So the only reason I am here is because there is a department budget meeting today.  If I do not show up for this, my program will be raked over the coals.  I started teaching Sculpture at this school in 2002.  After four years of that, they moved me to Photography (a long and complicated story of power play and revenge, of which I was merely a pawn).  Photo was a part of the Business/Technology department, as was its budget.  Once the program was given to me, it was moved to the Art department, as was its money.  B/T lost the money, Art gained it.

However, to this day I still have to deal with the "Photo eats up a lot of the Art department budget" bullsh*t.  Year after year, the same old sh*t.  One would think that seeing the dollar allotment increase upon movement of my program would have helped my colleagues understand that I am not sucking money from them, but no.  It's like the people who say that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts on the black market.  You can disprove the claims any number of times, but the lie serves their purposes much more and is more readily believed.  So, here I am, nose dripping, trouble breathing, nasty cough, and psychedelic phlegm.  Because when it comes to what is best for the kids, I am the only one who will look out for them and their Photo program.  When the budget fight comes up, I am left alone while some people chew me out for "taking" their money while others stay silent.  Sigh.....

As if I do not have enough stress and disappointment, I am making the In School Suspension proposal again.  Yes, third time.  With our new Super, I think this might be the time that my proposal is actually read and considered.  I have spent the morning looking up more research on the benefits and the best practices.  There is a lot out there.  One thing I found - that I love - is a sort of community service alternative to Out of School Suspension.  So, I have saved or printed a number of new found research pieces.  I am not deluded in thinking that ISS is the only solution, but it is a better solution than shoving the kids out of the building with loss of instructional time.  I know there exists a peer type of program here.  However, considering I am one of the teachers that gets the "problem" kids, I have never had a student who has experienced that program.  So who benefits from this?  Beats me, but it sure isn't anyone I know.  I think the time is ripe for some things that benefit the kids who the old guard wanted pushed out.

One more thing....  While talking to hubby about the amazingly friendly, positive classroom atmosphere and the attitude of the kids, he brought up a great point.  This was the first year we started without the figurehead.  I know the kids were not fond of him.  The feeling they got from him was one of condescension and nastiness.  Not many thought he was a nice person.  Some kids noted how he would talk down to them if correcting them.  Just as we breathed a collective sigh of relief upon his departure, I think the kids might have too, just without being cognizant of what was happening.  Could this man's demeanor and way of running things really cast that much of a pall over the vibe of the school.  Absolutely.  I know lots of people think things will never change.  I will say this...  Those pulling the strings in this district will probably pull the plug on any massive changes when push comes to shove.  But while the current leadership is doing things that help the mood right now, I will enjoy it while it lasts.

15

Recommendation letter count update:

The day I completed the last of the 14 recommendation letters and evaluations for the Common App, I received another recommendation letter request.  I told the kids I get paid by the number of letters we write.  They believed me.  I told them the harsh truth.  And then I cried a little inside.

Inclusion

So there was a very important faculty meeting last week.  The new superintendent introduced a new school-wide initiative:  Inclusion.  The scuttlebutt about the building was that the topic of the meeting was something horrible.  Me?  I pay no mind to that kind of rumour.  been there, done that, seen it all....

So when colleague and I hear what the topic is...  Well, we snickered.  Inclusion?  That's all we do in the art room.  Especially the two of us, since we are the go-to gals for the more challenging students.  Looking to include Special Education students into a none sped class?  Emotionally Disturbed, Developmentally Disabled, Learning Disabled, ADD, ADHD, Physically Disabled, Autistic, Asperger's....  You name it, the two of us have taken one and all.  And for the majority of the time we have no aid.  The students' IEPs are addressed by having them in our classes.  We read the IEPs thoroughly and modify how we teach based on those documents.  We talk to other teachers who have those kids to figure out how best to address issues that pop up.  We voluntarily read journals and literature on those kids' disabilities on our own time.

So, needless to say, when the Super was speaking, we kept nodding, smirking at each other, giving the thumbs up.  What she was proposing - team teaching, addressing the IEPs for real, having a mix of kids in one room - is what we have been doing every day, every year.  And we pride ourselves on our ability to get those kids to learn and feel a sense of accomplishment.  In many ways, they come up to the level of the so-called "regular ed" class.  And we do it all with no aides.

But, oh, the reception from my colleagues.  The worst lukewarm applause after the Super was done speaking.  So disrespectful.  And the sullen looks on peoples' faces walking out.  The grumbling from regular ed teachers was not kept quiet at all.  What are they worried about?  They will have disruptive students.  There will be kids at varied learning levels in one room.  They will have to adhere to IEPs (yes, that means you really have to read them).  If the Super has things run they way she hopes, the sped teachers will not merely be sitting in the room as an aide but will be an active participant in the teaching of the class.  That means the regular ed teacher is not in this alone - as we specials teachers always are.  Oh, so your test scores might go down?  Well, take a look at my students' QBA scores.  That is what happens when you get students of all learning levels.

