School Days: A Journal
Meier, Deborah
Deborah Meier is the director of the Central Park East Secondary school (CPESS), a public high school in New York City's East Harlem. The school starts in seventh grade and had its first...
...We'll tell them—with Antonio present— "We think it's true, but can't do anything about it whether it is or isn't so felt we just needed to pass the rumor on to you...
...It's like the old one-room school house evening performance, where kids got up before the whole community and recited poems, were quizzed on history, and so on...
...It's cold, but bearable...
...When we're trying to influence people's politics we recognize how difficult it is to dislodge a well-entrenched paradigm, a sustaining myth, an organizing principle...
...It's why we are so hypercritical...
...Differences of class, gender, and race disappear for me in this setting as they never entirely do in the midst of New York City and school...
...Maybe whites are morally bound to suffer the pain...
...We found a room that size...
...Do I try to use "influence...
...We have virtually no "drug prevention program" —but then that's a pedagogical decision...
...I visited George's math class all morning...
...I hammed it up but the African American teachers laughed in recognition...
...The essence of our notion of standards is this publicness...
...However, I know by now that this breakthrough "aha" experience is only one more stage in a long journey before she "gets" the idea of scale...
...I can't figure out a bottom line...
...Not to mention early morning, lunch time, and after-school uses...
...We need this midwinter break...
...February 3. Terrific staff meeting on racism...
...How could one tell if the student learned from it...
...That meant her bedrooms were 5 x 7 feet...
...Still, we'll see...
...I put it out of mind...
...December 12...
...We met with Antonio's family...
...It takes at least a year from the time the first set of work is presented until the last is approved...
...Despite the coaching...
...Instead we still use a factory model...
...Are there alternative viewpoints...
...Is that what I fear...
...And we pay a huge price when we forget that...
...Found a wonderful statement by some deep educational thinker in Ed Week responding to the criticism that all the international comparisons of student outcomes are deeply flawed: it went something like, "They may each be flawed, but taken together they add up...
...We start off with fresh notebooks divided into well-organized sections...
...The rhetoric of educational "crisis" has a dangerous side...
...THIS IS NOT AN ENTRANCE...
...That's what a good school is: an apprenticeship into ideas...
...Partly mine...
...What differentiates these two from the ones who buy in fast...
...No extra days...
...So I hug her too...
...By the end everybody felt more inadequate than when we started...
...Plus race...
...She isn't willing to be quoted on it...
...But I worry about potential "incidents" and being asked "How come you...
...They both have a vanguardist approach to change—the expert-driven revolution that's good for the ignorant masses (teachers, parents, kids...
...Madeline began by showing us a series of drafts of an essay that a student worked on with her...
...We keep feeling sure that if we could but "tell it right...
...To accommodate five families we decided on a dorm for all the children...
...I suspect he's a little annoyed at me for having caught one of his students in ignorance...
...She's now at Cornell...
...Then . . . it's an endless cycle...
...Scientists, bless them, have "discovered" (New York Times, December 24) that there's a quality called "hopefulness" that is a better predictor of success, even in college, than grade-point average, class rank or SAT score...
...Why doesn't she seem scared...
...Dom and Howie (both white) then role played a white parent luring a white teacher into a discussion about "those" kids in a clearly racist way...
...There's both showmanship and authenticity to it...
...But most of the time they are resisting membership—either out of fear of rejection or because to join such a club means to reject their own community or peer clubs...
...The way we have allowed the story to be told has created a seemingly inevitable conclusion...
...The latest official strategy is Bush's New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC...
...Our issue: should we try to find a face-saving way to slip by this or make a point of refusing...
...There are so many conversations going on...
...His parents are mad because his adviser—Howie—referred to Derek's bullying behavior but hadn't called them about it earlier...
...As long as he sees family and school as together, does this mean he can't use school SPRING • 1992 • 217 as an oasis from his family whom he is trying to distance himself from...
...I used to say that I learned most of what I knew as a kid in the company of people who were talking "over my head...
