My husband says he won't listen to my angry rants about the newspaper since I recently re-subscribed. Honey? Don't read this.

Here's an article that appeared in my newspaper today.

Can I just take some of this shit point by point? I'll differentiate the newspaper text from mine by font color. This is about the superintendent of our school district, who is stepping down.

Before starting as the new superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District, Jonathan Raymond was told how he could escape unscathed from the no-win job he was taking on.

“Rudy Crew (a former Sacramento superintendent who later ran New York’s public schools) told me: ‘Stay three years, keep your head down, and whatever you do, don’t close any schools,’” Raymond said with a wistful smile the other day.

Of course, Raymond did close schools. 

Yes, seven of them. All in poor neighborhoods with higher-than-normal poverty and higher-than-normal numbers of brown kids. Just FYI. 

He not only didn’t keep his head down, he took on the local teachers union repeatedly. He actually cared about the poorest kids in a poor district and showed it by making those schools a priority backed by his office.

This doesn't exactly say that the teachers don't care about kids, but it comes pretty goddamn close. And this is the kind of thing that pisses me off about the newspaper. The teachers union is TEACHERS, just like a band is made of musicians. And he cared about SOME poor schools. Others got left in the dirt. 

In a state where the teachers unions control politicians, Raymond was ripe for being fired with an agenda that actually put kids first.

LOL. Find me ONE politician who is a puppet of the teachers union. 

So Raymond is leaving after four years of success against long odds, but with few accolades and allies.

He was the ultimate solitary figure, doing good work that was praised by outsiders and ripped by insiders. His experience is a window into what truly ails public education in California.

So you're saying he is praised by people who don't know dick about the situation and ripped by people who have to live with the effects of his policies? Good to know.

Hack politicians seeking higher office from the school board dais jerked Raymond around constantly, even as the district achievement gap between the highest performing non-minority students and lowest minority students was reduced under Raymond’s watch.

Probably all the results of his policies, too, right? Nothing to do with the hard work of those evil teachers. 

The teachers union fought him and sued him at every step, even as school suspensions dropped across the board – most tellingly at the middle-school level, from 3,437 in 2010 to 1,236 in 2013.

Yeah... we sued him because he violated our contract intentionally and repeatedly. Also, WE and the principals were the ones responsible for that drop. You're welcome. 

Under Raymond, the dropout rate in the district fell from 23.2 percent in 2010 to 11.5 percent in 2012. The Latino dropout rate went from 27.8 in 2010 to 13.9. And for African Americans, it dropped from 37.1 to 15.5 percent.

Given these numbers and other achievements, and the virtual silence Raymond’s coming departure has inspired, the question remains: Are public schools a priority in Sacramento?

If we’re being honest as a community – and we rarely are on this topic – the answer has to be no. And Raymond’s lonely experience is illustrative of why.

The local teachers union cares most of all about preserving teacher seniority.

Eat shit, Breton. You are a dirtbag. Obviously, the union cares about things like job protections for and the working conditions of teachers. But the TEACHERS, who make up the union, care a whole lot about kids and schools. Otherwise, they'd probably go do something else.

And you know what? When, due to budget issues, Raymond suggested shortening the school year by two days, do you know what teachers did? We said no -- we'd rather donate $950 each and teach those two days, because we thought the kids deserved the time. So we care most about preserving teacher seniority? Eat a bag of dicks, Breton.

Many parents talk a great game, but Raymond’s idea of lifting the lowest ships gained him scant love from many whose true idea of public school greatness was preserving the schools and programs that their kids were in. As he recalled, “It was like the parent from (the high-achieving Genevieve Didion Elementary in Greenhaven) told me at a meeting. She said: ‘Superintendent, you’re not just the superintendent for poor kids. You’re the superintendent for all kids.’”

Raymond will likely be appreciated much more in retrospect – after he leaves for his native Boston in December.

His “priority” schools have been a resounding success after he arranged for the poorest-performing schools in the district to receive stable funding and staffing.

I think we may have different definitions of "resounding success." One of the "priority schools" dropped 91 points on the API index. One of the schools to make the highest gains was one of the seven he closed.

Further, protecting the "priority schools" in many cases hurt the other schools. It took away funding from my school, at least as impoverished as the high school that was made a "priority." 

He set up a pipeline to cultivate principals and district leaders of the future. He prevailed in a lawsuit that allowed him to essentially get around teacher seniority in some cases. He got the community to pass school bonds to upgrade aging schools. He brought in youth counselors to foster a sense of community in schools where kids didn’t always enjoy the benefits of a stable home life.

Speaking of hurting my school, that lawsuit that allowed him to get around seniority meant that my school's staff was DECIMATED last year. (Actually, knowing that decimated means 10% destroyed, it was MORE than decimated.) Initially, about 1/3 of the English department was on the layoff list. We ended up losing five great teachers because first- and second- year teachers at the priority school were "skipped" due to their "special training." Whereas the special training our teachers had (including very specialized, very expensive training which allows us to run an advanced program for our neediest kids) was ignored. It didn't count. Tell me how that's a success? It's like being proud you could fatten up one of your two skinny kids by giving one of them the other's food. 

He was a tireless advocate for Common Core standards that push students – and teachers – to drill down deeper on core subjects. He also set up restorative justice programs in schools through which students worked out conflicts in a safe environment, often in contrast to the environments in which they lived.

Raymond also bit the bullet and closed schools with declining enrollments and was pilloried the entire way by vested interests.

Vested interests: parents and community groups. Those tyrants!

What was the worst thing that anyone said to him?

“I know where you live,” Raymond replied.

From the beginning, Raymond was in a tough spot.

He remembers, in his first week on the job, eagerly accepting an invitation from Mayor Kevin Johnson to attend a news conference.

“But some members of my board were upset. They said: ‘Remember who you work for.’”

It was then Raymond realized what a polarizing figure Johnson was to the teachers union for turning Sacramento High School into a charter school.

(Which was a shitty thing to do, and my neighborhood STILL doesn't have a comprehensive high school because of it.)

Raymond was wary of getting too close to Johnson for fear of having his initiatives scuttled by union-backed board members.

Oh, no worries: we endorsed some of those sonsabitches, but once they were elected, they gave us the finger and said yes to everything Raymond wanted, ever. They often read the Raymond-penned FRONT PAGE only of the board meeting agenda and voted based on that. 

Just months after Raymond arrived in 2009, Johnson pitched the idea of bringing Teach for America to city schools. The nonprofit organization trains teachers and sends them to underserved schools and Raymond thought it was a great idea to bring a small number to city schools.

Yeah... the district laid off 70 teachers that year. We actually did not need anybody. Particularly anybodies to whose organization you have to pay a finder's fee.

But when Raymond couldn’t be sure he’d get votes on his board to approve a pilot program, he had to tell Johnson he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t risk a big defeat so early in his tenure. The union objected, as other teacher unions have, because they label Teach for America as “union busters” who supplant veteran teachers with younger ones.

Mmmm... did you mean "younger" or "untrained?" 

Johnson was not happy and a potentially valuable ally has been kept at arm’s length – depriving city schools of the biggest funding rainmaker in Sacramento as a full partner.

Meanwhile, a worthwhile program eventually set up shop at Natomas public schools instead.

And there were even bigger obstacles.

“There are some teachers in our district who should be getting paid six figures and there are some who should have been gone yesterday,” Raymond said. “And as superintendent, there is very little I could do to influence either extreme.”

While Raymond felt isolated as he dealt with these issues in Sacramento, John Deasy, leader of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is poised to leave for many of the same reasons.

It is what it is, and Raymond is clear-eyed about it. The only time he grows emotional is when considering the children of Sac City Unified.

“I love our kids in Sacramento,” he said.

“I’ll never forget this first-grader. He was so cute wearing a suit that still had the labels on it and making a presentation at a science fair,” Raymond said. “For many of these kids, it’s probably the first time in their lives where someone told them, you matter. You’re going to be something. Who knows what is going to happen with that kid (in the suit)? But maybe that presentation was the spark for him. That’s the stuff I feel really good about.”

