Cutting People off and Being there

                             One fad I remember from college was the "radical" notion of self love. Self love essentially asked us to free ourselves from the expectations of society and the people around us and instead begin to love ourselves unconditionally, regardless of our flaws. A component of self love was removing toxic individuals from your life. Basically we needed to identify the people in our lives that drained us or made us feel less of ourselves and swiftly cut them off in order to achieve a state of happiness. This nonchalant action of removing someone from your life always left a sour taste in my mouth. I pride myself on being someone who cares too much and I've held onto people far too long and sure it hurt, but it also allowed me to keep other people in my life who I would have otherwise removed. Cutting someone off is always my last resort because the action itself is painful. The myth of a clean break from a poisonous person reflected an underlying pretension and selfishness I always felt when listening to the doctrine of "self love" in college.
                        A recent article I read brought up this grey area in self love doctrine by viewing how it interacts with mental illness. The article itself mentions mental illness and how it is often described as a "negative" state. Many will engage with their friends who have mental illness in this manner and quickly label them as negative. And according to the doctrine of self love, if someone is draining you then that's ground to cut them off. If I could be candid without a horde of criticism (hell I don't care if you criticize me), mental illness is draining. It's draining not only for those who suffer it, but also for those close to them. So if you have a friend who suffers from a mental illness you should expect to feel some of the effects from it. Not that you deserve any pity.
                    Let's have some real talk for a bit, this blogpost will be very informal for the sake of being honest about how I feel on this matter. I had a friend in high school who suffered from a mental illness. We were friends for about three years and as the years went on our relationship become more and more strained. Part of this was due to the illness, but it also had to do with normal high school drama and stress. I was quick to call her negative, but I stood by her believing that only the lowest form of a person abandons their friends. At a certain point me and few other close friends of hers decided enough was enough. We couldn't handle the emotional toll she took on us anymore and so one by one we decided to cut her out of our lives. At the time we came up with excuses and threw the blame on her. But now that I can look back, the reality is we couldn't handle her mental illness. It was too much for us and we weren't strong enough. Well I don't want to speak for everyone else, so let me me take that back and clarify that I was not strong enough. It was difficult cutting her out of my life and though I put on a strong face pretending she was irrelevant at the point I decided she wasn't in my life, the reality (aptly shown by the fact that I'm writing about her several years later) was that I lost someone close to me. "Negative people", mental illness or not, are people who we can become close with. Sometimes we're the negative people in another person's life and they have to make the choice of whether they can handle us or not. In the end I can't absolve myself by hiding behind the shield of self love. I made a choice to remove my friend from my life. It was a choice that I have no doubt hurt both of us.
              I believe we need to love ourselves, but we cannot become self absorbed. The moment we believe our happiness always trumps everyone else's happiness is when self love has gone too far. Good friendship is punctuated by sacrifice and compromise. And sometimes friendships don't work out. When you do decide to cut the individual off, do so with a heavy heart and don't feel foolish for having lingering thoughts about them. You can grieve the loss of a friend even if you were the one that decided to end the friendship. As for friends with mental illness, if you absolutely cannot handle the toll it might take you can always end your friendship, but you'll have to live with that decision. It isn't a question of who is right or wrong at that point. Honestly it's finding the resolution that makes both people happy. 

Social Justice Warriors need to take a seat

                I can't stand people who cling to the tenets of social justice, but refuse to accept how  disconnected many of the claims and beliefs are from the actual populations they like to talk about. A prime example of this is when I see articles written from my Alma Mater describing education inequality and income inequality. They'll talk about we need to create self determination and need to take back important things such as language, agency and culture. How about we take back some food? Honestly, many of the people writing these pieces are so disconnected from the reality of things. They post studies, statistics and theories illuminating why they are right and everyone else is ignorant. I used to be one of them and one of the best decisions I ever made was to follow the convictions I believed in. So I put aside my contempt for the gentrifying force that was Teach For America and took advantage of the fact that someone was going to pay me to go home and teach kids from where I was from. And that's when I truly learned Social Justice because instead of being in the nice sterile environment of a college dorm room, I was confronted with people who had far more pressing needs. Rent, your job, taxes, food to eat, gang violence, these are things we rarely talk about when discussing the oppressive nature of "whiteness." And how am I to condemn my white co-workers who work side by side to help fight for our kids? They clearly are outsiders coming in, but they've taken their licks and earned their stripes. Stop it with the pretension.
        Well Raymond looks like you've sold out. No, I haven't. I still hold almost all of the beliefs I've learned in college about critical race, and gender theory to be true. I still believe the institutions that exist are oppressing our children. I've only learned how to articulate these things in a manner that doesn't reek of the ivory tower. I am not out there splitting theoretical hairs. I don't deal with gestures of what may be right and wrong. I don't think these endeavors are completely useless. I've just grown to take displeasure with what has become a mostly passive movement. I want my students to march with me and know what they're marching for. I want the parents in my community to feel like they don't need to read my blog to tell them about the movement because they are the movement.
       My message to social justice warriors out there is to try and remove yourself from your social justice bubble and begin to breath the regular air. Then tell me how easy it is to remain true to your beliefs. That's what I believe is the hardest part of the journey we call social justice. I'm just glad that I can go to bed at night knowing I do something that matters and have remained true to my beliefs.  

