This is just a test!

It seems as if the art of teaching has fallen off the face of this earth. I mean when I first went into teaching it was all about whole language. You had themes and spent time finding new innovative ways to explore the world with your students. You had freedom and the endless hours of prepping were fun purposeful. We included free time, imaginary play, trips. But now we are told to teach out of a text book. Read the italicized part. So why isn’t everyone a teacher then? Where has the art gone?



It is all about teaching to the test. With NCLB act it is pass or it is you’re a#$. So much pressure on the youth and so much pressure in us the teacher. When did testing become the end all and be all? What ever happened to observing the whole child? When did childhood get tossed out the window?


Next week my special inner city students take the state exams. Unlike when I taught in a regular public school, my charter school tells the kids to get good sleep and eat their breakfast. They have faith that the kids will rise to the challenge, that they will ace the test. They have faith that I have done my job everyday and thus my special education students are prepared and ready to rock the test. Unlike in the years past where we return in January to stop teaching and start teaching towards the test. Either way there is just too much riding on how a kid does one minute, one day on a test. When did the test become all that school was about? It is as you know JUST a test!


So tomorrow with granola bars in hand I will cross my fingers and feed my students and wish them good luck. What they lack to know is that their luck reflects who I am as a teacher. So I take a deep breath and realize that all of this, all of life for that matter is just a big test!

I earned this vacation

Yes, we have earned our winter vacation. I am sure all you business folks out there think that teachers have it easy. We have summers off and holidays… well there is a reason for that, we NEED them. With pleasure and the feeling of rightness I am still in my PJ’s at a late 7:08 am. It is true we might be off, but our internal clocks still wake us at the crack of dawn – oh vacation. We need the time to get ready for the next group of months, problems and issues that find their way into our classroom. We need the time to dye the gray that now plagues our hair from daily stress of trying to reach a kid that isn’t “getting it”, and put on a mud mask to relax the wrinkles that are forming from the endless demands from our schools to raise test scores, reading scores, behavior… We need this time.
But do not kid yourself we are teachers. And if you are like me (an inner city teacher) there are no funds to go away. We are not like the people of the business world that after all their hard work have the funds to hop a flight to some warm wonderful place to sit by a pool and sip fancy drinks with umbrellas in them. No, we get paid teacher salaries so we find joy in sitting on our couch reading a book of choice – oh yes the joy of not having just to read what is needed for your classroom. We think vacation is actually spending the $5 and getting a special coffee at Starbucks. In truth if we had the funds to go to some exotic far off place - I for one would most likely be spending that on the kid in school who I know is homeless and should get gifts on the holidays. Or on buying something nice to the mom of a student who works two jobs and still can’t make ends meet. Maybe I would spend it on sending over a Christmas dinner to the grandma who has taken in not one or two but a handful of kids who had no one else to care for them.


So you see we are a rare breed. We are under paid, under appreciated, but yes we get vacation. And if you ask any teacher most likely you will find them during some point in the upcoming days: lesson planning, making projects for their students, studying new curriculum, doing research. This is what vacation is to us, this is what we have earned!
Have a great holiday my fellow teachers out there. And keep on keeping on in 2010. This is the year you change the world.

Around the world and back again,


The Teacher in Purple

Inner City Teachers Must Be a Bunch of Masochists

After a great deal of thought, I have come to the conclusion that all inner city teachers are masochists. We all must just love and get pleasure out of pain. We keep coming back for more day in and day out. And many of us, like me the teacher in purple, enjoy the pain.

I think there is a sick side of me that loves the frustration of fighting against the world. You know what I mean. Fighting with poverty that engulfs the children that enter your doors. Fighting with the lack of supplies and books that always seem to get to the special ed classroom last. Fighting against the violence and gangs that fill the streets around your second home- school. Yet, we come, we teach, we take the child who is pitching a fit. And we understand them. We understand they are lashing out at us because we are all they have to lash out on. We understand that their bellies rumble and their minds crave. And so we take the pain. We take the tantrums, the hardships and we blossom in that environment.

I could not imagine teaching for a long period of time in any place where I was not in touch with the masochists I am. You see I do not find pain to be pleasure in any arena, but in school, I accept it, expect it, and thrive in it. I think all of us who “get our summer off” (you know that is how the world sees us- 8-3 and holidays and summers off – yeah right) are able to deal, work and flourish in this pain.

And for you that might be out there reading this – for you the first year or second year teacher who is banging their head against the wall please remember, tomorrow you are the one that changes these kids world. The pain is worth it, the work is worth it. And in time (like those that like to get tied up) you will find pleasure in the smallest of smiles and in the littlest of happiness among the hardship of pain.


Around the world and back again~


The teacher in purple

Teaching spec ed ain't so easy

I would say that for most of us out there, who find themselves working among children and white boards, our days aren't so easy. One would think after 11 years as a inner city special educator ... this whole game would get a little smoother. It would somehow become like the movies. you know, where the teacher is appreciated and all the kids live happily ever after. But, that is not what life behind the chalk is really about.



My guess is if you are a teacher you are like me. The money is too little, the hours are long, the job is thankless and never ending. And yet like so many others I find myself every fall back in the room with desks and chairs thinking, "today is the day!" As a special educator I love the moments when a child who couldn't sit still, sits and smiles. Or when a junior high student reads for the first time. I guess that is why we all do it. But there are those moments, those days, even those years when I think to myself, "What am I doing?"

So here I am the teacher in purple ready to share a little of my life with you. Together we will venture into the ups and downs of this weird world we live in. Maybe, just maybe, some of what my days are filled with, fill your.