Aw, then someday perhaps he'll wake up and realize he had fuck-all to do with that. Because science fairs have been going on for decades, and it's teachers who organize them, teachers who judge them, teachers who stay late for them, and shitasses like Raymond who show up for the photo-op and then wax nostalgic about it later. Good riddance.

As for Breton, seriously, man... did a teacher touch you in the no-no place? We're not Lex Luthor. We're not like in the cartoons where the bees swarm together to make GIANT BEE. Do we have some political sway? Some. But here's an example of how tenuous and hard-won it is: last election, there was a CTA-endorsed piece of legislation running against a billionaire-endorsed proposition. CTA represents 325,000 people. There were about 6 billionaires who supported the other bill. We had grassroots action! We talked to people. We walked precincts. They spent an ASSLOAD of money. We spent money, too, although we didn't have the assloads they did. And for a while it was really, really close. We did win. But it's not like politicians or school board members bend to our will. We're an organization of people, of teachers. The fact that we talk to people *should* have some sway. Many parents support teachers and think their kids' teachers are doing a good job. Not because we're some giant threatening mafia, but because every day, we strive to send their kids home just a little bit improved. 

An Education

About two weeks ago, something came up about the pledge of allegiance. Zadie knew the whole thing, she said! Wow! we said. Let's hear it!

All three of us said, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation..."

and then two of us fell silent and waited. One continued, "under God, indivisible..."

Huh. We thought. They still do that.

In the most unsurprised and least passionate voices we could muster, we mentioned that not everyone believes in God, and those who do don't all believe in the same one, and that some who DO believe in the same one don't think he has the same name, and isn't it funny how everyone in her classroom says "under God."

Not just everyone in her classroom -- the whole school! The principal comes on over the P.A. At first she thought the speaker was a heater! What a surprise!

Yes, quite!

You know, we said, we think you can and should say it if you want to, and not if you don't, but at our house one thing we try to do is to make sure everyone feels comfortable. So if someone ever chooses not to say the "under God" part, we would hope she wouldn't say anything about it, to help make the other person feel comfortable.

When we were choosing schools, we considered the public Waldorf-methods school, but it was really a commute. Many of Zadie's friends went to Montessori, but it was really a cha-ching. We considered several schools for their art and music programs, their proximity to home, their butterfly gardens. We did not consider test scores other than to rule out a school which boasted of quite good ones, earned primarily through hours of homework and a lack of other instruction. As we were getting ready to decide, our home school, the one for which we had guaranteed admission, announced that they were going IB. IB! The program I teach and love. I love its global perspective, its focus on the learner, its mission statement (among other things, they are going for "intercultural understanding and respect"). I love its belief in inquiry. I signed her up as soon as the window was open.

A few days ago, she came home with a hat on which she had colored a rainbow feather, and carefully traced the words "I sailed with Columbus." We complimented her and let it go.

But JESUS FUCK. I mean... My mom said, "You know, we learned all the wrong things, but later we learned the right ones and now we know better." And someone else said that they start learning the real story of things like the first Thanksgiving in about 6th grade. And that's fine, in many ways. I'm not aiming for her Kindergarten curriculum to include anything about cutting off the hands of indigenous people or selling 9-year-old girls as sex slaves. But, like... couldn't we just skip that asshole? I mean, it's not like they get the day off. Many places have started calling the day, if you need a goddamn theme, Indigenous People's day. Maybe you could color a basket instead, and trace "I wove baskets from reeds." Or it's October, harvest time... maybe we could talk about what's growing, or how early people grew stuff at all, or how food was stored in the early days of this country. That's all Kindergarten-friendly stuff.

I honestly just didn't really think the curriculum for my daughter, born 32 years after me, would be the same crap I learned, and the same crap the Brady Bunch kids learned, and the same stuff pretty much everyone past the age of copying the Bible and wearing dunce caps learned.

I can't imagine the amount of work that goes into being a Kindergarten teacher. Zadie turns in a packet of three pages of homework twice a week, and gets it back the next day with a comment, star, or happy face on every page. She has already learned all kinds of stuff that she didn't know before. This week, she is the VIP and she's very excited about it. Kindergarten makes her feel special and grown-up, and I love all that. But I think when I envisioned what a "global perspective" would look like in the younger grades, I didn't think it would mean strict and rigorous adherence to the doctrine of God and old dead white guys. And I am a little disappointed.

Update

Breaking up with optimism

Okay, so... we're trying to get pregnant. Not trying like, with science or anything, but giving it the old college try.

And before Duckie, we had said we'd try until Sweetie's 40th birthday, which is in 46 days. And then after Duckie, it took a little while to get my body settled again (and the doctor warned us away from trying for a couple months), and I admitted to Sweetie that I was losing faith that it would happen. He quickly said we could change our timeline if we needed to, and it *was* an arbitrary timeline, but I think he was just shocked to see me lose my near-eternal optimism.

You know, when I was younger and I learned about optimism and pessimism, optimism seemed like the one that suited me, and the option with the most potential for good. I mean, you're always looking forward to something good, and mostly it happens, and when it doesn't, well you can see the silver lining or look forward to the next good thing. You see disappointments as an anomaly rather than a way of life.

In Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen says that in her youth, she was able to believe six impossible things before breakfast. I may have her beat. I can believe that the symptoms of PMS are the symptoms of early pregnancy. I can put salsa on my eggs and drink two cups of bitter black coffee, then believe that that reflux-y feeling is morning sickness. I can believe that spotting is implantation, rather than a... scout. I can believe that a negative pregnancy test was just taken too early.

And for a long time, every month I would calculate what birthdate the potential baby would have. I would think about what season I'd be the biggest in. I'd figure out at what family gathering we could announce the happy news. I'd think, "this is the baby who went to Santa Cruz/hiking/the ocean before anyone knew about him." After Duckie, I have a harder time getting into that. I keep thinking of January 1st, 2014, his due date.

My cycle is irregular, so one month, it'll be day 29, and I'll be thinking "If it doesn't happen tonight, then I'll test tomorrow!" And I do, and it's negative, and a day later, on day 31, I'll start. And the next month, I'll have a day where I pee a lot on day 25, and I'll think, "Is this it?" and then I'll go to the bathroom and find I've had the shortest cycle ever. One way or another, I always get my hopes up, and they always get dashed.

I've just had my feelings hurt too many times. By my own stupid body.

I don't know if I'm ready to give up yet. People ask me a lot if we're planning to have another baby. I don't really want sympathy or follow-up questions, so I often give a very vague answer. Sometimes I outline why I might not want to have another, or why it might not be so bad if we didn't: no more diapers, no more sleepless nights, no more teething. And for a few minutes, I entertain the idea. Maybe those things are true. Parenting is hard, and often it is not fun at all. Sometimes I walk around in that idea like it is a pair of shoes I'm trying to break in: maybe it would be fine if we didn't have another. Maybe whatever happens is for the best. And then I'll see a mom with a baby in a wrap, and I just can't fathom not getting to do it again.

And I'm a magical thinker, even though I know it's ridiculous. A friend of mine, when I told her I was thinking of giving up, said "That's when it happens! Right when you give up, that's when it'll happen." And I was like, "YEAH. I'll give up! I'll tell myself I've given up so it will happen!" Which is not very good logic on a couple of fronts.

I'm tired. Tonight is day 28. In the last year, I've only had three cycles that were this long or longer. And so exactly half of me is thinking, "Maybe this is it! If I don't start by tomorrow at bedtime, I'll test on Sunday." And the other half is thinking, "you're such a fucking sap." I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy holds the football for him. Why does he keep believing her? Is it optimism or downright stupidity? I want to think the best of Charlie. And of myself. But I'm starting to think optimism is for suckers.

Trickle up poverty? LOL!

I saw a bumper sticker today with the Obama logo and the words "trickle-up poverty." It struck me that it would be pretty hard, actually, to impoverish the wealthy of this country. But I kind of like math, so I decided to see just HOW unlikely "trickle-up poverty" actually is.