...What standards was the student basing his judgments on...
...Says Cheneta, "Those five CPESS 'habits of mind' are proving very useful here...
...They tell visitors we're "like a family...
...No testing system can ever entirely avoid it...
...I'm aghast...
...The school starts in seventh grade and had its first graduating class in June 1991...
...We imagine every fall that this time we're going to get it right...
...There's nothing unworkable or undemocratic about having mandated obligations to others...
...I just read the kids' journals in my advisory...
...The conversation about the test is part of the test, we're always revising, and the stakes are never too high...
...Teaching is telling, learning is remembering...
...Smart school people go along because they figure that it's a story that offers needed attention...
...The dilemma: her dream was a house big enough for her parents, two brothers, sister, herself and all their families-to-be...
...For a moment we feel like family...
...November 15...
...November 13...
...But how to get out...
...It's the day before our Saturday retreat devoted to graduation standards...
...Shouldn't we be pouring more in, instead of spending so much time stirring up what's already there...
...Their critiques are alas more trenchant than their cures...
...The current crop of right-wing school reformers is reminiscent of some of the sixties New Left ones...
...I tell her in a whisper to come across to the office to talk with me...
...It's unusable...
...Is it fair to encourage them all to take these tests...
...Howie thinks the father treated him as the more serious offender...
...look...
...The heat in the gym is still not working...
...The chip on her shoulder shifts...
...In booms and busts...
...But then it's not my dream house, said Lydia...
...Naturally we can't be sure...
...To what extent had the student made changes just to "please...
...Our high visibility (and extensive extra staff development) tempts us to take a visible stand...
...He denied using or selling drugs, of course...
...They're always in a 214 • DISSENT hurry—looking for shortcuts that avoid the ornery nature of us humans...
...His father and I meet...
...Because they desperately need opportunities to sort out racism—to deal with it in a "safe" way...
...But, no action...
...Sweet victory...
...Expert design teams" will create privately financed models, hand them over to practitioners to implement, and replicate, with centralized specs (national curriculum goals) and close monitoring (via exams) to keep the practitioners honest...
...I start thinking we should have kids memorize them—although we ourselves never word them exactly the same way twice...
...The locker room is another matter...
...Although we try...
...He's proving to me that he's the boss...
...But it's the informal opportunity to be together in this unhurried and "alien" setting that I love most...
...January 9. Jose has, as usual, come to school hours late...
...It's a form of assessment that builds standards, examines teaching practice, and raises issues of curriculum—all at one and the same time...
...Somehow, somewhere young people need to join, if only part-time, the club we belong to...
...November 25...
...Once again they are largely a measure of the social class of our students...
...But lots of staff had trouble with it both ways...
...I silently scream every time I read about "international competition" as a reason to care about our children...
...We keep believing it's curable if we're tough enough...
...I like ours for that reason...
...I came away feeling I'd caught on to something that had seemed elusive before...
...It's partly an issue of race, partly gender...
...What kind of school are we...
...Not for kids or adults...
...But they're being proposed as high-stakes assessment intended to be used to make decisions simultaneously about grade placement, graduation, college placement, job entry, school accountability, and teacher pay...
...I think that's how human beings naturally learn...
...Less than half of New York City's seniors take SATs, and only about half of the city's students ever reach their 218 • DISSENT senior year...
...The school's steady attention to Carmela and her family as she lay dying for nearly a year can't happen in a school five times our size...
...It was easy to make the shift because we're more comfortable talking in generalities rather than engaging in close observation of one child's work...
...I next see her banging on a door that says PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR...
...They build their plans on the assumption that we can wipe out patterns of thought and habits of practice that are deeply imbedded...
...They're screening out key points based on assumptions that we're not aware they hold...
...The "free schoolers" insist that as long as it's mandatory it won't work...
...What would be the point of it...
...I go over and quietly open the door (it's not locked...
...They "set us aside as special," said another student in a letter I got last week...
...But pain is not the best educator...