Why does behavior intervention fail so often?

                  So you have a problem student and they continue to manifest negative behavior in the classroom. You try the gamut: detentions, calls home, ignoring, corrective behavior, behavior plan, etc. and finally you muster up the energy to go to the dean and ask for an intervention. This is typically done after a serious incident such as a physical altercation or a breakdown in the classroom. The kid is out of control in your mind and your hope is that an intervention will curtail their negative behavior. And then the meeting produces no useful results whatsoever. Who's at fault? The parents? The student? The teacher? The dean/behavior specialist? Well from my small experience and from countless veteran teacher discussions, I see similar factors that render behavior interventions useless.

1. Teacher calls for intervention too late- Yea, I'll admit sometimes I should have intervened much earlier than I chose to and my student's behavior reached a point where it could not be controlled. The intervention naturally was ineffective because the child had already reached huge levels of disruption which allows them to only slightly deescalate their behavior in order to stay in the clear.  An intervention typically tells a kid that they have crossed the line. So in their minds if they take a step back they'll be fine. In more concrete terms, a kid who "punched another kid in the face" and then received an intervention will rationalize that all of their behavior before that moment (e.g. play fighting, neck slapping, etc.) was acceptable behavior that they can get away with. The teacher who felt like the intervention was clear on physical interaction will find themselves frustrated because the student only dialed it back slightly. We need to draw the line around clear positive expectations. If respect other people's spaces is the rule in your classroom, then any infraction against that rule must be taken seriously. You need to call the intervention immediately. Don't wait...unless your administration keeps you.

2. Administration is not responsive- Just to be clear when ever I talk about dysfunctional administrations I'm never talking about my own. In fact, the only time I reference things from my school are criticisms of my own actions (my previous admission is a good example of this). But I have plenty of friends who have administrations that don't want to be stressed with the "small stuff" and that makes perfect sense. Administrations need to be focused for when huge serious issues occur, especially in schools that serve high needs populations. What do you do when a student is arrested? What do you do when you have a student potentially engaging in drug dealing within the school? Administrations are hard at work preventing those issues rather than talking to Brian Wilkers (completely made up story) about why he decided to get on his desk and start twerking in the middle of chemistry.

3. Conversation is framed in a broad or intangible manner-
What many people think would happen
Dean: Ok let's outline the negative behaviors this student does, let's outline the positive behaviors. Now let's create a plan to remove the negative ones and reward more heavily the positive ones.
Teacher: Sure, he is awesome at helping in the classroom, but he is horrible during the mini lesson
Parent: Well I know he has trouble focusing, maybe we can find a stress ball?
Dean: great we'll give him the stress ball and we'll tell him to keep his helper job he needs to focus in class.
Parent: I'll check up on him every week about how is focus is and corroborate what he says with the teacher.
Teacher: I'll be sure to upkeep communication with the parent and I'll create a point reward system that gives him rewards for keeping focus.
Dean: Ok bring him in so we can discuss these tangible next steps to change behavior.

What actually happens:
Dean: Ok let's lay into this kid for about 30 minutes.
Teacher: he's horrible, he's a nuisance. He's capable, but lazy. I want him to learn. It's not me, it's him. Etc. Etc.
Parent: I'm going to respond either in complete helpless agreement or I'm going to be overly defensive and claim my child is an angel and you are the only one having issues with him
Teacher: I'm either going to agree with your agreement or be passive aggressive about your disagreement the entire time.
Dean: ok now that we've established you have all these things wrong with you, how are you going to change your behavior
Student: here's a contrived and forced set of steps I will not follow and my teacher will have no way of holding me accountable to. Also, please accept my forced apology.
Dean: ok well hopefully that's the end of it.

Honestly, that's what ends up happening all the time. Behavior interventions needs some more concrete steps to follow.