I happened to see a Phys Ed teacher on the way out of the building.  He laughed at the regular ed reactions for the same reasons.  Afraid of having kids of varied abilities in one room together?  With no aides?  Welcome to our world.

Then I mention it to a non-education friend.  He disagrees with inclusion completely.  His reasons included the sped classmates being disruptive, beating up on kids, etc..  Two thoughts - which he seemed to not want to understand - are that the teacher and administration should have dealt with the disruptive behaviour.  I make a concerted effort to make sure those who are keeping up, paying attention, doing the work, are not penalized or slowed down due to classroom disruption.  When kids disrupt, I turn to those listening and teach to them.  The disruptions realize I will not cater to them and they eventually pay attention and work to keep up.  Pedagogically speaking, there are ways to deal with classroom disruptions without depriving any of your students of the education they deserve.  Teachers that allow disruptions to take over are not trying or do not know how to take care of it.

I cannot yet say that inclusion is absolutely wrong.  My classroom has been "inclusion" for years.  My gut instinct and my observations tell me that the teachers who grumble about this either do not have the experience to do it right or refuse to change their teaching style and drop their snobbery about having only the best kids.  I have read the arguments against it.  I am not yet convinced.

14

That is the number of recommendation letters I have to write.  Oof.  I have to check my non-existent records.  That might be the most I have ever had to write.  I have four more to do and that includes the one that just came in yesterday.  Holy crap.

I went for my physical yesterday.  My doctor said I looked washed out. He assumed it was the monthly visit, but that's not it.  I am getting exhausted but I do not want to slow down.  I am having fun going out socializing.  I am meeting new people who are just plain nice.  Hubby and I are doing volunteering and socializing.  I am still coming in to work by 6.15 every morning.  The kids are great.   I do not want to slow down.

So I was purging my digital files in my folder on the network last week.  I was looking through the 2012 Photo II and III files.  Damn.  That was the last year the kids were really creative.  The work was so cerebral.  There was an immense amount of personal expression going on.  The different ways the girls found to communicate was just so refreshing.  I mean, my kids this year are great.  I like most of the kids every year.  However, I have found it is getting increasingly hard to get the kids do use the camera for anything but documenting.  In 2012, the kids used the camera to capture a story, a tableau that was created with some great effort.  They used post camera editing to enhance the message, not just make it look "cool".

So yesterday the kids in one period asked if I have a snapchat.  I do not.  I told them all I do is facebook.  They were aghast.  Apparently fb is old.  Then the usual questions:  Twitter?  Instagram?  and others....  They were shocked I do not have an Instagram, considering I teach photo.  I said I prefer creating those filter effect for real with the camera, film, and printing.  They got it, but the exchange clued me in to the issue:  They are so inundated with filter-applied photos that they think that is the accurate representation of what the camera is used for.  The images the kids are inundated with do not tell a story.  That comes with caption and all the following comments.

So the challenge is to get them to use the camera to tell a story; communicate feelings, ideas, or opinions;  use the medium with intentions other than taking a pretty picture.  I think I can get this easily with the Photo I kids.  Intellectually, I think they are there.  Photo II?  Their senses have been dulled by what they look at in their spare time.  I need to look up some stuff to let them know what can be done with the image.   I want another year like 2012.  I want to look back at the work they did and see each kid's personality and ideas in the work, not just a bunch of pretty pictures.

All family in France are safe.    I have family who live in the suburbs of Paris.  Some work in the city.  Some socialize there.  After anxious waiting and phone calls, I found out all are home safe.

This reminds me of when there was a major natural disaster (it was either an earthquake or a mudslide) in Italy when we were little.  The waiting for the phone calls was stressful.  All were ok, but it sucks, nonetheless.

So this past week, someone contacted me on facebook.  He/she said they remembered seeing me from going out years ago and they were happy to see me out and about again.  Needless to say, the only reason I think anyone notices me is to laugh at me.  But this seemed genuine.  I had no clue as to who this was or even the gender.  Then he came up to me last night.  It was someone I recognized from eons ago too.  It makes me feel so good being approached by people who remember seeing me and not in a negative way.  I have always been made to feel that I was the outsider, not worth the trouble to socialize with.  Same with my sister.  So to hear people reminisce about seeing us out and about in a fond way...  Well, it makes me feel warm and gushy inside.  I guess I am not such a loser.