The lowest 15% of people in this country live in poverty, defined as making less than just about $20,000 per year for a family of three.


I went ahead and rounded up to the lowest 20%; that's 23,682 households (not people).


Although you can separate them into smaller chunks, the average amount they make in that 20% is $10,000 to $14,999 per year.


I rounded up, and figured they would need about $10,000 per household to not be officially in poverty. (Technically, I'm rounding still more, because most of the households in the lowest quintile consist of fewer than three people, so they would qualify for being out of poverty with even less cash.)


23,682 households multiplied by $10,000 means we'd need $230,682,000. That's a LOT!


The total population of the U.S. is about 313,914,040, so the top 1% represents 3,139,140 people.


To reach our lofty goal of having $230 million and change to bring people out of poverty, they'd have to contribute...







$75 each.


So you know how all those politicians and rich guys are always like, "If Warren Buffet thinks he should pay more taxes, let him write a check!"? I think those guys should suck my balls.

For the record, I don't necessarily think this is a great plan (neither the $75 checks nor the ball-sucking). I also recognize that there are differences between households and people (like Mitt AND Ann Romney would have to kick in $75, for a total of $150). And frankly, if we really want to fix the system, we're going to have to pour a lot more money than $230 million into education, social security, health care, etc. I realize that the contribution would have to be yearly, not a one-time check. And frankly, just having $20,000 doesn't really make a family of three exactly comfortable. The only point to this super-fun-time math is that you could take the ENTIRE COUNTRY out from under the federal poverty level, and the super-wealthy maybe couldn't buy ten hand-carved ice cubes. Depending on where you look, the 1 percent's net worth averages between 6.8 and 16 million per household.

I'm not blaming the 1% (although there are plenty of reasons why I could), but shit, y'all.

It's not about Trayvon Martin

It's about race in America, the justice system, prejudice, and the fact that many times, in many ways, it's still hard for black people to get a fair shake here.

Let's talk about Martin first, but then I'm going to branch out.

The first way that race affected the Martin case is that Zimmerman profiled Martin because he "fit the description" of burglary suspects in the area. In other words, he was black. Zimmerman initially followed Martin for the sole reason that he found young black males to be suspicious. The first step leading to Martin's unnecessary death was that he was born black.

And whether Zimmerman's mom is Peruvian, Zimmerman appeared to police to be white, and when they arrived on the scene and Trayvon was dead on his stomach with his hands under him, they approached the situation as though Zimmerman had been attacked and defended himself. He was treated for minor injuries, questioned, and released. No charges were pressed. Perhaps you can believe, in your heart of hearts, that a black man who shot a white (or white Hispanic) teen would also have been released. I am not so sure.

Did they thoroughly investigate? Did the collect all the evidence they should have? It's hard to say, but it looks like the police took a pretty lackadaisical approach to the case, assuming it would not be prosecuted. (For example, they didn't check Zimmerman's truck or test him for drug or alcohol use.)

Due to intense public scrutiny and media pressure (more on that later), Zimmerman was finally arrested and charged. Charged with 2nd degree murder, which would have been hard to prove. Why pursue charges it would have been hard to win with? Who knows.

Angela Corey is the prosecutor assigned to the case. It happens that in Florida, 27% more black teens are charged as adults than white teens. But Corey charges black teens as adults even more often than that, 70% of blacks to 18% of whites. Why was a woman who has a track record of treating black teens unjustly given the job of getting justice for a black teen? Who knows.

Florida's laws say that self-defense is a justified reason to kill someone. Okay. But that means that if you claim self-defense, to be convicted, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you were in fear for your life. If you are the only surviving witness, and you stick to your story that you were in fear for your life, it's pretty much a get out of jail free card. What Twelve Angry Men kind of legal angle can any prosecutor pull out to prove you weren't scared? Who knows. Perry Mason couldn't put you away in that situation (well, unless your victim is white).

But manslaughter, right? My understanding of manslaughter is that somebody died, and it was directly your fault, but you didn't really mean to. Like, you could be found guilty of manslaughter for changing the CD in your car, taking your eyes off the road, and killing a cyclist. So it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that a jury could convict someone who followed and intimidated a teen, ignored police instructions not to follow him, and then, in a tussle (whose origins we will never know), shot him point blank in the chest. Wouldn't a jury have to be crazy not to convict him of manslaughter?

Not a jury with juror B37 on it, who refers to Zimmerman as "George."

So I don't think Trayvon was served by the justice system. But I also don't think it's an isolated incident.

[From this point forward, I'm going to provide a lot of links.... Links which I've already read, but to sit down and read/watch them all in one day would probably give you a pretty serious bad mood, so I'm going to summarize them, and you can follow them if you want, or skip them.]

People have been talking a lot about Marissa Alexander. The father of her children was abusive. She had a restraining order against him. He got violently angry at her in the house, and she ran into the attached garage. The garage door opener was broken, and she didn't have the car keys. Realizing she had no means of escape, she grabbed a gun instead. Back inside the house, she fired a warning shot. She was arrested, and because of the (Floriduh) mandatory minimum sentencing law, she will now be spending 20 years in prison.  If you hadn't guessed, she's black. 20 years for NOT killing anyone. Do you think the justice system (and her prosecutor, Angela Corey) treated her and Zimmerman equally?

And the (mostly right-wing, mostly white) commenters will jump in and say, "but she left and came back!" or "but firing a warning shot is illegal!" or "but there's mandatory sentencing, so they can't do anything about it, because it's the law!" Okey doke, but are we all pleased with a legal system that lets people who kill teenagers off scot-free and gives twenty years to a woman who tried to scare off her abuser instead of killing her children's father?

And what about Jordan Davis, who was sitting in a car with his friends at a gas station when a guy in the next car told them to turn their music down? One friend turned the knob, but Jordan said no and went to turn it back up. The driver of the other car pulled out a gun and fired multiple times into their car, killing Davis. He claimed Stand Your Ground, saying that he felt threatened by the boys, claiming to see something that looked like a gun pointed at him (though his own girlfriend says he didn't tell her anything about seeing a gun). So basically, if you don't like someone's music and they don't obey your orders to turn it down, you can shoot them to death. And he may indeed have been frightened of a car full of (middle class, churchgoing) black boys, but isn't that kind of his problem? I mean, I honestly don't think I can go to Florida, shoot a white guy, and say that it's because I fear white guys.

What about the black police officer who was shot 28 times (!) by white officers, and the officers were cleared of all wrongdoing, even though they couldn't even produce as evidence the vest that the black officer had supposedly shot? In fact, he was never tested for gun residue and his car was crushed before forensic tests could be done. Oh yeah, and HE was found guilty of attempted murder.

And the justice system itself, as a whole (not just Florida and SYG laws) is skewed and unfair. Blacks are excluded from juries. Black people tend to get found guilty more often, sentenced to longer terms.

White on white homicide is considered justified far less often than white on black homicide, and far more often than black on white homicide.

And of course, unemployment is higher among blacks, which your republican friends will say is because they're lazy and enjoy sucking off the government teat, but then you read stories like this (job application), where a black woman tries to get a job interview for months before changing her race to white on her Monster.com (job search) profile, when she miraculously gets ALL the interviews, and if you're not being just a touch dishonest, you start to wonder if maybe it is hard to get a fair shake in this country. (This is where your republican friends will say at least we don't live in some-other-country-that-has-obvious-problems.)

And speaking of sucking off the government teat, your republican friends will swear up and down that black people are welfare queens, but the vast majority of people on welfare are white. But they're so invested in that narrative that they build campaign promised and speaking engagements around it.

And speaking of crime and incarceration, is it just possible that black people get arrested for so many crimes because of some kind of societal prejudice? Something like that passerby will ignore a white man or white woman, even after admitting that they are stealing a bike (in one instance that would be funny if it weren't so sad, even helping the woman steal the bike), whereas a black man dressed in the same manner will have an angry crowd around him calling 911 within seconds?

Or is it possible that police stop and frisk more people of color, thereby finding more of them doing something wrong, while letting whites walk past unmolested? [Edited Friday to add OHMYGOD, go look at the pink and black graphs on here.]

