn’t believe her, but hey, coincidence happens, so I said, ‘Wait five minutes for your friend to find her way back to her class, then you can go to the bathroom.’ You daughter then stormed out of class, slamming the door behind her. This is why she is in trouble.”

“She didn’t tell me any of that.”

“I believe you when you say she didn’t.”

Parents love their children. They will protect them with all of the ferocity of a mama bear and cub. This is the right and natural order of things. Teachers who do not already know this, will learn it soon.

Children lie. Frankly, we all do, but children want to have fun and, when caught, they would like to avoid trouble. Getting away with a lie is a wonderful way to avoid trouble. Teachers and parents who do know this, need to learn it. Like yesterday!

I’ve been really blessed with all of the wonderful parents whom I am in contact with at Skyline High School. I think our Advisory system is a contributing factor in that. Instead of feeling responsible for all one-hundred and thirty children I teach in a day, I, their English, biology, and math teachers all share the one-hundred, thirty and we each take responsibility to mentor about thirty of them. Since I only have thirty families to call and talk to, I have the time to actually build relationships with my children’s’ parents before there is trouble.

But I have heard stories… The story above, where mom believed her daughter’s story is not unusual. Our school has plenty of children who are experiencing their own personal wars against conformity, butting heads with teachers and administration. Many of these children have parents who butted heads with teachers and vice principals in their own days.

I’ve heard plenty of stories of parents who readily believe any lie their children tell them; who think that teachers are “out to get” their children, just like they were “out to get” them a generation ago.

I have heard stories of parents badgering and bullying teachers until a grade was changed or a consequence for behavior dropped. I heard of parents, grown adults, charging into classrooms looking to fight the 14 year old child who was bullying their baby.

I seen parents come to school high, to defend their child’s use of marijuana.

Perhaps the saddest, were the parents who made their child re-enroll in school every four months or so, to stave off the cancellation of their SSI check. After three or four days of attendance, the child would disappear and the parents would be unresponsive to our efforts to contact them. We wouldn’t see them for four months or so, when the SSI was threatened again.

To wrap up, let me be crystal clear about this: 95% of the parents I have had contact with over the past 14 years are WONDERFUL! They are looking out for their child and realize that the teachers are too.

But that 5%… they can drive me crazy, and at the end of the day, when I’m telling stories, it’s the 5% who seem to take up all my time.

– Two years ago our hardworking first-year bio teacher was consolidated to another school, and then we had to bring up a new one from a different school. Luckily, he didn’t quit and took the transfer, but that just seemed silly.

– I watched one principal who had only been on campus a month whip up his list of non-re-elects by doing 10-minute class drop-in visits ONCE. Can you imagine having your whole career damaged by a one 10-minute visit (plus whatever gossip the admin had heard)?

If the problem for prob teachers is really tenure, then, since we are without a contract, now is the time for the Admin to make a bold offer:

Significant raises in exchange for significant reduction in tenure protections.

I spent years as a non-union “at will” employee and was fine with it — however I got paid TWICE (80K vs. 40K)as much, to work roughly half as hard!