Bronwyn Harris, Author

I keep having all these topics I want to post about and I haven't had time to do it because we were taken off-line at school. Apparently there's some sort of upgrade or something going on in the district as a whole and they have to replace all the wiring. So, instead of waiting the three weeks until summer when it wouldn't disturb anyone, the district - in their infinite wisdom - decided to do it now. Even better is how it's happening in my school. The people doing the rewiring came to my class and cut all the wires, then decided they didn't really want to do that building, they wanted to do the other building. So they went to the other building and are rewiring it, leaving most classrooms off-line for only a couple of days. We've been off-line for almost three weeks, with those cut wires just hanging out of the wall, taunting me. There may have been more method to the madness, but I don't happen to know of it. The real problem is that a research proj...

Our principal has decided not to return. That means next year I'll be on my 8th principal in 8 years at the same school. I'll be the first one to admit that it's a hard school to work at, but at least two of these people knew exactly what they were getting into. I'm not really willing to cut them a lot of slack because my kids are suffering for it. They NEED some consistency, partly because our school is never going to get anything to work if we keep re-starting every year and partly because the kids need to know that someone loves them and values them enough to spend more than a year on them. I get so angry. Of all the kids who need people to stick around...

More casualties of gang warfare in Oakland. I didn't know them but I'm sure some of my students had connections. They were in middle school near us. Middle school. I don't know how their families can even cope. At some point it's going to be a kid I knew. I don't know how I'd cope. This is where it feels like nothing any of us do will ever make a difference.

There is a wonderful website - Teaching Tolerance – that has great resources for teachers. I showed the kids a movie called “Mighty Times” about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I was not prepared for their reactions. I remember being shocked by segregation and Jim Crow laws, but I also remember feeling separated from it – by time, culture, and geography. These kids do not feel that separation. They’re confused about the timeline: “Teacher, you had slaves when you was a little girl?” “Who older, Rosa Parks or Janet Jackson?” “My granny was a slave?” but they connect with the injustice they see. They were appalled by the “Whites Only” signs and the “White” and “Colored” drinking fountains. When they watched the old movie of Rosa Parks recounting her arrest and how many times she had been treated badly by white bus drivers, the students were outraged. One of them said to me, “If I had lived back in the day, I would have been arrested because I wouldn’t have been able to control my anger.” Th...

The District has reached a new low in logic. For the last few years, we’ve had these things called “Buy-Back Days.” They are professional development days but because of the contract or because the district is cheap or something, they’ve been optional, and only the people who go to them get paid. Then the people who want more money can go, some of us can sleep in, and the district doesn’t have to pay for everyone. Then, to make things a little more confusing, our school is in the “intensive Support Network" and we have three more optional professional development days. For most of these days less than half of our staff showed up, not because we don’t want the extra money, but because we’re generally exhausted. I went to two of them, but I don’t know if they were district-wide or particular to our school. Now things get interesting. We just got a new contract, as I mentioned, and it’s retroactive to the beginning of the school year. Under this contract, the Buy-Back Days are mandat...

Two or three of the fifth graders are going to the People to People World Leadership Forum for middle schoolers next spring in DC. This is a great opportunity – just even to go to DC, let alone be part of an international leadership conference. Each child has to raise something like $3000 by July. If you want to help, you’d be supporting some really incredible kids who don’t generally have an opportunity to get out of this neighborhood. I told all the kids going to write something out so I could help them ask for support. Stephanie’s the only one who’s done it so far, so please consider supporting her – even just a little! Email me if you’d be interested and we’ll figure out who to write the check to. I’ll write a little more about Stephanie later. She’s pretty awesome. Here’s the text of her letter in case you can’t read it when I finally post the photo: May 16, 2006 To Whom It May Concern: First, let me introduce myself. My name is Stephanie and I am a 5th grade student. I have been ...

I have been through nine staplers this year. No kidding, nine. This isn’t one of those times when I exaggerate a tiny bit and say there were 85 million people at the REI anniversary sale – nine staplers have actually begun and ended their pathetic little lives in our class. Office supplies do not last long in my class. One very disturbed little girl (who is now in a counseling-enriched special day class, thank God) had a habit of throwing staplers at the wall – and she could THROW. Other kids have tried to be helpful and put staples in the stapler, but managed to break the stapler in the process. The office wouldn’t give me any more staplers after the first four (can’t say I blame them!), so the others were all bought with my own money. Pencil sharpeners are also a problem. The school provided an old-fashioned wall-mounted sharpener which immediately broke. They also gave us one electric sharpener halfway through the year – again, broke very quickly. I have bought three electric sharpe...

I had jury duty yesterday and came back to find a note saying that the substitute was "extremely disappointed" in my students' behavior and that she won't be coming back. This is probably the fifth or sixth such note I have gotten this year, and shows exactly how "special" my class is. The only sub who has done more than one day in my classroom this year is a woman who knows exactly how to deal with this group of kids. She's in her early seventies, a very short, chain-smoking, African-American woman with crazy gray hair that sometimes resembles a birds' nest and polyester pantsuits. She covered for me one morning when I got stuck at the drawbridge AND the railroad tracks and was about 15 minutes late. When I walked in, she was explaining to Jowan: "By the time I count to eight, you WILL be sitting down, you WILL have your hands folded, you WILL be quiet and respectful, and you WILL have a smile on your face!" He did.