Or that there's a racial disparity in sentencing?

As for the media, it's still damned hard to find positive portrayals of Black people on tv (cue apologists saying "but what about that one character on that one show?" or "what about the BET channel? How come there's no white channel?"). And the public is complicit as hell. When Cheerios made a commercial with an interracial family,* the YouTube comments were so heinous they had to disable them. When a comic franchise considers making an iteration of a beloved character black, the public goes ape-shit. Even when a movie is filmed that casts a black actress in the role of a black character in a book, the public goes ape-shit, because their default is so white, they didn't even realize the character was black, and they can't imagine it any other way.

I saw this posted on a friend's wall the other day. I called her out on it, and I'm probably going to lose her friendship over it. I would care more, but later the same day she posted one of those attributed-to-Bill-Cosby rants about how black people's problems are black people's fault. So if you don't want to get called racist, maybe stops posting racist shit. Anyway...


The Marley Lion case is tragic. I would never want to take away from that primary, sad fact. I'm so sorry for his family's loss. But the subtle message of this picture and comparison goes something like this: "A black kid and a white kid were both murdered, but only one has received national attention. Clearly, the media favors black kids over white kids." And that is such intellectually dishonest bullshit that you'd either have to be dumb as dog shit or secretly racist to believe it and perpetuate it. Because the difference between the two cases isn't skin color of either the victim or the perpetrator:  It's the way they were handled afterward. In Trayvon's case, his killer was allowed to go home and not charged with anything until media pressure demanded it. In Lion's case, the Secret Service and the ATF were called in to assist in finding the killers. All the people involved were charged with multiple offenses. Perhaps media attention on the Lion case would have helped his family feel honored and validated. But there are something like 1,800 homicides of kids under 18 every year, and I don't think the media can cover all of them. But it's not always necessary, either, as it was in Trayvon's case to attempt to get some justice.

Another major, and tragic, difference in the two cases is this: every media outlet, every commenter, every blog and tweet about Lion assumes he was a good guy who didn't deserve to die ( I assume that, too). But there are a disproportionate number of people who assume Trayvon was a bad person, and he did deserve to die. And they went over his life with a fine-toothed comb to prove to themselves that they were right. No one did that to Marley. Thank god. It shouldn't have been done to Trayvon either. I saw a comment somewhere that said it appeared that Trayvon was on trial for his own murder. If you have children, I just want to you imagine for a moment how that would feel: your beloved child is dead, and thousands of people look up every photo of them looking tough, every school record of the time they got in trouble, every possible clue that they might have been a bad person. Geez, what would they have found on me?! And how that would have felt to my parents! But the thing is, I don't really believe it would have gone down that way. I think if a pretty blond girl was found dead, it'd be pretty unlikely that the next day, you'd read; "Breaking Mockula case news: Mockula tossed out of high school for shockingly poor attendance, grades," followed by 500 comments to the effect of "thank god for the bullet. I told you she was a thug. She brought this on herself." Because society treats black men differently.

And it doesn't matter if you're the award-winning, wealthy musician who is a relatively famous tv bandleader; people will still be frightened of you on the elevator. And it doesn't matter if you're a Harvard professor; your neighbors will still see a black man and call the police when you approach your own house. And it doesn't matter if you're a beloved actor; if the police pull you over, you go through certain protocol to protect your life.

And people seem to think that black people don't feel pain the same way white people do.

And kids identify white dolls as "pretty and good" and black dolls as "ugly and bad."

And most of us have SOME racial preference**... that doesn't mean it's bad, necessarily, just that it's a part of our society and our culture. So when, you know, the Supreme Court says that racism is over, so we no longer need the Voting Rights Act, well... I would tend to question that.

This is already a novel, and there's so much more to say. The reason I am riled up about the Trayvon Martin case is that not only does it show the deepest, darkest ugliest parts of our institutional racism, but it also shined a light on the apparently enormous number of people who think that is just fine and want it to stay the way it is, or who still can't see it and tell themselves all kinds of lies or focus on details that allow it to be okay for them. A black kid's life appears to be worth nothing, but after all, the dispatcher phrased it as "we don't need you to follow him." So everything's fine, the justice system is working as it should, la la la, I can't hear you.

*You can watch that Cheerios link -- the video I linked is actually quite sweet and heartwarming.
** This link offers a number of tests of your personal "implicit assumptions." It is interesting, revealing, and a little disturbing. I've taken quite a few, and I'm always surprised when they reveal a "slight preference" in some category. So take them at your own risk. It can be a blow to your view of yourself.

It's about Trayvon

The Trayvon Martin case is not about race relations in the U.S., the justice system, prejudice, fear, gun laws, neighborhood watch, media bias, Stand Your Ground laws, castle doctrine, Florida, the long-lasting effects of the peculiar institution (slavery), clothing, or what it means to be White Hispanic. It's about Trayvon Martin.

A seventeen year old was killed, on the street near his father's girlfriend's house, while doing nothing wrong. He had some candy and a soft drink.

And maybe (although no one can really know) he could have run away from the gunman. Maybe he could have avoided a physical confrontation and didn't. Maybe he started the confrontation. Maybe he was winning. Maybe he was not about to be nominated for sainthood. But he was doing nothing wrong at the time, and he was followed by an armed man and shot dead.

So... it bothers me when people jump on social media and decide that Martin was a "dumb nigger," that the world is better off without him, that we should thank god for the bullet that hit him, and that he shouldn't have had the munchies.

I mean, really? You're celebrating that a kid died, and that his killer went free?

And if there's a levels-of-racism trophy you get for calling an innocent dead kid a dumb nigger, then you don't earn it by nitpicking the case for all the reasons that the killer was justified in doing what he did, but you do get a small plaque. Plaques are currently being engraved for everyone who believes it's okay to kill a black kid walking down the street because...
*said black kid was tall
*said black kid once had a screwdriver
*said black kid once wrote graffiti on a wall
*said black kid had a fake set of gold teeth
*said black kid was seventeen, which is almost an adult!
*said black kid called the killer a "creepy-ass cracker" quietly on the phone to his friend
*etcetera on the dead black kid's actions that the killer could not and did not know about at the time
*911 dispatchers are technicially civilians
*the dispatcher technically said "we don't need you to follow him" rather than "don't follow him."
*yadda yadda on the "technically" "legal" arguments.

A high-quality embroidered badge goes out to everyone who has speculated on what might have happened, because in their imagination it makes some sense, then declared that as absolute truth. This also goes for those who take the killer's word as conclusive evidence, even though it is in the killer's interest to say such things, and no living person in the world can contradict him. Those receiving the badge include anyone who has uttered phrases like "Trayvon attacked him" or "Trayvon was smashing his head on the pavement" or "Trayvon reached for his gun" or "Trayvon said 'you're gonna die, motherfucker.'" If you feel you have been overlooked for inclusion in the embroidered badge level, please feel free to alert us as to which "facts" you made up from whole cloth or believed simply because the murderer said them.

A hand-signed paper certificate with a logo of a broken cookie will be awarded to anyone who fails to express empathy with the deceased's family because "that's the way the cookie crumbles." "Well," goes this line of thinking, "Zimmerman killed him, and he probably shouldn't have, but...
*after all, they can't prove he wasn't scared for his life BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
*after all, he had a concealed carry permit
*after all, he owned his gun legally
*after all, under Florida's laws, he didn't have to retreat from a conflict
*etcetera on the they-couldn't-convict-him-because Florida's laws are ass-backwards."

And finally, because there are simply too many people to thank for their apathy, there will be several pages in the program listing the names of those who say "who cares?" "Why is this getting so much attention?" or "We'll never know what happened, so let's let it go" or any version of "we didn't hear what the jury heard, so we have to trust that they made the right decision." Your name will have a star next to it if you were one of the people who expressed "outrage" at the Casey Anthony verdict, despite the fact that it was far less clear-cut that she murdered her child (no one disputes that Zimmerman fatally shot Martin). (Full disclosure: I totally think that Anthony did it, and I'm pretty pissed that she got off.)