...They've been doomed...
...I call home...
...She meets my eye...
...Learning to say, "I've got a theory...
...The kind of thing we learn best from pain is avoidance and bitterness...
...Researchers have demonstrated this over and over...
...I hate cake sales...
...They may get mad and defensive and accuse us (since the kid is sure to deny it...
...The kids take it very seriously...
...Of course Howie is now even more reluctant to call the family if problems arise...
...Or because they just don't "get it" yet, or "who wants it...
...Her physical posture shifts...
...Not patience because one is tolerant of injustice or ineptness—but patience because human beings don't change easily...
...I'm nervously checking to be sure our external reviewers (college faculty, teachers from other high schools, and so on) have the material they need...
...Leona's 890 is such an inadequate statement of her exceptional intellectual ability...
...Isn't this an odd way for me to spend my time...
...How and where does what you've learned "fit in...
...I started off irritated by the session's leader, who had us engage in a bunch of exercises I found silly and embarrassing...
...I bring back all her records and we peruse them together...
...That's more critical than the particulars of what they learn...
...I didn't help matters...
...I shoo Felicida out of the bathroom where she and a friend are fixing their hair—five minutes after class has started...
...But we're all naturally nervous about exposing ourselves to the underlying rage...
...Half of the staff-development and teacher-planning time rests on the use of the gym...
...Tenth grade...
...Paul and I talk it over and decide to ask the adviser to call the family in...
...It's even true of us teachers...
...We're getting conned into some really radical changes we weren't expecting, for example, a combination of centrally driven testing and marketplace incentives (read "privatization...
...We get anxious when the girls act so thrilled with a classmate's baby...
...The "outsiders" review the material ahead of time...
...The kids complain at times that we give (other) kids too many chances...
...Derek is new...
...December 16...
...All this talk about its being "painful" but necessary is a mistake, I argue...
...I suppose there are other useful side-effects to my being downstairs daily saying hello...
...Once again someone wants hard data on our success...
...no white parent in our school would be so openly racist...
...Shouldn't we be covering more...
...Tardiness goes down for a time...
...January 29...
...We have the latecomers sign in...
...Actually it's a poor way to pose it, since it sounds as though I mean that once he gets here we do all the work...
...I found the adviser...
...The widespread perception that schools have failed to accomplish even the simplest tasks they once performed lends credence to the conclusion that once again public institutions have failed us...
...But they don't know how, for example, to put in ten hours of homework...
...Good "habits of mind" are not easy to catch on to...
...He's right...
...It's why we're so hostile to the idea of imposed "standards" via tests...
...If a youngster has chosen that route, however thoughtlessly, do we want to be her enemy...
...Or they could be grateful and acknowledge that they've been worrying...
...Does she know the difference between feet and square feet...
...Dom said it had actually happened in just this way, and he had responded in just the way he play acted...
...The Board's demand that teachers attend school for two extra days of "staff development" is now in arbitration...
...Patience...
...A large closet...
...We drive each other mad spotting gaps—this kid doesn't use commas right, that one can't even remember the date of the Civil War...
...Despair...
...And I'm trying to suggest a way in which we can both be...
...On the other hand, for the first time it's an experienced CPESS-style staff...
...At heart she's never with us...
...Paul tells me our Saturday morning school really feels the best—serious, thoughtful, mildly playful, and completely voluntary...
...Most kids are not lazy or unmotivated...
...It's a fine idea to demand vastly improved educational standards, but what happens in the meantime...
...Would it be any more acceptable in our school if an African American or Latino teacher did the same thing with a fellow African American or Latino parent...
...They can always try again...
...One eye on the clock practicing bad habits...
...In her case it's tied into her being a good daughter and sister...
...A lot of interesting issues surfaced...
...Of course, the more engaged they are, the less passive their relationship to schooling, the better our chances...
...December 3. Came back from Carmela's funeral...
...why did I bother to argue with that amiable man at the Board of Ed when actually I know it doesn't matter how I fill them in—so long as he has numbers...
