Your Mama's Mad Tedious: Diary of a Bronx Teacher

New Blog!

2011-11-25T15:08:00.002-05:00

If you've enjoyed my writing here at Mad Tedious over the years, please check out my new blog: Mosey May, Chemo, and Me: Navigating Canine Cancer with my Best Friend. Join the blog to follow Mosey's inspiring cancer battle! It's the Mosiest blog buzz around!

Autism Awareness

2010-02-09T14:48:00.000-05:00

Once again, my favorite icon bar.

I don't have a car but ...

2009-10-10T12:10:00.001-04:00

... I have a blog! Cool bumperstickers:

Really, honk! As in leave a comment. (Thought I'd re-post this to let you guys know I am still out here and teaching. More soon!)

The Equity Project Charter School, Front Page of New York Times Again!

2009-06-05T14:20:00.006-04:00

The New York Times has another front page feature on TEP Charter School! TEP's teaching "dream team" has been chosen. The article is currently the NY Times' #1 most emailed story and the #10 most blogged about story.

The article also mentions TEP's fundraising efforts for our permanent school building in Washington Heights, NYC. I am on TEP's Capital Campaign Advisory Board. Please join TEP's Facebook Causes page or visit my TEP drive on Changing the Present.

TEP is an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit. TEP does NOT fundraise to support its investment in teacher salaries or administrative costs. The ONLY area for which TEP fundraises is for its school facility, since NY State public charter schools must primarily pay for their own facilities. TEP is a public charter school and does not charge student tuition or fees.

Mainstreaming Children with Autism

2009-06-01T21:21:00.008-04:00

Wow. The connections and exposure from the NY Times article I wrote back in Sept just keep on coming! I had no idea this site, Healing Thresholds: Connecting Community and Science to Heal Autism, was doing this write-up. If you ever get a chance to write for the NY Times, DO IT! It opens doors.

Google Gets It

2009-04-25T16:41:00.008-04:00

Project Spectrum "was created to give people with autism the opportunity to express their creativity and develop a life skill using Google SketchUp 3D modeling software." http://www.google.com/educators/spectrum.html

It's important to note, though, that not all individuals with autism think in pictures. Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures, has acknowledged this.

Grandin added this to the first chapter of Thinking in Pictures: "When I wrote Thinking in Pictures, I thought most people on the autism spectrum were visual thinkers like me. After talking to hundreds of families and individuals with autism or Asperger's, I have observed that there are actually different types of specialized brains. All people on the spectrum think in details, but there are three basic categories of specialized brains." Grandin goes on to describe those categories as 1) visual thinkers 2) music and math thinkers 3)verbal logic thinkers. She also acknowledges that some individuals with autism may be combinations of these categories.

Google's Project Spectrum is great. We also need cutting edge educational opportunities for ALL kinds of autistic thinkers. There's so much more talent out there to be tapped into!

Introducing ... ClassWish!

2009-04-19T23:22:00.011-04:00

I came across this new online nonprofit that makes it easier for teachers to create classroom wish lists and reach out to donors. Teachers at any school (public, private, low-income, middle class, etc.) can use the service. Check it out!

Celebration of Teaching and Learning Conference in NYC

2009-03-01T15:17:00.003-05:00

Join me at this year's Celebration of Teaching & Learning this weekend, March 6 and 7 in NYC!! I will be part of a panel on the school day for children with autism. I will be focusing on mainstreaming preschoolers with autism. Temple Grandin will be the keynote speaker.

Thirteen & WLIW21's Celebration of Teaching & Learning is the place where knowledge meets inspiration as the world's best thinkers, practitioners, and more than 8,000 educators come together to play a role in shaping the future of schools.

In New York City on March 6 & 7, 2009 at the Hilton New York, the Celebration will address today's most relevant issues in education related to Autism, English Language Learners, Global Awareness, Literacy, Math, Science, Technology, and Whole School Policy. Educators will be invigorated by a range of dynamic, nationally acclaimed speakers, including keynoters Alan Alda (on science), Temple Grandin (on autism), Danica McKellar (on math) interviewed by Dennis Van Roekel, Sir Kenneth Robinson (on creativity), Eric Schmidt (on technology) interviewed by Charlie Rose, and the Sesame Workshop's new cast of "The Electric Company" (on literacy). To join the conversation, see all the speakers and register, visit http://www.thirteencelebration.org.

Don't Do It!

2009-02-07T16:25:00.003-05:00

Best Widget Ever

2009-01-30T22:36:00.003-05:00

How cool is my new widget and fundraising drive for The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School?! (Under my profile.) I love Changing the Present !

Wooooohooooooo!!!

2009-01-20T13:22:00.000-05:00

President Obama!!!!!

The List

2009-01-04T21:56:00.002-05:00

Things I never experienced before becoming a preschool teacher in New York City: strep throat, conjunctivitis, bronchitis, scabies, sinus infections, colds lasting more than a week, head lice as an adult, styes, fun and new stomach problems! (List in progress.)

Noooooo, I'm not bitter that I spent my winter break sick.

Happy New Year!

Literary Agent and Fundraising

2008-11-22T11:07:00.002-05:00

Good news - I signed with a literary agent here in NYC. So some of the stories on Your Mama's Mad Tedious may end up in a book!

Other exciting news - my online fundraising drive for The Equity Project Charter School is now up and running on a very cool philanthropy site, Changing the Present. Check it out!

First Letter to Obama

2008-11-07T20:05:00.005-05:00

After reading that Obama is considering NYC Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein as his pick for Secretary of Education, I decided to take a few moments to express my disapproval of this potentially disastrous decision. I emailed the below brief letter via the Obama Biden website.

Please do not assign Joel Klein to the Secretary of Education position. As a special education teacher with the New York City Department of Education during Klein's Chancellorship, I experienced a great deal of negativity and administrative chaos from his office. I received little, if any, support from Klein's office as a special educator who worked hard to improve my students' educational experiences in the South Bronx. Please heed the opinions and experiences of New York City's teachers on this matter and research better choices. Please consider assigning a career educator, not a career attorney/politician to this position. Thank you.

If you agree that Klein is the wrong choice, please take the time to email a letter of your own at the above website.

Becoming an Autism Educator

2008-10-26T16:16:00.008-04:00

Originally published in the New York Times Lesson Plans blog (plus an excerpt in the Sunday NY Times!).

For the first time in my six-year teaching career, I am not completely freaked out by going back to school. I have, however, more than paid my dues to reach this stage of teacher emotional stability. In my first year of teaching, I freaked out not only in September, but pretty much every day (and well into every night) of the school year. At the time, I taught teenagers with learning disabilities in the South Bronx, including many emotionally disturbed students. I somehow managed to stick it out, and the next year, I met a Bronx teenager who would change my life and set me on my current career path.

Jeremy has Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. As guilty as I feel admitting this as a teacher, there’s no denying that Jeremy was my favorite student. He may always be. While other teachers seemed exasperated by Jeremy’s autistic quirks, I got along with him easily. We hung out during lunch. He fixed the classroom computers and shared his unique life insights. He also easily passed a New York State Science Regents exam on his first try, which quickly shifted the school administration’s attitude from, “We have to get rid of this kid,” to, “We need this kid for our numbers.” Sadly, Jeremy didn’t exactly receive a stellar public education in the Bronx. I often wondered how much further he could have gone had he received stronger educational support from an early age.

Jeremy taught me that working with students with autism was what I wanted to do with my life. I began training with the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, where I learned behavioral techniques for supporting children with autism in the classroom. Simply by circumstance, not choice, I began working with younger kids. This was because nearly all New York City and State funding for autism education is geared toward early intervention and preschool services. When children with autism reach kindergarten, they often lose their services. So it’s actually quite difficult to make a living as an autism educator to older kids in New York. There’s simply no money there. I miss teenagers like Jeremy, but, as it turns out, teaching the little ones is my forte. This is mostly because I’m a 34-year-old with a four-year-old sense of humor.

I now provide preschool and home-based services to children with autism spectrum disorders, mostly in Manhattan. I also occasionally work with children with other special needs. Last school year, I worked closely with a boy recovering from leukemia. He is now in full remission and about to begin life as a mainstreamed kindergartner! I have become a huge proponent of mainstreaming at an early age, and I love working with special needs students in mainstream pre-school classrooms. My goal is to help them prepare for fully mainstreamed kindergarten and elementary school educations. They, in turn, help me stay grounded.

In the ideal scenario, a few months into the school year, if I do my job well, an outsider will walk into the pre-school classroom and have little idea which teacher is the special needs teacher and which kid is the special needs student. My first few months with a student can be challenging, but with the right approach, the next six months of the school year are relatively smooth. Being a special education itinerant teacher (SEIT) requires a balancing act of supporting, but not stifling, my students. I often interact with the other kids in the classroom, and they tend to see me as one of their teachers, too. Most of them don’t really know (or care) that I’m officially there for one student. At the pre-school age, there is little stigma in receiving special needs services. The kids have not yet developed that sort of prejudice. If there is any stigma, it comes from the adults.

Preschool started this week. I had a wonderful summer of teaching part-time and hanging out with kids on city playgrounds. There are moments when I can’t believe I get paid to do this (tempered, of course, by moments when I don’t get paid nearly enough to do this.) This summer, there were more of the former. I worked with two students at their summer camps, and I worked weekends with one student at his family’s country home. Summer seemed to have a superhero theme. Two girls showed up to summer camp dressed as Spider-Man and Batman for no apparent reason (other than the obvious cool factor). I played superheroes on the playground and blasted off with a (highly imaginative) student from the tip of the Egyptian pyramids into outer space. (Yes, my job is cooler than yours.) I saw preschoolers develop seemingly random, yet fervent obsessions with the state of Wyoming and chicken pot pie.

I also experienced several language breakthroughs with a student, one of which came in the form of a clear request: “I want Sesame Street numbers!” So we watched Count von Count, who I quickly realized, like Jeremy, has a clear case of Asperger’s Syndrome. Numbers, numbers, numbers! Mwahaha! I then realized I was diagnosing a Sesame Street character with special needs and that I needed a break from kids before September. This school year, I am working with students at two Manhattan preschools and providing home-based, early intervention autism services to several two-year-olds. There is nothing quite like welcoming nervous and excited preschoolers to their first week. The two boys I will work with at school this year are old pros, having attended preschool before. But things are about to get more serious for them. It’s time to start learning to read, write, and share blocks without fighting.

It sometimes astonishes me that I found my perfect career. I never meant to be a teacher. I meant to be a serious journalist. But when my grad school classmates went off to write for esteemed media outlets, I went off to teach special needs kids. It made no sense. It was the best decision I ever made.

Palin and Special Education: A Closer Look

2008-10-21T16:24:00.008-04:00

Jennifer Laviano is a special needs attorney in Sherman, CT. Her guest opinion piece appears here with her permission. - Miss Dennis

Dear Clients, Friends, and Colleagues,

As we near the Presidential election in just two weeks, I have been asked by many of you to comment on my thoughts on Gov. Palin and what she can and will do for special education students. As an attorney whose practice focuses exclusively on the representation of children with disabilities, I always investigate candidates' positions and records on this very critical moral and financial issue. One of my clients recently suggested that I share with others what I have learned, and so here it is.

When Gov. Palin first came to my attention, I was, as I am sure all of you who care about this issue, intrigued to have someone on the national platform who talks about children with special needs. Since hearing her say this repeatedly in speeches, I have been waiting, and waiting, to hear some specifics on special education reform. Most of all, I want to know what her stance is on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal statute that governs special education. The IDEA is up for reauthorization by Congress in 2010, and it is crucial that it reflect the policies and funding structure necessary to protect and appropriately educate our children with disabilities. I needed to know what Gov. Palin thinks about the future of special education legislation in this country.

I know where the other three on the tickets stand. Senators Obama and Biden have issued position statements on the IDEA to various parent groups, strongly supporting full funding for the IDEA and the rights of children with disabilities and their parents. The Obama-Biden website has a direct link to the ticket's position on disabilities. Senator McCain's website does not have such a link and neither he nor Palin have provided those positions on the IDEA to parent advocacy groups. Senator McCain does have a supportive position on the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) which has been published. I was, however, extremely disappointed in his discussion on the Senate floor regarding the Reauthorization of the IDEA 2004, in which he expressed his concerns that parents of children with disabilities who have to sue to secure appropriate services for their children under the Statute and win against districts shouldn't have their attorneys' fees covered. This is not just a matter of self-interest for me; it is the difference between families, especially poor families, being able to vindicate their civil rights or not. But I knew those things, I did not know where Palin stood, and I wanted to find out.

Having waited for some specifics from her on just how she is going to be an advocate for children with special needs in the White House, I finally got close. In her recent interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, she was asked what her position is. While never mentioning the IDEA at all or what needs to be changed, kept, or fixed in it, she stated that the issue that needs to be addressed is "equal access" for children with special needs.

EQUAL ACCESS? Seriously? We HAVE equal access - that is what the original version of the Statute fought for in the early 70's, when children with disabilities were literally prohibited from attending our public schools. Equal access is so far in the minority of what needs to be addressed in special education I hardly know where to begin. Our problems are not that children with disabilities aren't allowed into the buildings; our problem is what happens when they get there! What about a Free and Appropriate Public Education? What about "meaningful educational benefit?" What about giving children with special needs the tools to thrive and prosper and be fully independent adults, which is what the IDEA now stands for? We are decades from equal access being the key question, and apparently Gov. Palin is not aware of that fact.

Now, you might say, "Well, Jen, I am a parent of a child with special needs and I didn't know that either." Okay, my response: "Are you running for Vice President of the United States? Are you telling the nation that you would see yourself as the voice for those children within the federal government? If you were, do you think you might have looked into it a little bit?"

It is not terribly surprising to me that Gov. Palin's views on this are so far outdated. I have traveled to Alaska to give a speech to parents and professionals on the subject of the rights of children with special needs, in particular children with autism spectrum disorders. I was stunned by how far behind the State was from the vast majority of the rest of the country on the education of children with disabilities. Perhaps, for Alaskans, "equal access" IS the problem, but it is certainly not the case in Connecticut or most of the rest of the country. I am in regular contact with a colleague of mine who is a parents' attorney in Alaska, who has had to fight tooth and nail for children with special needs in Alaska simply to secure them the most basic of services that we take for granted here. I for one do not want the rest of the country to use Alaska's system of educating our most vulnerable children as a paradigm.

Okay, yes, you all know I'm a liberal ... but that's one of the reasons that I chose to get into the field of representing children with special needs, because I believe in my heart that this last bastion of civil rights is absolutely critical to fight. We need major fixes in our special education system, and if you think that who is in the White House does not effect you on this issue, you couldn't be more wrong. IT MATTERS. It matters in terms of funding and at least as, if not more, importantly, enforcement. Our IDEA enforcement, even in States like CT where we have zealous advocacy, is woefully inadequate. School districts routinely violate the procedural and substantive rights of children and parents and only in a small fraction of cases are they taken to task for it. It also matters because the next President will have at least a few Supreme Court appointments to make. We have had more decisions from the United States Supreme Court in the area of special education law in the last few years than we had for decades. Those decisions have tremendous impact on whether parents have the right to have proper evaluations done for their children, how and when parents can exercise their rights under the IDEA, who has the burden of proof in Due Process Hearings, and a myriad of other issues which directly impact our children with special needs.

Whether we properly educate and embrace our children with disabilities is crucial to the future of this country, as the cost of NOT doing so will be far larger than the cost of doing so ... leaving out the fact that it happens to also be the right thing to do in a great society. This issue should be front and center for any candidate for the White House, and I write to let you know that, at least as far as Gov. Palin is concerned, it has been an opportunity not only missed, but frighteningly misunderstood. It does not bode well for her, for us, or most importantly, for the children we love who need and deserve better in an "advocate in the White House."

I will be casting my vote on November 4th for Obama-Biden, and I hope you will join me. They and their party have been on the side of children with special needs historically, and they will be on their side in the future. As our economy implodes and State and local educational budgets tighten, if we do not turn this around now, I fear that we will, once again, be fighting only for "equal access" for our kids. That is unacceptable to me.

Finally, for any of our more conservative clients who I may have offended, my apologies; I respect your views even if I disagree with them.

Thanks for reading.

Best, Jennifer Laviano
The Law Offices of Jennifer Laviano, LLC
Sherman, CT
Lavlaw3@aol.com

It Bears Repeating

2008-10-15T23:57:00.004-04:00

(Originally posted on the New York Times Lesson Plans blog.)

Two of my preschool students with autism are currently going through stages of repeating their favorite words and phrases over and over again. Both students repeat lines from their favorite children’s videos and books — stories and episodes of “Dora the Explorer,” “Blue’s Clues,” and “Max and Ruby.”

Amanda repeatedly says, “Benny the Bull,” who, as I was slow to realize after hearing his name dozens of times one day, is her favorite “Dora” character. She has also memorized many of Benny the Bull’s lines from the show, and she repeats them at seemingly random moments. David repeats the word “notebook.” At first, I thought he just really liked the word, or that he was proud of himself for learning it. Then, after he began repeating lines from “Blue’s Clues,” I realized “notebook,” came from Joe’s “handy dandy notebook” in the show. And lest this excessive repetition be blamed solely on TV and DVD’s, one of my former students, who rarely watched TV, repeated her favorite scene from the book “Harold and the Purple Crayon” — “moose and porcupine eating pies!”

