Tales of Adequacy!

Sadly, this is pretty much on point.

In truth, there are two dogs at the Fortress of Togetherness.  The older of the two is currently at the vet, with pancreatitis, which is Very Bad.  Her condition seems to be improving, but it is slow going, since its a serious condition, and she is an older dog.  It’s not an uncommon thing for her breed, with her underlying digestive issues, but that doesn’t make it less life threatening.

She went into the vet last week, on Thursday morning, so this has thus far been a pretty decent stay.  So far the prognosis is guarded but positive.  I had been keeping it under my hat both at work and in the webcomics, but now…here we are.

Beside this issue, this week is already shaping up to be challenging, before I even walk in the door on Monday.  That is definitely Not Great.

This year, Free Comic Book Day and May The Fourth aren on the same day, Which is today.

In past years, I’ve done a whole history/book report about Free Comic Book Day.  This year, I’m doing the “short form.”  The first Saturday in May, every major (and many minor) comic book publisher offers “give away” issues to local comic book retailers, in an effort to showcase the industry, and let people know about stores near them.  There is a web site with a store locator, so you can easily find a store close to you!  Stores handle the day differently, but invariably, you walk away with free stuff.

Star Wars Day (May Fourth) is, by contrast, an informal commemorative day observed annually on May 4 to celebrate the Star Wars media franchise. Observance of the day spread quickly through media and grassroots celebrations since the franchise began in 1977. Star Wars has millions of fans who celebrate this day every year. Star Wars is the second largest franchise in the world after Marvel and has the second-largest fan base in the world. That was two things I did not know, and found out resaeching this post.

The date originated from the pun “May the Fourth be with you”, from the Star Wars catchphrase “May the Force be with you.” Even though the holiday was not created or declared by Lucasfilm, many Star Wars fans have chosen to celebrate the holiday. It has since been embraced by Lucasfilm and the Walt Disney Company as an annual celebration of Star Wars.

Today, both things happen at the same time.

I will be putting in my efforts at a local store that makes the whole thing a fundraiser for the Los Angeles Food Bank. Food insecurity is still a major issue, and has been since the pandemic, so it’s definitely a charitable effort that I get behind. As a teacher in South Los Angeles, I see food insecurity all the time…so this is a very worthwhile, if also very exhausting day.

Find your local store, enjoy the day. Get some free stuff! And…if you’re feeling charitably inclined, maybe take a moment to get behind a charity that you endorse, and make a difference.

You know she’s going to smack that Kryptonian Thought Beast with the huge mushroom, right?

The title says it all.  One of my closest work friends just got a new post (I helped to make that happen), and won’t be at my school site any more.  That teacher was effectively driven out, by being asked to teach two AP classes that were outside of their credential.  Think of an English teacher being asked to teach Computer Programming, and you pretty much have what you need there.

The teacher wouldn’t do it.  After being told that they would be “displaced” if they didn’t…my friend went into an “overdrive” looking for a new position with a better commute, and one materialized pretty quickly.  I’m glad about this, for sure.

A quick “back of the envelope” calculation shows at least fifteen teachers not returning to our school in the coming year.  That is a Very Large Figure for this time of year…a huge amount of turnover.  Most are citing dissatisfaction with “school leadership” and a “lack of support.”  Those are typical complaints in education, but greatly exacerbated at our school site.

Only one administrator seems to care, and that’s the one that’s been there the longest.  The principal professes the idea that we are all parts that can be swapped, or even replaced by AI, while simultaneously calling us “a family.”  It’s shortsighted, for sure.

Many of the teachers leaving are very early in their careers.  They would have stayed if they felt supported, or that there was stability, but have sucessfully been driven to find other postings.  So our school has spent three to four years training and developing them, as a time and finiancial investment, and then loses those good professionals.  You hear administrators and sernior teachers gripe about this all the time, blaming everything BUT the school site and treatment of those newer, younger staff.

I’m particularly cranky about this one though.  A good friend, and a good teacher.