...I asked them to write down our five "habits of mind" —which are listed on every classroom wall, discussed every week in our newsletter, used to organize curriculum, and are the basis for our "standards" for graduation...
...But staff meetings are something else...
...It's a month since we reported it...
...It's getting easier to talk this way together...
...Thus the cramped little rooms...
...A little "discomfort" is probably okay...
...That works for a while...
...We look more professional in September...
...I'm staring at loads of Board of Ed memos and forms...
...November 28...
...Of course, it's not a perfect beginning...
...She's one of four CPESSers who've had babies...
...I leave her to recapture my composure...
...They believe this is a "stash," unrelated to our students...
...At stake: whether in a break with established practice teachers will be required to come to school the day after Thanksgiving and the first Monday of the Christmas holiday...
...Is it part and parcel of the test design...
...But he still comes in late...
...The whole thing is like a series of doctoral orals...
...What's your evidence...
...It looked less simple to me when reversed...
...There was an almost audible explosion of relief...
...So we're comparing all our students to the top 25 percent...
...We need to attend to the other side too...
...or "You mean you don't even have a TV...
...Snake oil...
...But so what...
...we have detentions...
...If I could raise their scores in any way I knew how, I would, just to ease their pain...
...I was aghast at both facts...
...January 24...
...Then it gets out of hand and I lay down the law...
...The degree of rage it raises in me is unreasonable...
...November 1, Friday, 6 P.M...
...Was the edited version always better...
...We're likely to abandon the dream of public education and local control in a panic (plus lethargy) based on phony data and bad analysis...
...George was sure he had explained it...
...I understand although I suspect I could push her into it...
...They wouldn't be so dangerous if they were low-stakes exams that were used mostly on a sampled basis or as a way to get a second opinion...
...She smiles politely...
...They were muttering...
...Idea: place the requirement to keep in touch in his hands...
...SPRING • 1992 • 219 But it's also his way of caring for his son...
...Pretty soon we need to work Derek into this picture...
...Uh-oh, I thought...
...To her the school is a distraction from her central task: helping out those who love her and care for her...
...Is it mostly being small and intimate enough to pay attention...
...My co-director Paul and I sit from 8:05 to 8:40 A.M...
...So, Jose, his adviser and I agree on a new plan that includes new penalties...
...220 • DISSENT...
...Is it contagious...
...The bedrooms instantly became 10' by 14...
...But they end up enjoying it...
...Have we created enough of an internal culture to sustain hopefulness at least between nine and three...
...I presented George with the problem...
...I got off into my distaste for the kinds of reports we encourage (or at least don't discourage), as though writing dull, pointless lists about a country, people, topic (generally plagiarized from encyclopedias) is a "developmental stage" in children's writing...
...If we could just say it better, the kids would finally "get it...
...February 7. Remember Derek...
...November 18...
...People cheat on eye tests if they need to...
...But is this because of bad schools or bad testing...
...It's built on a familiar but false story: that bad schools caused our economic woes, and good ones can cure them...
...The ratings are then compared with ours, and then we join together to argue over our rationales...
...But our paradigm of teaching and learning is so well lodged that we don't hear the evidence...
...When it gets down to individuals, the mismatch between SAT scores and real intellectual competence is shockingly clear...
...The noble fantasy that fuels every curriculum reform...
...Oh, for a less litigious society...
...Why didn't we think of this before...
...Since the chancellor is not the bad guy in this story, why give him a hard time...
...Or something in between...
...The children are especially studious the first week...
...Lutsky, the school's "manager" of everything, found five vials of crack hidden beside the rear door exit of the school...
...Doing well at school would require her to see us as allies...
...Friends in other schools claim they can see the despair...
...Is our involvement with his family a mistake...
...God help us...
...The custodian is trying...
...In a year in which the Board is unable to offer teachers anything (class sizes are larger, salaries frozen, and kids are coming to school more damaged than usual) our SPRING • 1992 • 215 "employers" have decided to pick a phony fight...