While the ability to remember and repeat words is an important step in every child’s language development, many children with autism tend to repeat words excessively and in socially inappropriate contexts. A child with autism may repeat the same word or phrase hundreds of times a day (which can drive their parents and teachers a little batty). In the autism education field, repeating lines from movies, TV shows and books is known as scripting, or echolalia. (Some people use the terms scripting and echolalia interchangeably, while others distinguish echolalia as repeating words spoken by live people, not in shows.)

Scripting was famously portrayed in the film “Rain Man,” when Raymond Babbitt, the autistic character played by Dustin Hoffman, memorized and repeated Abbot and Costello’s comedic skit, “Who’s on First.” In the film, Raymond seemed to use scripting to calm himself in stressful social situations. At times, my students appear to script for a similar calming effect; at others, it seems to be meaningless, out-of-control repetition. Despite the many challenges this behavior presents, it is possible for young students with autism to use it in socially appropriate contexts. Encouraging them to do so is one of my goals as a special education teacher.

Many of my students have proven themselves capable of memorizing a word or phrase, associating it with a particular emotion or social situation, and then attempting to use the phrase when they encounter a similar emotional or social situation. One of my favorite examples of this is described in Paula Kluth’s book, “You’re Going to Love This Kid.” Kluth tells the story of a boy who said, “Go to hell, lieutenant,” when he was upset. The boy was scripting from the film “A Few Good Men” and he correctly associated the phrase with anger. In another case, one of my students memorized the phrase, “Hello, everyone. How are you today?” — one of his teachers often said this when she entered the classroom.

One day, when I brought the boy home, he walked into his family’s apartment and said, “Hello, everyone. How are you today?” His parents and I were floored. At the time, this was by far the most socially meaningful language the boy had ever used. While he had learned the phrase through rote memory, he showed progress in social communication — a skill that children with autism often lack — by correctly associating the phrase with entering a room and greeting people.

One thing I cannot do as a teacher is miraculously change the way my students’ brains develop or the way they process language. There is clearly something in the brain development and language processing of children with autism that differs from their typically developing peers. Genetic researchers, such as the scientists with the Autism Genome Project, are currently trying to pinpoint the root causes of the disorder.

We don’t yet have all the scientific answers to what causes autism, and it remains to be seen whether a cure will be developed, or whether a “cure” is something that would be welcomed by those affected by autism. Many parents have told me they would welcome a cure, while many higher-functioning autistic adults are offended by the notion of needing to be cured. In the meantime, there are language development techniques that teachers and parents can use to help children with autism begin to socially connect with their peers and families.

One of the programs I learned while training and working with the Center for Autism and Related Disorders is a social questions activity. Using the basic principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), I am able to teach my students to answer questions ranging in difficulty from, “How old are you?” to “What was your favorite part of the book?” While my students typically learn to answer these questions in a rote manner by memorizing the questions and answers, the next step is to take what they have learned through memorization and use it in socially meaningful situations at school.

David, the boy who repeats lines from “Blue’s Clues,” was able to quickly learn the answers to many socially relevant questions. During snack time at preschool last week, I asked him, “What’s your mommy’s name?” We had worked on this question, so he quickly answered correctly. Then I asked one of his classmates at the snack table what her mommy’s name was, and soon all of the children at the table were telling their friends their mommy’s names. We then did the same activity with daddy’s names and favorite foods. (Of course, teachers should be sensitive to kids who may not have both parents.)

These are the kinds of basic, pre-school level conversations that come naturally to most kids. But David needs to be taught to participate in such conversations in a step-by-step manner. That’s where breaking things down through ABA becomes helpful. While I am not a strict ABA practitioner in the classroom, I do find it helpful to use the basic principles of breaking larger tasks into smaller steps and quickly reinforcing my students for achieving each step. Within ABA, there is a more recently developed model that I use called the Verbal Behavior Approach. This model is especially useful for language development activities.

While I can’t get inside David’s brain to know for sure what he’s thinking, something does seem to click for him when he participates in these kinds of peer conversations at school, and he seems to enjoy them. Being able to use his memorized language with his peers, and hearing that they have different answers to the same questions, does appear to be helping him connect with them socially. Throughout the pre-school year, our social question activities will become more complex and, step-by-step, we will build up to asking questions and initiating peer conversations. The ultimate goal is for David to begin talking with his peers more spontaneously. Spontaneity in language is difficult to teach, but I aim to give David more opportunities to reach this stage by pushing him beyond his scripted comfort zone.

Language issues like this, which can be so exasperating for parents and teachers, do not disappear overnight, but I find it helpful as a teacher to keep in mind that the same strong memorization skills my students use while scripting can be shaped into socially meaningful language.

Update on The Equity Project Charter School

2008-10-15T23:00:00.001-04:00

Some of you may have read the piece I wrote for the New York Times about The Equity Project Charter School (TEP).

TEP's fundraising efforts for its new school building in Washington Heights are now underway. Donations can be made via TEP's secure Groundspring.org site. TEP is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 and accepts tax deductible contributions.

In contrast to most charter schools, TEP does NOT solicit donations for general operating expenses. This is because a central feature of TEP’s mission is to demonstrate that schools can make a radical investment in teacher equity by reallocating existing public funding. The only area for which TEP solicits donations is the cost of its school facility, since, in contrast to traditional public schools which receive a free public facility, New York State public charter schools must pay for their own school facility.

As a member of TEP's Capital Campaign Advisory Board, I aim to raise $100,000 for the school's new building in Washington Heights. I am also currently recruiting others who have expressed an interest in TEP and who may want to help with fundraising on some level. I am primarily looking for "Fundraising Captains," each of whom will raise $1,000 for the school building as members of TEP's Finance Committee. If you think you can raise $1,000 (it only takes knowing 10 people who would donate $100, 20 who would donate $50, etc.) or if you would like to get involved in supporting TEP in any other
way, please contact me at nyc30731@yahoo.com. You can also arrange a meeting with TEP's founding principal, Zeke Vanderhoek, by emailing info@tepcharter.org.

TEP is also currently seeking 3 lead donors to help fund its new school facility. Facility naming opportunities are available!

If you believe in TEP’s unique vision--investing in teacher equity to achieve educational equity for students in low income communities--then seize the opportunity to help make this vision a reality. TEP needs your help to fund its school facility in Washington Heights.

Thanks!

3rd NY Times Piece Now Up

2008-10-07T19:04:00.002-04:00

My third New York Times blog piece is now up. It's about the new school in Washington Heights, NYC, that I mentioned below. As always, feel free to leave a comment on the Times blog, whether you agree with the school's model or not!

New School in NYC, Washington Heights

2008-10-01T13:57:00.007-04:00

I am on the fundraising advisory board for a wonderful new middle school that will open in Washington Heights, NYC, in September '09.

The Equity Project Charter School (TEP) was featured on the front page of the New York Times back in March. As a member of the school's Capital Campaign Advisory Board, I will be raising $100,000 in the next year for the school's new building. To accomplish this, I will recruit 100 Finance Committee members, who will either donate or raise $1,000. TEP Charter School is a non-profit 501(c)3 educational organization. Since I only know a handful of people who can donate $1,000, I am focusing on recruiting people who can commit to raising $1,000. It only takes knowing 100 people who will donate $100, 20 who will donate $50, etc!

If interested in becoming a Finance Committee member for TEP Charter school, please get in touch! You can email me at nyc30731@yahoo.com. Also, stay tuned for my third piece for the NY Times Lesson Plans blog!

2nd NY Times Piece Now Up

2008-09-22T20:48:00.002-04:00

The Special Needs Kindergarten Crunch

New York Times Education Blog

2008-09-11T22:48:00.003-04:00

The New York Times education blog is up and running with its first piece of the school year! Six teachers from throughout the U.S. are contributing. The first Lesson Plans piece, by Joseph Santini, is wonderful. Check it out! My first article for the blog should run either tomorrow or Thursday.

New York Times Blogger!

2008-09-04T16:06:00.002-04:00

Hi Everyone, I am excited to announce that I will be writing for a New York Times education blog this month! More details and a link to come when the blog launches next week. The focus will be on back-to-school time and "learning to teach in a complicated world."

Happy World Autism Awareness Day

2008-04-03T14:13:00.004-04:00

I'm a day late, but happy Autism Awareness Day! April is Autism Awareness Month, and yesterday was the first official World Autism Awareness Day. From now on, April 2nd will always be Autism Awareness Day.

The first lady of Qatar, who is apparently quite progressive, was one of the people who pushed for this day. This CNN video about autism services in Qatar is quite fascinating. However, since the focus of the story is on a severely affected autistic child at a school just for kids with autism, I do feel the need to mention that if CNN were to bring a camera to one of the mainstream preschool or kindergarten classrooms that I am working in this year, they would not be able to tell which kid is autistic! With the right behavioral and language intervention, many kids with autism can succeed in a mainstream classroom and become indistinguishable from their mainstream peers. That is not to say that a separate school is not the right choice for some families. But I've noticed that TV stories too often focus only on severely autistic kids, which can lead to stereotypes.

As most of us already know, there is a huge spectrum of kids with autism, thus the "autism spectrum." Many kids diagnosed today have milder forms of autism. Since there is no typical physical characteristic that distinguishes autism (like there is with Down Syndrome and other disorders), I feel that tv/new media journalists too often choose to visualize autism by using kids that look developmentally abnormal in order to garner more sympathy in their stories.

Most kids with autism do not, in fact, look developmentally abnormal. In fact, to be a bit shallow, most of the kids I've worked with have been considered by their peers and teachers to be very cute and even beautiful children. But I guess beautiful-looking children do not evoke as much sympathy. Still, this issue aside, the story about services in Qatar is quite interesting.

I feel that print journalists tend to do a better job of covering the whole spectrum, since they don't feel the need to go for the visual sympathy-evoking element. Here is another story from CNN that focuses on a more high-functioning boy whose mom amazingly discovered that other women who used the same sperm donor had autistic children as well.

The Purple Stapler

2008-01-26T02:08:00.000-05:00

Dear Mad Tedious Readers,

Thanks for the emails encouraging me to get back to writing about teaching! I am still teaching special education in NYC, but my teaching position has changed significantly since I started this blog. I have gone from teaching high school special needs students in the South Bronx to working with much younger kids in Manhattan, mainly preschool to kindergarten-aged kids on the autism spectrum. I've also become a sort of special needs consultant, working privately with several schools and families. I still have amazing teaching experiences every day with amazing kids, and I do want to get back to writing about them.

I'm not quite sure where to take the blog from here, so for now, I'm re-posting an old "favorite," The Purple Stapler. I wrote this at the height of my frustration in the South Bronx, and since first posting it two years ago, I've received a steady trickling-in of emails and comments from amazingly dedicated teachers in similar positions throughout the U.S. The sad truth is that most of us cannot stay in these positions without developing insomnia, losing our minds and/or becoming numb. Purple Stapler conditions still exist in far too many schools in our country. How can we work to change such deplorable learning and teaching conditions while maintaining our personal sanity and professional integrity?!

The Purple Stapler

There are hundreds of reasons to freak out at work each day. Those who haven’t spent much time in a South Bronx high school may think I’m exaggerating or stereotyping. Unfortunately, I'm not. My school’s administration is in shambles. The school district is grossly neglecting the educational rights of students with learning disabilities. I have 17-year-old students who are reading and writing at a second grade level. Not because they’re dumb (talk with them for a minute and you’ll hear their wit), but because they never received help for learning problems ranging from dyslexia to autism. They are among the few teenagers in their situation who haven’t dropped out. Two of my brightest students are constantly in and out of sketchy foster homes. They come to school smelling of urine and worse. One of them has learned to deal with neglect by managing to find a way to get high every morning before 1^st period. A 15-year-old girl in my English class still sucks her thumb. She's six months pregnant.

Yes. There are hundreds of reasons for a teacher here to freak out. Fly off the handle. Go ballistic. Hit the ceiling. Wig out. Flip a lid. Fly over the cuckoo’s nest. Go off the deep end. Or, in other words, break down. My students call it beastin’. There simply aren’t enough idioms in the English language to describe what can happen when a normally rational inner city teacher decides she's had enough.

Before today, I had remained relatively calm in the classroom. I would weep at home, vent to friends over the phone, laugh when I meant to cry, and stay up worrying at night. But for six months I managed to wake up each morning, take the painfully slow train up to the Bronx, and put on my game face in front of my students. I knew it couldn’t last.

So today marks the day that I finally went loca en la cabeza in front of my students. I didn’t snap over something worthy, like drugs or dropouts or a student telling me to fuck off. No. I, Miss Dennis, snapped over a stapler. A miniature purple stapler. It was missing, and I was mad.

Mind you, I teach at a school where several computers are stolen each year. Teachers’ wallets and cell phones have gone missing. I've been lucky. My stapler cost $4.99. In an attempt to make myself seem slightly less ridiculous about freaking out over this, let me explain that at my school, teachers have to buy their own paper to make photocopies for their students. We also have to staple all of our student packets individually because the stapler function on the copier never works. (Administrators pay themselves overtime, but they won’t buy paper or staples for the copy machine.) Since I was also provided with no appropriate books for my special education students, I have to make countless photocopies from books I purchased myself, and I end up stapling countless packets for my students each day. My little purple stapler was part of my daily routine, and it made me happy. Its theft, of all things, pushed me straight over the edge.

When I discovered that the stapler was missing, I completely shut down my class and demanded to know who had taken it. I was on the verge of tears. My students stared at me in shock.

“Are you okay, Miss Dennis?”

“What’s wrong Miss?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong! Look around this classroom. Look at all these books and posters and videos and markers. Do you know who bought these? I did! With my own money! That’s right! The Board of Ed gives me nothing! Nothing! That was my purple stapler, and no one has the right to take it! That’s it! I’m taking everything home with me.”

I began pulling down and piling up everything I had bought with my own money. It wasn’t quite true that the Board of Ed had given me nothing. I received $150 to spend on classroom supplies. Other teachers got $200, but the genius Board of Ed CFO decided that special education teachers should get 25% less than all other teachers, and my own teachers' union agreed. (Way to go guys! Way to motivate teachers in your highest need area to keep working for you.) So I got $150, which I spent on 10 copies of The House on Mango Street. I paid for the other 15 copies of the book myself. I’ve spent an estimated $550 on classroom supplies already this semester, and many teachers I know have spent much more. Clearly, my rage was not simply about the missing purple stapler.

I finished piling up all of my belongings as my students continued to look on in disbelief. As soon as I calmed down, I pathetically tried to salvage a lesson out of my tantrum.

“Now. Who can tell me why I’m bringing all of this stuff home with me?”

The Class Sycophant actually raised his hand to answer my question, but he was thankfully stopped by The Student of Reason.

“Stop playin’. You not really gonna’ take all that home. You take the 6 train. I seen you yesterday. You can’t take all that home on the 6 train.”

He had a point, and it finally dawned on me how ridiculous I was acting.

“Miss, are you crying over a stapler?"

“Not just any stapler Joseph! My lovely, miniature purple stapler!”

Laughter, finally.

I was sure my students would hate me for this incident. Instead, something strange happened. They began to see me as human, and they began to respect their classroom.

“Miss, did you really spend your own money on all that stuff?”

“You must really care about your classroom, Miss Dennis.”

I had my suspicions about who’d stolen the stapler, but I knew no one would snitch. In high school (whether in the wealthiest of suburbs or the grittiest of inner city neighborhoods), there’s nothing worse than a snitch.

But amazingly, after class, one by one, every single student came back to my classroom to show me where the purple stapler had been stashed – in a desk drawer in the back of the classroom. Apparently, whoever had planned on stealing it couldn’t go through with it after my tantrum. Even the toughest, most seemingly uncaring of students came back to the classroom to make sure I was reunited with my beloved stapler. One of them helped me put back all of the books, posters, videos and markers.

“I knew you were just playin’ us Miss.”

Right. It was all a big plan.

Latest on Teacher Licensing Fiasco

2007-07-02T19:17:00.000-04:00

I took and passed the four NY State Teacher Certification Examinations that a certification specialist at the New York State Education Department told me I needed to pass. I'm applying for a teaching license in Students with Disabilities, Birth-Grade 2. I passed the Students with Disabilities Content Specialty Test, the Elementary Assessment of Teaching Skills Test, the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, and the Elementary Education Content Specialty Test.

I took the Elementary Education Content Specialty Test (CST) in 2003. Education schools generally recommend that teachers take this test in the first or second year of their teacher education programs, which I did. Since then, however, a new test replaced the test I took. The new test is called the Multi-Subject CST and, based on study guides, it is basically the same test under a new name. At most, it's a slightly different version of the old test. The state certification specialist I spoke with six months ago specifically told me that my passing score on the Elementary Education test would “be sufficient” for licensing requirements. Not so.

Rather than do the logical and fair thing (accept the Elementary Education CST for people who took and passed that test before the Multi-Subject CST became the new requirement), NYSED is of course making teachers jump through hoops again. The state is requiring people who already took and passed the Elementary Education CST to pay another $88-$150 and waste another Saturday morning taking the Multi-Subject CST (again, basically the same test). Not only is this a waste of money and time, it will also add at least another two months to the time teachers have to wait to get their licenses processed, potentially keeping many teachers out of the classroom come September.

