may day

summary: in the morning, my guiding teacher called and told me she would be unable to be there today. she asked if i could cover her 5th period which is at the same stage as the 4th period. sure. period one: no one was there; all gone for la marcha.
period two: conference period; went with my wonderful cameraman to eat.
period 3: shared the articles from yesterday with the kids, asked them to summarize for the class as well as give their opinion. for the most part, they participated and were insterested. at some point, i told them that in order to know what kinds of things go on in the world, they need to speak to their parents, that they underestimate their knowledge. *nervous giggles all around* one girl said, "i've asked but she doesn't want to talk about it." another girl said, "yeah my dad's the same way." so i said, "sometimes, the things that immigrants go through and experience are hard and painful, and they don't want to tell to their kids. tell me: does your mom ask you to clean your room just once, or does she have to tell you a million times before you do anything?" the girls giggled, a clear indicator that it's the latter. i continued, "you need to be the same way. ask her at dinner. ask her in the car when she picks you up. ask your aunts and uncles about it. ask your brothers and sisters to help you. at some point, she will tell you her story. your history starts at home." and you know, i didnt get the blank stares from the class one would expect. all in all, 8/10.
period four: pact filming. fundamental counting principle, the building block of statistics. cooperative for the most part. one girl, J is very confrontational about everything. you could ask this girl for the time and she would take it as a personal affront. she is very angry. i am worried about her. also, due to AP testing, they put the morning announcements smack dab in the middle of the period. uh how about THATS STOOPID? better? skip announcements all together or make them at the end of the period. it disrupted the entire flow of the lesson, broke the kids attention and made it more troublesome to get them back on task. who the hell are these administrators, anyway? havent they ever taught a day EVAR? 6.5-7/10.
period five: same lesson as period four. here's what i learned, via direct experience: giving a lesson is more effective, more streamlined, more concise, and more clear the second time around. i also take into account the lack of a giant inturruption in the middle of class. 9/10.
period six: algebra 1a. never met them before ever. in fact, i wasnt even gonna stick around since i had work for tomorrow, and was all anxious about dealing with the clusterfuck of traffic (going from school to my apartment takes me across wilshire, through the center of la marcha). same thing as period three. these kids were asking more questions than third period and were really affected by the story from the toronto star. we talked about ther fears more. at some point, our discussion was about how minority groups turn on each other (there was one african american boy and one asian girl in this period, making it a different dynamic than period three, where all the kids are latino). we did the exercise i participated in with the BCLAD compas where we bring 10 chairs to the front to symbolize wealth, then force people out accordingly. it was really effective with the kids. they really got into it. they are bright kids. they made my day. and all this for kids i wasnt gonna see today. 10/10.

so yeah, i feel good about going to school today. i wish more educators taught them about the history they dont learn in school, read subversive literature in english class. i gave them a little bit, but tomorrow is more graphing and more statistics. the truth is in the numbers; power is in the truth.

2 comments:

Srta. García said...

cmon now people... dont make me enable word verification.

Anonymous said...

are you able to start some kind of "subversive lit" club or something at your school? i'm sure you'd get a lot of interested kids, and you got a lot to offer. especially in times like these, i'm sure they're frustrated at what's going on around them...