...Or because the impact of the school is always limited...
...As though our children only count if they help us beat somebody else's children—like the Japanese...
...We select a sample of items— including videos of Graduation Committee meetings—for staffwide review and then, ultimately, for external review...
...She allows a smile...
...January 17...
...When budgets are set is often as critical as how much...
...It's nice to see kids hanging out in classrooms—working on computers, writing papers, playing quiet games when classes aren't in session...
...The Graduation Committee has at least two assigned faculty, another adult of the student's choice, and a student...
...Delight...
...October 10...
...Fortunately we've not yet had really cold weather...
...The arbitrator ruled 100 percent in the UFT's favor...
...And feel joy...
...October 5. Is it worth it...
...Lydia, age thirteen, was dispiritedly trying to complete her assignment: map your "dream house" on a sheet of 8" x 11" graph paper...
...They remind me of the weekends I spent in the country with my own children and their friends...
...I've been thinking about the argument we had at the staff humanities meeting...
...If death doesn't count, does life...
...He doesn't yet really accept that "telling" isn't teaching...
...There's got to be a willingness to take risks...
...We were right...
...We focus on telling, not on listening...
...The police were called...
...February 13...
...Do we have to cancel gym classes...
...Changes in dates, names, and sequence of events have been made to maintain the privacy of students, their families, and the school's staff...
...The present generation be damned...
...I tried it out with Sandra (African American...
...If I fail...
...Self-doubt and a sense of hopelessness are things you can chip away at...
...I remind him that it's our job to "teach" but his job (and his family's) to get to school...
...The kind of reform we're after requires hopefulness, mutual respect, faith in democratic institutions, a certain tolerance for messiness, uncertainty—even ambiguity...
...What follows is a selection from a longer journal of life at CPESS...
...Mike Rose, in Lives on the Boundary, walks the reader through his own initiation into the world of ideas...
...It helped when someone "played" the white teacher and interrupted the attempted complicitous conversation by insisting that "those" kids were "hers...
...Students ought to be able to hang out anywhere and not get herded into the gym, lunchroom, or even the library...
...Within limits...
...At times I deny this—because we are after all here for a purpose...
...But if one doesn't "buy into them," they will not be done well...
...I threaten...
...Attacking the testmakers doesn't relieve the burden of self-doubt...
...The wound to children's confidence and self-respect is enormous...
...Tomorrow I meet with Yolanda about her pattern of lateness and absenteeism...
...In a period in which reform is fueled not by parents or teachers but by corporate and statehouse priorities, it's hard to imagine anything else...
...Is his failure to engage related to not knowing how to succeed in our school or because he has other more critical priorities in his life...
...Also, we calculated our cuts early, relied on attrition (and support from foundations), and didn't let anyone go, no matter how low their seniority...
...She showed me her first drawing, which was put together with four pieces of 8" X 11" graph pages...
...It's a trap...
...And persist...
...How we agonize...
...December 14...
...The teacher gives us an angry "Why are you interrupting this class...
...or is it the symptoms they see: violence, death, pregnancy, drugs...
...As a purist about data I can't compress it into the needed two sentences...
...We so rarely suspect our students of being "involved" with drugs that I wonder if we're SPRING • 1992 • 213 naive...
...January 25, Saturday...
...In our sister elementary school there's a crisis a day...
...The constraints, George insisted, are important to get kids tackling the mathematical issues...
...I put up with it in what I hope was good grace...
...But it's hard to be tough if there's no "bottom line...
...He's admitting he's bought in a little...
...Maybe the kids learn more here accidentally than on purpose...
...Only two kids out of ten remember any of them...
...First music, then art is threatened...
...One of the teachers showed me a letter from Cheneta, who graduated last year...
...I realize Felicida doesn't belong in this room but has come in to collect her coat and bookbag...
...I think it's a breakthrough...
...Does that make our kids seem more "normal" —joyous, giggly, flirtatious, friendly...