So how is this related to family in Europe?  Well, he is Hungarian.  Holy crap!  He immediately asked me if I spoke Hungarian!  In my flustered state, all I heard was "Magyarul?".  Ha ha...  And I was ashamed that I let my Hungarian lessons go.  He mentioned visiting with family in Budapest.  And I was reminded of when a long lost cousin of my dad's contacted him and found out I had recently been in Hungary.  His first question?  "Was she looking up family?"  So now, I vow to return to my lessons in earnest and doing the genealogical research.

The lesson?  There is an ocean between us.  Some of our more immediate family might forget about our roots.  But there are people over there that we have a connection to and if we wait too long, they will all be gone.

Another fabulous trip to look at art.  We went to Philadelphia during the teacher's convention.  I spent Saturday in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  There were two exhibits I wanted to see: a contemporary photo exhibit and one of the work of a guy I had not heard of.  The contemporary one did nothing for me.  That was the one I had hopes for.  Bleh.  But the other one?  Whoa.  The photographer - Dave Heath - is someone I wish I knew of earlier in my life.  I would have enjoyed finding this kindred spirit years ago.  His work was so "me" in many ways.  He is clearly a man who likes his solitude and likes to observe.  He is also clearly sensitive to the good and bad going on around him.  His photographs made me feel so un-alone, even though others would see nothing but loneliness in them.  I was talking to the gallery guard about the work at the end.  I told him he must love spending all this time with this work.  You could look in the eyes of the people and Heath captured them in such a way that you could almost have a conversation just looking into their eyes.

I also got the feeling I would really like to talk to Heath about how he views the world and the ethics that matter to him.  That's the kind of person I could enjoy being friends with.  He might have been shooting for himself, but the images he captured could enlighten a great deal of this society.  And they aren't in your face like Mary Ellen Mark's or Diane Arbus' work.  His photos from his time in Korea say more about war than any battle field image.  His shots of African American men and boys have more about racism and life under racist American law than any image of a riot or some such event.  I was the only visitor to this exhibit that took as long as I did.  Others - all older than me - breezed right on through.  I wonder if not many people get the meaning or the message.

One thing that upset hubby and I while in Philly: the increased number of homeless people.  We don't know the shelter situation in that city, so we could only speculate.  There was one guy with a cat - Socks! - and hubby gave him money for food.  Then, the next day, while hubby was out and about, he got to talking to another guy and bought him lunch and milk.  We donate to our local food pantry every time the Boy Scouts hold a food drive.  We donate to food pantries, homeless advocacy groups, and such.  And I think that everyone has the same attitude until reality smacks me in the face.  I am still correcting students who refer to "bums" and "hobos" and think it is ok to photograph them as a funny subject (though I will be surprised to get this with this year's bunch).  I am still encountering people who "tsk tsk" when they see men and women in need at highway exits asking for money.  Have you ever understood the sincerity of the thank you you get when giving them something?  I am still having to grit my teeth when acquaintances refer to areas as "ghetto", ignorant of the hypocrisy of using that word when you are not above frequenting that area of a city, but not smart enough to acknowledge your part in perpetuating that situation in society.

In ridding myself of one major source of negativity in my life, and having a wonderfully enlightened group of students this year, I am realizing I have less and less tolerance for things in people in my peer group.  I have little patience for ignorance disguised as smug above-it-all attitude, thinly veiled racism (like hitting the door lock in my car when riding through a neighbourhood a block away from the club you aren't above frequenting every weekend), and general lack of ability to be a productive, sympathetic part of society.   Too many of my peers have grown up so sheltered that they have an inability to have any compassion for people unlike them who have a rough time.  There is an inability to look beyond their prejudices.  Looking at this exhibit in Philly made me realize that there are others who do see more clearly and I need to find those people and surround myself with them.

Some pretty cool things that happened in the classroom this week:

• kids who are not friends and have nothing in common other than being in the same period together helped each other immensely through the processes; 
• a couple of students were not happy with "meh" negatives and insisted on re-shooting because they knew they could do a better job, vowing to come in extra to meet the deadline;
• a student's conversation with a challenging classmate involved telling him how he is in a good class because everyone helps each other; the compassion and sincerity were wonderful to see;
• students having a political discussion around the development sink and explaining how they came to have the opinions they were expressing;
• one of the more challenging students I have comes in extra to get the work done;
• another student requests Frank Sinatra for the darkroom and is disappointed when I left it on my toilet at home; I vowed to remember it on Monday.

Seeing and experiencing this goodness in my classroom makes the job easier to handle.  With so many varied personalities thrown together in a room - all levels, all backgrounds - many horrible things could happen.  Luckily, that is not the case.  I know that some of my kids are not angels.  Some might be mean to others, deceitful, far from exemplary people.  But for the time that they are with me, they are good people.  I treat them as I want them to treat me and each other.  And it works.  

And then I step out into the world and it is not the same.

