Why voting for a third party does not make sense (and when it will)

                       I don't believe people intending to vote for 3rd party candidates are wrong in their desire to do so. Hillary Clinton has proven to be a lackluster candidate, while Donald Trump is well... himself. But the rationale given by 3rd party supporters, especially those who were politically activated by Bernie mania is what frustrates me the most. First, we need to stop romanticizing the vote. There's this false sense of patriotic duty ascribed to voting. While voting in the very first election after years of authoritarian oppression is truly a touching moment, America has been doing this song and dance for over a century now. At this point voting should be second nature to us. In fact the only reason it isn't is because so many people don't do it. So many people don't really care to vote. And there's plenty of research out there that defends the apathetic voter, so I won't get into it. The point is that when you're voting, you're not making some grand statement about your worldviews. In fact, the anonymity of voting exists so people cannot crucify you for what may well be a whimsical decision.
                     So if voting doesn't exist for me to give myself a reach around, then what is the purpose of voting? Well, it's actually quite simple. It's to be a selfish fuck. Ok, maybe that's a bit pessimistic, but the inherent self serving nature of voting is often what is obfuscated by these people claiming to vote based on principles. You don't only vote because you have a set of principles, you vote because someone is going to materialize those principles into actions when they're in office. So to vote effectively one has to ask themselves two questions, the second of which hinges on the answer to the first one. The first question that needs to be asked is: how likely is it that this candidate is going to be elected? While nobody expects you to be a world class statistician, it doesn't require a PHD in political science to realize that America has a 2 party system. Does this bar a 3rd party candidate from winning the presidency? Yes it does. Simply put, the notion that your third party presidential candidate is going to win the election is highly unlikely, making a vote for them purely symbolic. Often this symbolic gesture comes at little to no cost, given that two party systems typically coalesce around the center during general elections. This move to the center makes democrat candidate blah and republican candidate bleh two scoops from the same American themed rainbow sherbet pint. But this election is different. Given the rapid polarization that has occurred in our country, the democrats and republicans are offering vastly different flavors, with the republican flavor not even to be found in a conventional republican icebox (ok this ice cream metaphor is going too far). The point is that a third party voter now might have a critical role to play in determining the political changes that occurs in this country. The two questions I mentioned earlier become critical because what might come as a purely symbolic gesture for you could be the entire repudiation of a portion of the country. Also, if 3rd party voters built a coalition, then in elections like these, candidates would specifically pander to them. Again voting is about achieving results, not grandstanding on a set of values.
                 One might read this and say that I'm basically giving no hope for 3rd party candidates. Often people claim this pessimistic talk of "it's always been this way" only serves to deter the eventual rise of a political movement for a 3rd party candidate. They'll claim that I'm spouting broken logic, which makes it impossible for a 3rd party candidate to win. Well, they're idiots. It shouldn't come as a shock that perhaps the best way to win the highest office in the country is by taking considerable control over smaller offices. Senatorial races and House of Representative seats are far more valuable, practical and essential for the long term success of a political party. If these same fools who are going to go out and vote for Jill Stein made sure to vote and advocate heavily in local, state and congressional elections, then Jill Stein would be a viable candidate. But until then they'll call everyone else sheep, selfishly vote for their third party candidate and then wipe their hands clean when the negative repercussions of which ever candidate they enabled to win finally comes to fruition.

A small defense of the 3rd party folk that they themselves won't admit to. The rampant spending in political elections have made any true grab for power that does not in some way compromise on 3rd party beliefs difficult. However, this line of argument makes it even more pertinent not to vote for 3rd party candidates, but to vote for primary candidates who have a shot of making the political environment more tenable for 3rd party candidates.

Who owns Steven Universe?