Please collect your trophies, badges, certificates, and programs on the way out. Don't let the door hit you in the ass.


Coming up next time... It's NOT about Trayvon, and it IS about race relations, the justice system, etc. (What, are you surprised? As Whitman said, ""Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Goodbye, Duckie

I knew I was pregnant the day I missed my period, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. I waited until I was well and truly late, and then I tested. It wasn't just a faint, pale-line positive, either -- it showed up dark and immediate. The next morning I was leaving for Yosemite, and I've never had a secret, so I just decided to keep it to myself. In my head, I was calling the baby Duckie.

I camped, hiked all over, and peed in every godawful bathroom in the park. I bought a little tweeting bird for Zadie, and another for Duckie. I felt great.

We came home on Sunday, and on Monday, I had a dinner date planned with Sweetie. I told him at dinner, and he was glad. We both thought it best to wait as long as we could before telling Zadie, but I wanted to tell my mom on Mother's Day.

On Thursday, I had the worst stomachache. I could hardly move. I changed my lesson plan to "watch a movie" and sat very, very still. I skipped that afternoon's work meeting. It went away after a couple hours, and I thought it was gas. I did have a little spotting, but that can be perfectly normal.

On Friday, I had it again, around the same time of day. It must, I thought, have been related to eating. Perhaps I had eaten too much food.

On Sunday, I bought a crib.

The ache returned off and on all week, sometimes early in the morning, frequently at work. Wednesday was the worst. I took three bathroom breaks in an hour, unable to actually *go*, and it was painful to even walk. At lunch, instead of eating, I just lay on the floor behind my desk. Most of the kids didn't even know I was there, although there was a club meeting. Toward the end of lunch, I went back to the bathroom and threw up the only thing I'd eaten in hours, a carrot.

I Googled cramping in early pregnancy. I Googled abdominal pain. I Googled round ligament pain. I Googled symptoms of ectopic pregnancy. I still thought it might just be really, really bad, trapped gas, and how embarrassing would it be to complain about that?

I felt better Wednesday night, and we walked to the frozen yogurt shop, where we ran into some friends. I went to bed early, but I woke up at about 11:30 to use the restroom. The pain came back, and it was so bad I couldn't get up at all. I sat there for a long time, trying to figure out what to do. Finally, I got down on the floor and crawled on my hands and knees back to the bedroom. Sweetie thought it was Zadie at first, trying to sneak in, but when he realized it was me, he knew something was wrong. "What do you want me to do?" he asked. "I don't know. Take over." He called the Kaiser advice line and they said to come in, so we called Mom and she came over. I got dressed while Sweetie got Z up and dressed, and we all went to the emergency room.

Only Sweetie and I went in, and we were admitted fairly quickly. It was a little after midnight when they asked me what my pain was like, and I said it was severe, like a 9 on a 10 scale. They got a urine sample, weighed me, and tucked me into a freezing room! The nurse couldn't even find a vein because I was so cold, so they had to get another nurse and a warm blanket. Most of the next few hours was waiting around, getting a second urine sample (that they never used), and being cold. I did go for an ultrasound, which was intensely painful. I said to the lady at one point, "I know you're doing your job and you're being as gentle as you can, but you are my least favorite person right now." I told Sweetie when I got out that it had been like in the Princess Bride when Count Ruger takes a year off Wesley's life. She asked, "haven't they given you anything for the pain yet?" And it occurred to me... NO! I told them 9 on the pain scale, and they had not managed to respond to that yet. She wasn't supposed to say anything about what she saw, but she did add at the end that I would be better off laying with the bed more reclined, and she was surprised I wasn't bleeding more. At that point, I wasn't 100% sure, but it did seem like it was an ectopic pregnancy.

When the doctor came back to my room, she confirmed it. She said they were calling an OB/GYN surgeon to come from Roseville, so it would be a while, but they'd probably have me in surgery that morning. When she left, the nurse (who, like all the other nurses we saw that night, seemed annoyed with the doctor) said, "I don't know why she said that. You're definitely going into surgery." I told the doctor at that visit that I would appreciate some pain medication, and as I already had a line in my arm, they got some morphine into me pretty fast.

The surgeon, when he arrived, had a great bedside manner. He was warm, but professional. He explained everything, which I pretty much knew/anticipated already. He did say something like, "When they see the heart beat..." and I said, "So they DID see the heart beating?" I hadn't been sure. At the very least, he looked empathetic when he said yes. So the surgery I would be having would remove my fallopian tube with Duckie in it. And Duckie was the size of a lentil, and barely had dimples for ears, as I had just been telling him that afternoon as I played Queen in the car, but it was still sad.

Sweetie went out to tell Mom to go home and take Z to bed, and when he was gone, I cried, and my first nurse gave me a hug.

It seemed to take a long time to actually get ready for surgery, so Sweetie talked to me and we made lots of silly jokes. Plus, I had to take all my jewelry out, which was a royal pain, and he had to bend my nose ring for me. That made a third trip to what we were calling MRSA-bathroom. When I walked back to my room, one of the nurses was like, "SOCKS! YUCKY! GET HER SOCKS!" So Travis, who was my later-that-evening nurse, found me some flashy red ones and some washcloths and sanitizer to wash my feet off. Everyone there was nice, sympathetic, and helpful.

Dr. Wang, the surgeon, popped his head in to tell us that they were assembling the A-team up in surgery for me. I asked if he'd tell me if it was really the B-team, and he said he would. Then Sweetie whistled the A-team theme song for me.

Finally, they wheeled me up. I was introduced to Wayne and Jennie, part of the A-team, and then Sweetie had to go to the waiting room.

As we were getting leg cuff things on and my arms put out on the table's wings, and an oxygen mask, I burst into tears one last time. They pulled the mask away so I could talk, and I blurted out, "I was just really excited about this baby, and I haven't had a chance to say goodbye." Jennie gave me a warm hug, and Wayne asked if I wanted to say something before I went under, and I said no, it was okay.

And then I woke up in the recovery room, my mouth feeling like flypaper, and was given ice chips, and juice, and they went to find Sweetie (it took them a couple tries, because he wasn't where they thought he'd be). They sent him off to pick up some prescriptions, and eventually I got dressed and Mom came and I was discharged. I slept most of today. I am sad, but I think I'm okay, too.

I remember thinking that Zadie's pregnancy had been so easy, and she's such a challenging child. Maybe this would be the difficult pregnancy, and a very easy child. And in a way, it was true. He never gave me any trouble at all. Good night, Duckie.

But Mock... really... how could you have ADHD?

You were an honor student! You were the most easygoing kid!

All true. In fact, I think being smart got me by. Apparently, many girls with ADHD, instead of being hyperactive physically, express it verbally. In other words, via non-stop chatter. And their impulsivity and risk-taking looks like tree-climbing. And a big part of the disorder for many people actually includes something called "hyper-focus," an ability to completely lose oneself for hours in something they actually are interested in. So... there's 8 year old me, up a tree, reading a book. Also? The only thing I ever got in trouble for in elementary school was talking too much.

But what about high school? You graduated with honors! You were a National Merit Scholar finalist!

Little-known fact: I got thrown out of high school. Yes, I managed to turn it around eventually, but I had some rough going there.

But you're not, like, super-disorganized.

A note: this question would only come from someone who wasn't close to me. Someone who, for example, I would tidy up the house for if I knew they were coming over. My car is a mess. My purse and work bag are messes. My desk is a mess. Pretty much anything that isn't official shared household space is a mess. I am, in point of fact, totally and completely disorganized. My mom, husband, and former roommates would LAUGH if they heard someone ask this question.

But it doesn't, like, affect you negatively.

I guess unless you count all the time I have to spend going back to the grocery store for items I forgot, returning home for my phone or purse, going back to the restaurant to retrieve the purse I left draped on the back of the chair, downloading PDFs of forms I need for my taxes that I should have filed away in the first place and now can't find... I haven't suffered too many really bad consequences, like getting audited and not having the paperwork, or actually losing my purse, but it's pretty time-consuming.

