Thankful Thursday

Kitkat, I'm going to jump on the bandwagon of thankfulness. I think it'll be good for me to make a conscious effort to be thankful.

So, I am thankful for the Chartrand family and their foundation. I am thankful that they are such charismatic and committed advocates for the success of our school and the other parts of the New Town Success Zone. Thanks to them, we have about 30 partners involved in this area and it will continue to grow.

At a "thank you" gathering tonight, Mr. Chartrand said a few words. His most profound were, "We strongly believe that one of the most effective ways to end the cycle of poverty is through education." Mr. Chartrand, you read my mind! Thank goodness someone with the means to help understands this.

I am also thankful for my job. It has made me grow as a teacher, person, and professional. Doesn't get more real than that.

Forecast: Reality

It's been rainy for the past 7 days. And 5 of the 7 days, it rained without letting up. Normally, consistent gloomy weather puts me in a funk, but this time around, it hasn't bothered me. It's actually been kind of enjoyable. Maybe I CAN live in Seattle...? Wishful thinking.

One of my friends is a choir director at a brand new high school in St. Johns County. His students had their final performance Monday evening, so I decided to check it out. After driving through miles and miles of gated communities with perfectly pruned lawns and cookie-cutter houses in suburbia hell, I made it to the school. Before I get on my soap box, I want to say that he and his students did a wonderful job.

My 45 minute experience at this school gave me reverse culture shock (is there such a thing?). And being there pissed me off. How little progress we have made in closing the gap between white, privileged communities and poor, ghetto, black communities AND each one's relationship to education. Explain to me why the county (St. Johns or Duval, it doesn't matter) has the money to build brand new schools in white suburbia but can't afford to repair the infrastructure of older schools (like mine) that are infested with roaches & rats, have playgrounds not up to code, and classrooms that flood on a regular basis. What are their intentions, really? Keep building new schools in safer parts of town so that the inner-city schools will eventually fail (academically, structurally, communally etc.)?

Did you know that DCPS has made the following a requirement: in order to be a candidate to serve on the DCPS school board, you MUST have administrative experience in a Title I school (eh-hem, a school like mine). So, are we planning on Title I schools being around for a long time, i.e., not helping the poverty-stricken communities around those schools so that potential administrators and potential board members can get their rough and tough, hard-core, real-life inner-city experience? That's like saying, "We're counting on you to fail! so that our people can reap a special experience from your shitty, low FCAT score, high-crime, low parent involvement reality!" Okay, okay, let me be rational for a moment: maybe they're just trying to get fair representation from various schools.

I can't say that the lives of my friend's students aren't AS REAL as the lives of my students. They are both equally real. And I can't blame his students for being born into that reality, just as I can't blame my students for their situation. It is what it is. But I feel like I can blame the public education system for making those realities so foreign to each other and mainting the age-old divide between the rich and the poor. I am convinced that one of the biggest causes of poverty is lack of education. I believe that. And I also believe that people should have to work for what they want instead of receiving hand outs. But when you're trying to do that in a system that sets you up to fail, what's the point? I can see why those people would feel that their efforts are futile.

Ugh. I could say more, but my adrenaline is waning. Lucky you :)

Scattered Post

Last week:
There are 13.5 days left of school. I couldn't be happier about this, especially after last week which was Fine Arts Week. While the week was very successful and fun for the students, there were many unnecessary head-butting incidents with adults which pushed me over the edge. So, I have a bitter taste in my mouth. I'm too tired to explain the week in its entirety but there are pictures on Facebook if you are interested in seeing the students doing Pollock painting, mosaics, and the final performance.

Friends:
I am truly thankful for the people in my life in Jacksonville. I've come to know some really genuine, loyal people here who have become a second family, and I appreciate them with all of my heart.

This summer:
With Fine Arts Week behind me, I am ready to dive in to my goals for the summer which mainly involve heavily researching graduate schools and working on my porfolio. I'm going to apply again this fall so that I can hopefully get in for the Fall 2010 term.

Spoiler

If you haven't seen The Soloist yet and don't want any part of it ruined, then you probably shouldn't read this.

I saw this movie a couple of weekends ago and was impressed but not in the way that I expected. I think this was a risky movie to make in that it could have been very typical: lost talent in the form of a mentally ill homeless man is rediscovered and brought to fruition through the help of a complete stranger. The fact that it's based on a true story is certainly inspiring, but the movie could still be a big flop. I think many viewers (myself included) could sit there waiting for a predictable happy ending: Ayers gets medicated, gets himself off the streets, and plays professionally again. But that's not what happens because that's not real-life.

Speaking of real, this movie was a little too real for me at certain points. I cried at 2 parts, and no, it wasn't during the part when Lopez gives Ayers the cello and he plays in the tunnel or when Ayers gets into Juilliard. There's a very tender-hearted flashback which shows Ayers's mother coming down to the basement where her son sleeps. In so many words, she tells him that music is his way out of that neighborhood. It reminded me so much of my students and their situations; no one really says it, but if a student can go to LaVilla instead of Butler (sorry, truth hurts) because of their artistic talents, that's their ticket out. What also got me were various scenes of the Lamp Community with all its homeless.

Though uncomfortable at times, what made this movie a success, in my eyes, was its real-ness. There was no happy ending, no predictable moral. One of its unexpected lessons was the importance of meeting people where they are and moving forward with them from that point. We spend so much time trying to tell other people what they should do or think or be. We project ourselves onto each other, as if our own life with all its ideals and experiences is THE way to live. Lopez went through that with Ayers, and in the end (if there is an end), he realized that he couldn't change Ayers because that's not what Ayers wanted or needed.

Bonus: I was SO happy that this movie brought classical music to the general public through the medium of film. I'm hoping it instilled some music appreciation. The cinematography in conjunction with the music was incredible.

Sidenote: I set aside my not-so-secret crush on Robert Downey Jr. while writing this post.