4. Parents don't show-
No judgement here. Parents often have difficult lives and to expect them to come at moment's notice for meetings is actually pretty ridiculous. Just because a parent hasn't shown or call doesn't necessarily mean they don't care. Life is hard, so keep the judgement somewhere else. However, when a parent doesn't show up, all it accomplishes is reaffirming to the child that there are no real consequences for their actions.

5. Lack of a stable classroom environment-
        As a new teacher my classroom management is so shaky. I can admit that I have a lot to work on as a manager of the classroom as most first year teachers do. So when I have a student who's chronically a behavior problem, it's important for me accept a fraction of responsibility for their actions in the classroom. If I maintained a strong classroom, many of them would not act the way they do. It's often due to unclear and poor maintenance of expectations that classroom chaos ensues. That chaos can be enough to set off students who have poor control of their behavior. Of course don't ever let students use this as an excuse for bad behavior.

To test or not to test

                 The opt out movement is hitting fast and hard. Scores of parents in NYC are saying no to what they consider to be unnecessary standardized testing. There are a multitude of reasons to opt out. Some are opting out because they feel the tests are merely political and don't serve a serious pedagogical purpose. Others are opting out because they feel the rigor of the test is too high and won't accurately assess their child's intelligence. And some are opting out in solidarity with teachers who will now have 50 % of their rating determined by how their students perform on the exam. All in all, there are plenty of reasons to opt out. The issue is how quickly we are forgetting why these exams are so important for some of the most vulnerable students in the city.
               Unlike most places, New York City has a high school system that requires students to apply to programs within high schools in order to determine where a student will attend. This has taken what should be a smooth and seamless transition from adolescence to young adult hood into an incredibly stressful and confusing process. While some programs have alternative criteria, the bulk of programs choose students based on grades and standardized exam scores. For a student who is exceptionally bright and did poorly in school, the state exam could be your saving grace. Zone schools which exist to protect those students who truly have no other options are plagued by discrimination based on income disparity. It should be no surprise that the poorest neighborhoods are home to the worst zone schools. Students in low income neighborhoods even at the young age of 6th grade are aware of their need to "get out" of their current school system and into one of the more prestigious options New York City has to offer.
               For this reason many of these poor students can't afford to "opt out." Especially when the convention for students who opt out hasn't been determined. Will a high school judge a candidate without standardized test scores in the same manner they judge a candidate with standardized test scores? The answer is probably not. Especially if the student comes from a school in a poor district because regardless of what high schools claim in their selection process, many of them are privy to which schools produce the best quality of students and which schools simply don't. Furthermore, huge high schools might not even bother to look at students without test scores. It's much easier to organize students by 4s, 3s, and 2s and just take from the top till you reach capacity.
          Some parents may be wondering, "should I opt out my child if I know they are going to perform poorly on the state exam?" One might consider this question to be "gaming the system", but when we are dealing with a high school process that in many ways is more complicated and difficult than the college application process, every little bit helps. The answer to that question is really determined by you and your child. Where do you want your child to attend and do you think that high school will be uncomfortable admitting your child without state exam scores to evaluate?
        The reality of education is it is far easier to obtain a 90 or above average in the classroom than it is to even perform on grade level in the state exam. Furthermore, with the introduction of the ICT classroom setting in many schools, the mean level of rigor in the classroom has been brought down due to the lack of students being able to perform at such a high level of rigor. For example, if my child was bright and hard working there should be no reason for them not to score a high 3 or even a 4 on the state exam. Why don't we see many students scoring 4s from poor districts? The quality of their peers is significantly lower, making many of them perform at a low to medium level of rigor. When the exam comes they perform exceptionally well on most of the material, but due to their unfamiliarity with difficult material, they tend to be unable to reach the upper echelons of standardized testing scores.
        So back to the original question. If I was confident that a high school would not penalize my child for opting out of the state exam, then I would definitely have my child opt out. There is a higher likelihood my child performs better in the classroom than the state exam, which allows my child to be more competitive in the high school application process. But that is a big if and I doubt many high schools would go in blind. In a way this would actually hurt the quality of education because when the state exams become pointless, the level of rigor needed in the classroom has a huge variance. Teachers are not bad, they just respond to external stimuli. Teachers love their students and so if it helps their students to create grading schemes that allow for an average of an 85, then that is what teachers will do. Good teachers will still have high level work, but will also have safety nets so that their scores don't dash the ability of low performing students to compete in the high school process.
      Where does this leave us? To test or not to test? I'm unsure of what the answer to that question should be but in the spirit of not only being a nit picker, let me provide an alternative to the current system. First, we need a standardized test score that measures two things:content mastery and intelligence. The reality is we want schools to choose students in a holistic manner. Not all schools need the "smartest" students. Intelligence is not always a good measure of whether a student is the right fit for a school. Some high schools might have great vocational programs built into their schools. These programs don't need the most "intelligent" students. Instead they need students who have mastered a specific bulk of content. The standardized exam should be able to provide that information. A 2 on the state exam could be describing a student who is proficient in content or a student who is highly proficient in a specific kind of content. For example., if I have a student who is horrible in algebra, but excellent in geometry, then there is a chance that the student performs exceptionally well in all geometry questions (including those of high rigor) and performs poorly on algebra. Compare this to a student who is able to answer all the low rigor questions for all the content areas on the exam. Both students could end up scoring similarly on the state exam. A vocational high school wants a student who has a basic understanding of most content. The geometrically inclined student is not a good fit for the school. Unfortunately the state exam does not provide this information. We need state exams that can measure both a students mastery of content and a student's ability to apply content in a rigorous manner.
          Once we are able to distinguish between these types of students, there is no need for high schools to function in a monolithic manner. Meaning a vocational high school does not need to be devoid of high performing students. Different programs, which exists in the current high school application system, can be implemented in order to have a diversity of intelligence in the school. How useful would it be for future engineers to begin working side by side in high school with many of the mechanics and workers that will probably assist them in the field? Separation does need to occur by high school, but it should not be isolation. It is time we stop trying to teach everyone the same liberal arts education and instead center their education based on a well rounded support for their potential future career. The advantage of having the high school system New York City has is we can legitimately provide students with the ability to choose what their potential careers might be. It might seem young, but the reality is that the high school they go to in a large part will determine their career choices no matter what. If your student is not given high levels of math and science, the likelihood of them entering those fields in college is very low. Instead of pretending we leave students as blank slates, let us allow students to start the beginnings of their adult self when they choose their high school in conjunction with their parents.
         There so much more I can write, but for now I'll leave it like this. All I can emphasize is the necessity for these exams to be useful. Data driven instruction is only useful when placed in the context of a student's success. Unfortunately it seems like New York State and essentially the rest of the country is stuck in an inferiority complex. We are obsessed with these abstract standardized exam scores and forget that the data is intended to allow us to guide students to their best possible outcomes in life. Let's refocus on what's important: our students, our children, our future. And for parents who have decided to read what honestly is a slightly informed opinion, I hope you take my advice with a grain of salt. The landscape of education is changing rapidly and so many of my opinions may be invalidated with a swift signature on a piece of paper. 