How much more ridiculous can it get? Seriously. What’s sad is that this is just a drop in the bucket of ridiculous red tape roadblocks I’ve come across during the teacher licensing process, and I have many teaching friends and colleagues going through the same thing. I usually try my best to have a sense of humor about it (it's not hard to make fun of NY educrats), but I'm too exhausted now to be funny.

I learned of this new testing requirement after spending several hours on the phone today (mainly waiting on hold) with both city and state bureaucrats, trying convince them to speed up the processing of my license application. Instead, I learned I have to take another joke of a NY State teacher test. (The tests are all complete jokes, by the way.) I can take the test on July 21, but I have to pay $88 plus a $70 emergency registration fee. Then I have to wait until August 20th to get my score. Then I can call city and state bureaucrats all over again to try to get my license application expedited in time to begin working in early September.

Meanwhile, until this is resolved. I have no guarantee of a teaching job for next school year, despite having glowing references from parents, preschool directors, and co-teachers. One dad, who was referred to me by a preschool director and wants me to be his son’s special ed teacher for next school year, is talking with his attorney on my behalf. We’ll see if anything comes of that.

Oh, and by the way, for some reason, this testing requirement was waived for people applying for a license in Students with Disabilities Grades 1-6, but not for people applying for licenses in Students with Disabilities Grades 5-9, or Students with Disabilities Birth to Grade 2. This is what a New York City Dept of Ed “Certification Hotline Supervisor” told me. Sheer brilliance.

When I asked for this policy in writing, I got “shushed.” The supervisor literally said, “ssssshhhhh” to try to get me to stop asking questions about the policy. Then she said that this was “verbal information” she’d been given by “someone” at the state. I swear these people aren’t even sure of what their own policies are. Who even knows if this is actually the policy. But it’s easier at this point to just pay for and take the new test than spend a week of afternoons calling and emailing pinheads and getting frustrated, and then still probably having to take the test in the end.

Well, all in all, it's just another chapter in my book exposing how the inefficient and laughable city and state bureaucracies are crippling New York City’s public schools and convincing talented teachers to either change careers or teach elsewhere. I've learned that public exposure is the only thing that motivates some people to change.

Autism and Excess Nitrogen – A Possible Connection

2007-05-15T01:19:00.001-04:00

I finally got a chance a few nights ago to really pore over the recent findings of the Autism Genome Project (AGP). The most significant finding was that abnormal functioning of glutamate neurons (related to a mutation in a gene called Neurexin 1) may be a key cause of genetic autism. An even more recent study from the University of Iowa found that the same genetic mutation occurred in the sperm cells of a father with two autistic daughters.

What do these finding mean in plain English? As a special education teacher, I have little scientific or medical expertise. What I do have, as a teacher of children with autism, is a huge motivation to understand this stuff. I also have some pretty good instincts when it comes to autism. Some of my instincts come from the fact that, although I am not autistic, I do at least mildly share some of my students’ symptoms, such as sensory sensitivities, patterned thinking, and abnormal metabolism. (I wrote about this in a previous post.)

So a few nights ago, I felt incredibly inspired to understand and interpret the AGP findings. I think I could be onto something, but I could also be a total quack. My theory is just a theory, so please take it as that.

The AGP research leads me to believe that an abnormally low level of glutamate - an amino acid essential for neurotransmission, protein metabolism, and the bodily disposal of excess nitrogen - may be a primary cause of autism.

While AGP’s pinpointing of a specific genetic mutation is groundbreaking, the idea that autism may be caused by insufficient glutamate functioning is not entirely new. In 1998, a Swedish researcher questioned whether autism was a “hypoglutamatergic disorder.” In other words, is autism related to a glutamate deficiency? AGP’s research suggests it is. (Hypoglutamatergic disorders have also, interestingly, been linked to schizophrenia.)

Since the late 1980’s, two parent-run groups, the Purine Research Society and the National Urea Cycles Disorder Foundation, have also been advocating for scientific research related to abnormal glutamate functioning in children. Both groups point to the urea cycle, which involves the bodily disposal of excess ammonia. The National Urea Cycles Disorder Foundation explains on its website, “In urea cycle disorders, the nitrogen accumulates in the form of ammonia, a highly toxic substance, and is not removed from the body, resulting in hyperammonemia.” The Purine Research Society discusses how children with Purine Autism “excrete too much uric acid in their urine,” and the role that metabolism and genetics play in this process.

The Wikipedia glutamate entry explains the metabolic relationship between glutamate and urea (thank god for Wikipedia):

“Glutamate also plays an important role in the body's disposal of excess or waste nitrogen. Glutamate undergoes deamination, an oxidative reaction catalysed by glutamate dehydrogenase, as follows:

glutamate + water + NAD+ → α-ketoglutarate + NADH + ammonia + H+
Ammonia (as ammonium) is then excreted predominantly as urea, synthesised in the liver. Transamination can thus be linked to deamination, effectively allowing nitrogen from the amine groups of amino acids to be removed, via glutamate as an intermediate, and finally excreted from the body in the form of urea.”

Autism, once considered a strictly neurological disorder, is now being viewed by many cutting-edge doctors and researchers as a whole-body disorder, specifically involving the connection between the digestive/metabolic system and the brain.

Dr. Joan Fallon discussed the possible relationship between protein digestion, amino acids, and autism in her article, Is Autism a Brain Disorder or a Gut Disorder?:

“If protein digestion is not taking place, then the proper number and amounts of amino acids will not be present to make other proteins. The body therefore must prioritize the use of the available amino acids, and it is possible or at least theoretical that the body will sacrifice the use of the available amino acids to allow the most function not necessarily the highest function.” (Caveat: I have no idea why this article was published on a chiropractic website.)

Discover Magazine recently published Autism, It’s Not Just in the Head. The article features Harvard pediatric neurologist Martha Herbert, who writes on her website, “After much thought, I have come to the formulation that autism may be most inclusively understood and helped through an inclusive whole-body systems approach, where genes and environment are understood to interplay.”

This makes total sense to me, since our brains don’t function in isolation from the rest of our bodies, and our bodies don’t function in isolation from our environments.

So here’s my theory, based mainly on the AGP findings and other research cited above: In at least some people with autism, protein digestion is impaired. The amino acid glutamate is thus not being properly broken down in the digestive system, and glutamate is not being sufficiently utilized as a neurotransmitter in the brain. Normal glutamate functioning is necessary for the bodily disposal of excess nitrogen. Insufficient glutamate is causing a build-up of excess nitrogen in the body.

To understand how excess nitrogen may affect our bodies, consider how it affects the earth. Nitrogen pollution in soil and water causes algae blooms - similar to bacterial build-up - and reduces oxygen flow. Biodiversity suffers. Bodies of water become cloudy.

In humans, excess nitrogen may result in bacterial growth in the watery areas of the brain. This may explain the brain inflammation common to many people with autism. It may also explain what some people colloquially call, “brain fog,” or mental/communicative confusion. Neurotransmission, already limited by insufficient glutamate, may be further limited by bacterial build-up.

Magnesium supplementation has been shown by some researchers to reduce autistic symptoms. This may be because magnesium aids protein digestion, which perhaps allows for higher glutamate functioning. Could glutamic acid supplementation possibly help reduce autistic symptoms? (There also exist food additives called “magnesium glutamate” and “magnesium aspartate,” which I don’t totally understand yet. I also don’t totally get how Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is created or why it causes headaches in some people and addictions in others. Also, if any scientists out there are clear on the difference between glutamate and glutamine, please explain.)

Thinking along bio/environmental lines, I find it interesting that Dr. Herbert earned a doctoral degree in History of Consciousness from U.C. Santa Cruz (my undergrad alma-matter), where she focused on the “evolution and development of learning processes in biology and culture.” She then earned her medical degree at Columbia University, and she trained in neurology and child neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. I find her approach to autism research refreshing, and I believe it will take doctors like her, who think outside the neurological box, to uncover the mysteries of autism.

Again, the above theories are a special education teacher’s interpretation of the Autism Genome Project’s recent findings, and they may be on or off the mark. If nothing else, I hope the links I've provided above will help a few people understand the scientific aspects of autism a bit better. Hopefully, in the next year, we’ll be hearing more from the likes of Dr. Herbert and the AGP researchers.

Farewell David Halberstam

2007-04-26T21:49:00.000-04:00

The sudden death of inspiring writer David Halberstam has jolted the world of my old journalism school. As someone with passions for two of Halberstam's favorite topics, baseball and Vietnam, I just want to send out this small but heartfelt tribute to him. His extraordinary contributions to journalism and American history will have an immeasurable influence on many generations to come. His efforts to uncover the truth of a war were truly admirable, and his baseball writing was simply enjoyable. Now I only have 19 more books of his to read - he published 21!

WGBH Eye On Education

2007-04-09T20:52:00.000-04:00

For those of you in the Boston area, WGBH radio (89.7) will be re-airing my interview with Tony Kahn and the podcast version of The Purple Stapler tomorrow morning (4/10) at 6:34am and 8:34am. They are airing it as part of their Eye on Education series.

You can checkout any time you like, but ...

2007-04-07T02:03:00.000-04:00

I've been trying for over a year to resign from the New York City Department of Education. I haven't actually worked for them since early '06. I'd been under the impression for the past few months that I had finally succeeded in resigning and was free from the Court Street beast.

Then, yesterday, I took on the terribly frightening task of making human contact with the Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York (TRS). I wanted to try to get a few thousand dollars of mine out of the city's low interest pension fund. I needed to be sure I was mailing in the right forms, so I called TRS.

My call was clearly annoying to the woman who answered. She pulled up my info on her computer and told me she could see that my resignation date was listed as March 5, 2006. She then went on to tell me that I hadn't actually resigned, so I couldn't access my money. My status with the Department of Ed was still listed as "active."

Here's how the conversation went:

Me: But you said I have an official resignation date listed in your system.

TRS: I see the resignation date, but above the date, it says "status, active." According to our system, you're an active employee.

Me: With a resignation date of over a year ago?

TRS: (Losing patience with me) Ma'am! It says you're active.

Me: I resigned. Your database shows I resigned on March 5, 2006.

TRS: As long as you're active in our system, we can't mail you a check.

Me: How do I become inactive in your system?

TRS: You need to send the Dept of Ed an official resignation letter.

Me: Done. Three times.

TRS: Well, they never got the letter.

Me: Ok. Ok. It's not your fault, I know. But I just have one more question. If the Dept of Ed never got my letter of resignation, then why is there a resignation date listed for me in your system?

TRS: (Puts me on hold for ten minutes.)

Me: (Downloading and then memorizing Styx, Mr. Roboto, while on hold.)

TRS: Here's the Dept of Ed number you need to call.

Sooooooooo ... Monday morning, I'll call the Dept of Ed to try to resign. Again.

What Math Teachers Can Accomplish

2007-03-21T20:39:00.001-04:00

Former high school math teacher Brenda Pfeiffer discovered that a computer glitch was causing the U.S. Department of Education to overcharge her for student loans. After repeatedly attempting to resolve the issue with the Dept. of Ed, she started a class action lawsuit on behalf of millions of people with student loans. The article appeared in yesterday's Washington Post.

This gives me faith that I did the right thing by getting involved in a class action suit related to special ed teaching fellows.

Oh yeah. A small group of teaching fellows and I started a class action.

It's related to the NYC Teaching Fellows and Mercy College. It's complicated and a major headache. I've been wondering lately if I'm doing the right thing, since it's turned into such a major hassle in my life. A friend of mine, to whom I cried about the difficulties of the case, sent me the above article, and she said she thought I was doing the right thing.

More on my class action later. I really don't know how much info on the case I should divulge here, since it is an ongoing case.

Attention!

2007-03-20T22:05:00.000-04:00

I received the following message, word for word, from the New York State Education Department when trying to access my Teach Online account: "Attention! Your account is been disabled."

The more experience I gain with New York educrats, the more comfortable I am becoming with this feeling called "not knowing if I should laugh or cry." I think I might even miss this feeling if I ever leave New York.

Latest from the Autism Genome Project

2007-02-19T13:37:00.000-05:00

The Autism Genome Project is conducting the most advanced scientific research yet on the genetic causes of autism. The results of the first phase of the project were published yesterday in Nature Genetics. Don't bother looking for the article on the Nature Genetics website, though. It's either hidden or for pay only (believe me, I searched for a while). The best summary of the results I've found so far is on China View. (I think one of my old journalism classmates must be working there.) Autism Speaks, which partially funded the first phase of the project, also has an announcement. Great work towards a biological/neurological diagnosis of autism. It should really be an embarassment to the medical community that psychologists are still diagnosing autism. This project gives me hope that we're moving out of the dark ages!

Amazing Moments in Autism

2007-01-09T23:15:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year Blogosphere!

Today David reminded me how amazing and sometimes downright hilarious the world of autism can be. I usually walk David straight from his apartment building to school, but today we were early, and I was desperate for caffeine. We stopped at the Starbucks across the street from his pre-school, and I ordered my usual. In typical Starbucks fasion, the cashier called my drink out to the barista, and the barista repeated it. Having now heard the name of my drink three times, David had it firmly planted in his memory. Three hours later, during circle time, David blurted out (much to his teachers' amusement), "Grande no whip mocha!"

Guilty as charged. I'm sure his parents will be thrilled to learn that their 4-yr-old frequents Starbucks.

From Rockefeller Center

2006-12-22T23:09:00.000-05:00

Happy holidays everyone! I've been on a blogging lull but I'll be back in 2007. Enjoy the pictures from Rockefeller Center and this adorable Christmas slideshow from the NY Times!

Love,

Miss Dennis (on kid sabbatical til '07)

Suing for Autism Services in New York City

2006-11-05T15:22:00.000-05:00

Excellent article in New York Magazine: The Autism Clause. After reading this article, you'll understand why my mildly autistic Upper East Side student gets 35 hours per week of one-on-one autism services while my more severely autistic Bronx student gets 5 hours. (And he's one of the few in the neighborhood who get even that.)

One parent's brief response to the article is also worth reading. "Apparently my demands are appropriate, but the Board provides the services only when sued for them. In other words, if the Board of Ed turns down all 1,000 children needing specialized services, and then loses, say, 250 cases that are brought against it, it would still cost less. It saddens me for the kids whose parents are unable to fight for their rights."

My two students live three miles apart. One is getting excellent services and is beginning to speak clearly and spontaneously. The other is getting less than mediocre services and is rarely understandable through echolalic speech. One lives in a luxury apartment in a doorman building. One lives in a one-room studio neighboring the projects. They are both at the age when services matter most.

I wonder how the Board of Ed would feel about their autism funding strategies after paying a major class action settlement to inner city children with autism.

P.S. Interesting fact hidden at the end of the article: "Last year, Chancellor Klein, who complains that too many lawsuits result in private-school placements, hired ten lawyers specifically to fight special-education claims."

The Case of the Cat on the Motorboat

2006-09-29T00:49:00.003-04:00

Preschoolers come up with the best stories. I have the privilege of working in two preschools every day (Mon-Fri) - one in the morning, one in the afternoon. I go to the schools to support kids on the spectrum who are in mainstream classes. During lunchtime at one of the preschools today, I was half listening to this little comedian boy on one side of me, and half listening to the adorable boy I was there to support. I was basically trying to get the two boys to socialize during lunchtime, but they both ended up talking at me at the same time, vying for attention. I was trying hard to understand both of them, when suddenly I realized Comedian Boy was telling me about his cat flying off a motor boat.

I was like, "Wait, whoa, whoa, what? Your cat flew off a motorboat?"

So he starts the story again from the beginning. His family went out on a motorboat - only he doesn't say motorboat, he says "mozobo." So the family took their cat mozobo-ing with them. (??Who takes a cat mozobo-ing??) They went really fast in the mozobo, and the cat flew out.

I lost it. Once you get the image in your head - I mean a really clear image of a cat flying out of a speeding motorboat - it's really hard not to start cracking up. One of the other teachers overheard me say, "So that's a true story? Your cat really flew out of a motorboat?" The other teacher and I made eye contact for a second and started cracking up. But we tried really hard to contain our laughter, because we were both thinking the same thing: "Oh, no! Maybe we shouldn't be laughing. Maybe it's a true story, and the little boy's cat really did fly off a mozobo!"

So I asked the boy again if it really happened, and he said, "Yep." I asked what happened to the cat. (I'm picturing the family jumping into the water, rescuing the cat). The kid thinks for a few seconds, and says matter of factly, "He died."

So now I really don't know if I should be laughing, but the image of the cat flying out of the motorboat is stuck in my head.

I'm 70% sure this story is mostly fiction. The kid is seriously going to be a comedian. When I remembered the story later in the day, I started cracking up again. I laughed harder than I have in months, and it felt really good.

But what if it's true? What if the family really did bring their cat motorboating, and what if the boy's cat really did fly off the motorboat and die?

Still, you gotta' admit, it's pretty funny.

Amazing Moments in Autism #1

2006-09-18T00:31:00.000-04:00

Remember the toothpicks scene from Rainman? I had an experience like that with one of my 5-year-old students, only with dogs and fewer of them.