           Steven's Universe is my new summer discovery of a show. The show is bold, producing a fantastical plot that is able to explore a variety of identities ranging from body size, race, and sexual orientation. Most importantly, these identities don't feel forced or political, instead they function within the universe to allow the main character to explore the world with a normal that unfortunately isn't normal for most of the people who share the identities of these characters. I love this show and think it should be considered the benchmark for how to produce socially conscious material that's compelling. You would think that a fandom that spawns from this show would be as accepting and open minded as the characters in the show. Unfortunately they aren't. Instead they ridicule anyone who creates art that doesn't remain faithful to their interpretation of the source material. The argument is that the LGBTQ and the non-conforming community and women  have a unique claim to the artistic material. First, thanks white people :D. And also thanks to SU for hardly exploring the racial dimension that exists in the show. But even if we found a person of color who identified with the aforementioned communities, would that person have a pure claim to Steven's Universe? I don't think so. There is only one group that Steven's Universe is for. Kids.
       The thing about Steven's Universe that so many people from so many backgrounds don't get is that it's not about them. It's about the children. These shows are teaching children to have a much broader mind concerning gender, race and sexual orientation. It teaches kids that love cannot be caricatured as gay or straight, but instead is made up of actual interactions. As a bigger guy, it would've been nice seeing a chubby Steven be good enough for his friend Connie. A beautiful mother who also shared his grandiose stature caps off my love of this show. These characters reminded me of my childhood, but provided me with an alternative way to interact with the people in my life. If only I grew up watching this show, but I didn't. And neither did any of you producing all this ridiculous vitriol over a skinny Rose or a white cosplayer dressing as Amethyst.
      In a world connected by the internet, we nerds need to be aware of when we hastily take material intended for kids and make it our own. We have a responsibility to either keep kids from seeing our mature takes of the show or producing material that will not poison the innocence of children with our bickering. I don't think the community is acting irrational, but how far is too far with this behavior? The fact that a girl attempted suicide because of the backlash from a drawing is ridiculous. Perhaps if people took the time out to critique her drawing in a level headed manner, the community would be represented as passionate and thoughtful gatekeepers of the content, not crude bullies. Fortunately for me, my blog is hardly read, so I doubt any of these over zealous fools will shower me with their discontent. But if they do, that's fine. I'm not a young girl. I'm a grown cis-gendered Puerto Rican man and I'm telling you that you don't own Steven's Universe. The children do. 

Real Social Justice: How a sexist man chooses to interact with the world

                 This blogpost was supposed to be a generalized discussion about how sexism makes dating shitty for both men and women. But as I wrote it, I realized that the conclusion from that blogpost would be incredibly boring. Most of us understand how the environment of sexual assault and misogyny could make many women skeptical of advances made by men. And if you don't agree with that reaction, I probably won't convince you otherwise with the post I was intending to write, so go over to this website. I'm sure you'll feel at home there.
               Now that the children have left, let's have some real talk. I messaged a girl on ok cupid (yep, I've been sucked in too, honestly in a city as a working professional it's just really convenient, but wait I don't have to justify my decisions to all of you!). I read her entire profile, as I typically do (some people actually care about that shit), and realize she made a comment about laughing about space hamsters. " Well I'm  a pretty big weirdo and the thought of laughing about space hamsters intrigued me so I messaged her first writing, "What type of space hamsters do you laugh about?" To be completely honest I didn't really expect a message back. While I'm not doing horribly in the reply category, I'm also not being offered free A list status. I expected a no response (which for every bitter asshole out there to hear, is fine, sometimes people don't like you, haven't checked their account, don't like you, were too busy, or perhaps they don't fucking like you). I don't care as there are plenty of fish in the sea, they're just all really hard to catch (seriously if you go fishing, you'll see what I mean).
             So color me surprised when she responded to me accusing me of searching up her twitter name and casually referencing it before even knowing her. Now let's stop for a second. There are definitely guys who do shit like this. Hell even I will facebook stalk/internet check someone out after talking to them for a few hours just to make sure the ole catfish detector ain't ringing off. Her disgust about the assumed lengths I went to message her would definitely be warranted, if it actually happened. Instead turns out I was just mindlessly asking about something she talked about in the profile she wrote for everyone to read to know about her... (confusing right).
           Now let's be clear, I'm an asshole. So immediately I thought she was a fucking idiot. This really has nothing to do with gender. Anyone who knows me, knows that when someone does something stupid, regardless of the setting, I'm quick to call them an idiot. And of course I immediately responded by pointing out where the inspiration for my message came from. But after establishing that I wasn't a weirdo creep, something hit me. Why the fuck do I have to deal with this overreaction? If someone else would do this kind of shit to me, I would rip them a new asshole. And it's not like I know her. The inter webs allows us to be morally reprehensible with the protection of the glass screen. So I began writing this long tirade about how tired I am of being accused of shit I didn't do and how it's typical white girl bullshit to claim this kind of shit. And then I stopped because I realized if I said any of that shit, I'd be acting like a sexist asshole. That girl was not in the right to be a jerk over something that she clearly made public but that reaction isn't because she's an irrational stuck up jerk. It's because so many women get harassed on these kinds of sites and so when ever a guy, especially one that labels himself as a gamer and nerd like I do, messages her with something that just seems too familiar, she immediately becomes suspicious. That reaction, while definitely not deserved, is a product of the environment. To blame her would just add onto the fucked up nature of the system.
         She hasn't messaged back, but maybe she will. Regardless, I'm happier with my decision. Often when we're placed into situations concerning racism or sexism, we find that the inability to empathize with the target identity makes it so that the reaction you give is highly inappropriate and often reaffirms the systems of oppression that person lives in. However, the opposite expectation of immediately checking your privilege is an unrealistic one. The system skews the way we view each other. By acknowledging our frustrations, we become aware of the distortion and are then able to fix it or at least, check ourselves. 

