Skip to main content

Numbers

Number of School Days Left (with kids): 4
Number of School Days Left (for teachers): 5
Number of Total Days Until School's Out: 7

Number of Lockdowns So Far This Year at School: 3
Total Number of Lockdowns Covered by the Media: 0*
Total Number of Lockdowns Effectively Dealt with By Police (in my opinion): 0*

Population of Oakland (2000 Census): 399,484
Total Number of Homicides in Oakland in 2006: 61
Number of Homicides in Oakland in 2005 (at this point in the year): 35
High School Graduation Rate of Oakland Public School Students: 35%

*To be editorialized upon in a future post.

Lockdown today - a little frightening and frustrating, although everything turned out all right.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Have a great summer. And thanks for blogging.

Even though I rarely post, it's very helpful to hear what's going on day-by-day. It's like you're a war correspondent, except of course it's not war, it's teaching and childrearing.

I think that the systemic effects of visibility into the school can end up being incredibly important.

By the way, if you don't know Van Jones at the Ella Baker center, you should meet him. He's a great speaker, he seems to be a great person, and he's also working towards getting away from all the violence and all that. I don't know him personally, just heard him speak. http://www.ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=10

Popular posts from this blog

The Best Mistake

I recently wanted to get a pedicure (I promise this will be important) and was looking at nail salons nearby. I knew there was a place called Kim's Nails near my exercise class, so I quickly googled to see if I could make an appointment online (I hate calling on the phone) and it let me, so I made an appointment for a few days later and went on with my day. Later that day, I got a text confirming my appointment and I realized that I had made the appointment at the wrong Kim's Nails! I meant to make an appointment for the one in my city and I made one at a nail shop in the next city over (Kim's Nails is a common business name). Because I had already made the appointment and they had taken the time to text me, I figured I'd just go with it. OK, if you're still with me, this is where it gets exciting! A few hours after I got the confirmation text, the owner of Kim's Nails texted me again. the text just said, "Are you a teacher?" I didn't know why they...

A Loss

  (I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why)  Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me.  He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me.  We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class....

A New Prison, Part 1

My former student, friend, and co-author was moved to a new prison during COVID. We (myself, Mitali, and his Abuela) have visited a couple of times via the video visit functionality they set up, but we've also been trying to visit in person, ever since in-person visits were allowed again. After four of them being canceled (sometimes we were told why, sometimes not), we finally got a visit. I was super nervous about this visit. (I felt better when Mitali mentioned that she was also, because she is an inherently positive and optimistic person!) I am not proud of this, but there was a large part of me that was hoping that the visit would be canceled, just like the previous four were. I felt a little better when someone I know messaged me privately to tell me that they had had very good experiences visiting a family member in that prison. But I still didn't sleep well at all that night, worrying about the guards, the many things that could go wrong, and the projected 111-degree hea...