We're walking down 1st Avenue. Jude is 'scripting' - repeating various phrases he's memorized from cartoons, computer games, and electronic Elmo toys. "It's a watermelon. It's a pineapple. They're getting on the train. We're going to the zoo. Bye bye! See ya later!" This is generally how he communicates. (And I seriously want to throw all those Elmo toys out the window of his parents' 29th floor apartment. "Bye bye! See ya later!"). Jude is taking in nothing from the environment around us as he scripts. Or so it seems. Just as I begin feeling exasperated from hearing, "Bye bye! See ya' later!" in a high-pitched Elmo tone for the 30th time, Jude busts out with one of his amazing talents.

We walk by a dogwalker with a bunch of dogs on the sidewalk. Jude doesn't look at the dogs at all. To try to break up his scripting, I say, "Hey! Look Jude! A bunch of dogs!" He doesn't appear to be listening to me at all, but then he glances at the dogs for half a second and says, "Twelve dogs. It's a watermelon. It's a pineapple. They're getting on the train. We're going to the zoo. Bye bye! See ya later!" If I hadn't been watching him carefully, I wouldn't have even noticed Jude's split second glance at the dogs.

I start counting the dogs. They're moving all around, and I'm looking back as we pass the dogs, going "one, two three," in my head. I re-count the dogs to be sure my number is accurate. Fifteen seconds or so later, and halfway down the block, I feel pretty confident that my tally is correct. Twelve dogs.

I don't know why I even bother to verify these things anymore. He's always right, and he's always immediately confident in his calculation. But how the hell does he do it? How do you glance at a bunch of moving dogs for a nanosecond and immediately know that there are twelve? What's going on in his brain to make him be able to do that? I'm not particularly bad with numbers myself. I've been known to count things for no apparent reason on occassion, and I sort of understand that it can be relaxing. But this kid blew me away.

It's easy to assume that kids with autism are taking in nothing from their environment. But in a way, they're really taking in everything. It can just be hard for them to communicate all the details of what they're experiencing. They see, hear and feel details most of us miss. Jude doesn't think in terms of "a bunch of dogs." He has a hard time seeing the big picture. But he gets the details right every single time - right down to the perfect, annoying pitch of Elmo's voice. "Bye bye!"

Best Teacher Blog Post Ever

2006-09-17T12:05:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I only just discovered this. Thanks to the Science Teacher Formerly Known as Ms. Frizzle for leading me to this Hedgetoad gem, "Why I Miss Teaching Junior High." There are no words.

Teacher Licensing Issues - Still

2006-09-12T22:34:00.000-04:00

They are driving me mad. Beating me down to the ground. Not the autistic preschoolers. The adults who run the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department. Two completely out of control bureaucracies with employees who only give cookie cutter responses - if they give responses at all. It's dehumanizing. So dehumanizing I can't even muster up the energy to write complete sentences. I want out. Of this state. Of this city. Of this system.

New Job

2006-09-07T17:13:00.000-04:00

Back. Exhausted! Started new job with preschoolers with autism. Lots to tell, but no time to tell it yet. Major tantrum from one kid wore me out today. How do you tell parents that they are overcoddling their kids and encouraging bad behavior at home? I already know I need to have this conversation with one kid's parents. I can't be the only one who pushes him to change his behavior, or he'll make my life a nightmare. Autism and bad behavior. Two different things. Oh, and potty training. The best part of my new job.

Traveling

2006-08-31T10:22:00.000-04:00

In South America. Will be back Monday!

Purple Stapler Podcast

2006-08-15T00:20:00.000-04:00

Public radio veteran Tony Kahn interviews Miss Dennis about teaching special education in the South Bronx. Miss Dennis reads a version of The Purple Stapler. To listen to the podcast, visit WGBH's Morning Stories website, or download the MP3 file here. On the website, it's currently the second story down - "My Little Purple Stapler." No need for downloading on the site.

Dear Commisioner Mills,

2006-08-13T22:56:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Statcounter, I am aware that you, or someone who works for you, found my letter on this blog on August 11 at 10:48am through a Google blog search for "commissioner mills." I am impressed that your office is interested in what bloggers have to say about you. Clearly, you are savvy to the wieldy presence that bloggers now have in national political and education arenas. Being appointed, after all, does not make you immune to public outrage.

I think it's great that your office was able to access the letter on my blog before receiving the paper copy that I mailed to you. You (or your colleague) spent four minutes on the page, just enough time to read and consider the letter. Since I now know (and have proof) that your office accessed the letter, I am holding you accountable. I expect a response. My current teaching license expires on August 31st, and I still have not received a response from the Office of Teaching Initiatives. I do not expect you to allow an inefficient licensing system to keep a fully qualified special education teacher out of the classroom in New York City.

By the way, you may also be interested in checking out some of the blogs that linked to my letter: USA Today's Tech_Space, The Carnival of Education - Week 79, Teach Effectively. Enjoy.

Sincerely,

Miss Dennis

P.S. If you did not conduct the Google blog search, and would like to know who in your office did, I'd be happy to provide you with their Internet Protocol address. The Internet Service Provider is New York State Education Department in Albany, New York.

Will Politicians Respond to a Special Ed Teacher?

2006-08-07T00:51:00.000-04:00

Mr. Joel Klein
Chancellor
New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007

Mr. Richard P. Mills
Commissioner
State Education Department
Education Building
Albany, NY 12234

Mr. Michael Bloomberg
Mayor of New York City
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Dear Messrs. Klein, Mills and Bloomberg:

I am a highly qualified special educator with a Master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley. I teach children with autism. I completed the New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) program in June ‘05. I would like to inform you of the types of bureaucratic roadblocks that many highly qualified New York City and State teachers experience when applying for their teaching licenses. I would also appreciate your help in getting to the bottom of why my permanent special education teaching license has not yet been issued.

I have called and emailed NYCTF and the NY State Office of Teaching Initiatives about this matter. I have not yet received a response. The details I describe below are rather complicated and lengthy, but I feel it is important that you follow them so you can better understand the extent of the hassles that many of your current and potential teachers are experiencing. We are not the ones creating these complications. We just want to teach.

I began applying for my permanent teaching license more than one year ago, in July 2005, when I completed the NYCTF program and met all qualifications for the permanent license. At that time, I discovered that my Transitional B license had never been issued, despite the fact that I properly submitted my application via NYCTF and Mercy College in Summer 2003. NYCTF and Mercy staff assured me in Fall 2003 that my Trans B license had been issued, but when I asked for a copy of the license, they told me that NYSED did not issue paper licenses. Even Vicki Bernstein (Director of Alternative Certification) told me during a telephone conversation that my Trans B license had been issued. She was wrong. It is now clear that she never even bothered to check.

So after two years of teaching special ed in the South Bronx through NYCTF and taking night and weekend education courses, I discovered that I didn’t even have a basic teaching license. Mercy College and NYCTF blamed the state for the problem, and the state blamed Mercy. Mercy acknowledged that they had a copy of my correctly completed Trans B application dated August 2003. Still, I had to submit an entirely new Trans B application. This mess with my Trans B application was finally cleared up in January 2006 (almost 2.5 years after it should have been issued). In the end, my Trans B license was issued 01/27/06, made effective 9/1/03, and it expires 8/31/06. (Yes, these dates are correct.)

Once my Trans B license was issued, I was finally able to apply for the permanent license (which, again, I’ve had the qualifications for since 7/05). I received confirmation through USPS return receipt that my permanent application was received by NYSED on 3/23/06. My information was entered into the Teach Online system on 4/29/06. I applied through individual transcript review (since Mercy dropped the ball on offering a special ed degree, but that is another long, frustrating issue). I received a letter from the Office of Teaching Initiatives dated 4/29/06, stating that my permanent application had been received and that the evaluation process could take up to 4-6 weeks because of the high volume of applications.

It's been over 14 weeks since that letter was written, over 19 weeks since my permanent application was actually received by the Office of Teaching Initiatives, and over one year since I began the process of applying for my permanent license only to find that my Trans B license had never been issued. I still don’t have my permanent license.

This is beyond outrageous. If I were you, frankly, I’d be mortified that this is happening in New York. I began my teaching career in Vietnam, and I never imagined that the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department would subject me to more red tape than the Hanoi Ministry of Education.

I am currently transitioning to a new teaching job, and I do not appreciate having to live with the anxiety of not knowing whether or not I will be able to keep my new job because of all this trouble with my license. I am quite sure that my students and their parents would not appreciate losing a highly qualified autism teacher due to a bureaucratic snafu. My Trans B license expires in just a few weeks. There are no deficiencies in my qualifications for a permanent license. There is no reason for the hold up.

New York is in desperate need of special educators, particularly highly qualified special educators who have extensive autism training. Why put someone in my position through so much trouble when I am eager to teach children with autism, and I am more than qualified? There is something seriously wrong with this system, and I am by no means the only teacher who is fed up with it. I hope each of your offices will take action to help me and the many other teachers in simililar situations. No qualified teacher should have to put up with such nonsense.

Sincerely,

Miss Dennis
Teacher/Journalist

How NYC is Failing it Special Ed Students

2006-07-22T20:45:00.000-04:00

Edweek’s blog led me to this three-part WNYC radio story, “How NYC is Failing Its Special Education Students.” I highly recommend listening to the whole series. It originally aired in June.

Below is one of the WNYC graphs depicting how New York City’s high school administrators dole out disproportionate numbers of IEP (Individualized Education Program) diplomas. IEP diplomas are not really diplomas at all. What they communicate to potential employers and colleges is, “This is a special ed student who does not have the intellectual ability to graduate from high school.” From my experience, administrators in NYC use these “diplomas” as a way to get rid of their “problem” learning disabled students (rather than taking the time to actually educate them).

Two of my former principals issued IEP diplomas to students who showed up to school maybe 20 percent of the time. They also gave them to students who showed up every day, tried their best, and could have easily gotten local diplomas, if not Regents diplomas, if they had just stayed one extra semester in high school. Such students should be encouraged to stay in school for a few more months to get a diploma that will actually help them succeed in the future. High school special education students should also be clearly educated about what an IEP diploma actually entails. WNYC reporter Beth Fertig does an excellent job covering this and other issues affecting NYC’s special education students and their families.

I'm Insubordinate, Part 2

2006-07-10T00:38:00.000-04:00

The day after Principal Puffschmuck charged me with insubordination, I gave her a copy of the relevant section of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). I was still hoping she’d see the light - or at least something remotely resembling logic in the area of special ed.

IDEA is basically the bible of special education professionals. It clearly states that a minimum of two teachers must be present at special ed annual review meetings – “at least one special education teacher of the child” and “at least one general education teacher of the child.” (The general ed teacher requirement is waived if the child doesn’t participate in general ed at all, which was not the case for students at my school.) This bare minimum requirement was also clearly spelled out in a NYC Dept. of Ed “high priority” memo that was given to all principals.

Of course, successful annual reviews involve not just two teachers, but all of the child’s teachers and service providers. How Puffschmuck thought it made sense that the teachers at annual review meetings did not need to be the child’s actual teachers was beyond me. Aside from being a law, it should be common sense to anyone who even remotely considers the purpose of annual reviews that the teachers attending these meetings cannot be any random teachers from the school. They must be teachers “of the child.”

The purpose of annual reviews is to discuss and write the child’s academic (and in some cases behavioral) goals for the upcoming year. Responsible parents attend these meetings and take them very seriously. High school students are also encouraged to attend their own annual review meetings. After the meeting, the agreed upon goals are entered into a legal document called the IEP (Individualized Education Plan). The child is then promoted or held back based on whether or not s/he meets these goals.

So … uh ... yeah … it’s kinda important that the teachers who run this process and write the goals actually know and teach the child. Yet Puffschmuck had ordered me to conduct annual reviews and write IEPs for students I did not teach or even know in any capacity. And when I told her I could not follow through on this order because, as a special ed professional, I knew it was not in the best interests of my students and their parents, she wrote me up for insubordination and threatened my job. When was it that Puffschmuck lost sight of the fact that she was a public educator and not a military dictator?

One of the many sad realities of inner city teaching is that some parents don’t show up for their kids’ annual reviews. This seems to make some administrators think it’s okay to cut corners and further disservice the child by turning the annual review process into a meaningless charade. I don’t care how much of a pain in the ass a child is or how irresponsible his or her parents are. Every special ed student has the right to a meaningful annual review process. Living in the projects, having a learning disability, and having parents who don’t show up for school meetings does not make a child open game to further educational injustices. This is not an issue I am willing to waiver on. This is why the fight with Puffschmuck was so important to me. This was why the annual reviews needed to be done right. They needed to be meaningful. We owed it to the students.

But back to being insubordinate. The Individuals with Disabilities Act was not proof enough to Puffschmuck that she was wrong. She told me I’d have to go through a union grieving process if I wanted to try to get the letter of insubordination out of my file. A letter like this can ruin a teacher’s future career options. The teachers’ union rep in my school was a nice enough guy and a well-respected veteran teacher, but I’d often heard other teachers accuse him of being in cahoots with the administration, so I was skeptical. My district union rep was awful. He knew nothing about special ed. He was condescending, and he liked to claim credit for victories teachers actually won on their own. I also tried speaking with a union rep who supposedly focused on special ed issues. She was not even aware of the wording of IDEA.

So one day I said, “F*** Puffschmuck. F*** the union.” (Note: I didn’t begin cursing until I became a teacher.) It was clearly all a big charade. Sadly, that was how I was beginning to view the entire NYC Dept of Ed. A big charade. But if there’s one thing I learned in journalism school, it's how to pick up a phone and get through to people. I called the Superintendent’s office. With a little persistence, I reached the Deputy Superintendent. By some amazing stroke of good fortune, I found myself communicating with a South Bronx administrator who still had his wits about him and who did not view teachers as the enemy. (They exist!) We had a rational conversation. I faxed him my letter and Puffschmuck’s letter. After reading them, he called me back and said, “When you’re right, you’re right, Miss Dennis.” The next day he told Puffschmuck to remove the letter of insubordination from my file.

The end. Or so you’d think.

One of the UFT (teachers’ union) reps later reprimanded me for speaking to the Deputy Superintendent directly. “You shouldn’t talk to them. You can’t make deals with them.” Well …. no, that wouldn’t be in the best interest of the UFT, would it? Teachers and superintendents actually communicating directly and respectfully? If this trend caught on it’d be the death of the UFT. Of course, the UFT still took credit for my victory. (Glad to know my 80 bucks a month in union fees were worth it.)

Puffschmuck never mentioned her conversation with her boss - the Deputy Superintendent - but it became obvious that she wasn’t going to let it go. This was the same woman who’d fired one of our English teachers (the only teacher who’d ever attempted to start an AP program at the school) after he showed other teachers a story he’d written about his experiences with Puffschmuck. Puffschmuck was portrayed unfavorably, to say the least. And then bam! The AP teacher was gone. He didn’t put up much of a fight, though. I think he wanted to get as far away from Puffshmuck as possible.

Now it was my turn. I’d made Puffschmuck look bad, and she just couldn’t stop herself. She began lurking around my classroom, hoping to find some technicality to nail me on. Meanwhile – in other news - the school’s hallways were a zoo, even during classes. Most students didn’t even know who Puffschmuck was. Seriously. She was an interim, first-year principal, and she had no idea how to lead. (She came from teaching ESL in Brooklyn, and I still don’t get why she was so clueless as a principal.) She had never even introduced herself to the students. It sounds unbelievable, but it’s true. This is the kind of sad leadership that makes bad South Bronx high schools even worse.

Puffschmuck would occasionally walk down the hall, and the students would just keep doing whatever they were doing. They didn’t even know she was the principal. One day, she came into my classroom and said she needed to see one of my students. I told the student to go to Puffschmuck’s office at the end of class. He said, “But Miss! I don’t even know that lady!”

Puffschmuck had a difficult time finding anything wrong in my classroom. My room was physically immaculate. Puffschmuck herself had encouraged other teachers to model their classrooms after mine (this was before our insubordination battle had begun). I'd put my all into turning a tiny, crappy classroom into a pleasant learning environment. I planned my lessons weeks in advance. I returned my students’ papers with abundant comments that they were eager to read. I had applied for and received a private grant for one of my literacy units. My students’ test scores were (relatively) good. Several of my special ed students – who’d been classified as 3rd-5^th grade readers - passed the English Regents Exam.

I’m not saying I was the perfect teacher. It was only my second year of teaching special ed. Some of my students still had severe behavioral problems. Some still cut class. My emotions sometimes got the best of me (especially after a night of work-induced insomnia). I had - and still have - a long way to go. But considering the conditions, and compared to the quality of teaching around me, I was doing a pretty damn good job.

So after snooping around my classroom for a few weeks, here’s what Puffschmuck came up with. I didn’t respond. Puffschmuck was fired at the end of the year.

Dear Miss Dennis,

2006-07-10T00:28:00.000-04:00

When I entered your classroom on Wednesday during the double block English class, periods 5/6, I observed that the shades were completely drawn and the room was darkened since there was evidence that the students had been watching a video clip.

There must be accommodations made for either natural light or ceiling light to be present. Students should have some interactive activity that they can engage in during a pause or break in the viewing, such as, writing answers to questions or a “turn and talk” activity and light is necessary for them to perform these activities.

Also, please ensure that lights are turned on for all other classroom activities.

Sincerely,

Principal Puffschmuck

I'm Insubordinate, Part 1

2006-06-30T01:09:00.000-04:00

Nothing scares ineffective administrators more than teachers who know how to write effective letters calling for educational change. It took about six months of teaching special ed in the South Bronx for me to get fed up and start writing such letters.

