I want to clear up a few things about my blog. It occurs to me that many of my readers get an awfully negative view of me, my school, and this district. It is true that there are many things that are going terribly wrong here, but it is also true that many of the people I work with are incredibly skilled and thoughtful and effective in their jobs.

I had a long talk with a fellow staff member after school who read my last post and identified with the nagging Open Court monster some of us turn to when we attempt to teach a boxed curriculum to kids who are more spherical. We discussed how frustrating it is to feel like we never get the time to share ideas or plan together because of other constraints.

Let me list off those constraints:

• Our school had the lowest test scores in the district last year.
• Our administration is new to their positions
• We are a brand new school (new small school)
• We have 11 brand new teachers at our school (K-3) and 2 brand new teachers in the 4th and 5th grades... are you sensing a trend?
• We have ONE reading coach.
• We have ONE prep teacher who meets with each class to teach them writing ONE time per week.
• We have a computer lab that is not functional because as far as I can tell it's piled with boxes.
• We do not have a reading intervention teacher, but I have 4 kids who read more than 2 grade levels behind and 10 that read one grade level behind (yes, that's 14 just in my class).
• Our copiers are always broken whether because they're old and worn or because they're old and we wear them out!
• There just aren't enough experienced staff members to go around helping all of us newbies figure out how to make the best use of our time!

We also discussed how sad it is that we don't spend time giving ourselves credit for the things we are doing well. So much of our staff time is spent looking at our failing test scores and breaking down whose class has more or less red than last time (for those of you who don't get a chance to look at OUSD's standardized test score print-outs, they are color-coded to make it easier to see what's what: red is far below basic, orange is below basic, yellow is approaching, green is at standard and blue is above standard.)

So here are some of the positive things going on at my site:

• We have teachers spending their personal time before and after school tutoring kids so they can learn to read and meet grade-level math standards
• We have a cracker-jack second grade bilingual team who is basically writing their own transition plan so that when they get to all-English classes in third grade, they'll be prepared.
• We have a terrific custodian who will get us anything we need, including furniture and good advice but also royal barbeque luncheon the week before our holiday break.
• We have amazing first grade teachers who go out of their way to create celebrations for the 100th day of school and teach their kids about Martin Luther King, Jr., even though they really don't have time in the day.
• We have a reading coach who volunteers to make fluency packets for us so our kids can achieve their fluency goals.
• We have a parent liaison who organizes parent meetings, evening celebrations, and awards ceremonies.
• We have an office staff that helps pathetically monolingual people like me translate our papers and interpret during parent meetings.
• We have parents who dedicate their time to come discuss budget issues at Site Council meetings.
• We have teachers who come at 6:30 every morning and teachers that stay until 6:30 every night and some that do both.

So while we are certainly working against incredible odds, we're all doing our best. The negatives are real and need to be addressed seriously (and by someone who has more perspective and know-how than I), but I do hope that we can also appreciate the things we're doing to make the best of this difficult situation.

Two days ago the septic tank at our school burst, spewing dirty sewer water, feces, urine, and toilet paper all over our blacktop "yard." This is the central meeting space for children, parents, and teachers. This is a high-traffic area where the 4th and 5th graders, who have been quarantined into portables, travel from their rooms to the cafeteria and the outdoor bathrooms.

Did our school get closed? No. Were parents informed about the accident? Only if they asked. In a middle class school with better-informed parents, school would have been cancelled and parents would all have been informed of the safety and health concerns of the accident. To their credit, the administrators asked that the gates be locked so as to keep children and families out of the yard. They called the city and had trucks out cleaning up the yard all day. But this did not prevent kids from venturing out on their own to check out the spill nor did it prevent teachers from walking right through the filthy water and right into their classrooms.

If you read this and are as outraged as I am, please call the Oakland Unified School District (510-879-8200) and complain. They need to hear what is happening. We need to stand up for the safety of our children.

Siobhan Boylan is a 3rd grade teacher at East Oakland PRIDE.

It’s another Sunday morning coming down, or so would say Kris Kristopherson. I attempted to deny it by waning in and out of sleep, slipping into my subconscious where only occasionally I am protected from a gripping anxiousness. It’s a self-centered apparition that comes in the night, latches on to my soul and perverts my thoughts for the entirety of my sleep. I now know it, recognize it, and have made efforts to fight it, if not only be prepared for it. After four weeks of school I now sleep with a semblance of comfort and ease.I find myself angered over how overbearing the profession is for me at this point. I was aware that I had a natural antipathy for specific tasks that teaching requires you to become efficient at. It is the organization and planning, not just for yourself, but for your students as well, that prevent me from finding the pleasure I assumed I would receive given a room of young malleable minds. It is all the duties that must be performed, and performed well, for you to even have the chance to exchange ideas and information worthy of being deemed an act of ‘schooling’. I am not there yet.

It's approaching noon this Sunday and I've taken the morning to bike to Mama Buzz café. A local artisans venue that reconnects me with a world that I wish to be a part of. I envy the casual conversations, the pleasure reading, even the smiles that are exchanged that have the weight of a feather and are given at ease, where Sundays represent respite and release. I faint contentment as to not look out of place. Across the street, vocals wail from an African American church. My mind associates that with my students, knowing many are sitting in similar benches receiving similar sounds. This only reconnects me with the inevitable. That tomorrow I begin another week. That tomorrow my conscious will carry me back to work and the whirl of five contiguous days of teaching.

Lucas Brown is a 6th grade teacher at the Alternative Learning Community

"We live by that big ocean? What if I can't swim?"

