Yo Mista!

The idea and privilege of "tenure" in public education has garnered a lot of attention as of late. Most people who have never worked in education a single day in their lives seem to feel that tenure is unfair and teachers should work under the same expectations that other "regular" and hard-working Americans work under. At least, that's the narrative being presented in the media. Three years ago, I would have agreed, but I didn't know any better. At the college and university level,  tenure  is difficult to obtain and can take 4-8 years. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what I think I know, the candidate usually needs to have published some sort of research and have demonstrated a strong teaching record, among other things. Before becoming a high school teacher, I understood why tenure was necessary at the college and university level as it protected academics when they published work that went against the mainstream, and thereby prevented profes...

It's a long weekend in the U.S. So, during the barbeques and fireworks, read Diane Ravitch's book review of former NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's book entitled, US Education Reform and National Securit y. If you're interested in the future of education in this country, it's worth it.

In our transfer school, it's very difficult to find a teacher willing to chaperone students on a field trip, most likely because a day with our kids inside the building is already pretty taxing. Last weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to chaperone this year's 3-day senior class trip to Virginia Beach, where students would get two full days of amusement parks, an evening of go-carting, and one beach day. In all honesty, I was really expecting the worst from the kids, based on how they behave in school. A part of me knew we were all going to get sent home, probably on the first day. Man, I was wrong. The charter bus was scheduled to leave at 5 AM sharp Friday morning. I woke up at 4 AM, threw on some clothes, grabbed my already-packed bag and hopped into the subway tired as hell. I was expecting to arrive a little before 5 AM to a half-empty bus and a stressed-out field trip organizer trying to figure out where our kids were. I got on the bus at 4:50 AM and was shocked to...

So, I finally caved in and joined Twitter. Before you judge me, it's not my own personal Twitter account, it's for the blog. At least this will allow me to more efficiently document my own thoughts and notable quotes from within the trenches of my high school. Follow this blog on Twitter: @ Yo_Mista

Growing up, my mother would drag me to Pakistan every other year for the summer. A large chunk of my mother's family resides in Karachi, so we generally stayed with them for three months at a time, switching up which aunt or uncle we stayed with every so often. I used to hate going there, but as I got older, I grew to love it. And eventually I developed deeper friendships with my cousins, which was nice. We would get to Pakistan in early June and leave late August, so I was able to observe my cousins end and begin their school years. Most of my cousins considered school to be a privilege and a way out (generalizing here, I know). I couldn't relate to the former, but I definitely agreed it was a way out: a way to get options. In Pakistan, I have family at all class levels: lower, middle and upper class (although right now it seems there isn't a middle-class left anymore). My cousins, not by any means wealthy, took school very seriously - sometimes memorizing entire chapt...