I was amazed when my first letter to the NY State Education Department actually got a decent response. I think it helped that I signed it “Miss Dennis, Teacher/Journalist.” Shortly after I wrote that letter, by coincidence, the NY Times published a piece about how badly the NYC Dept of Ed was screwing up special ed, and the reporter used my school as an example. I had nothing to do with the Times article, but my bosses assumed I did. Then the mother of one of my students started a lawsuit through Advocates for Children. A school social worker had recommended the mother to Advocates, but again, my bosses thought I’d done it. (Some of my co-workers were good at making complaints behind the scenes while kissing ass and stroking egos on the surface. This has never been one of my talents.)

All this finally led to my school getting placed under state investigation. At the beginning of my second year of teaching, I actually saw some improvements. We got two more special ed teachers and smaller classes. As usual, my bosses blamed me for the state investigation, but even if I really was to blame, I can’t say I felt terribly bad. Improvements were being made. Of course, the principal and assistant principal began to hate my guts, and they set out to make my work life hell. They were big enough to acknowledge the whole time that they thought I was a good teacher, but that didn’t stop them from trying to cover their asses by isolating me from the new special ed teachers and trying to get rid of me. I was a threat to their jobs. Never mind that my actions were in the best interest of my special ed students.

I was amazed by the sheer desperation of my bosses' tactics. We could have had a great school if they’d spent the same amount of energy on improving education as they did on devising tactics to save their jobs. Despite the basic changes they were forced to make because of the state investigation, they continued to mistreat special ed students. About half of the 95 special ed students at my school were still programmed in the wrong classes. One of my students had his class schedule changed 8 times in one semester. Another student sat all semester in a science class he had already passed. Most students were not getting their related services. Very few of my "emotionally disturbed" students got counseling. Parents received a letter about how the school couldn't offer speech therapy. The letter came with a list of outside speech therapists, but when one mother called every number on the list, she found that not one of them was accepting new cases. It had been two years since her son had received his legally mandated speech therapy.

As all this administrative bs was going on, I was still trying my best to do my actual job - teaching learning disabled and emotionally disturbed teenagers. I became pissed off and emotionally drained at work each day. I also began to develop a strange sense of humor about the ridiculousness of everything that was going on around me.

Someone over Chaos Theory described this blog as “painful and hilarious at once.” That’s inner city teaching for you – painful and hilarious. These letters from my ex-principal are painful for me to look at again, but they’re also kinda hilarious in retrospect. The principal has since been fired. I saved her letters of reprimand, knowing that one day they’d be great fodder for a book – or, as it turns out, a blog – just like Up the Down Staircase, only 40 years later.

The principal’s below letters are in response to this: Dear Principal, You Want Me to Do What? I’ve been meaning to post her response for months now, but I actually have a strong, negative physical reaction to even touching her letters. So it took a while. It helps if you know a little about special ed laws here, but those who don’t will still get the gist. First, read my letter.

So after giving that letter to my principal, word quickly spread in the mouse-infested teacher's lounge that I would be officially charged with “insubordination.” Somehow, I missed that I had signed up to work for the Politburo. The next week, I got this:

Dear Ms. Dennis:

Please report to my office on November 3 for a meeting to discuss your refusal to send the parent notification letters to conduct the annual review. You are advised to bring the UFT Chairperson to the meeting.

Sincerely,

Principal Puffschmuck

There was no discussion at the "meeting." Principal Puffschmuck immediately told me she was writing me up for insubordination. I again tried to explain that what I was being asked to do was not in the best interest of my students and that it went against special ed laws. (You’d think the principal of a school currently under state investigation might be concerned about this.) As I was speaking, Principal Puffschmuck got a phone call and yelled, “This meeting is over!” The next day, I got this:

Dear Ms. Dennis:

On November 3, I met with you and your union representative to review your refusal to complete and prepare for mailing, parent notification letters to conduct an annual review
when directed to do so in a memo, dated October 29, that I personally handed to you and which memo you accepted.

Also, in a verbal exchange on that day, you told me that you would not create the draft of the goals and objectives for the special education students whose annual reviews had not been completed.

At our conference, I afforded you an opportunity to respond. You stated that you felt it was not in the best interests of the students to draft the goals and objectives that had been assigned to you because you did not service these students in any of your classes.

Based on the above, I conclude that you failed to comply with my directive in a memo dated October 29, requiring you to complete and mail parent notification letters for the purpose of conducting annual reviews for special education students. As such, you were insubordinate. While you may disagree with the reasoning behind the assignment, that does not give you the right to refuse to comply with an appropriate directive from your supervisor. I am always happy to discuss any concerns you have, however, I cannot accept your refusal to follow my directive when given.

This incident may result in disciplinary action, including an unsatisfactory rating and termination.

Yours Truly,

Principal Puffschmuck

Apparently, a "directive" asking me to do something against the laws of my profession is "an appropriate directive." Stay blogged for I’m Insubordinate, Part 2, in which Principal Puffschmuck writes me up for turning off the lights while showing a DVD program.

Hip Hop Radio Wars

2006-06-27T17:54:00.000-04:00

I have often cursed Hot 97's influence on South Bronx teens, so I was happy to read this column by Errol Louis. Well worth the read. Hot 97 - R.I.P.

Thanks Yahoo

2006-06-22T00:45:00.000-04:00

I've been neglecting Your Mama lately, but it's nice to know someone over at Yahoo Picks still noticed. New readers, welcome! Here are some of my popular posts:

The Purple Stapler
Old School Wisdom from a Burnt-Out Counselor
Word of the Day: Tedious
Beautiful Absurdities
Dear Principal, You Want Me To Do What?
El Bronx Comics
Miss Dennis is a Latin King
John Stossel: Stupid in the Studio

Thanks for visiting! I'll be posting more stories and commentary soon.

How Aspergery are You?

2006-05-13T16:03:00.001-04:00

It's my favorite new adjective. Aspergery. I came across it while reading Time Magazine's series of autism articles. In one of the articles, The Geek Syndrome, reporter J. Madeleine Nash writes, "There is no question that many successful people — not just scientists and engineers but writers and lawyers as well — possess a suite of traits that seem to be, for lack of a better word, Aspergery."

I'm currently making a career move from teaching kids with a range of disabilities to exclusively teaching kids with autism. Why? While other teachers seem to get exasperated by their students with Asperger's and autism, I get along with them easily. I really don't get the problem. These kids are amazing. Who wouldn't want to teach them? At the beginning of the semester, I was warned by several teachers about Jeremy, a 9th grade "troublemaker." Teachers apparently couldn't control him. One teacher said, "I just don't know what his problem is." This is why EVERY teacher needs special ed training. I realized within two minutes of meeting Jeremy that he has a classic case of Asperger's. As yet another example of the stellar special ed services in the South Bronx, Jeremy, despite having a very clear IEP indicating that he should be in small classes, had been placed in large high school classes with no special ed support. According to a guidance counselor, Jeremy's IEP had been "lost in the shuffle." He wasn't placed in my class until spring semester.

Jeremy is wonderful. I hang out with him during lunch. He fixes the classroom computers and shares his unique life insights. One of his more colorful insights came during a fixation on breakfast cereals: "Apple Jacks make sense. I realized that this morning. They make sense. They just do." (He went on for about 15 minutes.) Jeremy also easily passed the Living Environment Regents exam on his first try. Although I try not to show favorites, the other kids are obviously becoming jealous of my relationship with Jeremy. One day, hyperactive Christopher began banging on my classroom door during lunch. Jeremy was absent that day. When I ignored Christopher's banging, he shouted, "If I was Jeremy Stevens you would let me in!!!" (Christopher actually banged out each syllable of the sentence on the door as he yelled this - we'd had a grammar lesson earlier that day.) What can I say? He was right. I love kids with autism, and I know that teaching them is what I want to do with my life.

As I've begun to interact more with my students with autism, I've also begun to realize that there is a reason I understand and get along so well with them. I'm a bit Aspergery myself. I would certainly never claim to have any form of autism, because I don't, but mild Obsessive Compulsive Disorder does seem to run in my family, and I believe OCD and Asperger's are neurologically linked. In his brilliant portrayal of an OCD-inflicted detective on the hit USA show Monk, Tony Shalhoub shows us just how quirky, exhausting and lovable people with severe OCD can be. Some Monk fans believe Shalhoub's performance more closely resembles a person with Asperger's or high functioning autism. In any case, Detective Adrian Monk reminds me of Jeremy. A lot. He also reminds me, to a lesser extent, of my sister, several friends, and - oh crap! - myself.

I suspect there are many people out there who have more Aspergery minds than they're willing to admit. Taking a look at my own mind helps me better understand my students with autism. I recently began working with Pre-K kids in their homes. One four-year old girl lines up all her stuffed animals on her bed in a particular order, and she has a tantrum when they're out of order. (We're working on this.) Another student fixates on symbols. On the playground, while his non-autistic classmates naturally socialize and play together, this boy naturally gravitates toward every letter or number to be found on the playground - usually on signs. This is in some ways great because he's learning to read at an unusually early age. But it's not so great when he socially isolates himself. Like Adrian Monk says, "It's a blessing. And a curse."

Hanging out with these kids has helped me recall some of my own childhood 'quirks.' Like many of my students, I have hypersensitive hearing, and I've always been easily overwhelmed by certain noises. I used to get unusually upset by seemingly minor sounds around the house. I also remember fixating on symbols, creating patterns, and repeating them in my head when I was a kid. I used to sit in my childhood living room, stare at the digital clock on the VCR, and repeat in my head, "Eight flash flash ten. Eight flash flash ten." The "flash flash" came from the blinking colon on the digital clock. Who even notices that? I also remember fixating on street signs while sitting in the back of the family car and having to repeat, "Stop ahead, stop ahead, stop line, stop" eight times before reaching a stop sign. (There was a "Stop Ahead" sign, then "Stop Ahead" was also written on the road, then "Stop" was written on the road, then there was a white line on the road, and then, finally, there was the stop sign. Thus, "Stop ahead, stop ahead, stop line, stop.") I'm not sure what I thought would happen to me if I didn't repeat this phrase eight times, but I just had to do it. I think it started when I was eight.

As many girls do, I kept these things hidden, and no one knew what was going on in my mind. (I believe both autism and OCD are under-diagnosed in girls.) I still occasionally catch myself memorizing a license plate for no apparent reason or washing my hands far too many times. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to check the alarm clock that I already checked ten times before falling asleep. Of course, my apartment locks can never be checked too often. Sound familiar? I think we all, to some extent, have minds that cause us to do seemingly bizarre, repetitive things from time to time. We all have our neuroses. (And I'm willing to bet that those who spend time in the blogosphere have them even more so than others.)

I'm one of the lucky ones. My life has not been held hostage by OCD, Asperger's, or any form of autism. I believe fewer lives would be if, rather than judging and fearing children with neurological disorders, more people - especially more educators - were willing to take a look at their own minds and see how much they have in common with these kids. Often, when I tell people I teach kids with autism, they'll say things like, "Oh I could never do that. It would be too sad." Sad?! I don't find it the least bit sad. Kids with autism are amazing. Frankly, there's something sad about people who don't get that.

Losing My Faculties

2006-05-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

Losing My Faculties by Brendan Halpin is THE best teacher memoir. Period. Get it and forget about Frank McCourt. Halpin manages to write with a hilarious, ego-free voice. How many teachers write with an ego-free voice? Not me, that's for sure. Every other teacher memoir I've read has somehow annoyed me. Losing My Faculties is different. It's obvious Halpin cares infinitely more about kids than kissing ass. He taught high school English in Boston area public schools. And no, I don't know the guy.

An excerpt:

"One day John busts out with, 'Your mama's so black she went to a night class and got marked absent!' I am getting ready to yell at him, and I'm really afraid I am going to have to pull Latoya off of him in about two seconds. How could a white kid be so dumb as to make such a totally racist joke?

The class explodes with laughter. Latoya says, 'Good one John,' and he gets high fives all around the table. I have no idea what just happened."

New Housing Incentives for Out-of-Town Teachers who are Going to Sell at $20,000 Higher and Get the Hell Out

2006-04-19T20:24:00.000-04:00

So most teachers in NYC have probably heard by now about the new housing incentives and signing bonuses that the NYC Department of Education is offering new special education, math and science teachers who agree to teach for three years at the city's high needs schools. The DOE is trying to lure teachers from other parts of the country by offering down payment and rent help. Today's front page New York Times article also indicates that former New York City teachers can get the incentives if they've been out of the system for at least two years.

Helloooooo. I've been teaching special education in the South Bronx for almost three years. I'm also trying to get together enough money for a down payment on a Manhattan apartment. So guess what? I'm quitting now and coming back in two years. That's what their plan encourages all current special education, math and science teachers at high needs schools to do, right?

Ok, it's not that I don't want the kids of NYC to get a few great new teachers. Of course I do. But unsuspecting teacher souls out there in other parts of the country and the world, be warned. What is it they're offering? About $5000 toward a down payment for three years of teaching in a hell hole? Okay, at least it's something, and in other parts of the world that might be a significant chunk. But in NYC, you need a down payment of AT LEAST $35,000 to get a decent place with a decent mortgage deal. And by "decent place" I mean tiny, cockroach infested studio apartment. I’ve been looking. And the rent help is what? $400 a month? Again, at least it's something, but a nice one bedroom apartment in Manhattan will run you $2000 a month. Oh, and don't expect to actually get ANY money, even your regular monthly salary, during your first months of teaching because the DOE often messes up the paychecks of new employees.

Oh, and for any special education teachers out there considering taking this bait, just remember that when the Teacher's Choice checks come, you get less money than everyone else simply because you are a special education teacher. And the UFT (teachers' union) agreed to this. And you have to pay more than $80 per month in union dues, whether or not you really want to be in the union. It's an automatic deduction. Also, you will be expected to do your principal's work for half of his/her salary in addition to your teaching duties, because virtually no administrators in this city seem to know what they're doing when it comes to special education. Either they haven't been trained or they don't care. In many cases both. Of course, YOU will have a deep conscience about all that is unfair to your special education students, so you will try your best to fix the problems because you won’t be able to sleep if you don’t. And all the injustices you discover will drive you crazy and raise your blood pressure if you do. And I mean crazy crazy.

To say I'm a little bitter would be like saying the Bush administration is "a little worried" right now. As someone already commented in my below Beautiful Absurdities post, "All your hard work and dedication...and now someone new from outside the NYC school system can do your job and get financially rewarded with a signing bonus and $400/month for housing. It's nice to know you're worth it, even if our own union and the DOE don't think so."

Seriously.

Why is it so f***in hard for DOE bureaucrats to understand that they need to find a way to hang on to their current good teachers rather than continuing to bake up these schemes to get new people in who are just going to leave again? It's hard enough for out-of-towners to make New York City work for them. And when you add moving here to teach at the worst schools in the city with insane administrators? Fuggedaboudit. I suppose that's what the incentives are all about - creating reasons to stay. But please. $5000 of a $35,000 down payment (AT LEAST) for a cockroach infested studio apartment ain't gonna' help. How many teachers do you know who have $30,000 saved anyway? And the few who do will realize that in three years, their infested studio will be going for $20,000 more on the market. And DOE bureaucrats actually think people from out of town are going to stay? Please. Teachers are smarter than that.

The city is going to be paying about $1.5 million for this. But they can't fix the ghetto floor in my classroom (as my students call it)?

Here's the last line of today's NY Daily News article about the DOE housing incentives: But, said Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, "The most important citizens that will benefit from this program are our children."

Uh. Do I even need to get into what a load of crap that sounds like to me right now? And it's "citizens who." That’s how you speak to the press Mr. Deputy Mayor? You need a grammar lesson. Not to mention a common sense lesson.

Beautiful Absurdities

2006-04-14T01:59:00.000-04:00

Can't sleep tonight, so I thought I'd get back to blogging about the beautiful absurdities of my classroom.

Here’s how my 5th period conversation went with Raynard, who’s officially and actually “emotionally disturbed.” (Students are often not ACTUALLY what their IEPs say they are, but in this case ... uh, yeah.) Raynard has good reasons to be disturbed, but that’s not always easy to remember.

Raynard: (30 minutes late to a 43 minute class, banging furiously on door in the middle of an extraordinarily successful lesson on prime factorization. Students are actually giving each other high fives when they get the right answer. It's a teacher’s dream. Raynard sees this and suddenly wants in.) Yo! Lemme in! Lemme in! Yo! You mad stupid. Lemme in! (Raynard’s face is now pressed against the door’s window, deforming his nose, mouth and cheeks.)

Me: (Approaching door and looking sternly at Raynard, trying hard not to laugh at his nose, mouth and cheeks.) I will let you in when you stop banging and yelling and start acting like one of my students.

Raynard: Yo, this bitch is mad dumb! Mr. I! Miss D won’t let me in!

Incompetent Dean: (Unlocks door and lets Raynard in, completely destroying teacher authority, prime factorization lesson and whatever lesson I was about to teach Raynard about entering classrooms respectfully. Incompetent Dean knows full well that Raynard cuts every class, but still feels need to reprimand me.) Miss Dennis, you need to let Raynard in. You know students cannot wander the hallways of this school. Blah blah blah … liability … blah blah blah.