As a good friend, I helped to kick them out the door to a better posting when the matter was crystal  clear.

Most days, you just put your jacket back on, and get to work.

Stress is starting to get to me though.

It’s a strange stress.  It has a lot to do with the job changing around me.  Two of my closest friends at work are aggressively looking for new jobs, and in all honesty, I’m fairly certain one of them just got hired.  Students are using Chat GPT to do assignments, and I have a principal who thinks that teachers should be using it to create assignments.  A report card is due tomorrow, standardized tests are in progress, and all told, I worry about how much is really being achieved.

I’m up to date on my paperwork, but like those burger stealing ninjas in Panel One, small problems still keep coming up, that need to be just dealt with.  Often, small, kind of dumb problems.  I think all jobs have those kinds of things, to be honest, but when there are some definitely “bigger” issues at hand, the little things seem deeply annoying and stressful.

It’s a good thing that the year is winding down.

Definitely been a challenging week…

Cap’s X-Wing Pilot friend is trying to be helpful, but really…it has been a lot.

On Day Two of standardized testing, I successfully streamlined the process.  That was a good thing.

However…

• My wallet wound up getting left behind at home, entirely by accident, starting the morning off scary.
• Four of my students signed into the test, and then proceeded to do their make up.  For the duration of testing.  Despite my repreated attempts to get them to try.
• Three slept through it.  Despite my repeated “wake up” moments.
• Seven finished in twenty minutes…of a three hour testing session, so they clearly did not try.

If you think that sounds like a lot…it’s half my homeroom.  Most of that time turned into simple classroom management….again…for three hours.  Three hours of being a “rules enforcer.”

Oh…but we are not done.

• A bird (a robin, apparently) flew into my classroom in the last fifteen minutes of testing.  As of this writing, it might still be there.  This…derailed any kind of focus for my students for the REST OF THE DAY.
• I went to “Book Club,” which is in the library.  No one but me, and two other students read the chapters.  So…it was like class, but somehow sadder.
• I then went to class. One of my best students “didn’t want to participate” in the play.  I got another student, who desperately needed credit in class…and they had no idea where we were.  Obviously, the play ground to a halt.
• The bird was still there.
• Next class…went better.  Still a bird present.
• Had to go to after school meetings about a standardized test given in January that my students did overwhelmingly well on.  In that meeting, the presenter brushed me off, until she realized that my students outperformed the district, and then she asked me to present in her stead.
• Then…noticed principal sitting next to me, using ChatGPT for professional correspondence.  Called him out on it.  He proceeded to lie, then defend himself, then try to sell me on ChatGPT.
• At the end of the conversation, he earnestly asked me for my feedback about the standardized test prepaation, having obviously ignored everything that I had said.

No wonder Cap look so tired, and need her Pilot friend to be supportive here. No matter how great your super powers are, a constant thread of minor frustrations is just exhausting.

And today, we are at the “halfway mark.”

There are days where this seems like the best course of action.

Monday, we started a full week of standardized testing at my school, which means two things:

• Completely everything is focused on that testing, perhaps to the dtriment of the rest of school.
• Actual learning grinds to a halt.

Normally, there’s a “testing schedule” that makes some kind of sense to me, but this time…the school really “knocked it out of the park,” if you ask me.  The schedule is nigh incomprehensible at BEST, a complete obstacle to anything like ongoing classes for sure.  I will see each of my courses only once this week, in fact.

There’s also a report card due, for what THAT is worth.  Students would normally be in a kind of position to do last minute work to bring grades up…but that probably will get lost in the shuffle of testing.

Alongside all of that, there’s the issue with the AP classes, both the ones in progress now, and scheduled for next year that was bothering me (see the previous post).  Both a student of mine and a staff member I’m friends with were bullied by administration over this issue on Friday…there’s really no other way to say it.  It bothered me all weekend.