What if Wendy Kopp was black?

                         I have to admit to some bias before writing this blogpost. I have always made it known that I am a 2014 NYC corp member (about to finish my 2 year commitment). As a corp member I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly of the NYC corp. However, this blogpost is not really going to discuss those topics. Instead it's going to ask the question of whether Teach for America is the best form of support for high need schools? Or perhaps there was an alternative path that could have achieved similar, if not better results than Teach for America, while not carrying the white savior complex people often ascribe to the corp.
                     One might wonder what race has to do with it, but in many ways the approach of TFA is what I would imagine a well intentioned outsider would do if they were confronted with the horrors of educational equity. You see Wendy Kopp, founder of the corp, birthed the idea when she realized that investment banks and wall street were aggressively recruiting top talent from great schools and wondered why those students weren't going into education? Thus TFA was formed, the financially feasible way of going into teaching, while also keeping every other career option open. The idea that more intelligent teaching candidates would lead to more effective teachers isn't necessarily an awful one. The only issue is that teachers are kind of like fruit, it takes a few years for them to ripen and the best ones are often shipped to private and charter restaurants. Teach for America has certainly inspired people to remain in education or affect some sort of policy change in education, but the mantra of "one day" constantly posed to corp members as if it were a Utopian dream we were working towards, rings hollow as you realize how static the education system is. When I say static I mean static in its educational discrepancies. Schools  seem to be playing a game of firefighter, where the low performance is the constantly raving wildfire and the myriad of curricula are the ineffective tools used to put out these low performing outcomes.
                  And yet one day always seems to be several years away. Outcomes may change for individual teachers and classrooms, but your illustrious students of 7th grade easily slip back into their under performing ways when they reach another corp member who wasn't quite up to the task in 8th grade. I was that corp member my first year. Ineffective at classroom management and lackluster when delivering material, Teach for America had placed me in a position where I was largely unsuccessful. But I bit my tongue, took my lumps and finished what one education school professor described to me as the "tunnel of shit" that is one's first year of teaching. Now at the end of my second year, I am able to see actual growth in my students. I have grown into my own and find myself exponentially getting better at the job. Each day I become more aware of what good instruction looks like and with the impending completion of my master's of education, I will now be certified as a professional and not the hastily put together corp member people like to caricature us as.
             The main ingredient for my success? Veteran teachers who have consistently shown me how to run a classroom. Often it's not only the quality, but the variety that helped me as a new teacher (I still am a new teacher). Every teacher had something different to give me in terms of my own identity as a teacher. From Mr. Singleton's emphasis on teaching kids respect to Ms. Spencer's ingenious use of social pressure to govern the classroom, each teacher made up a piece of my identity as a teacher. I learned to love my kids from Ms. Roman and was taught to stand my ground by Ms. Cabarcas. Even veteran teacher who I had little contact with were incredibly influential. For example, Mr. McKenna's tenacity was infectious and Ms. Dwyer's organization, admirable. I didn't need a class to teach me what a teacher was, I had examples of it all around me.
             On the contrary, my fellow corp members in other schools who had opposite experiences (basically their second year was a continuation of their first year) found themselves in schools with mostly new teachers. Never having any true veteran presence, many of them had to try to figure out for themselves how a teacher was supposed to function. Some of them were successful and some of them failed. I have no doubt that if many of them had veteran teachers who were willing to provide insight into their craft, they would have been successful.
            It is estimated that a teacher reaches peak performance after 4 to 5 years of experience. Effective schools have grade leaders and content leaders, who help create a uniformed approach to how content is developed. Their presence in schools makes it so that students in the classrooms of new teachers get a normalized teaching experience. Gone are the days where new teachers learn to fend for themselves and instead new teachers are explicitly taught what is proper pedagogy by seeing it in action.
         A 2013 study from the American Educational Research Journal found that turnover rates in high needs schools are much higher than their affluent peers. The reality is high need schools struggle to keep their excellent teachers. When I came back for my second year, I was shocked to see the mass exodus of teachers that had occurred. 5 veteran teachers of a staff of around 40 changed schools. While that might seem insignificant, the caliber of teacher we lost was tremendous. Those 5 teachers were among grade leaders and some of the most active co-workers in our staff. Many of them ran several clubs and did special events that they were only privy to. When they left, unique experiences our school could offer were taken with them.
        Which leads me back to my question. What if Wendy Kopp were black? Would she look to the ivy covered halls to find our new teacher force or would she realize that it was the life force of a few critical teachers that kept a staff running excellently. I believe instead of jettisoning recent college grads into difficult situations, the corp would serve better if it made the decision to leave a school you love much harder. It would provide money and prestige to those who stay at their schools. In all honesty, veteran teachers deserve every bit of that money and prestige, at least far more than I do. In a year I hope to be preparing for law school. I am not the solution to my school. But the veteran teachers struggling to stay another year are. What if one day good teachers stood in struggling schools? What if those teachers gradually made those schools great? It's a risk either way, but I'd rather put my bets on them then on myself.