Me: (Turning red with anger for a few secs, thinking, “Then why have you been letting him and 25 other students wander the halls in plain sight for the past 30 mins? Liability my ass.” Then I remember my recent attempts at meditation and opt for a more peaceful approach.) You know what? We’re having a very good lesson on prime factorization, Raynard. Why don’t you join us?

Raynard: (Who is a hell of a lot smarter than he acts.) Prime wa wa wa wa wa?

(Class begins giggling.)

Me: Raynard, have a seat.

Raynard: (Sits on Jezibel’s desk) Jezibel’s mad fine. You mad fine, Jez.

Me: (Losing patience) Raynard, we are all aware of the fact that you think Jezibel is mad fine. You say it every day. I’m sick of hearing it. We’re all sick of hearing it. And Jezibel is sick of you hitting on her. Now have a seat.

(Class is now on verge of cracking up.)

Raynard: I wasn’t hitting her!

(Class now completely loses it. I lose it. Lesson destroyed. Raynard laughs too, but with a look on his face like he doesn’t really get it. We’ll try again tomorrow.)

How Cool is This?

2006-04-02T20:13:00.000-04:00

I just learned that Your Mama's Mad Tedious was mentioned last week on USA Today's Tech Space blog. No wonder I've been getting so many hits lately. Thanks Angela Gunn! Great encouragement for getting back to writing.

Hiatus

2006-03-07T00:29:00.000-05:00

Currently pursuing an adult social life outside of my school. Will be back soon with more posts.

Miss Dennis

Above the Bronx

2006-02-18T15:34:00.000-05:00

Last night I dreamt I was flying over the South Bronx projects in my white ao dai - the dress that my students in Thai Nguyen gave me on Vietnamese Teacher's Day. I've never felt so free.

Ao dai history.

Stickin' it to Stossel

2006-02-13T21:23:00.000-05:00

Just got word that the NYC teachers' union is planning an anti-Stossel rally. I'm not much of a rallier or a union girl myself, but I do think John Stossel's a whack job on par with Tom Cruise. (Both smugly broadcast predictable party lines while actually believing themselves to be intelligent men.) But will protesting Stossel only make him more popular with his Libertarian fanbase?

Last month, Your Mama's Mad Tedious got some serious traffic after I turned on 20/20's "Stupid in America" and felt like barfing. Stossel insulted public school teachers for, among other things, not working hard enough. He did not have one nice thing to say about us. He did not mention the issue of low pay, and he conveniently blamed everything on unions. In lieu of actually barfing, I posted John Stossel: Stupid in the Studio, in which I pretty much spewed my anger about teacher voices in this country being muted and disrespected.

I wrote for my own sanity, but a lot of people seemed to relate. I got some thoughtful comments from people who truly want to see education improvements in America. I also got a few abusive comments from anonymous, anti-teacher Stosselites. This one's a gem: "Let me guess: You're an underperforming public school teacher, and an enthusiastic dues-paying member of the powerful and left-leaning NEA. Right?" Holy knee-jerk. Dude didn't even read my post, in which I clearly say I'm not a union supporter. Some of us have minds and views that are not so easily pigeon-holed. But then again, I'm just a special ed teacher. I teach the troubled ones. Why would anyone want to consider my opinion on education?

If you want smug, party line politics, take a one-way ride back to Stosselville. And check out Cruiseville on your way. Your Mama's Mad Tedious is highly allergic to bandwagons, mindsets and all things predictable. (Which is why I love my students - true originals.)

Here's what the union is planning. Do what you want with the info - use it, bash it, cheer it - but by all means use your own mind about it.

From the UFT:

"Stossel needs a lesson: Video tapes of the John Stossel segment on 20/20 that bashed high school teachers and trashed the Unions (singling out the UFT) were distributed at our last Chapter Leader meeting ... It is infuriating ...The UFT needs your support on this. Hold a chapter meeting, show the video, get the signatures ... We will be delivering them at the rally in front of the ABC-TV studios on March 8. Show some pride in our efforts and fight back against the disrespect shown to us on national television. We work too hard and do too much good to let them paint us as the source of all problems and evil in the schools. Please stand up for us."

If someone were inclined to mocking unions and had a national TV news show to do it on, this might be a good opportunity. Just saying.

And just because I love mentioning his name, why would anyone watch 20/20 when they could be watching quality TV journalism on Anderson Cooper 360? Here's AC's take on what kids are doing in America's classrooms: "Dear Mr. Anderson Cooper." Just a bit different from Stossel's view. One of the kids actually wrote "Dear Ms. Cooper." Interesting.

Also, great words from Michael Winerip, a real education reporter: "By far, the issue getting the most ink is the need to reduce the time it takes to dismiss bad teachers - a pet peeve of the mayor's. While this is clearly a problem, the far bigger problem is holding on to good teachers. Last year New York City had 3,567 "regular" teachers leave, the most in memory, 936 more than the year before, and 1,100 above the previous three-year average. These are not retirees or troubled teachers - they're certified teachers in good standing."

Logical, lucid reporting. But something tells me "regular" may not include special ed teachers, in which case the NYC teacher turnover rate would be much higher. "Another One Bites the Dust" is the theme song for special education teachers in the New York City Department of Education. We drop like flies from a system that disrespects us and loves to label us "insubordinate" when we do our jobs and stand up for our students' civil rights. Why can't we just be pleasant and mute while our schools break disability laws, administrators wonder. How dare we challenge incompetence. How dare we be our students' champions. We are the insubordinate. We emerge from our dank, windowless classrooms at the edges of our school buildings to say, "This is wrong. We must change it." Our supervisors swat us away with petty warning letters that read, when you look between the lines, "Shut up or else." So we go back to our seedy rooms, to the kids that no one else wants, to the students who learn at the edges of society, to the only other people in the building who understand why we cry.

Time to Shake Out Your Brain ... Literally

2006-02-07T02:04:00.001-05:00

I co-taught an English class with a teacher who always said, "Shake out your brains," when the class began to zone out. Our high school students knew it meant time for a mental break. Not so with Justin, a five-year-old boy I teach three times a week. Justin is high-functioning autistic, and children with autism tend to be extremely literal. Justin struggles with his literalism in adorable ways.

When I saw Justin starting to zone out, without even realizing what I was saying, "Time to shake out your brain," slipped out. Justin looked perplexed as he began to shake his head. When he stopped shaking, he said, in a regretful tone, "It's still in there."

IT being his brain. Which was still in his head. He had not succeeded in doing what I had asked of him, which was to shake out his brain.

Justin also has a tendency to put his feet all over me, and I am constantly asking him to stop. The other day, after asking him gently several times to move his feet, I finally said, "Justin. Please. How many times have I asked you to move your feet?"

His answer? "Six." I'm sure he was right.

The Irascible Professor

2006-02-06T19:45:00.000-05:00

Welcome to anyone over from The Irascible Professor. For those of you who have not yet discovered the wonderful Irascible Professor, you can visit his E-Zine here. My Purple Stapler story is currently up as a guest commentary on his site.

Babe Ruth Visits Blog

2006-02-05T06:26:00.000-05:00

The ghost of Babe Ruth is haunting this blog. He refuses to let me delete the picture of his Monument Park memorial, which I took during our Yankee Stadium field trip. I've tried to delete the picture no less than three times from my Gem of the South Bronx post. Each time, I delete the picture, republish the post, and republish my entire blog. The picture goes away at first, only to stubbornly and mysteriously reappear a few hours later. Sure, it could be a bizarre Blogger glitch, but this all began happening before yesterday's Blogger breakdown. Nothing remotely like this has ever happened with any of my other posts, and I am constantly editing and deleting things from my posts.

I prefer to think that Babe is watching over my students and me in the South Bronx. Now that he's not busy cursing the Red Sox anymore, he has plenty of time to hang out with us. On our Yankee Stadium field trip, a few of my students had the adorably off-base thought that the players were actually buried at Monument Park. It does kind of resemble a graveyard, but no, the Yankee veterans are not buried there. Somehow, though, the memorial does invoke Babe Ruth's spirit. Babe? Are you out there?

I've always felt that I have an other-worldly connection to baseball. I feel truly in my element in three places - beaches, deserts and baseball stadiums. Last season, I predicted that Jermaine Dye would win the world series. Guess who drove in the winning run and was the 2005 World Series MVP? Once, when I was interviewing fans at the Oakland Coliseum about their baseball superstitions for a Cal radio story (this was during the A's 20-game win streak), Jermaine Dye hit two homeruns - one right at the first fan I interviewed (about his lucky transitor radio), and another one two innings later right at another fan I was interviewing. Both men caught (or scrambled for) the homerun balls. I got it all on tape, and it made for a great radio story.

My dad used to go to Yankee Stadium in the 1940's when he was a kid growing up in the South Bronx, and he took me to Dodger Stadium all the time when I was growing up in L.A. He told me that if I didn't eat my entire Dodgerdog, I would bring the Dodgers bad luck. Once, I didn't finish the Dodgerdog, Fernando Valenzuela broke his winning streak, and I was thus inducted into the world of superstitious baseball nuts.

It's great to be able to share this passion for baseball with my students, especially through the sports journalism unit. The one (and sadly only) stellar thing about our school is its baseball team. I have one special ed student who is a pitcher on the team, and he is by far my most disciplined student.

When I was interviewing for teaching jobs, I got two job offers on the same day, and I couldn't decide which one to take. I finally decided to go with the school with the good baseball team. There are plenty of days when I regret that decision (I have a classmate who teaches at the other school, and from what I hear, it's far better), but I do at least get to share my love of baseball with my students, and this sports journalism unit is turning out great so far.

Next week, I'll be teaching a baseball math lesson on rate, distance and time in my resource class. We'll be taking the lesson to the baseball field. Perhaps Babe will join us.

Eleven days until pitchers and catchers report for spring training. Super Bowl? What Super Bowl?

Gem of the South Bronx

2006-02-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

I got a grant from the Jordan Fundamentals program to teach a literacy unit on sports journalism, which paid for (among other things) our private tour of Yankee Stadium, including a talk in the press box. I'm teaching this unit to my 10th grade English inclusion class. Many of my students live for baseball, so I thought this would get them excited about reading and writing. So far, so good. The best part of our field trip was our visit to the Yankee Stadium press box. Students got to sit in the sportswriters' chairs, and they looked like real pros. I've never seen them so enthralled! We also visited Monument Park.

Yankee Stadium - A View from the Warning Track

To any teachers at high needs schools - schools where most students are eligible for free lunch - I highly recommend applying for this grant. You can get $2500 for one unit! The application deadline is usually at the end of May, and the 2006-2007 school year application should be available on the website soon.You have to create a budget and explain in detail how your unit is related to state standards. Your unit does not need to be sports-related. It's fairly competitive, but if you put together a clear application, you'll have a great shot. I applied for a combination of related books, materials, and field trips.

Only fourteen days until pitchers and catchers report for Spring training! The bleacher creatures should be coming out of hibernation soon. It's been a long, cold, lonely winter in the Bronx without them.

El Bronx Comics

2006-01-31T00:40:00.000-05:00

Jonathan is 17 and in 9th grade English for the 3rd year in a row. I'm not sure how this happened when his vocabulary easily rivals mine. When our word-of-the-day was ephemeral, Jonathan wrote (without looking it up in the dictionary), "Compared to trees, the lives of humans are ephemeral."

The main reason Jonathan underachieves in school is because he sleeps in class (probably partially due to meds), and for years, when he sat sleeping in the back of big, general ed high school classes with no special ed support, nobody woke him up. One teacher told me that last year, Jonathan "was so far gone on anti-psychotic meds" that he would just sit in class drooling. Keep in mind, though, that general ed teachers at my school tend to view special ed students as far less teachable than they are. Jonathan does have a serious mental disorder, but he's also extremely bright and teachable. Now that he's receiving the professional support he should've been getting all along, he's beginning to excel.

He's getting 100% (or close) on every vocab test, and he wins every spelling bee. My students have insisted on regular spelling bees ever since we watched Spellbound. Jonathan and Manuel always end up competing for first place, and they take the spelling words up to a ridiculously difficult level. Last time, we got to disingenuousness, and Jonathan got it right. So when he's not sleeping, Jonathan is actually somewhat of a savant. But today he slept. Or so I thought.

Today we began reading El Bronx Remembered by Nicolasa Mohr, which is a huge student favorite. It's a collection of short stories about Puerto Rican families living in the South Bronx from 1946-1956. The first story, "A Very Special Pet," really got the students cracking up. When we finished the story, it was time to write. I insisted again and again that Jonathan put up his head, and he said again and again that he didn't feel like writing. So I finally encouraged him to at least draw some scenes from the story. Whoa, did I strike a chord! I've never seen him perk up so quickly. "That's a good idea!" he said, and he quickly got out the beat up sketch pad that he carries with him wherever he goes.

In no more than 15 minutes, Christopher produced this (click to see enlarged version):

Holy crap! He memorized every last detail of the story when we were reading it out loud. "A Very Special Pet" is (in essence) about the Fernandez family and their beloved pet, Joncrofo la gallina. Joncrofo is named after Joan Crawford, Mrs. Fernandez's favorite movie star. The family bought Joncrofo so they could eat her eggs, but Joncrofo turned out to be a cantankerous old hen who never lays eggs. Still, the children love her. The Fernandez family is poor, and Mr. Fernandez has a cold, so Mrs. Fernandez decides to kill Joncrofo so her husband can have chicken broth and her eight children can have chicken and rice for dinner. (Okay, so it's a little predictable.)

Now the part of the story depicted in Jonathan's comic strip (in progress) begins. Joncrofo lives under the Hernandez's kitchen sink. When Mrs. Hernandez tries to grab Joncrofo to kill her, Joncrofo bites her finger, and Mrs. Hernandez yells, "Ave Maria!" Mrs. Fernandez then gets angry, gets a broom and says, "Ok, you wanna play games. You dumb hen!" Then she unties the twine fastened to Joncrofo's leg and the sink, and she pulls Joncrofo toward her.

You'll have to get the book or stay tuned for the rest of Jonathan's comic strip to find out what happens next.

After class, I excitedly showed Jonathan's comic strip to other teachers in the teachers' lounge. I said I thought Jonathan could pursue a successful career as a comic artist (our school is supposed to have an emphasis on the arts). The general ed math teacher scoffed and said, "A successful career as a comic artist? Yeah, that sounds promising."

What the hell? Who's more mentally ill? The brilliant kid who grew up in foster care and thinks so far outside the box that his teachers and society don't know what to do with him? Or the smug math teacher who can't think outside the box to save his life?

Somebody out there, give this kid a job! I'm also going to look for Jonathan's drawing of the character Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis (which we read last semester). I hope I can find it!

"Miss Dennis is a Latin King"

2006-01-27T00:30:00.000-05:00

Darryl never ceases to amaze me with his outrageous comments. Today was teacher/student crossdressing day - no, not that kind of crossdressing. Students dressed up as teachers and vice versa. I wore my old Earl Boykins Warriors basketball jersey and baggy jeans. I thought my students would laugh at how ridiculous I looked, but I have in fact never been more popular.

When Little Charles (who was wearing a dress shirt and tie) saw me, he said, "Whoa! Miss D! I knew you was down like Missy Elliot."

Uh, not quite Charles. (Charles calls me Missy Elliot whenever I unwittingly wear something associated with hip hop, such as my North Face jacket or my pink Kangol hat. Who knew?)

Not to be outdone by Charles, when Darryl saw my jersey, he shouted, "Miss Dennis is a Latin King!"

Darryl has a knack for blurting out statements that are at once hilarious and horrifying (such as the title of this blog). The Latin Kings are a Puerto Rican gang still thriving in the South Bronx (despite Bloomberg's insistence that gang activity in New York City is under control). My jersey happened to have the Latin Kings' gang colors - gold and black. Darryl proceeded to draw me a gold and black crown during English class.

While I can laugh about how ridiculous this moment was, it was also hearbreaking to see this kid becoming so entrenched in gang culture. Every kid around him also knew exactly what he was referrring to. To Darryl and his classmates, it is perfectly normal to see gold and black and think "Latin Kings."

When I was a kid, when I saw gold and black, I thought "bumblebee."

How to Put on a Durag

2006-01-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

I am too angry today with incompetent Dept. of Ed. and NYC Teaching Fellow bureaucrats to write anything reasonable, so I offer you fluff. (How do those people live with themselves?) Oh yeah, the fluff. (But seriously.)

How Googlers found this blog:

1. Your Mama
2. Naked Mad Thumb
3. How to Put on a Durag
4. Art Teacher Vent About Principal
5. Bronx Chat Room
6. Catfish and Mandala Themes
7. John Stossel Rubber Room
8. Transit Strike Teacher Attendance

Yes, I am addicted to statcounter.com. And in other news, I am still trying to understand how a propagandist who stole a catch phrase from Kit Kat is allowed to be a 20/20 "reporter."

Teacher's True First Crush

2006-01-23T00:08:00.000-05:00

Now that I work with Pre-K students after school, I've realized who my TRUE first crush was. I always thought it was Fernando Valenzuela (Dodgers pitcher - I grew up in L.A. during Fernandomania). But no. Forget Fernando. My first crush was Harold!

I must have been three when I first discovered the boy with the purple crayon and feet-in pajamas. I now believe the purple stapler incident was subconsciously connected to my early infautation with Harold. High school and Pre-K aren't so different after all.