So much so, that I wrote a couple of e-mails, and made a couple of phone calls.  Right now, there’s a kind of “no fly zone” around both of those people (the teacher and the student) because our administration really overstepped thmeselves, in ways that are at best marginally legal.  Like cockroaches fleeing a turned on light, or Darths scurrying away from a Canadian hurled at them with great force, administration has fled that particular matter, at least for the moment.

Amazingly, this sketch does double duty…it applies to both a student AND a teacher situation.

During the week, a student came to me with an issue.  Many, in fact, have come to me with issues this week, some small, some large.  In this case, it was an issue about one of their AP Classes.  In short…the class is staffed by a teacher that doesn’t know the content…through no fault of their own.  However, they have pretty much “given up” teaching, with the AP exam just a short time away.

The student didn’t want to really change things for themselves.  They are already accepted to a college…to this kid, it was about alerting someone outside the school so that the situation wouldn’t happen to someone else.  They were upset about the class, and wanted to tell someone in a more supervisory position, with oversight powers, about it…so that another student wouldn’t have the same situation.

As teachers, we are supposed to encourage this sort of leadership.  The student wanted to write a letter, and send it off to the district.  They were actually upset with themselves that they hadn’t had the idea sooner, to which I said (wisely), “all ideas come in their time.”

At almost the same time, a teacher friend of mine was given their “line of classes” for next year.  She teaches in the “school within the school” that we have on campus, giving her a more restrictive schedule.  Figure around two weeks ago she got the line of courses.  It included the same AP class that the student was concerned about.

If possible, my friend was even LESS qualified than the current teacher.

That’s not to say that my friend is not an excellent teacher, she is.  She is at the beginning of her career, and can only be desribed as a “gifted” teacher.  The thing is…she is not “gifted” enough to have expertise wildly outside of her areas of study.

Knowing of the situations at our school, and that this kind of thing could happen, she immediately started looking for another job.  At the same time, she offered counter offers that were very intelligent to the administration, which were alternately “slow rolled” or rejected.

Simply put, she stated that she “wouldn’t do that kind of disservice to the students, who9 deserve a better teacher.”  That’s been her “standard” to get behind, and is strangely in line with what the student was concerned with.

The student sent their letter, and she sent her own professional correspondence.  The difference was that the student went to officials outside of the school, and the teacher stayed inside the school.

Both wound up with very similar results.

The student got a prompt response…one that probably influenced the lagging response from our campus officials to the teacher.  The response from off campus promised a swift inquiry, and real attention, and thanked the student for standing up.

By the end of the day, both individuals were called in by separate teams of two administrative Darths each.

Both were told that they were somehow wrong, and that they didn’t understand the situation.  Both were bullied and intimidated.  Both were made to feel badly about trying to improve things.

If that makes you upset, Gentle Reader, it should.

I’ve been thinking about it all weekend.  I’ve made some phone calls, and done some consults.

As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t over for either of them.  I’m definitely going to take a VERY active hand.

When people try to improve things, to make things better for young people, that’s a good thing.  A Vice principal that I used to actually like had a poster in their room that said “Evil Flourishes When Good Men Fail To Act.”  That’s true.

I think Frank Miller needs to be quoted as well.  He said (or rather Bruce Wayne did) “Courage isn’t the absence of fear.  It’s the will to face it.”

I find that people tend to have much more will when I’m standing next to them.

You know Cap has had a tough week if she’s sitting down with Yoda.

It really has been a tough week.  School is going well enough, in terms of the courses and the grades.  There’s an upcoming report card next week, but there is also Standardized Testing, so really…I will have plenty of time to grade.  More than enough.

Besides everything going on politically, I have had a number of students come to me with Major Problems.  The kind of thing that I expected to deal with when I signed up to be a teacher, that I’m glad to help with…but still, very stressful.  You need to Get It Right when kids count on you.

One was a girl whop had ugly rumors starting about her on campus, because of an event with her boyfriend.  another was a student that wanted to exercise their right to free speech to protest the fact that their AP Classes were just not even being taught…the teacher “gave up.”  Another was a student who is smart, but made poor choices this semester and now is trying to pick up their grades…all of them.  One student was anxious and fearful about a class, and needed a pep talk and some tutoring.  A whole crowd of them came to me worried that their transcripts would be suffering because a teacher was suddenly removed.