Self Policing doesn't work when you're an invisible man

                         I thought the topic of Yale would be over. For those of you who don't know, Yale had a bit of controversy this past Halloween. A multicultural committee at Yale sent an email out to students asking them to be mindful of the costume choices they make this year. In response, the wife of one of the headmasters of a residential college at Yale, upheld a belief in being culturally conscious, but ultimately felt that self policing and honest discussion is the right way to go about achieving that goal. Students of color did not particularly like those comments and therefore demanded her resignation. If you want to know who I think was right and wrong (not like it matters) you can read my other blogpost about the matter. Instead I want to explain why Self-policing simply does not work for minorities.
                      Self-policing is a new entryway for racism to be disguised as pure disagreement. When self-policing becomes the defacto way to handle disagreements around hate crimes and other such transgressions, then anything short of blood (and even then some administrations look the other way) becomes ultimately ignored. One might argue that minorities can protest. But even we understand the concept of trade offs. Why protest that asshole frat boy Blake and his Cinco de Mayo outfit when we're still in arguments with the University over whether a black fraternity can get a house on Frat Row (cough University of Michigan cough). The point is that while these acts of racial insensitivity are damaging, we may not be willing to disrupt our everyday lives to exert the energy to get it to stop.
                 And when we do exert that sort of energy, due to the accumulation of abuse, we are typically met with the same response.
                   "Ok. Ok. Ok. Calm down, we didn't know you were that upset about it," says the unsuspecting public. But here's the thing, we probably have expressed our displeasure with the matter and were written off as either being overly sensitive (i.e. you need to let me have fun at your expense) or given some bullshit apology (e.g. I'm sorry, it's just so funny!). Then you wonder why we erupt randomly over what seems to be trivial but is actually important to us. The issue with self-policing is it puts the entire burden on minority students to create a new movement in order to solve problems that are non-existent in a non-minority student's life. Otherwise the non-,minority student will continue treating you like an invisible man, ignoring for as long as they can the subtle abuses they dish out through their everyday actions.
                When that headmaster's wife implied that self policing should occur, she essentially took away the only form of lifeline minority students had in terms of addressing grievances in a low energy manner. She sided, unknowingly with the students who were willing and ready to be culturally insensitive and instead of discovering through self reflection her mistakes, she remained adamant about not being at fault. Well she's wrong. She was at fault. Administrators are there to maintain peace and equality. They are not supposed to pick sides. Administrators only pick sides where there is a huge power differential (e.g. minority students constantly having to deal with culturally insensitive costumes) and even then they serve as equalizers. By having equal footing throughout the community, true intellectual dialogue can occur. But if you expect minority students to engage in discussion with our wings clipped and legs chained, then you are creating an intellectual dialogue for white men.