This is a very interesting article that a friend found about how "simple living" is actually a privilege for the wealthy. Also will cause anyone to think who has been guilty (myself included) of judging the spending habits of the poor. One example: it's easy to criticize those in the inner city for making poor nutritional choices for themselves and their children - aside from a frequent lack of education, there are no grocery stores in the inner cities. When you have to buy groceries from liquor stores, there's not a lot of choices for fresh produce. Again, farmers' markets, Whole Foods, organic vegetables... may be getting back to the basics but it's an opportunity that many people don't have. Read it. One student wanted to take this picture of our hands after I told him that I have alway s wanted to be his color. He didn't believe me. Let me state up front that I understand how many situations in life are much much easier for me because I am white, a...

It's not perfect and of course not what we're worth, but what teacher in this state gets paid what they're worth? The good thing is that we have security and no strike for the next THREE YEARS! Thank you all for your prayers. These kids sure don't need any more distractions from their education!

OK, for all my whining about teacher appreciation week, I got appreciated today. By one of my former students. He came in when we were in the middle of a test and I said, "Marcel, you're not supposed to be in this building during testing." (Someone suggested using aliases for the kids because it makes the stories easier to remember and more personal, so I'll try that.) He said, "Oh, I just wanted to bring you something." The something was a little stuffed Taco Bell dog that says, "Feliz Navidad, amigos," when you squeeze it. It looks like it's been well loved - I'll put a picture of it up later. I asked him what it was for and he said it was for Teacher's Day! And he's not even my student any more. Later, the class had a little conversation that also made me feel appreciated. D'Anthony called some girl ugly, and the girl was sad, and I said that if someone were to call me ugly I'd just think to myself, "Well, I know I...

So, it's National Teacher Appreciation Week this week, National Day of the Teacher today, and California Day of the Teacher tomorrow. My first question is where everyone is who's supposed to be appreciating me? Second question: why can't California and the nation as a whole get together and have the same day? Anyway, it was really nice of the district to give us a press release for Teacher Appreciation Week/Day/Days. We got a copy in our mailboxes so we'd feel appreciated. Here it is. . Oakland Unified School District officials today asked all members of the community to help honor Oakland public school teachers during national Teacher Appreciation Week May 7 through May 14. "Oakland's nearly 3,000 classroom teachers do one of the most difficult, most highly skilled and most significant jobs in the city," said Dr. Kimberly Statham, OUSD Chief Academic Officer. "Outside of the home, no one has more impact on the growth and future success of our childre...

Oakland just had its 49th homicide of 2006. Last year at this time there were 26, so we're still on our way to setting a record.

-One of the kindergartners was playing with his little toys, and the teacher kept telling him to put them away because he would lose them. Sure enough, the kid starts crying and says, "Ms. S - I lost my marbles!" The teacher said, "I know, honey, me too." -The same teacher had a bunch of teacher rubber stamps that said things like, "Good Job!" "Parent Signature Required" and things like that. Her kindergartners went on her desk when she wasn't looking and stamped themselves all over. Only they picked the stamp that said, "Please correct and return to school." A bunch of them went home with "Please correct and return to school" stamped all over them. Wonder if their parents got the message... -Another kindergarten teacher - who was eight months pregnant - got asked by a kid if she was pregnant. When she answered in the affirmative, he looked scandalized and said, "I know what YOU did!!!"

We're taking the standardized test right now - and let me say that whoever thought it was a good idea to give eight year olds a really long, hard, scantron test obviously never had to administer it. I mean, I'm all for accountability, but this test is approximately FOURTEEN hours long for third grade (some parts of it are untimed, so it varies a little) over two weeks. It's ridiculous. I gave them special pencils for the test and told them that these were their "magic pencils." I was mostly kidding, but they totally bought into it and are asking me how I made the pencils magic, and telling me that the magic pencils really do work. One kid told me today that he was "being a pain" because he gets stressed out during the test. It's true - they all of a sudden have more needs than ever because they're worried and feel inadequate. And this group is needy to begin with! The minute the test gets passed out, they are all hungry, have to go to the bathroo...

I found a note on the floor that said "L. is my Beast Friend Ever." We all need more Beast Friends, don't we?

Next Week (May 7-13) is Teacher Appreciation Week. Tuesday, May 9 is National Day of the Teacher. Appreciate a teacher, please. Once we got appreciated by our principal from that year (long gone, thank the Lord) for Teacher Appreciation Week. It was pretty classy - a generic crooked photocopied appreciation certificate that she forgot to sign. If you have kids, please do something nice for their teacher. Just a little note or something. Especially because for many of us, Teacher Appreciation Week is also Standardized Testing Hell Week, Part II.