But everybody focuses on things they like and avoids things they don't like. 

Yeah, but I'm beginning to realize that it's not to the extent that I do. Other people are like, "Yeah, I don't like folding laundry either, but I can't stand to have it sit there, so I just suck it up and do it right away." I'm more like, "I made pickles and jam and sewed a dress and wrote a poem and read a fascinating article on race relations, but I didn't fold laundry. I'm SO LAZY." And other people are like, "Dude, that's not lazy, you did five times as much as I did." But in my head, I really wanted to fold the laundry, but I just couldn't face it... I couldn't make myself. So since I wanted to do it felt like I needed to do it and still didn't actually do it, I feel lazy.

And you say you rely on lists and calendars. That's just life. Everyone does that.
I know, I know. But perhaps not to the extent that I do. For example, here's the kind of conversation that happens in our house:
Sweetie: Hey, did you get half and half?
Me: No. You didn't put it on the grocery list.
Sweetie: But... we've lived together for 8 1/2 years and I've needed it every week, ever.
Me: It wasn't on the list. You put Cheerios on the list, and I bought Cheerios. Half and half wasn't on the list.

Or...
Me: Where were you?
Sweetie: At the GE meeting. I told you I'd be late.
Me: Did you?

Or...
Me (on phone): Hi, this is Mockula. I'm so sorry, but I'm wondering if I can reschedule, because I didn't realize that I accidentally booked two appointments at once. I somehow had this one on the wrong calendar.

ALL. THE. TIME. I miss appointments, parties, don't bring things I told someone I'd bring... I put on the calendar things like "Get tape and put it in car. 5 pm. Alert 5 minutes before event." And if I didn't, that tape would not get into the car.

But... you do so much! Didn't you write, like, four novels during NaNoWriMo?

Ah yes. But an important thing to note is that although I've done National Novel Writing Month several times, I've never once even considered doing National Novel Editing Month. Because people with ADHD can complete the challenging, creative part of a task, but will stop when it gets to the tedious part. Like when I made caramels, but simply COULDN'T face wrapping them individually. Or made Zadie a dress but didn't put the straps down. Or painted Zadie's room but didn't re-hang the posters. Or, oh, a thousand other things in my adult life.

But speaking of your adult life... you have three college degrees and a good job.
Yep. I'm not saying it has ruined my life or anything. In fact, I think I've been rather successful and am proud of all my achievements. But as I reflect back over it all, I think of the hardest parts, the parts that sucked the most, and they all went like this. "ARGH! I hate this fucking class! I can't believe he sits and fucking GREETS everybody for the first forty minutes. What a waste of my time!" "You know, if I have to make nice with another goddamn sweater-wearing first grade teacher cutting out bears instead of getting right to the instruction, I am going to scream." "I couldn't believe it -- twenty minutes into the class, people were still LOGGING ON, for fuck's sake, so I went ahead and made a whole PowerPoint with animations and pictures of myself about how hungry I was." "I have infinite patience, but I cannot stand these meetings that waste my goddamn time." In one notable impulse-control moment, I remember being asked to "reveal something" about myself with an item in my purse, and I was so pissed off that my time was being wasted AGAIN that I got out my menstrual record chart and cheerfully intoned, "so you can see that here, I was spotting, and the H is for heavy flow days." So I'm thinking that the impatience, impulsivity and frustration with wasted time are perhaps, possibly, maybe just a little, something that is part of my professional life.

I think I have ADD...

and I couldn't be happier! That probably sounds weird. But here's why:

A: it explains a LOT. Like, my "organizational skills." My school performance when I was younger. My reliance on calendars and lists to get anything done. It doesn't make it better, exactly, but to know it's all a part of the same big disorder is actually a relief! I would have described myself as forgetful or scatterbrained, but it's a thing! A few weeks ago, I completely forgot to go to a family function that was important to me, simply because it wasn't on my calendar (well, it was a technology cock-up, actually). I felt awful, and it obviously doesn't make it up to the family members who were hurt that I didn't attend. But, you know... it helps me make sense of it! And that's something.

B: I am a successful-ass adult. So is my husband (who almost certainly has it, too). In fact, the two of us together pretty much have it made. We have a home, jobs, each other, a cool kid, a whole bunch of education... And since what brought this whole thing up is that my kid has it (more on that in another post), I'm kind of relieved! It's like, "Oh no, my kid has this horrible thing! How will she ever cope?" And then to hear that I have the horrible thing... well, it makes it less horrible. How will she cope? She'll make lists, she'll use her smartphone's calendar, she'll fidget... It'll be totally okay. Because like us (and I'm kind of bragging here, I know), she's extra-smart and creative. She'll need our support, but we've got this! We're the coping mechanism kings and queens of the world!

C: To realize it's a thing is to realize that there are treatments for the thing.  I don't think I'm going to jump on Adderal or whatever, but if there are time-management and organizational and meditational and nutritional ways I can address my own spazzy/forgetful/talkative/impatient stuff, I'm going to look into them. Heck, it might improve my life! I get really stressed out when I forget stuff, so it might be a blessing to find some ways to address it.

D: This is the weirdest one, I admit, but I almost feel like... we're all in this together. When it comes to the hyperactivity, that was just the two of them. I'm, like, slothful. But since the attention/distractability issues are all part of the whole shebang, I can join their club! We can all work on being mindful together. It's a family affair.

Anyway, I'm writing this very quickly before band practice, so I'll return to the subject more thoughtfully later.

P.S. Perhaps I should have suspected something before I turned 37. I mean, I *did* author a series of poems called "11 or so songs for a disorganized mind." Ahem.

"Down with the struggle" (a rambly education post)

It is my considered opinion that most of the so-called school reform agenda is based on falsehoods and designed to maximize profits for its corporate engineers by privatizing education. To do that, they have had to create a narrative that schools are failing, which is also largely false.

But there still is an achievement gap, and there are major problems in the public schools. I don't live in a bubble, and I am not myself a liar, so I won't deny that. I just don't think the corporate reform agenda is the way to fix anything.

Many of my students are several grade levels behind in reading, and their writing is atrocious. Not just the students in special ed., but many others as well.

My grandma asked me the other day what the problem was, and I answered simply: poverty.

She looked at me quizzically, probably thinking of the years she spent summers sleeping on a fruit crate outdoors while her parents picked fruit.

"Imagine," I started.

There is one book in a household per 300 children living in poverty.

Imagine working full time and figuring out how to get your kid to 3 hour a day preschool. Daycare is an easier option, so many kids in poverty start school with little literacy awareness at all.

Now that they're in school, though, what happens if they're sick? If they don't have insurance, they likely don't get treatment unless it's an emergency, so they either miss school or attend sick. Same thing if they have a toothache. Can you concentrate when you have a toothache? Imagine how much they are learning under those circumstances. Imagine not being able to afford your asthma medicine or allergy medicine.

Imagine that the two free meals we feed them at school are the only regular, nutritious food they can count on. And imagine they're five minutes late and miss breakfast. Can you concentrate when you're hungry?

How loud is your house? Your neighborhood? In my years of teaching, my kids report hearing arguments, sirens, gunfire... One kid slept in a room with his colicky infant brother, and was awake almost all night every night. Can you learn when you're tired?

And imagine how hard it is just to get to school! If your neighborhood school is across a freeway overpass, a busy thoroughfare, or a rough neighborhood, your parents may not allow you to walk, even if it's within a mile or so (and with the school closings happening so rampantly, it will often be more than a mile). So what if your parents didn't have money for gas? What if the car needs repair? What if the family has one car and Dad needed it to go to work?

Imagine that your dad lost his job, so you need to stay with someone for a while, but it's in a different district. You wear out your welcome there, so you stay with friends in another city. Your parents always enroll you in school, but it's in a different textbook, a different teaching style, and it takes the schools a while to transfer your records, so you don't get the services you need. Imagine trying to learn when by eleventh grade, you'd already attended four high schools.

Imagine that your little brother is sick, but Mom will lose her job if she takes even one more day off, so she asks you to stay home with him.