...I know Sandra gets mad at me for saying that these race/class/gender discussions only will work if they're "fun...
...On the other hand, motherhood is wonderful...
...twenty-nine in the upper grades...
...She enters loudly...
...Spent our advisory time organizing a cake sale for our spring trip...
...What's new is that there no longer seems to be an assumption that we can afford to intervene with resources, or that there are real jobs out there for the real kids in our schools...
...I suppose it's a measure of their hopefulness (or naiveté) that they persist after low PSAT [Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test] scores...
...Their graph grossly understates the case...
...Visiting different college campuses each year has a cumulative impact...
...We're starting with four fewer staff positions (out of thirty-five) because of budget cuts...
...I said something pleasant...
...more supportive...
...There's a sense in which they're right...
...October 26...
...It goes against the grain to see this as our job...
...It's not possible, she said...
...It's not enough to "want to do well...
...I point to the sign and to the proper entrance...
...Pain works when it's strictly voluntary — when you're in control of the level of pain...
...But on the other hand: maybe it's in that gray area between being a family and a school that we engender hopefulness...
...we send their advisers daily notes...
...he recommended downsizing her dream...
...Yet death surrounds our kids...
...Why did I imagine that the reform "movement" would take seriously the arduous task of school-by-school change that involves taking practitioners seriously...
...The tension among the white and black teachers was very sharp...
...She accepts my role as giver of lessons...
...The real shortcomings have always been there...
...Won't they seem illiterate if we don't get to...
...They complain about how the teachers are always getting "into our business...
...People are "impressed," one kid quipped with a grin when he visited...
...Even if I could...
...There are lots of different kinds...
...But George said I had to put it all on one page," she lamented...
...I next see her banging on that door...
...He left Howie with a demand for instant feedback on Derek's future behavior...
...It's not what we're "spozed" to be doing...
...Wasn't she listening...
...Last month the New York Times published ETS [Educational Testing Service] data showing how closely scores correlate with family income...
...they barely answered...
...Or worse...
...After school sports...
...All this compulsive collection of data—the more the better even if it's misleading and largely self-serving...
...As I was leaving school this evening after family conferences I passed two parents in the stairwell...
...Over 90 percent of this year's potential graduates took them...
...Running around the fields, dashing in and out, playing silly tag games, shopping, cooking, giggling before the fire, keeping me up very late at night, choosing a movie, bowling...
...November 26...
...Who cares, what difference does it make...
...But it can easily lead to rhetorical cures...
...Magical moment...
...We don't need to raise much money (or do much planning) because we're going to my place in Hillsdale, and the school pays for travel...
...The kids always give me a hard time about "Why can't we bring a Walkman...
...I agreed...
...I look the other way...
...Each little square is one foot...
...The project was all about scale, but alas, Lydia didn't get it...
...How rare is it for a student to say thoughtfully, "I just don't get it...
...But it's not legal...
...Maybe it's "hopefulness" that we keep alive at CPE...
...And such testing leads to cheating—directly and indirectly...
...Every student must complete the requirements of fourteen different "portfolio" areas: literature, history, ethics, science, math, media, and so on, and present seven of them to a Graduation Committee for questioning and defense...
...February 12...
...I showed her why the size of the paper didn't matter...
...Lois (white) felt sure it was a "straw man...
...In a month they'll be feeling it...
...Could things 216 • DISSENT have been otherwise...
...in the country...
...September 14...
...But when we "teach" we have to keep reminding ourselves that students are doing the same thing...
...But no one could exceed 2,000 square feet...
...As we talk I can see drug deals being made out of my office window...
...Will we be conscientious enough to follow through or will he wear us out...
...Most of the kids do homework like I did piano practice...
...I can't stand to think about it...
...As we await the arbitrator's decision, rumors fly: if teachers don't show up they'll be docked two days pay...
...Is it translating into how we dare talk with kids...
...But his mother trusted our story...
...It's like a well-done Bar Mitzvah...
