Lately, breaking news has been quite a crucial part of my life. It's taken me a week or so to get over the bottled up anger that I have inside about work, but now that I've rewarded myself with a long weekend and a trip to NY to visit Mandi, I have some time to think.
My relationship with the press began in October, when a member of the ESAAC Committee came to the Central South campus to see how things were going. He spoke with a lot of students over several days, and then sat down on a Planning day to talk with the teachers. We aired our grievances, vented about the ridiculous situation in which we had found ourselves this school year, and generally bitched. He left, and I assumed that our words would go the way of many complaints, suggestions, and solutions in the Miami-Dade school system: unnoticed.
Then, three weeks ago a vaguely disturbing email came by way of my work account saying that a "report" had been published about Miami Central. Confused, I didn't put much stock in the worries of the administration, who have categorically ignored the South Satellite all year. You blow me off, I blow you off.
That is, I blow you off until you attack me.
Following the press release of the 13 page ESAAC (I can't even remember the acronym it's so complicated. Something involving School Accountability Committee: a community oversight board), the state of Florida and the district of Miami-Dade county suddenly decided to "notice" us again. We had a representative from one of these educational organizations every day for three weeks; keep in mind now, that this is the place where we had to struggle, scream, and stomp to even get our own PRINCIPAL to pay attention to our needs. Ironic? Yes, I think so. My favorite day was when I had 9 visitors, including 4 computer technicians in my classroom on one day. That was Tuesday, two weeks ago. These IT people from the district told me that I was not only irresponsible for not contacting them about the malfunctioning computers in my room, but that my children weren't learning because of it. They did this in front of an entire classroom of my students. Super. Great. I proceeded to tell them, in professional but forceful terms, that their "computer glitch" did nothing but throw off some meaningless statistics required by the district, and that they didnt' know their asses from a hole in the ground regarding 1. my students' learning gains, and 2. the DISTRICT REQUIRED teaching program called Read 180 that they came to supposedly "monitor" and "troubleshoot."
After that, I was ripped. The Miami Herald published an article the day before called: "Central Kids Set Up to Fail" which of course the Administration freaked out about. My personal favorite line was "Dr. Simmons, the other principal, was unavailable for comment because she was out of town." Every fact in the article was true, and I sent an email stating as much to the author at the Herald. No response.
Wednesday rolled around, and there were more people than ever in the classroom. I made up my mind to attend the Town Hall meeting scheduled for that evening, but what exactly I would do/say was unclear. The meeting started, and who should I see on the dias when I walk in, but the same parent who had been at Madison in September and October. This was going to be interesting. Unfortuntately, the Superintendent refused to come to the meeting, claiming that the parents didn't get to decide when they would speak to him, but that he had the power to decide when he felt like speaking to the parents. Right. Anyway, the meeting dragged on with bickering about the new construction which hadn't even started yet. Finally, we moved on to the academic progress of the students, and one of our Assistant Principals spoke on that. She spouted off some statistics about benchmarks, learning gains, bi-weekly assessments, and crap like that, saying that they've been monitoring the progress of the students, and growth has already occurred. I was flaming mad, and could barely think I was so pissed. I get up out of my back-row seat in jeans an a central athletic jacket, walk over several of my colleagues getting out of the row, and step up to the mic.
I introduced myself, projecting my voice into a microphone barely held steady by my shaking hand. Then, I proceeded to call out the school on major "inconsistencies" in their statements, the first of which was my AP's claim that they have "documentation" of the kids' learning gains. My comment was "It's the 25th week of school I've only given 5 bi-weekly assessments to my students. I'm not a math teacher, but I can figure out that these numbers don't add up. And, I've also addressed this concern with each of the SIX administrators who have been in charge of the Madison satellite this year."
My own voice ringing in my ears, I made my way back to my seat and glanced at the smiles and astonished eyes of the Central teachers sitting around me in the back of the auditorium. There wasn't much of a reply from the Assistant Principal, some bullshitting and backtracking but nothing of substance. The reply came instead from a reporter for the Miami Herald, who sprinted over to ask for my name and teaching position. [enjoy the real thing here]
Unfortunately, absolutely no reply at all came from either of our principals. I was disgusted that throughout the entire 4 hour meeting neither of them got up to address the community. Such a disrespectful attitude is so frustrating; it's almost as if they absolved themselves of any responsibility in the situation, acted like it wasn't "their" problem. Yeah, that would be so stupid, if the principals actually were held accountable for what went on at the school.
The community response to my little rant has been slow in trickling in, but those people who either heard me at the town meeting, or read the Herald article which was published in the next day's paper have taken time to appreciate my very small voice. For the past year and a half, I have felt like I was screaming at a system that didn't make any sense, and did its best to make my life miserable. I have a shit job at a shit school that nobody wants to pay attention to. White suburbia doesn't really even want to acknowledge that places like Miami Central exist, let alone advocate on their behalf. I've lead a pretty emancipated life, and if there's one value that I take very seriously, it is the pride I take in voicing my dissent. Arguing a point, speaking up in class, and sharing my views has always been second nature to me, so I feel stifled and powerless in a system where you are expected to "C.Y.A." and tow the company line lest someone "write you up."
I may feel voiceless and disempowered, but I do have the freedom of a vagabond, without the strong social or economic ties to my position as a public school teacher. The Herald article wasn't the death blow to the Miami-Dade County Public School system, but at least a few people heard. One parent took the time to come in early before her job the next day to thank me for speaking out. Security guards, other teachers, and my family and friends have commended me for having a little puff at a very large whistle, but some part of me feels so unsatisfied.
There have been changes around school since the report came out, namely an actual clerk to do paperwork and copies, new headphones for the computers, and more attention from the Main Campus, but it's just too damn little and too damn late. Huge mistakes were made by so many people in so many levels of the school system, and each of those officials will get off scott-free at the end of the year. The people that their mistakes truly hurt are those who the system is supposed to serve: the class of 2009.
The parents can lash out at the administration, the administration can hand out the tired old 'no comment' line, and the district can apologize like Dr. Tosada did, saying "There is no excuse for that" but when the consequences are played out, it doesn't matter if the mistakes are excusable. The kids still missed out on nearly a year of normal education.
This is why I think it's amazing that some of my kids really are learning. In a positive backlash, I printed out all of my students SRI (Reading Inventory) scores and made a huge poster for my class to show all the assholes who are in my classroom every day, three times a day that no matter what the fuck they throw at us, we come to school every day and we learn. The State's not there every day; hell, our principals aren't here every day, but the teachers and the students show up every morning at 7:20, take out a pen, a pencil, a whiteboard marker, and a book, and dammit, we read.
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