I've also realized that my current crush, despite the suits and gray hair, possesses every ounce of Harold's boyish charm. Realizing who your true first crush was explains so much.

(Is it wrong to use the above image? This is Crockett Johnson's artwork. The great Mr. Johnson died in 1975. Here is a wonderful site devoted to him: Crockett Johnson Homepage.)

AdSense Musings

2006-01-22T10:08:00.000-05:00

How do you do it Google? How do you know my readers so well?

I just signed up for AdSense, and when I clicked on my Purpleville post, an ad for "Marijuana Addiction Rehab" appeared. The next time I clicked on Purpleville, it said "Marijuana Addict Recovery." I'm banking on those ads.

Also, an "Upholstery Staplers" ad made an appearance with my Purple Stapler story. "American Made Skull Caps" accompanied the Du-Rag post (this should be especially helpful to the Australian who found this site through the keywords "how to wear a durag"). And of course "Manhattan NY Psychologist" popped up with the Stand and Survive post in which I mentioned a school-induced panic attack.

I wasn't sure if I should commercialize my blog, but I think I'll stick with Adsense just to see what crazy ads appear. Of course, as Google sternly warned me, I am not to click on any of the ad links myself or I will be fired. So I'll have to look elsewhere for a psychologist and marijuana treatment.

Teaching "I Have a Dream" in Vietnam

2006-01-18T20:00:00.000-05:00

For the past two years, when teaching I Have a Dream to high school students in the South Bronx, I've received eye rolls and snickers. Not from every student, but from enough to make me realize that some inner city high school students feel they have been over-exposed to Martin Luther King, Jr. This, of course, is not the most mature attitude to have, but the attitude exists nonetheless, and I have to wonder why. Could it be that some of us in

America

have heard this great man's name and his moving speech so many times that we have become jaded? Forty-three years after our country's most moving speech was delivered, are we already taking it for granted?

Five years ago, I had the opportunity to teach I Have a Dream to English students in Vietnam who had never read or heard the speech before. Their responses were amazing. Each year on MLK Day, I get emails from former students in Vietnam who were inspired by Martin Luther King.

I didn't exactly have the easiest time in Vietnam. I lived for a year in Thai Nguyen, a seedy steel town north of Hanoi. Thai Nguyen was the first major center of the Viet Minh revolution, and it is still arguably the most communistic area in Vietnam today. While internet cafes and tourists with camcorders abound just 50 miles south in Hanoi, I had to argue for months with officials in Thai Nguyen before I was allowed to use email or make unsupervised telephone calls. I taught at a medical school in Thai Nguyen, so my students were about my age. Students who befriended me were questioned by police. After I snapped photographs around town one afternoon, rumor had it I was a spy. Of course, it didn't help when word got out that my father is a veteran fighter pilot who flew more than 200 missions over North Vietnam. I spent many nights alone in Thai Nguyen crying.

To put it mildly, I had a difficult time living and teaching in Thai Nguyen. I had become extremely cautious about what I taught in my English class. Two of my best students had walked out on my class when I taught a chapter of the book Catfish and Mandala, which was written by a South Vietnamese refugee who grew up in the U.S. I was not yet fully attuned to the lingering hatred between northerners and southerners. The term "escaped from Vietnam" in the book offended my students, whose history books did not include the perspective of South Vietnamese refugees. During another lesson, I decided to introduce "American song day" into my curriculum, and when I played an Aretha Franklin song, students literally plugged their ears in disgust. They were expecting to hear the New Kids on the Block-type American pop that had been over-marketed in Asia. Aretha was just too messy for them.

So when I decided to take the risk of teaching I Have a Dream in Thai Nguyen, I was nervous about how it would be received. I cautiously explained to the class that it was Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in the U.S., and that I wanted to share an American holiday with them. (My Halloween party had been a big hit in Thai Nguyen, so I thought the holiday angle would help.)

Halloween in Thai Nguyen - Get me the hell outta here!

When we began reading the speech in class, I was amazed by how excited and moved my students were. They had never studied this aspect of American history before, and their questions about MLK and America’s Southern states came pouring in. They wanted to understand the exact definition of every word of the speech. One advanced English student wrote that the class could understand the meaning of the speech so well because "Vietnam is still sadly crippled by the manacles of colonialism." (From the second paragraph of I Have a Dream – “One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation…”) I'm sure some students also wanted to mention the manacles of the Vietnam War, but perhaps out of respect my father's experience, the class stayed on the topic of French colonialism. A week later, one student turned in a voluntary project. He had re-written I Have a Dream from the perspective of a Vietnamese plantation worker.

It was refreshing to experience (in Vietnam of all places) the raw emotion of young adults reading and hearing I Have a Dream for the first time. Like my current students in the South Bronx, I had become somewhat immune the speech. I couldn't remember the first time I’d heard it or how it made me feel. Was it in second grade that I was introduced to MLK? Growing up, it seemed I always knew who he was and what I Have a Dream was about. But it wasn’t until I taught the speech 8,000 miles from home that I experienced the full emotional appeal of MLK’s words. For once, I was crying for joy in Thai Nguyen.

John Stossel: Stupid in the Studio

2006-01-13T22:24:00.000-05:00

A Play-by-Play Reaction to 20/20's "Stupid in America"

Round One: I am so tense right now watching 20/20's special, "Stupid in America." Serious flaws in America's public schools do need to be exposed (that's what my blog is all about), but John Stossel is way off base. He started the show by mocking teachers and polarizing educators vs. parents. He has yet to include an interview with one American teacher about the issue. How could he and his 20/20 producers miss the fact that he is so blatantly doing exactly what many of the bureaucrats who run America's public schools are doing: disrespecting America's teachers by ignoring our voices and diminishing our professional experiences.

Round Two: Now Stossel is interviewing Joel Klein, Chancellor of NYC's public schools, about how hard it is to fire "all the bad teachers" who do awful things, such as a teacher who sent sexual emails to a student. As NY Times Education Reporter Michael Winerip pointed out, the problem is not how hard it is for the NYC Dept. of Ed to fire the relatively few awful teachers. The real problem is that NYC cannot, to save its life, hold on to its good teachers. The teacher turnover rate in NYC is out of control - so out of control that the Dept. of Ed literally has to go up to Canada to recruit teachers. Two of my Canadian colleagues who took the bait are absolutely horrified by how teachers are treated here. One of them, an amazing teacher, just quit. I'm almost out the door myself. Why? Because I feel thoroughly rundown by administrators like Klein who don't support special education, and I found a private autism group that respects me. So while I agree that America's public schools could use more competetiveness from private education groups, the manner in which Stossel is "reporting" this issue is only making me feel more beaten down, disrespected, and misunderstood as a teacher in America. His point about economic competition is overshadowed by his clear cluelessness about my job.

Ding ding ding! Round Three: The predictable anti-union tirade. Okay, as anyone who's followed this blog knows, I am not exactly a fan of my own union. I get what's ridiculous about it. I have been yelled at by colleagues for not supporting it. I'm not happy about having to pay $85 a month in union dues. That said, Stossel is so blatantly biased against UFT (United Federation of Teachers) leader Randy Weingarten, it's embarassing. Seriously, this interview is an insult to journalism. Stossel's just waiting for soundbites to prove his pre-conceived point. What happened to fair and accurate news reporting? What about pointing out the ever-abounding absurdities of Joel Klein and the Dept. of Ed's bureaucracies? When did 20/20 become a sounding board for Stossel's libertarian theories? (And by the way, "The Rubber Room" portion of this show was a total rip-off from local reporters. Actually, everything related to NYC was ripped off from local stations. None of it was new.)

Round Four. Stossel's laughable predictability continues with his complaints about how easy teachers have it because we only have to work six and a half hour days. How does he not get that those are the bare minimum contracted hours that we are required to stay in the school building? Most teachers I know stay beyond those hours. Add to that an average of at least 15 hours a week at home planning lessons, grading papers and calling parents. Sure, some teachers don't do those things. I know a teacher who doesn't. And I know about 300 who do. For new teachers who are still struggling with lesson planning and learning to efficiently grade papers, it's more like an extra 30 hours a week. And even without these extra hours, six and a half hours of teaching classes with 25-35 kids in each class is enough to put anyone in a post work-day stupor. Guess what Stossel? I've worked as a journalist. Now I'm a teacher. Teaching is harder. And you shouldn't be calling yourself a journalist anyway. I don't know about you, but I went to a school where journalism ethics were stressed. If you don't have ethics as a journalist, what do you have?

Round Five: Fifty minutes into the show, and Stossel is finally interviewing some teachers. Well, not really interviewing them - he has a few soundbites from charter school teachers about how they are anti-union and anti-tenure to prove his point. He still hasn't interviewed one public school teacher, and he has not even touched on the issue of teachers' barely above cost-of-living salaries. Nice, coming from a guy who makes six figures, if not more, for emulating Geraldo Rivera.

Wait, did that show really just happen or was it just the hallucinatory nightmare of a hard-working, exhausted public school teacher? If I'm this upset, I can only imagine how all the union-supporting teachers I know are feeling. But you know what really knocked me out? What really makes my blood boil? I missed an hour of swooning over Anderson Cooper for this crap. Never again 20/20. Never again.

Dear Principal, You Want Me To Do What?

2006-01-10T00:11:00.000-05:00

Dear Principal Puffschmuck,

I received your written instructions today to begin writing Individual Education Programs and scheduling annual review meetings for four special education students that I do not teach. As I discussed with you last week, the following students have never been on any of my rosters. I do not know them:

Jorge Largo
Juliette Johnson
Virginia Gonzalez.

The following student was in my Resource Room class during fall semester 2004. I have not taught him in almost a year:

Dashawn Jackson.

I feel strongly that it is not in these four students’ best interests nor in their parents’ best interests to have me write their IEPs and run their annual review meetings. I am disappointed that no effort was made to pair up special education students with teachers who actually teach and know them. Rather, the assignment of special ed students to teachers for the purpose of writing IEPs was done in a completely random fashion. This is very troubling to me as a special education professional. I attempted to discuss this with you last week, and I am concerned that you indicated that it was not an issue up for discussion.

I am also troubled by the fact that Miss Sandberg has been assigned as the general ed teacher to discuss the educational needs of all special ed students at IEP meetings, regardless of whether or not she actually teaches or knows the students. Miss Sandberg does not, in fact, teach any of the above four students. I do not see how she and I can create meaningful goals and objectives and hold meaningful meetings with the parents of students we’ve never taught, and, in most cases, do not even know. The above four students do have special ed and general ed teachers. Those teachers should be writing the students' Individualized Education Programs and meeting with their parents to discuss their educational needs. This would not only be the best practice for our school; it would also be following basic federal and state education laws.

I am more than happy to write IEPs for my 36 special education students. I am also willing to stay and help other teachers through the IEP writing process and annual review meeting process. I will not, however, prepare or sign any legal special education documents that involve creating detailed educational plans for the above four students or any other students that I do not teach.

Sincerely,

Miss Dennis

Old-School Wisdom from a Burnt-Out Counselor

2006-01-06T01:31:00.001-05:00

There’s a crazy, burnt-out old guidance counselor at my school who falls asleep during faculty meetings and repeatedly schedules students for classes they’ve already passed. Most of the other teachers have completely written him off. I’d written him off too until I realized he had a pearl of wisdom for me about the New York City Board of Education.

The first time he saw me, he cleared a path for me in the crowded hall and said, “Watch out! Here comes Sandy Dennis!” If I’d had a clue about who or what he was referring to, I would've realized that he was actually being quite witty. But I had no idea what he was talking about, so I assumed he was crazy.

Over the next few months, he'd pop into my classroom at least once a week, point at me good-naturedly and say, “Sandy Dennis! Up the Down Staircase!” He would sometimes interrupt my lessons with this proclamation. I usually smiled politely and went on with my lesson. Finally, one morning, he came to my classroom, pointed at the suggestion box on my desk, and started cracking up. I really thought he was losing it, so I stopped my lesson to check in on him.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Sandy Dennis. Up the Down Staircase.”

“Have you seen that movie?” he asked, still cracking up.

“No, never even heard of it.”

“You must see it. Doesn’t she look like Sandy Dennis?”

“Who's Sandy Dennis?” asked 15-year old Jessica, whose lesson on prepositions had just been interrupted.

“Oh, you guys are too young. I’m a dinosaur.” He walked away, muttering, “But nothing has changed .”

I had absolutely no idea who Sandy Dennis was or what Up the Down Staircase was. For some reason, I had assumed it was an old Alfred Hitchcock movie. When I finally checked it out online, I found this synopsis from Hollywood.com: "Up the Down Staircase, 1967 (Feature Film - Drama, Adaptation) Teaching in an inner-city high school becomes a tough prospect for a young woman.”

Okay, so the burnt-out counselor’s comments were relevant. I tried adding Up the Down Staircase to my Netflix queue, but the film was apparently too obscure for Netflix, so I ended up ordering the VHS from Amazon.

Guess what? The crazy counselor was right. I AM like Sandy Dennis in Up the Down Staircase. In fact, I’ve never related to a character more. Sandy Dennis plays Miss Barrett, an idealistic yet dedicated and somewhat rebellious first-year teacher at a crappy NYC high school. She has a suggestion box just like mine, and she is straight out of a Master’s program like me. She teaches English to special education students (then called “special slows” or “non college-oriented”), and she struggles to share her love of literature with them. Miss Barrett also develops an incisive sense of humor about the ridiculous bureaucracies of the NYC Board of Education. This humor, I’ve learned, stems from Bel Kaufman, author of the original Up the Down Staircase, a bestselling novel published in 1964.

Kaufman’s book is now a major inspiration in my life. So thank you, crazy burnt-out old counselor, for recognizing in me the spirit of Sylvia Barrett. You’re right. Nothing has changed. There are still up staircases and down staircases. I walk up to the fifth floor of the school building every day for fear of getting stuck in the elevator that is always breaking down. Occasionally, I'll go out for coffee at the bodega across the street, and on my way back up, I'll get toppled by a group of teenagers running down to the basement for lunch at 10:30am (their scheduled lunch time). I must be literally walking up the down staircase. There are still Delaney Cards and petty Admiral Asses. Bells ringing off schedule and mixed-up Joe Ferrones. Drab faculty meetings and ineffective administrators. How can it be that so little progress has been made in forty years? Could it be that the quality of New York City’s public schools has actually deteriorated since the 1960’s? Should I get out? How long can a Sylvia Barrett last in this system?

Word-of-the-Day: Tedious

2006-01-04T02:52:00.000-05:00

Each day, we begin our English class with a word-of-the-day. Students are supposed to write the word in a sentence in their journals, but they have a clear preference for shouting out the first sentence that comes to mind. Today's word was tedious.

Angel: I'm tedious!

Me: Nice try Angel, but tedious means boring, not bored.

Sean: This class is mad tedious!

Me: (Swallowing my pride.) Good Sean! Just take out the "mad," and you’ll have a good sentence!

Darryl: (Quickly stands up and points angrily at Sean.) Your mama's mad tedious!

Me: Thank you, Darryl. Thank you.

My thanks were sincere. Darryl is one of the school's "most challenging" students. In other words, he's a complete pain in the ass. He's one of those smart kids who manages to get kicked out of every class for disruptive behavior. Just last week, he called Walt Whitman "wack," and he threw Leaves of Grass on the floor.

Yet there was Darryl, standing in ardent defense of my class while using the word-of-the-day in a sentence. It was a truly great moment in teaching. "Your mama's mad tedious." Little did I know, when I decided to become a teacher, that I would one day be honored by such a sentence.

"We Weren't Poor. We Just Didn't Have Any Money."

2005-12-22T21:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I walked from 170th Street in the Bronx to 70th Street in Manhattan. It was day two of the transit strike, and I needed to get from my school to my second job. I could have taken a taxi at least part of the way, but once I'd walked 50 blocks, I got stubborn and figured why not walk 50 more? The best part about the walk was that I took some side streets and saw a whole different side of the South Bronx. It didn't seem so harsh without all the buses and above-ground trains roaring past. Pedestrians were everywhere, and there almost (almost) seemed to be a brotherly love on the sidewalks. I even walked past the building on Willis Avenue that my dad grew up in over half a century ago. It was recently renovated and actually looked really cute. There's a barbershop on the ground floor with old-school red, white, and blue barber poles. I emailed my dad about my visit to his old home, and he sent me this:

Thanks for the trip through time ... I lived on the 5th floor of 372 Willis Ave. with my Uncle Rich and Aunt Sadie from 1943 to 1949. There was no heat except for the big kitchen coal stove and no elevator of course. The building originally had no electricity. My Jr high was on 147th and grade school on 138th, both between Willis and Brook Ave. Started Stuyvesant while still living there. The rent was $28 per month until central steam heat was installed, when it went to $35. We weren't poor. We just didn't have any money. I was categorized as underprivileged but didn't know it. The store in the building was a toy store. Feliz Navidad.

My dad now lives in a much different environment - a nice house with a Pacific Ocean view in California, where I grew up. How did I end up back on the sidewalks of the South Bronx, gazing up at that old brick building, imagining that I'd been transported back to 1940's NYC? It all seemed somehow beyond my control. I chatted with a few men who were hanging out on the sidewalk outside the building. They were super-impressed that my dad lived there so long ago. A sweet kid walking into the building overheard me, stopped at the front door, and looked on with interest. I wondered how similar his childhood has been to my dad's. He probably goes to the same middle school on 147th. Hopefully, he'll get a chance to go to a good high school and college like my dad did.