I have always thought I had a good sense of a person.  I have usually been right when judging a person to be good at heart when others dismissed them or sense someone's BS when others are blindsided by sweetness.  However, in a few instances, I have been proven that I can be very far off.  I am apparently not a great judge of character, at all.  I maintained a friendship with a person who was becoming a cruel racist, all for the sake of the memories and dedication to the friendship.  I have mistaken meekness and sadness as real when they masked a deep rooted selfishness and manipulation.  Some people I thought were cruel and shady have turned out to actually be nice and sincere.

Why is my inner human compass out of sorts?  I want to tell the people I despised that I am sorry if I gave attitude, but I just try to be nice and hope that makes up for it.  I want to tell the former friends who turned out to be cruel people to stop hurting me and others for selfish gain.  At times, I know that solitude is better than being with people who make you doubt yourself. I am not sure if people used to always be this selfish and cruel, but I have a hunch that is not the case.  I wonder if people are becoming more and more cruel and selfish these days, worried only about how things that happen in this world will affect them.  I saw it in my colleagues last year.  I see it in online conversations people have regarding politics, society, the economy, etc..  So, are people getting better at hiding who they truly are?  Or am I getting really bad at judging people?  I am leaning towards the latter.  I am opting to stick with my kids.

I am ecstatic to get away this weekend.  It is Teacher Convention weekend.  I scoured the program for good workshops.  However, there were none that really appealed to me, as usual.  The rates for the hotels in DC were way too high for me to even want to pay to go there.  So we are going to Philadelphia.  There is a photo exhibit in DC I would love to be able to see, but I don't think I can fit that in.  There are a couple of really good ones in Philly though.  So I get to go see some stuff I would have loved to see anyway.  I had posted the information on my exhibitions board in the classroom and now I will be able to tell the kids about what I saw.  Not that they will go, but I keep hoping my classroom boards will someday inspire....

I also made all purchases and reservations for another trip to Amsterdam.  A friend tipped me off that there is a retrospective of Hieronymus Bosch's work for the 500 year anniversary of his death.  It is in his home town, a mere train ride for Amsterdam.  The exhibit closes in May, so I had to make sure we made the trip before then.  Springtime in Amsterdam?  Sure, why not.

The best part about these two trips?  I will not have the imposed guilt of having to constantly check my messages.  I am not anyone's babysitter/free counselor anymore, and it feels positively liberating.  All my life I have been made to feel I am a selfish person.  My sister read a note a student wrote to me in my first years of teaching.  The student was thankful for all the selfless things I did for her.  My sister asked who the kid was writing about, followed by a chuckle.  Well, my experience has taught me that the most selfish people are those who are most adept at portraying others as the selfish ones.  A selfish person is very good at playing the victim and portraying oneself as selfless.  My sister and my family now know they were wrong and are appreciative in meaningful ways.  But trying to escape encounters with manipulative selfish people of my generation is hard.  I sometimes wonder if it is a geographical or cultural thing.  Meeting and socializing with family or people from other areas of the country or world makes me think that is the case.  People can be giving, compassionate, and truly caring without being demanding or selfish.  I just don't find that around here.

One of the biggest things in my classroom is respect and cooperation.  When I see the concern my students have for each other, I glow inside.  We had a couple of deaths in student families last year.  Kids get sick, need surgery, have other issues.  When classmates figure out something is amiss, the concern is genuine.  You can hear it in their voices and see it in their eyes.  That comes from a respect for each other.  If you respect someone, you inevitably care about them.  That care might differ in type or intensity from the care you have for a close friend, partner, or family member.  Yet, it is there and it is not selfish and fleeting.  I have space issues in my darkroom - 12 enlargers, 21 student cap on the class.  This necessitates partnering.  The students learn they must cooperate with each other in the darkroom.  They are patient waiting to process the prints.  They help each other clean up.  They are now at the point where they are comfortable enough to seek out each other's advice on a print and give each other praise.  They brag to each other about a great print and they cheer each other on.  There is no jealousy.  There is only friendly competition and support.  I love that.

I wonder if this is what teachers were doing all along.  I don't recall this when I was in school, but I wasn't really looking for it.  So, if the teachers were using the classrooms to incubate this kind of cooperation and respect, what happened to my generation?  When did my peers lose it?  And if this is the case, will the students we have now, the ones who show so much care and compassion, lose it too?  I want to think that our kids will take this with them forever.  I prefer to think my peers and I are part of a newer breed in the past 20 years and reflect a new type of whole person education.   I would hate to see some of these kids deal with the selfishness and competition I have had to deal with.  Solitude is so much better than daily encounters with selfish people, but it would be nice if the next generations are better people than my peers in my generation.  That way, my students will never be alone.