That’s a lot.

In each one of them, I need to be the Wise Mentor.  To have patence, to give it my full attention, and to work on a solution with the student.  It’s an important trust, that many teachers don’t really take seriously.  Each one of those things takes a kind of care to manage.

While all of that is unfolding, you still have to manage class, teach English, and do the basics of your job.  It’s meaningful, but very, very tiring.

I would love to just go to a local diner, and sit down, and have the double with extra bacon.  It has been an exhausting week, and I think Cap has the right idea here.  Quiet, anonymity, and being away from the things that we do…important as they might be…that carry a lot of personal weight.

Cap and her friends are not okay with those Russian Super Soldiers…

Since the last post was kind of political, this one will be too.

The U.S. just finally agreed to send real aid to Ukraine, which I very much think is important, and a Big Deal.  I’m not going to recount a bunch of geopolitical ideas here…let’s just keep it simple.  Russia really wants to annex Ukraine by force, and that’s just Bad for European Politics.  In fact, there are a whole lot of agreements, like NATO, that make it bad for foreign pilicies in general.

In fact, a mistep there could be an ecological disaster, since the site of the Chernobyl Disaster is very much in Harm’s Way in this conflict.  It is a net benefit to literally everyone that this be taken seriously by the United States, which finally happened on Wednesday.  Mr. Biden signed a bill submitted by Congress which, among other things, provided much needed aid to Ukraine.

When I was a teenager, in the eighties, th Russians were the Bad Guys.  In everything, the Cold War was in full swing.  When the eighties ended, Glasnost happened, and in theory, we were getting past this sort of thing.

It’s said that History moves in cycles.  If one thinks in that way, this seems pretty much predictable… Russia has routinely tried to annex that land, regardless of what government is in charge at the time.  “Charge of the Light Brigade,” an excellent poem by Tennyson, is about the Crimean War, which is pretty much on point with the situation that we have right now.  Ukraine was annexed by the Soviet Union, and now, in a tighter time cycle, we have today’s problem.

I’m pretty glad we finally managed to get something done, and help Ukraine.  Until the regime changes in Russia, it is a very important stand to take for freedome and democracy….and for a while, it seemed like we might not be organized enough to do it.

This…is happening right now.

Let’s get this out of the way immediately.  Long time readers know that I’m Jewish.  With that said, I…like MANY Jews in the United States, think that there should be a cease fire in Gaza, humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and a two state solution.

Seriously.  That’s a no brainer.  According to some polls, a majority of American Jews feel that way.

Right now, there is a massive protest to the war in Gaza…and that protest is at my old school, USC.  That’s the University of Southern California, not the other one.  Things got violent between campus safety and some protesters earier today, which deeply saddens me.

On some level, it saddens me because I have always seen USC as a safe place.  I was a student when the L.A. Riot happened, over the Rodney King case.  When the rest of the city was on fire, was being looted, the campus was a safe place, where students that had no place to go (like me) were protected.  During my time there, students could speak their minds, and there was real diversity…an active Hillel, as well as a Black Student Union and a GLAAD chapter, to name a few.  I name them because I had friends in all of them…that’s what made me like the school.

We could talk about issues, protest things that mattered, and still be friends.

I had the day off today, because it is the Day of Rememberance for the Armenian Genocide.  We should always stand up to things like genocide and ethnic cleansing…those are stains on history.  Bigotry at the worst.  We should always remember that humanity has descended to those depths.

With that said…to see people scuffling with campus safety on my old school grounds…a part of campus where I used to sit and read…it’s saddening.  To see it happen at a relatively peaceful protest…worse.

News coverage says that those people weren’t students, but that’s not the point.

The point is that we should be able to have a peaceful protest.  We should be able to have diverse opinions.  And it shouldn’t turn ugly.