I had been getting off the subway in the Bronx every day for a year without realizing that I was just six blocks away from my dad's childhood home. I was always in such a rush to get to work, and I still had to transfer from the subway to a bus to get to my school. When I came to Willis Avenue during my strike-induced walk home, the name of the street rang a bell. I got out my notebook, where I'd scribbled my dad's old address months ago, intending to someday pay a visit. I always knew that my dad grew up in the area, but visiting the actual building he lived in really made history come alive for me. So even though I don't agree with this transit strike, something positive did come of it for me.

It all feels fateful. My dad's older sister - my late aunt - actually graduated in 1941 from the high school at which I now teach. I didn't know this before taking the job. My dad would have gone to the same school too if he hadn't passed the test to get into Stuyvesant, which is New York City's finest and most competitive public high school. Getting accepted there was my dad's first real shot at making something of himself outside of the ghetto.

It really seems like more than a coincidence, literally following my dad and aunt's footsteps. There are hundreds of schools in New York City that I could have ended up in. Why did I end up here?

(Props to Carl Hurley and Hazel V. Hall, both of whom wrote little-known books entitled We Weren't Poor, We Just Didn't Have Any Money. Both are on Amazon.)

Transit Strike (Day One)

2005-12-20T22:10:00.000-05:00

I usually take the 6 train to the 5 train to the 21 bus to get to my school in the Bronx each morning. Today, the city's transit workers, many of whom make more than the city's teachers, decided to essentially hold the people of NYC hostage by striking. The strike also essentially shut down the city's schools. I may as well throw away all my lesson plans for the week. To get to work this morning, I began walking from 67th St. and Second Avenue to 97th St. and Madison to catch a ride from Nadine, one of my teaching colleagues. Meanwhile, two other car-less teachers were walking from different parts of the city to meet her as well.

Nadine couldn't drive below 96th Street to pick us up because the city implemented a traffic control rule that cars needed to have at least four passengers to drive below 96th Street in Manhattan. Never mind that she was trying to get below 96th Street to pick up three teachers, then turn around and take us up to the Bronx. All of the traffic rules were focused on streamlining things for people who work in downtown Manhattan. As I was walking, Nadine called to inform me that she could only cross from the West side of Manhattan to the East side at 110th St., so I kept walking up to 110th to meet her. She got completely stuck in bottleneck traffic on 110th, so I just started walking west to find her. In the end, I walked over 40 blocks on a frigid December morning. By the time I reached Nadine, my face and fingers were numb.

Overall, it took me two and a half hours to get to work this morning. It took one of my colleagues four hours to get to work from Brooklyn. (Good thing I don't live in Queens anymore - that would have been a nightmare.) Attendance was abysmal today. Most of our students depend on public transportation. Others simply took advantage of an excuse to miss school. Still, it was worth it to get to work because I got to help one of my students finish her scholarship essay about how music changed her life.

When school ended, I then had to figure out how I was going to get down to the Upper West Side of Manhattan by 3:30pm for my second job working with Justin, a four-year-old boy with autism. Nadine usually works late in the Bronx, but there was luckily a "rapid dismissal" drill at our school today, so Nadine left early and gave me a ride to Justin's. Still, I was 20 minutes late with all the traffic. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow when Nadine can't give me a ride until 4pm. I guess I'll either walk from the Bronx to Manhattan or fork over a huge taxi fare.

This transit strike is just crazy. Kids were out there wandering around the city's streets in the freezing cold, trying to figure out how to get to school and back. School was completely disrupted for over a million kids. There's no way I can support this strike, especially not after reading in the New York Times that the average base salary of NYC's transit workers is $47,000, and $55,000 with overtime. Yes, the cost of living in NYC is crazy, but should the city's ticket booth clerks and train conductors really make as much as (and in some cases more than) a teacher with a Master's degree? And teachers don't get overtime for hours spent at home preparing lessons, grading papers, and calling parents. Now the NYC transit workers are striking for more money? This strike is really going to hurt their already poor images. It's no secret that NYC's transit workers aren't exactly the most courteous of employees, which is one reason why so few New Yorkers can find it within themselves to support this stike.

The NYC teacher's union (UFT) recently negotiated a new contract and long overdue raise with the city after teachers worked for years without a contract. We still don't get paid maternity leave or a salary befitting our job responsibilities and education levels, but we did not strike. How could we possibly justify leaving already under-served kids without teachers? We knew what the salary was when we took the jobs, and although most of us feel that we deserve more, we're not going to hold our schools hostage by striking. I don't understand how the transit workers' union can justify their action. The International Transit Workers' Union is even speaking up against this strike.

I will walk for three hours if I have to to get to work with Justin after school tomorrow. He was a little angel today. When I said goodbye to him, he said "I love you so," which made me forget about all the craziness and injustices of the day. I walked home through Central Park feeling elated. What a day. Now Maureen from Brooklyn is sleeping on my couch so she can at least start from Upper Manhattan with me tomorrow, when we'll do it all over again.

Purpleville

2005-12-15T23:28:00.000-05:00

After cutting classes three days in a row, Darryl made an appearance during English today. He stormed in 20 minutes late and proclaimed, “Holla’ out for Purpleville!” Three boys responded, “Purpleville!” in unison, and they made a cryptic symbol above their heads. Darryl then jumped around the room, shook everyone’s hand, and bolted right back out the door. I managed to get in a quick, “Nice to see you Darryl,” just before he left, then I went on with my lesson.

Hmmm. Purpleville. Not sure, but I think it has something to do with “Purple Haze,” which is written inside one of the girls' bathroom stalls next an astute sketch of a marijuana leaf.

Those Z Authors

2005-12-14T00:11:00.000-05:00

I was thrilled today when two of my struggling readers expressed an interest in reading the works of Zora Neale Hurston.

"Will you really let us read Zora in class Miss?!"

"Of course! She was one of the major writers of the Harlem Renaissance!"

"Oh. She was? But do we need a note from our parents?"

"To read Zora Neale Hurston?"

"Because, you know, it's porn."

Screeching halt. Huh?

Turns out, they were confusing Zora Neale Hurston with Zane, modern erotica writer. Definitely not one of the major writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

How Do I Explain ...

2005-12-13T23:40:00.000-05:00

I can't even begin to describe what I've been through with one of my emotionally disturbed students over the past few days. For now, I will only say that she ended up having to be physically contained by a guard, and she was brought to the 42nd precinct. I'll try to describe the incident in more detail later. I survived the incident with no physical injuries. The emotional injuries, however, will linger for a while. The thing about emotional pain is that you can't see it; you can't show it to other people for sympathy. There's no bruise or broken bone to prompt "what happened" or "are you okay?" Emotional pain is easy to tuck away and ignore until one day it comes back to haunt you in ways you never expected.

This particular student has not been getting the counseling she needs and deserves. Her pain is only getting worse, and she is taking it out on me. When I became a special education teacher, I was not prepared for the amount of verbal abuse I would be subjected to from emotionally disturbed kids. There are always deep reasons for their behavior, but it is sometimes hard to keep that in mind when they are screaming at me and threatening me. I've been thinking lately that I'd rather take a punch in the face over emotional abuse any day.

As it turns out, I was in an accident after school, and I have to remember to be careful what I wish for. I've begun working with children with autism after school. Yesterday evening, I was working with a four-year-old girl, and she accidentally knocked over her art easel. An edge slammed right in my eye, so now I have a bruised, swollen eye with a deep cut under my eyebrow. Funny how for the past few years, I've been working in two high school buildings in the South Bronx that are considered dangerous, yet I've never been physically injured. Then a sweet, four-year-old girl on the Upper West Side comes along and takes me down.

It may sound bizarre, but now that my physical appearance matches what I've been feeling inside, I feel better. People can see that something is wrong. Strangers on the subway and at the deli have been giving me sympathy. "Ooooh. What happened to your eye? Are you okay? I'm so glad you're going to be okay." The fact is, I really haven't been okay for about a year now, but no one other than the friends I vent to about my job have noticed.

Watching the news, I wonder about the emotional pain of soldiers returning from Iraq. We know there is suffering when we see a soldier return with physical injuries, but we so easily overlook the emotional suffering that inevitably results from witnessing violence, death, and injustice. Violence. Death. Injustice. Too many of my students have witnessed these things right here at home.

Du-Rag Protest

2005-12-13T00:48:00.000-05:00

Dear Students,

Want to wear a du-rag to school to tame your hair? Okay. Not gonna' argue. Want to put on a du-rag, call it fashion, and start acting gangsta at school? Not okay. You don't look gangsta. You look like you have panty-hose on your head. So do 50 Cent and Eminem, and you shouldn't be emulating them anyway. The du-rag trend was cool for maybe a month. Why is it still running strong? Even the Wall Street Journal, in a pathetic attempt to be cool, published a front-page feature about kids wearing du-rags. That right there should be your cue that it is no longer cool. Besides, most of you have straight hair, and your du-rags just give you hat-hair. Do me a favor and put your Yankees caps back on. I'll waive the no-hats-at-school rule. Anything to never again have to teach a lesson while gazing at a sea of panty-hose clad heads.

Concerned for Your Fashion Senses,

Miss Dennis

Word-of-the-Day: Condescending

2005-12-12T00:27:00.000-05:00

Student sentence: Cops are so condescending to me.

The New Kids

2005-12-10T21:49:00.000-05:00

A new student, Kevin, was placed in my special ed English class last week. There are three weeks left of the semester. Kevin immediately announced to the class that he'd been "locked up." He seemed proud of it. It was as if he were announcing to the class that he was their new leader. So last week was pretty much about Kevin screaming at me, trying to assert his power, while no one learned. Some of Kevin's comments were personally abusive toward me. At times like this, it's hard to find a positive side, but I finally found it yesterday.

Before Kevin arrived, Tanysha was my most challenging student. Tanysha had arrived half-way into the semester. After a month of yelling, Tanysha finally settled down when I told her she could use the class computer. She began typing away. She typed for hours. When I printed her writing and read it, all the yelling made sense. She had written about her mom's recent murder. Troubled kids sometimes make things like this up, so I checked out the story, hoping it wasn't true. Sadly, it was.

I gave Tanysha an A on her writing, and she walked around clutching the paper for weeks. She would show everyone the A, but I was the only one she would let read the paper. I asked her if she wanted to write more, and she said she did. I recommended Tanysha for counseling, but our school building has one part-time counselor for over a hundred students who are mandated for counseling. Since Tanysha is not on the list of students mandated for counseling, she may not get seen. This school system is infuriating. I went to the assistant principal's office distraught over the situation. He told me that I needed to "toughen up," and he has yet to do anything to attempt to get Tanysha counseling. "Toughen up." This from a man who's never taught special education students and who called one of my students a "throwaway kid."

Oh yeah, back to trying to find the positive side of Kevin entering the class (it's so easy to get lost in the negative here). Well, Kevin's screaming could have gone on for a month, just as Tanysha's had. I quickly learned that Kevin spent most of his childhood moving from home to home within the Bronx foster care system, so I thoroughly expected more screaming from him. But on Friday, Tanysha quickly put Kevin in his place when he started screaming at me again.

"You can't yell at my teacher," she yelled. "Only I can yell at my teacher!"

For the first time, Kevin shut up. Tanysha went on, "My teacher helped me! If you stop your screaming she can help you too 'cause you obviously got issues!"

Wow. Pretty powerful what can happen when you give a troubled kid a keyboard.

For the first time in a week, we got through our English lesson.

Unnecessary

2005-11-25T12:29:00.001-05:00

Back in my classroom, planning lessons, I decide to check out the G-Unit CD that Darryl gave me for Christmas. Actually, he bartered with me to get his CD player back (which I took away from him when he was listening to it so loudly during a midterm that he was completely oblivious to everyone around him yelling at him to turn it off). Long story short, I told Darryl I'd be keeping the CD player until his mother came in to get it. This was a last-ditch effort to get a mother who doesn't return calls to meet with me. She never showed up (big surprise), so I made a deal with Darryl - which felt sort of like making a deal with that other D-guy. Darryl said I could have the G-Unit CD as an early Christmas present if I would give him back the CD player. I couldn't resist the sad humor of it all, so I am now the proud owner of the one CD I credit most with destroying my students' respect for women and girls.

I'm not anti-hip-hop or anti-rap. Believe it or not, I have a big crush on Nelly, whose occasional mild disrespect for women is at least laced with a sense of humor (i.e. Nellyville) and a sense of social responsibilty (i.e. Fly Away). I mean, come on, any straight black guy who's okay with calling himself Nelly is crush-worthy in my book. But Nelly is neither violent nor crude enough for my students. They call him a pussy.

So I listen to Darryl's G-Unit CD, Beg for Mercy. It starts with the sound of a trigger being pulled, then "Hey yo what the fuck ... G-Unit's in the motha fuckin' building," then rounds and rounds of gunshots. And then come the ever-so-enchanting lyrics (keep in mind that this was what Darryl was listening to while taking a midterm). “Girl you look like someone I done fucked before. Girl you look like someone I done fucked on tour ... I’m rich Bitch! 50 Cent, Bitch! ... Blah Blah Blah, Bitch! ... Treat me like a lollipop, lick me baby, then lick Dr. Dre and Shady …”

The worst part is it’s a catchy tune. No, wait. The worst part is that my students absolutely worship 50 Cent. Little Charles regularly walks around school yelling “Fiddy Cent! Fiddy Cent!” (He also refers to me as "shorty." I'm 5'9''. He's little.) Once, when I tried to explain to a student on the verge of dropping out what the GED is, he shouted, "GED-Unit!"

At least the CD was bootleg, so Darryl didn't actually put any money into 50 Cent's mouth. And 50 Cent's mother, apparently, never put any soap in his mouth.

I know. I can’t blame everything on 50 Cent. He didn't exactly invent disrespect for women. He's just making millions off it, and he's making it cool for already-troubled inner city boys to glorify guns and crap all over their female classmates and teachers. But no, really, I don't blame 50 Cent for everything.

Actually, it seems that disrespect for women is all over NYC lately. After delighting in Beg for Mercy, I further procrastinate on lesson-planning by opening one of the school’s free copies of The Post. I read an article about rampant sexual harassment within the NYPD (which is a pretty deep article for The Post). This news comes as little surprise to me since just yesterday in advisory class, two of my 14-year-old female students told me that cops in their neighborhood regularly hit on them. Did these officers learn nothing from Anita Hill? Oh. Right. They learned that creeps who harass women can still make it to well-paying positions of supreme power. A female detective finally wire-tapped some of her colleagues’ disgusting on-the-job comments and started a lawsuit. You go detective woman!

Seriously, it's everywhere. On my way home, I stop at one of my regular haunts in Manhattan - a cute, family-owned Mexican restaurant. A twenty-something frat-type-guy sitting near me says to his friend, “I’d fuck that.” His noticeably more decent friend says, “No. Forget it. She’s probably married.” Twenty-Something-Frat-Guy says, “Even better. No strings attached.” Meanwhile, the owner’s thirteen year old daughter is sitting next to me, trying to concentrate on her homework. I'm still not sure if frat-guy was referring to me or the girl.

Home, finally. I sulk in bed about my harassment-laden day and watch Anderson Cooper (sigh) interview Maureen Dowd about her new book, Are Men Necessary? If only all men were as respectful as Anderson and all women were as bad ass as MoDo. MoDo assured Anderson that he is necessary. 50 Cent? Not so necessary. Not in MY classroom, anyway.

Stand and Survive

2005-11-22T13:59:00.000-05:00

I watched Stand and Deliver for the third time last night. Before I became a teacher at a South Bronx high school, I found this movie absolutely inspiring and amazing. Every teacher wants to be a Mr. Escalante. I still think it's a good film, but the thing that stands out to me now that I am actually in a situation similar to Escalante's is that he neglected his family and friends in order to accomplish what he did, and he nearly killed himself over that job. This struck me because in the past year, I have checked myself into a hospital twice. For Escalante, it was heart trouble. For me, it has been panic attacks, which were never a problem for me before. I have also been diagnosed with "insomnia due to work-related stress." I never experienced insomnia before taking this job. I don't understand how other South Bronx educators can sleep when they know what is happening in our schools.

Yesterday, I broke down and wept in the assistant principal's office. I am now taking a day off and wondering how much of my life I am willing to sacrifice for this job. Stand and Deliver isn't just about teaching. It is also about having the courage (and stubbornness) to fight bosses, stand up against a failing school system, and be hated by many.

Another thing I noticed about the movie is that Escalante demanded a certain amount of respect partly because he was an older, already very accomplished man. Not to diminish what he accomplished or what he sacrificed, but I do feel that as a relatively young woman, the fight is a bit harder. It doesn't matter what I've accomplished. I look young and naive, and to older administrators, I'm a little white girl who has no right to call them on their incompetencies. I have already been through fighting administrators and prompting a state investigation at one negligent South Bronx school. I am not sure I have another fight in me at this time in my life.

I recently passed up an $80,000 a year job offer with a private group because I felt dedicated to my school. I'm not sure if I made the right decision.

NYC Teachers: Still Climbing Up the Down Staircase

2005-11-03T03:04:00.000-05:00