Yo Mista!

Two years ago, two brothers enrolled at the alternative school where I worked. Colin and Ken, at 16 and 15 years old respectively, had just come back from spending two years in the Dominican Republic. They were now living in a foster home in the Bronx away from their birth parents. During the years they spent in the Dominican Republic, Colin and Ken were in and out of school, but mostly out, working on their family's farm as free labor. Beyond the trauma of separation  from  their birth parents, Colin and Ken experienced a significant amount of trauma  with  their birth parents. They were two teenagers who had already lived a lifetime. Silent with a dark sense of humor, Colin kept quiet during the school day during most of his first year. His entrance test scores placed him in classes at about (or slightly under) grade level. In those classes, Colin excelled. During his first year in this alternative school, Colin accumulated credits, earned rewards based on academ...

I'm back.  It's been nearly a year since I've last written on Yo Mista!  A lot has changed personally. Yet nothing has changed professionally. And I guess that's why I've been so uninspired to write.  Over the last year, my professional life took a backseat to my personal life. When the dust settled, I realized I didn't want to write  Yo Mista!  anymore. I still felt passionate about my work, but I was somehow uninspired. My day-to-day at school over the last year hasn't changed. I still teach over-age, at-risk students at an alternative high school. Everyday, crazy shit happens in my classroom. Everyday, a student either feels supremely connected to me and my content or feels without direction and completely out of touch with education. My students and I still keep each other on our toes. The only problem is, I'm getting jaded.  This is my fifth year of teaching at-risk youth and I'm getting tired of seeing students arrive to school hig...

"One of these days, Karl is probably going to stab me outside of school," I admitted to a co-worker as we left for the day. My co-worker smiled, but looked concerned, as if she couldn't tell if I was being my usual comical self. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I don't know, with the kind of shit I say to kids sometimes, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. These guys need tough love, so we have to play teacher and parent. A kid like Karl, for example, is not hearing what he needs to hear at home. For him, that means unfortunately he has to learn principles of life and algebra in the same classroom." We continued talking as we walked towards the subway station. Karl and a handful of other students suddenly stepped into view across the intersection and began approaching us. My co-worker stopped mid-conversation and gave me a concealed look of panic, which made sense since I'd just confessed I wouldn't be surprised if Karl ...

"I know Mista, I did really bad. Imma come during lunch to get help." I do a lot of legwork in the beginning of the year building relationships with my students. It's actually a tactic I learned in the finance world. As an investment banking analyst a.k.a. finance monkey, my day-to-day rarely comprised of human contact outside of my own colleagues. On most days and nights, I sat in my cubicle and built financial models, created presentations, and then made sure these materials were delivered on time to my managing director's Upper East Side condo before his black Lincoln Town Car came to drive him to the airport. Of course, I sent the materials to him using a separate company Town Car that would make the delivery and come back to the office. Simultaneously, I'd take another black Town Car back to my place on the company's dime for working into the wee hours of the night. What recession?.. It was rare for a low ranking monkey like me to travel. Sometimes I...

"I'm sure you have some pretty wicked stories." I was eating brunch at a dim sum restaurant recently with a large group of friends and friends of friends. My wife was telling someone about my career change from banker to teacher, which prompted the quote above. "Pretty wicked stories" - these words really got me thinking about a story I'd been wanting to write, but couldn't because I didn't know if he would be okay with it. "He" being Kareem, a former student of mine, now in college, but whom I've written about on this blog before (see here , here and here ). After brunch, I wrote Kareem an e-mail asking if I could write this particular story. He wrote back, "Go ahead, put it all out there lol." Three years ago, I had the pleasure to teach algebra to then 17-year old Kareem. When I first met him, he immediately struck me as an intelligent, motivated student with a lot of depth and personality. Here was someone you just co...

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...

I get very angry grading quizzes and papers sometimes. There are times when I teach the same topic to the same student in different ways over a period of many days. And day after day after day, they still don't get it. These are the same students whom I catch doodling or gossiping during lessons. I catch them coming to school late. I catch them cutting my class. For situations like this, some teachers who have grown jaded over time, tend to generalize and think "one size fits all," that is, they erroneously assume all of these students must not care enough to try. So fail them all. I may be growing slightly jaded, but that's just stupid. One size doesn't fit all in city schools. What kind of asshole simply assumes any kid who doesn't do the work must not care? I mean, maybe he/she does care, but not enough to learn. There's a difference. Maybe there are bigger problems they need to worry about: court dates, pregnancy tests, where they'll sleep t...

During the last three months, I haven't been as happy as I normally am on the job. I attribute this unhappiness to a variety of factors. Lack of proper school leadership and management is definitely number one. A low teacher morale is another, probably because of the politics that are currently in play . And finally, the icing on the cake: the lack of effort to put forth a solution to our school's attendance problem. At this point, I'm sure even you, the reader, is sick of me whining, bitching, and moaning about attendance. This country's lack of logic in terms of education is bad enough, but then to have to come to school the next morning and deal with having no students show up for your first and last classes of the day? That's too much. A silver lining presented itself recently in the form of new recruits. I don't know what the fuck happened, but my school somehow managed to recruit some pretty intelligent and motivated students for the trimester. In fact...