When mob justice doesn't work

                  People have an issue with mob justice, but I think the irony behind the criticism is that mob justice often represents the purest form of free speech that exists. In an anarchist society or one with little government intervention, mob justice would be the de facto social check for most behavior. If people don't like your shit, you got to go, or that's at least how many of these situations have been playing out. But one might be surprised to hear that even I have seen a few instances of mob justice where I had to raise my eyebrow. Often my issue is not with the mob (mobs are gonna mob, it's kinda what they do), but the actors responding to the mob. Simply put, when mob justice initially started, corporations were probably taken aback. Scandals have happened before the age of the internet, but now it's so much easier to expose the rampant racist remarks made in the upper echelons of corporate America. Since corporate America had lost its personality several decades ago, these businesses responded to this outrage as if it were a textbook scandal. What corporate America failed to realize was that the internet and all its awesome power can be angry about Africa tweets one minute and bickering about a dress color the next. I mean just ask Kony 2012 how the global movement of young people helped usher in a new change in the child soldier situation in Uganda (update: he still hasn't been caught). And that's ok, it's kinda how the internet has functioned. So why aren't corporations privy to the fickle nature of the internet? There are a few things that would probably help corporations and other domains deal with mob justice in an appropriate manner.


1. Verify before crucify:
          How many times have we seen someone's public image be crucified because they've been accused of a crime that they actually didn't commit?  Mob justice is what would happen if we did not have a legal system and decided to punish without verifying any of the facts. If corporations made it a standard to verify accusations and transgressions before reacting, we would see lynch mobs fizzle out quite quickly. But in order to do that, corporations need to be willing too...

2. Test the resolve of the mob:
       Remember I have no qualms with mob justice because mobs function like dust tornadoes (I hear people call em dust devils elsewhere, well fuck you) they look incredibly terrifying and can definitely be irritating if you're caught in it, but most of them will fizzle out in a few seconds, leaving you pretty much unscathed (except you'll have some dirt all over ya). So many forms of mob justice would fizzle out if a corporation claimed to take the mob seriously, but stood by their own, thorough investigative process. This process would test the mobs resolve and if the mob finds themselves easily distracted by the next bit of juicy internet drama, the corporation can then deal with the issue without the integrity of the penalization process being called into question.
If the mob continues their adherent disgust with the company, letting that disgust materialize in lost customers, etc., well the customer is always right and honestly such pressure is not and should not be illegal. People are allowed to choose with their wallets and if you can't make them happy, then you need to change your business model. But as I said before, this actually rarely happens. Sure the zealots, who scream from the mountaintops might call for a boycott, but these actions are just as effective as the so called boycotts the transphobic community has been launching against Target. Target don't give a fuck.