The Privileged Overstep speech

               People want answers when institutions screw up. When the government is caught stealing public information from phone records, we raise our fists and yell angrily "how could this happen!" When a southern fraternity gleefully uses the N word in what seems to be a long standing tradition, we stand aghast as if this society is not riddled with these issues. And even when we accept that perhaps more work needs to be done, there is always someone who likes to come along and trivialize these issues to the point where no meaningful action can be taken against institutions that are clearly culpable. This process of obscuring issues to the point where responsibility becomes a shared burden rather than a weight tied to a perpetrator is what I call "the privilege overstep." It is when someone looks to an overarching societal problem as the root cause of what ever negative behavior a typically privileged institution commits. It's not their fault that they used the N-word, race relations are tense and we don't have discussions around race. It's not the financial sectors fault that the housing bubble set off a domino effect in the economy, we were all caught up in the hysteria of fake profit. When one uses a privilege overstep, they move responsibility from a privileged institution onto at best all of society and at worst (covertly) onto an oppressed group. It's unfortunate that women are often victims of sexual assault in college. We need to have more conversations surrounding these issues, perhaps starting with special nail polish and self defense techniques (cue the victim blaming).
             To be fair it's not like when ever someone engages in the "privileged overstep speech" they have malicious intent. Often the polarized nature of these issues make it so that both sides prevent any culpability to begin with. But the effects of such obfuscation paints those who pursue justice as hot-blooded and narrow minded. It is from this paternalistic explanation of "how the world is riddled with root evils" where the minority is not justifiably disgruntled, but instead an irrational and angry person. When one engages in the overstep speech, they often make a false equivalency between genuine concerns (e.g. sexual assault, racism, food stamps) and their fictionalized counterparts (fake accusations, reverse racism, deficit spending). The "privileged overstep speech" is yet another way people refuse to acknowledge confront their own privilege. In its most repugnant form, it maintains the systems of oppression by preventing any meaningful institution change. We must not be fooled when someone claims that issues are inherent in society and meaningful and targeted steps cannot be taken to keep institutions from perpetrating further injustices.