Imagine your mom doesn't speak English, so she needs you to translate at the welfare office, the doctor, the utility company, your little brother's school, most of which have to be scheduled during your school hours.

I don't even think that's an exhaustive list, but it'll do for now. And I know what some people will say: they shouldn't have all those kids, then. They should learn to speak English. They should get a job.

Whatever. You know what? I've been damn lucky, and I didn't have more kids than I could afford, I have a job, and I was born speaking the language. Some of those things I worked hard for, and others I didn't. Some of them were choices and some weren't.

If you think those are the right choices, though, you have to help people make them. Endorse sex education. Make birth control affordable and available. Keep abortion legal and accessible.

End corporate tax loopholes, end the Bush tax cuts, make it harder for companies to profit at the expense of U.S. citizens by making huge profits but using strategies to make it look like their money was made offshore. Incentivize small business, incentivize factories on American soil, support unions, buy products made in America, stimulate job growth, forgive student loan debt... Find ways to get jobs for those who want them. Raise the minimum wage so that it actually supports a minimum standard of living.

And for the love of God, stop cutting education funds. If you want people to learn English, which for the parents of some of my students is a third or fourth language, then don't kill adult education programs!

In the meantime, while public schools aren't perfect, and society isn't perfect, there is much being done that is an attempt to mitigate the effects of poverty. The free lunches and breakfasts we serve on campus help. The Affordable Care Act is going to help.

And there are things that hurt. Closing neighborhood schools hurts.

And the worst news is, Even if you don't give two shits about the poor, even if you see them as crack-headed derelicts sucking at the welfare teat, this will affect you. These kids will grow up and either they will get jobs, or they will commit crimes. They will contribute to their communities and society at large, or they won't. And if they don't-- if all of them get left behind-- what kind of world will this ultimately be? Of course there will always be the rich kids with their SAT tutors. Presumably there will be no shortage of doctors and lawyers and investment bankers. And middle class kids like mine will probably be fine. And then there will be the bootstraps kids, many of them my students, who will succeed regardless of their circumstances. But if we don't lend a hand to the ones who need the hand, we will have, at best, a generations of kids who are well-suited to work at Wal-Mart (incidentally, one of the corporate moneybags behind Ed reform). They will be low-skilled workers, and Wal-Mart will pay them minimum wage, and as many as 80% of Wal-Mart employees use food stamps. So if you're not into subsidizing people's lives via your taxes, you may at least want to make a decision as to on which end of their lives it is better spent.

By the way, Wal-Mart made $15 billion in pure profit last year. You think they could handle a minimum wage hike?


I think back to Grandma again. I know that as a married couple with five kids, she and my grandpa didn't have a lot of money. My dad tells, me, I think without exaggeration, of having debt collectors at the front door, the back door, and on the phone. But there were differences as well from the kind of poverty my students experience: my grandpa had a union job. My grandma worked. They were homeowners. Their neighborhood was solidly middle class, although it has slid somewhat downhill since. Their kids walked to school, but not through the ghetto. It's hard to consider yourself to have been poor, then to hear that other people's kids can't succeed because of poverty, when your own kids did succeed. They are literate, they have jobs, they own homes.

My students invented a new game the other day. It's called "You don't know about the struggle." They begin with that phrase, then add, "I'm so down with the struggle," and make a hyperbolic statement about suffering from poverty. "I'm so down with the struggle," one said, "we had to eat sandwiches that were just two pieces of bread with ice cubes in the middle." "You don't know about the struggle," the other replied." "I'm so down with the struggle, I didn't even have the bread!" A third kid chimed in, "I'm so down with the struggle, my whole apartment has cockroaches." We all laughed, because he didn't get it. The game isn't about telling the truth about the struggle. The truth is too sad.

Happy fifth birthday, Azadeh Finn!

Feels like the first time: on seeing Star Wars for the first time in three decades*

One of the most interesting things about Star Wars is the completeness of its place in the culture. If you proclaim yourself a movie buff but admit you haven't seen Goodfellas, people will be shocked. But Star Wars is different: you don't have to be a movie lover. People will be shocked to learn you haven't seen it if you are within three or four generations of age, grew up in a first-world country, and don't have some significant disability. It is referenced in songs, tv shows, other movies... I haven't been keeping track, but I'd be surprised to learn that a month of my life has gone by without hearing one of the following: "I am your father," "these are not the droids you are looking for," "use the force," "the force is strong in this one," "I find your lack of faith disturbing," and a few choice others.

I recognize popular costumes, debates, and almost all the characters. What I could not have done, before re-watching it, was tell you the plot. Honestly, I had no idea what the thing was about. And it was a revelation! There were many things I was pleased and surprised to discover.

First, and perhaps best of all the surprises, was Princess Leia. I assumed she was some damsel in distress they managed to run into and she tagged along. Quite the contrary! She was working for the rebel alliance while Luke was still a whiny teenager stuck at home with his uncle. She takes the lead several times, dismissing the macho rogue Han Solo as useless, and she actually endures some form of torture when pressed to give up the location of the rebel base. She's a badass, not a damsel in distress at all.

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ben Kenobi are the same person. I did not know that.

Darth Vader is not the big boss man in that film. It's Grand Moff Tarking. (I enjoyed irritating my husband by pretending to think his name was Grandma Pftarkington.) Of course, by the end, Grandma is dead, so things will change for the next film.

Alec Guiness as Obi-wan is not the scene-chewer the Star Wars nerds would have you believe. I can't tell you how many times someone has quoted the Jedi Mind Trick scene ("these are not the droids you are looking for") and done a deep stare, a hypnotist-at-the-fair voice, and a big hand gesture. In the actual scene, it's very subtle. He looks relaxed and calm -- is even smiling a bit -- and says it very casually. It's much more effective, actually, as a scene, than people who over-act it when quoting.

[Side rant: now that I think about it, that's frequently true. Think of how people quote Bogart in Casablanca. They have to do this over-the-top Bogey impression, when most of those famous lines ("Here's looking at you, kid") are actually relatively understated.

Luke is a whiny kid when the movie starts. It makes sense, because the story is a total hero's journey (I'm actually been teaching that this week, so it's fresh in my mind), and it fits the profile of the reluctant hero, but you never see that bit in pop culture. You always see him flying some spaceship or having a light saber fight. In the beginning, though, he's all, "aw, man, I don't wanna do my chores! Gee whiz, uncle."

Darth Vader does stuff. Again, the few things you see of him in pop culture are usually him standing, breathing, and giving orders. But at one point in this film, he's jumped into his own fighter jet thing and is chasing down the rebels, shooting at them. And when he's done with everybody else, he's chasing down Luke, which adds a good deal of dramatic irony and tension, as everyone now knows he's Luke's father.

[Note: this kid didn't know, and I love this video.]

Anyway, since all I remember of Return of the Jedi is Ewoks and some sort of really fast bicycle-things they fly through the trees, and all I remember of The Empire Strikes Back is stormtroopers marching, and all I can think of pop-culture-wise are Leia in the gold bikini from the cantina scene, the actual light saber fight, and Yoda, I'm quite looking forward to watching the next two movies! I will probably never re-watch episodes 1, 2, and 3 (I think I may have only seen 1 and 2 anyway), because that damned racist kangaroo got on my nerves.


*Three decades and change, actually. I spoke to my mom tonight, and she says we went to the theater to see The Empire Strikes Back when I was four, and we all enjoyed it so much we found a showing of A New Hope (back then, we just called it Star Wars) shortly thereafter. That was 1980, and that was the last time I saw those two movies. I saw Return of the Jedi when it came out in 1983.

Shady dealings in SCUSD

Okay, here's the Cliff's Notes version of what is going on in our school district, and a little history. It's still pretty long, but there's a lot to cover. For the record, although I'm a high school teacher, we're not really affected by this move. And although I'm a parent, my neighborhood schools are unaffected. I basically don't have a horse in this race. But I'm not objective: this pisses me right off.

Eli Broad is a bajillionaire who wants his hands in education, so he created "The Broad Academy," which trains non-education business guys to be school superintendents.