"Eh Bebe! Eh bebe!"

"My dad and I modified our car last night. It goes a lot faster and makes more noise."

"It's o.k. We speak English." (from a parent when I was struggling to explain in Spanish why my newsletters aren't translated)

"Ms. Boylan, why is it wet under your arms?"

"Lookit - he's crumpin!" (to a kid who was dancing to a multiplication rap song)

"Mi perro, he runs hella fast."

These are some of the funny quotes I've heard from my kids in the past five weeks. I teach 3rd grade at a school in East Oakland. I have 4 African-American kids and 13 Spanish-speakers who have been taught in Spanish for the past 3 years. It never ceases to amaze me what comes out of their mouths. They are smart and funny and "hella" unpredictable.

I most recently lived in Minnesota where I got my undergrad degree in Geography and trained to be a Geographic Information Scientist (glorified computer programmer). I worked for the Department of Natural Resources for several years as a map maker, programmer, and planner. I went on hiatus and ended up travelling to a school in Ghana, going to a craft school in North Carolina, moving home to Cleveland, and then going to grad school back in Minnesota. For the past three years I've worked in 5 different schools as a tutor with the American Indian Education Program while also working as a nanny for up to three different families. Last year I student taught at an arts magnet school and did several long-term sub positions there throughout the year.

I know California is a different place, and I made the decision to come out here to do something different. Yet it strikes me EVERY day how vastly different the administration, funding, delivery, and expectations of schools are here than they are in Minnesota. Back in St. Paul, teachers were expected to arrive at least 30 minutes before school, and stay at least an hour after. Every week we had staff meetings and committee meetings after school, which was an accepted part of the work day. Here teachers arrive 10 minutes before school and leave 15 minutes after. There is little expectation for people to get involved in their school. Many of our teachers stay quite late and come in very early, but it is certainly not recognized or expected. In St. Paul, teachers had a 40 minute prep EVERY day. Students had one recess. I had time to make copies, check student files, make phone calls, and get the room set up for the next subject during my prep and I still had time to teach reading, writing, math, and social studies or science every day. Here I have three recess times per day (including lunch), with six transitions herding my kids to and from, and I have 6 different curricula I am supposed to address daily (reading, math, science, social studies, ELD, and P.E.).

I don't. I worry. I wonder how to do it all. I wonder how I'll make it through the year with only one bathroom break all day (lunch). I wonder how my kids will fare on the looming standardized tests because we cram so much into their brains without giving them time to reflect, let it sink in, try it, apply it and analyze it.

But at the end of every day, I think of some silly little quote from one of my kids and I know they're thinking, they're looking, they're wondering, they're hoping:

"My hope and dream is to be the smartest kid in the whole school."

My hope, as their teacher, is that they learn to like and take pride in school so they can claim what belongs to them in this crazy, messed up, unfair, and endlessly fascinating society we call America.

Siobhan Boylan is a 3rd grade teacher at East Oakland PRIDE

"In order to live, you must learn... and in order to save, you must serve." Sometimes a quote can speak so soundly to your thoughts that it can become the very force that guides your actions. After graduating from Stanford University with my BA in Poltical Science and a minor in Human Biology, this quote is the best way that I've come across to explain why I decided to enroll in STEP (Stanford Teacher Education Program) to recieve my MA in Education along with my teaching credential. I spent the year student teaching everything from 1st grade to 6th grade in Santa Clara and East Palo Alto. I am now teaching a self-contained 6th grade class at West Oakland Middle School and strangely enough we are currently writing personal narratives, (so I suppose I'll make sure to include a beginning, middle, and end to this blog.)

Why 6th grade? I wanted to be the one who helped students find ownership in themselves and their actions, especially at a time when they start asking questions, like "why should I care?" As a bi-racial child myself, I thought I would be able to help minority students navigate the cultural, social, and professional worlds that tug on them daily.

Instead I have found that no all-encompassing quote could possibly describe nor speak to the uniqueness of each day that my individually unique students bring to the classroom. In the first three weeks of school, my students and my principal have taught me more than I could have imagined. No classes can prepare you for a classroom of 6th graders — 2/3 of which are boys. No classes can prepare you for the behavior you see in and around a school in West Oakland. No classes can prepare you for the 25 knowing grins who are waiting to see if they can "own you" from day one, nor the 25 minds that have been accostumed to low expecations and are prepared to fight to keep it that way. Read the rest of this entry »

It was by no means what I expected. I mean, it was, but it wasn't. Of the 5 days, I went home all but one of the days with a sickening feel to my stomach. I went home exhausted, leading to one day sleeping at 9pm. I knew it was going to be hard. I knew the kids were going to be trying, they were going to be behind grade level, ....and they were going to be sweet. Talk about roller coaster.

There were days where I wanted to grab a student and slap behavioral sense in them. There were days I wanted to hug a student for getting the right answer. There were days I wanted to vomit (or at least dry heave) after a class and there were days where I felt like I could change the world.

Thankfully, the faculty has been supportive. There has been constant checking in on me to see how I survived. There is nonstop empathy. Notice, not sympathy, but empathy. They give no false words of, "Oh, just the first week. It'll be fine from here on out." Rather, it is, "Brother, I feel your pain. We can get through this." That was comforting to some extent but I'd be lying if I didn't say it doesn't scare me.
"Can I handle them?"
"Can I teach them?"
"Can I make it through the year?"
I knew this year was going to be rough. I knew there'd be much sacrifice and pain. I just didnt know what it'd feel like. After week one, now I have some idea.

Andy Kwok is a biology teacher at EXCEL High School.