...We cut back on support staff, so we're bound to have gripes...
...His apprenticeship...
...We gambled that given citywide attrition there wouldn't be a massive bumping game...
...their son was walking apart...
...It's not that we've figured out how to make all our subjects interesting or relevant or our assessment authentic...
...I played the African American parent sharing "our" shared perception of whites in the school...
...I felt vindicated today...
...Her bedrooms were fine sizes...
...The real social class disparities are much more devastating because so few students in the low-income categories take the test, and those who do are those rare high-achieving students who are considering expensive four-year colleges that care about SATs...
...and when we do, we think we can act, "do" something...
...But what a lot of wasted time...
...Derek was a silent observer...
...I can't...
...If we had to close the gym, it would be a disaster...
...I asked her what her scale was...
...Who does...
...It means twenty-eight vs...
...twenty-five in kindergarten, thirty-three vs...
...Judy came in with her infant...
...Hardly a helpful session, although lots of important things got said...
...I think everyone left feeling intrigued and pleased...
...But maybe it's like closets—the more you have the more you put into them...
...We're not endlessly bound to love and forgive...
...November 27...
...Compared to New York City data re attendance, graduation rates, test scores, college acceptances, it's so staggeringly high that I suppose precision isn't necessary...
...We feel we have to justify the time spent listening to and observing kids or engaging them in endless conversation or asking them to "write it again" and again...
...A jerry-built solution to our heating system in the gym will tide us over...
...She gets nasty, belligerent, and tries out all her "attitudes" on me...
...November 2, Saturday...
...Ens...
...Plus the required trip to a college campus...
...Granted, the African American staff feel the pain all the time, so why shouldn't we...
...Above all they enjoy the sheer leisure and play...
...Once again the language of schooling is based on a notion of teaching and learning that's all wrong...
...The other seven are presented for a more cursory review...
...CPESS serves a predominantly low-income African American and Latino population...
...It has taken more than an hour of my day...
...But . . . it shifted into a larger "ideological" debate about teaching and learning, what kids don't know how to do and—implicitly?—who's at fault...
...Maybe our success is not related to our highly praised curriculum or pedagogy but to creating an intensely personal and stable place that's always there for kids...
...How did she decide what to edit...
...Last month we (the staff) wasted hours trying to decide on an approach to school life if the threatened custodial strike was called...
...The more they make us listen...
...Partly this man's particular issue...
...How do you know what you know...
...But we're both happy...
...They're as touchy as the staff...
...This month we're trying to decide what to do if the Board wins its revenge on the UFT [United Federation of Teachers...
...Half above 790, half below...
...We've come a long way...
...The SAT overwhelmingly measures class...
...there's steely disdain underneath it...
...Will it matter...
...They both want to leap over the present...
...We spent an hour or more trying it out other ways, while everyone commented and criticized different approaches...
...I go from calm old lady to furious defied authority...
...They start off by discussing their ratings and reasoning...
...These are the moments when the years of patient alliance between school and family pay off...
...Finally the staff agreed to add three to four kids per class...
...The police say it's a handy place since the door is used only in fire drills...
...At present we seem at best a benign enemy (or nuisance), always telling her to make school her priority...
...He's daring me to kick him out...
...A good education and knowing each other well is what the kids need...
...But ensuring that we have a set of shared and publicly defensible standards takes continual reexamination...
...I haven't given up...
...But the place itself is interesting and authentic...
...What would we do for the rest of the lunch break...
...Trouble...
...scolding latecomers...
...they're fitting new knowledge into old schema where it isn't appropriate...
...Our SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test] scores came in...
...But I go along...
...Back to the drawing board...
...No one wants to leave at the end of three days...
...Rose, who works in the elementary school, says she saw Antonio buying or selling drugs last weekend...
...We get restless...
...We can help...
...And we aren't good at discouraging kids...
...His father made clear he found both Derek and Howie at fault...
...We see less of these—because we're smaller...
Vol. 39 • April 1992 • No. 2