3. Have a consistent behavior scheme in your company
     Shout out to the Youtuber Destiny who made this awesome video about why the ban of Gross Gore from Twitch, while potentially justified, was ultimately unsettling. He argues that the fact that GrossGore escalated from several warnings to a full permanent ban when there were other intermediary steps that could have been taken, makes it seem like the process is unfair and can be easily manipulated. When there is a clear behavior protocol, then it's hard for mob justice to continue going, unless of course your system is inadequate for the particular instance that occurs. But you still don't cede to mob justice, just change your system to make it responsive. Furthermore, protocols ensure that people within your company or community know exactly what they can and cannot do, actually encouraging more freedom since people aren't afraid of randomly getting in trouble. 


           In short, mobs good, corporations dumb. Mobs can do their mob thing as long as the rest of the world responds to them appropriately. 

Test Prep and Prestige: How I learned to stop worrying and love teaching

                           I wake up at 5:30 in the morning every single day to begin my commute to my school. As a guy I'm blessed with the ability to do a 15 minute turn around and find myself on my way to the train station at 5:50. On a good day the trains run smoothly and I find myself a seat. On a bad day I spit out onto the tracks, my saliva representative of the fatigue of another work day, quietly dreading the eventual behavior disruption that will come on my triple period block with one of my classes. And then when I arrive they're perfect. I mean perfect in the sense that you could make a freedom writers movie using them, of course for that production to be complete you would need a teacher. I remember when I became a teacher, I tried to be a teacher. And it didn't work. So then I tried to be myself. From that point on my kids saw me as their teacher. Often the nerdiness comes through at times where I'm nervous or insecure. I find that your kids will strip you down and let you know when something is wrong. Your insecurities are keys on a piano for them to play. Better get used to hearing the tune. Eventually in your first year you'll find yourself drinking a little too much. Smoking a little too much. Curled up in a ball, crying in the shower with your clothes on, a little too much. And you'll hate it. At that moment no amount of mantra or motto will save you from the existential dread that can only be described as society induced disappointment. People can call you superman, but after a kid tells you to suck their dick, you begin to wonder why you even decided to become a teacher instead of taking that tech writer job in Wisconsin. I'm sure my manager there wouldn't have told me to suck his dick, well...probably. But you learn that forgiveness isn't a virtue, it's a paradigm that you're constantly stuck in. They're just kids isn't enough to forgive. Often times you have to murder pillows and bookcases in order to forgive yourself for taking it. Pictures taped up on your wall do little to comfort you after being berated. Your kids are not monsters, but the struggle will turn them into it. Test Prep means nothing when all you wanted was prestige. A flashy little badge to wear that says "I made it through Teach For America." Often times I find myself folding my students' notes a few times more when I snatch them from their hands. I want to bury their words in an infinitesimal dimension and each fold separates their words from me. Ahh you miserable fool. Why teach if you hate it. But I don't hate it. I love it. There are so many amazing moments where you get to see light bulbs and shattered fluorescent glass. I hope you have a hammer for glass ceilings male teacher because your female students will astound you. I spoke Spanish through my kids and through me they speak English. Our accents are embarrassing, but our rhetoric is eloquent. I can speak Vietnamese too. In fact every modicum of my voice has been crafted by their presence. To see me write is to see me teach. Performance or not, you choose the person you leave behind at the end of the mini-lesson. I used to think that teaching was about lecturing. I tried to lecture. It didn't work. I tried to talk to my kids. Now I am teaching.
         Being an adult is a farce taken to its extreme. No one is an adult until the title has been thrust upon them. Unfortunately teachers are forced to be adults. 22 and 23 year olds who were overgrown children in college attempt to be adults when they enter their classrooms for the first time. We can't afford rent or even a bed frame, but we'll still wear a button down with a tie and khakis to prove that we've moved on from our days of torn jeans and a University of Michigan hoodie. Four months in the hoodie will be donned weekly. You keep the khakis because you want to keep up the illusion of being professional. Your gelled hair will become dry and your pristine tie tossed aside. Such niceties are for show anyways. And teaching isn't a show. It's the show. You're the main attraction till the next body comes in.