They have this guide that outlines their policies for privatizing education (i.e. turning public schools into charter schools).

Their sort of signature method is this:
1.  Create "churn" or chaos and disruption in the district.
2. Cite budget problems and declining enrollment as a reason to close schools.
3. Turn the closed sites into charters.

There's some subtly evil stuff like creating that "churn," then telling parents "Aren't you tired of the churn? At least a charter school will allow some stability."

And there's a marked propensity for hanging the school closures on a flimsy reason, then changing the reason at a moment's notice if it's questioned. The numbers they use are almost always pulled from thin air.

They generally affect poor and minority neighborhoods because the parents in the other kinds of neighborhoods are more likely to make a stink.

In the meantime, they write laws that say things like "if a school site is closed and a charter wants to open there, you have to say yes," or how if a small group of parents wants to "take over" a school (i.e. have it closed down and given to a charter operator), they can, and then give the laws to some politician to get them passed.

And they put money into school board campaigns to elect their candidates.

And on a larger scale, they make movies about how charter schools and "parent trigger" laws are the only way to save education, which is a nightmare (according to their carefully selected information, which ignores a lot of data and appeals to "gut feeling").

So what happened in Sacramento?

Our Broad-Academy-trained superintendent has created chaos for the last few years (several fights with the union over furloughs, calendar, massive over-estimating pink slip numbers, creating "priority schools" which moves teachers around, etc.).

The last school board member was appointed, not elected.

A "chief" of the superintendent's goes on maternity leave. They make a temporary hire of a guy who ran a charter school.

The school board announced that they were closing 11 schools, almost all in low-income neighborhoods, and that they would vote to close them all as a block, not negotiate over individual schools. There would be several public meetings over a few weeks, and the final vote would be in February (five weeks after the announcement). They cited declining enrollment as the reason, and said that many buildings were "underutilized." (No "stakeholders" like parents or teachers were consulted.)

People questioned the numbers, particularly given a few glaring inconsistencies. For example, one school they said was "underutilized" had plans to get portables in order to have enough room for the kids they had. Other schools had been scrutinized for upgrades and in the district's own report were sized differently than in the closure report.

Parents made a stink about a few of the schools, and two were taken out of the initial vote.

Parents made a stink about three more, and they were taken out of the vote, leaving seven schools to be voted on for closure.

4 members of the school board, including the appointed one, voted to close the seven schools.

As you might imagine, charter school operators are already eyeing the sites, and parents are being assured that there will still be a neighborhood school to attend.

Of course, closing all seven schools is only estimated to save the district about $2.5 million, and if 450 students dis-enroll from the public schools to attend charters, the district's funding will go down by $2.5 million. So any savings will be completely lost.

Among other shady things, the local newspaper, which has been falling all over itself to praise the district's action, has financial ties to the "reform" movement which includes privatization.

This is a losing situation for families, mostly. Many will lose a neighborhood school that they were able to walk to, or that served as a community hub.

It's a losing proposition for teachers, too: the schools that the kids will be moved to are all "priority" schools, which in this district means that the teachers there are "skipped" for pink-slipping purposes. If a larger number of teachers are at those sites, a larger percentage of teachers at other sites are likely to be laid off. Last year, it went all the way to teachers with nine years' service to the district. This year it could go further. A former student of mine remarked that maybe this wasn't the time to go into teaching. Maybe she's right.

It's also idiotic, in many ways, for the district as a whole (although not for the superintendent, who is working in the best interests of privatization, not of the schools): they spent money on things like smart boards at the sites that will be closed, and they have no intention of having them moved to the new sites. It's a very expensive gift to the future charters.

But perhaps the real kicker is this: the district is not really facing a financial crisis. Governor Brown's proposal (not yet passed) would increase funding to our district by $12.1 million next year and $18.7 the year after.

Long story short, education stands to be very profitable via contracts with testing companies, construction of new buildings, contracts with software companies, etc. And as long as all these goddamn unions are in the way, that big pot of state and federal money is hard to get at. So the "reform movement" people have to change laws, train a cadre of superintendents to destabilize education from the inside, buy the media so they can spin the story their way, and then open charters to get the kids enrolled. It seems like a lot of work, but apparently it's worth it, because they're doing it in Chicago, they're doing it in New York, they're doing it in LA, and they're doing it here.

Further reading:

Local journalist Cosmo Garvin does some good writing on the topic here and here.

This is Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post writing about why charters are good business.

This explains some things about how the exact same thing went down in Chicago.

Charter schools and "disaster capitalism."

This one explains how the Broad Academy got its hands on Chicago schools.

More on the Broad Foundation. 

Text "like!"

There's a radio station in town that I like. It plays a variety of music, most of it newer, that fits pretty squarely into the "alternative rock" format. It has no DJs, and promises short commercial breaks. I listen to it a lot.

One thing they do that I tend to roll my eyes at is play a little pre-recorded drop, probably at least every ten minutes, that asks listeners to send a text message indicating whether they like or dislike the song currently playing, or want to hear it more or less. In a quieter, speedier tone, someone adds "text and data rates my apply."

I ignore it, but one day my kid called from the backseat, "Text like!" I told her instead that I would put the song on her playlist. She was satisfied. But every once in a while, she'll ask me again to text the radio station.

I know marketing is invasive. I know we see and hear more ads than we ever take in consciously. But still, it bugged me that this particular bit of marketing had worked so well on my kid, precisely because she didn't realize it was advertising. You're not supposed to.

See, if you text the radio station, my old community college psychology professor would tell you, you feel loyal to them. You've made yourself a part of the station's identity. You feel as though you're being self-serving ("I can make them stop playing that Adele song!"), but in fact, you're creating brand loyalty. That station "belongs" to you (hint: it doesn't).

And of course, they'll tell you the same thing: This is your station. We play what you tell us to. Which is kind of Prong Two of this marketing attack. First, they make you feel loyal. Then they advertise to you, telling you that they're responsive.

And of course, data and messaging rates may apply, so to add insult to injury, they're making you pay for the privilege of their cheap psychological ploy.

BUT FINE. FINE. I'm not going to text them, and other people can, and I'll try to explain it to my kid, but it's all fine.

But then, the other day, they had a new drop. It went something like this: "Our marketing department wanted us to do some expensive market research project. But we told them no; we'd rather answer to you, our listeners." Or some horseshit like that.

So wait. You're telling me that you're advertising to me with the "text like" drops, tricking me* into brand loyalty, using my* input to do market research, and making me* pay for it, and then you have the temerity to use THAT as its own ad? "Hey, we're fucking you six ways from Sunday on this whole advertising and market research thing, but doesn't it make us sound homey and alternative and grass-roots? We're actually marketing to you by telling you how we market to you, and we're doing it right now. And rightnow. And... now. Hey, could we get you to pay $20 for a sweatshirt with our logo, too? Then you could walk around in public advertising for us at your own expense. Could you friend us on Facebook so we can market to you while you check your phone on the toilet?  When you text us, can we add you to a never-ending feed of announcements and reminders that are also advertisements?"

I'm not even sure they do that last thing, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised. And as to being homey and grassroots, everything is so corporate these days that I'd bet money this is just a new format they're trying in fifty markets across the country.

I am too lazy, so please read this as, "Yo Dawg, I heard you like advertisements, so I put an ad in your ad, so you can be marketed to while you're marketed to."

I realize I am uncharacteristically cranky about this, but advertising really does get on my tits, and although I can usually ignore it, it really seems like they're finding more, cleverer ways to force you to be advertised to. Want to watch a music video on YouTube? You have to sit through an ad first. Want to read the paper online? An ad swooshes over your text. Use a recipe? The audio of a commercial in the sidebar starts playing automatically. In the last week, I saw on Huffington Post the opportunity for readers to watch a "teaser" for a Superbowl commercial, but before it would play, you had to sit through an ad. Seriously? An ad to watch an ad for an ad? 

What is this world coming to!? (see also) Kids these days! (and) Get off my lawn!

*And by me, I mean not me.