       Sometimes I show my students my scars because they will judge me honestly. The irony of their honesty is that it's compassionate. I never understood how they could stand with me in solidarity against my plight. Then one day they showed me their scars and I cringed. My kids noticed my taken aback posture and begin to retreat. Often they'll nonchalantly talk about how they have no bed frame in their house. I guess we can bond over our own impoverished state, except for that fact that I've chosen this life. They are simply victims of fate. To err is to be human, but to be unjustly positioned in life is to be capitalist. I once had a student ask me what was he supposed to do at a funeral? His friend had died due to petty nonsense and he had to miss the long awaited school trip to attend the service. I had never been at a funeral, except for one. But it was for someone I hardly knew with feelings I could hardly understand. Adults are supposed to know the answers to these questions. At that moment I was the adult in his life. I failed. That night I went to a bar and pretended to drink myself into sorrow. Except I didn't go to a bar, I stood in and completed a grad school paper. And I didn't drink myself into sorrow, I stood up all night playing league of legends, raging at an unsuspecting player who did something that was not all too important.
       So why teach? Honestly there is no reason. Teachers are paid too little. The situations we are placed in are rigged. Success comes bundled in large portions of failure. This isn't a half empty- half full situation. It's a perhaps you could get one more drop from the cup situation. My kids are brimming with intelligence that has not been tapped till they got to me. I do not know why. I try to recount how I became intelligent and begin to wonder, am I even intelligent? Does the capacity to think and expound on one's thinking justify the label of intelligence. Meh, I could certainly beat my kids at my middle school self. And that's the issue. I don't remember a teacher specifically teaching me to be smart. I don't remember a teacher telling me I'm the best. I remember everyone around me expecting it. I sit in my chair one day, waiting for one of my kids to come up to me and say, "Mr. Arroyo how much smarter are the kids in Queens." I don't know what answer I'd give. Knowing myself I'd be honest. A lot smarter. They're harder workers. They truly engross themselves in the material and therefore by the time they get to high school and college they'll have developed the skills necessary to do higher level work. It's an uphill battle from here kid. At that point the kid would have ignored me and probably went back to what ever they were doing.
       I have a student who wants to be a lawyer. Dealing with her is night and day. When I saw her I incorrectly stereotyped her as the loud angry black girl. I now know that is a part of who she is. In my class, for the most part, she is a studious and inquisitive student, who is soft spoken when working through material. I understand her in ways she does not realize. I too, enjoy being quiet and studious, but often feel pressured to be loud and boisterous. Hell, I love being loud and boisterous. I do not need to choose. Both states are part of my personality repertoire. When she wrote in ebonics for her first persuasive essay, I did not cringe. I merely told her the truth. I completely understand your work, but the world outside of here will deem it unacceptable. You want to be a lawyer yes? She nods. Then you need to talk the way lawyers talk. And that has unfortunately been dictated by a predominantly white educated society. Talk ebonics to me. Talk however you'd like. But when we're doing academic writing, we both must hide our roots, cloaking them in clever diction and unnecessarily obtuse grammatical schemes. She still struggles with elements of reading comprehension. She will need to work harder to be a lawyer. I should push her harder.
      But that's the catch-22 of a teacher. If you go home feeling your job has been done, then you are incompetent. Of course, do not stress yourself out, but do not accept a 54% passing rate. Do not accept a 55% passing rate. Hell, do not accept a 99% passing rate. These percentages are nothing. Your kids are the ones at stake. I gladly give up my dreams to my kids, knowing that the minutia of my mind may very well be the only thing I have left to give. The rest of it is occupied by lesson plans, observations, grad school, parental expectations and being a 23 year old. I guess adulthood is the trick of losing yourself. That's how you wake up 50 and unhappy. Eventually your true self comes surging back, expecting a vacation and life achievements, when in fact you've been setting yourself up for the point that you could be happy.
     Do not read this as an indictment of teaching. I am just a writer who writes with the lines heavily shaded in. I have always been one to point out the disgustingly ugly, so that way when you get into the profession, the beauty is a nice surprise. I have finally stopped caring about grad school. I have finally stopped caring about dating. I have finally stopped caring about being an adult and test prep and prestige. Instead I care about my kids learning. And once I stopped worrying, I realized I love teaching.