I'm standing in front of the class, spinning around a meter stick in one hand and holding a marker in the other. I'm using neither of these things: the class has gone off-topic and I'm okay with that. It's good to use these times to learn what my kids are interested in and what sorts of observations they make. Today, we're talking about the Mayan prophecy regarding the end of the world in December of 2012. I teach algebra by the way. "Yo, this blowin' mines. If this shit is real, that means I just spent my whole damn life in school," Bryan, a student who barely comes to class remarked. We've only spent about two minutes on this top and I'm already bored of this topic. "Seriously, Bryan? You seriously believe in that crap? Remember the priest last year who predicted the world would end in May? And yet, here we are, not dead. These things are basically idiotic theories created by people with an agenda. Fools spread them and idiots accept...

Today is the last day of the first trimester. It also happens to be a Friday. Only now, in my third year of teaching at a transfer high school, I finally know what to fully expect on days like this. Note: If you don't know what to expect on days like this, you haven't read this . Or this . Grades were due to the administration today at 9 AM. Since my Algebra classes culminated last Wednesday with a final exam, I decided to wrap-up the remainder of the week with Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Yes, I do realize this movie portrays Holmes engaging in numerous fist fights. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle readers: I do sincerely apologize for the heart attack this may have caused you.  Before you judge me for showing the Hollywood version of Sherlock Holmes to my students, consider this: in the movie, Sherlock not only uses his superb reasoning skills , but he also comes off to be somewhat "cool." Downey's version of Holmes is mainstream enoug...

I received the following e-mail tonight: from: Keenan Joseph (keenan.joseph@randomschool.org) to: Yo Mista! (yomista@randomschool.org) date: Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 9:02 PM (58 minutes ago) subject: Assessment Hey, I forgot to hand in the quiz from earlier but I have it completed. Can I hand it in to you first thing tomorrow morning? I don't want a 0 to jeopardize my overall grade for the class. Such initiative. This is the kind of feel-good-shit that makes a teacher at a transfer high school feel great. Unfortunately, I think I'm growing a little jaded. I've seen so much of this honeymoon motivation over the past two years, that it's become predictable. Clearly, Keenan is a new student at my school, who probably came here to be different. To get away from his friends who acted as a distraction. To stop feeling so pressured to chill out without focusing on school. To graduate. On time or about time. In the coming weeks, Keenan will most certainly continue to domin...

Attendance on Friday is usually atrocious. As a result, it is extremely difficult to introduce new material, as I usually have to then re-introduce it the following Monday. Most teachers at my school utilize Friday as a review day, a catch-up day or provide students with in-class time to work on larger assignments. A colleague of mine decided to use his class time on such a Friday to get students to work on their writing assignment using laptops. Two students, Jamil and Antoine, decided they weren't going to work on their assignment. Jamil, whose attendance is pretty impressive, shockingly still fails most of his classes. Antoine's attendance is terrible, and when he does come to school, he's usually stoned out of his mind. Seriously, this guy has the potential to be very successful starring in anti-drug commercials. Anyway, Jamil and Antoine put on some music on their laptops and begin to plan their evening. My dear colleague decided to type up this gem of a conversation...

I'm teaching a mini-unit on conversions between units right now in my Algebra classes. This means converting between U.S. units, metric units and conversions between both systems. For example: Mount Everest is 29,028 feet tall, which makes it the tallest mountain in the world. How many miles tall is this? How many inches? For death penalty cases by lethal injection in the United States, criminals are given 5 grams of sodium thiopental. How much is this in kilograms? If you're speeding down the highway in the Dominican Republican at 100 km/hr, how fast are you going in mi/hr? Compare this speed to New York State's highway speed limit of 65 mi/hr. In my limited experience, this seems to be a topic students tend to enjoy and remain interested in because it's more relevant than other topics. Today, I planned on introducing the metric system to my students, who for the most part have never thoroughly learned the system due to this country's obsession with the old ...

Over the past year and a half, I've had a hard time dealing with the idea that the bulk of my students don't value an education. As outdated as our education system is, we are still much better off than most other countries. I forget that sometimes. I think my students often forget that in this country, a child born into poverty can jump into the middle or upper class simply by going to school everyday and doing what they're supposed to be doing. So why isn't the system built to effectively convey this incredible opportunity? [insert conspiracy theory here] One of the more challenging questions I've asked myself this year is how the hell did I make it out of this system, given I grew up under some incredibly challenging circumstances? Most of my students and I share childhood trauma which has forced us to "grow up" a lot faster than others. I think it all comes down to the coping mechanisms we create to deal with our shit. One of my earliest childh...

It was back to school from winter vacation today and I have to say, our attendance was fucking pathetic: I had a whopping five students show up for my first period class. And I can't just give a quiz to teach these supremely-motivated-students-who-happen-to-not-be-in-class a lesson. Apparently, you actually have to care in order to feel guilty about missing a quiz. Damn it! Then there were students who actually came to school, but bailed early. I actually greeted and said "what's up?" to several of these students in the hallway, many of whom I should have taught a few periods later. They probably just said "fuck it." This is something I really don't understand: what the hell is the point of waking up early, taking the subway, and going through metal detectors to get into school if you're just going to leave early and screw yourself later? This is literally what I hear in the hallway sometimes, loud and clear: "Yoooo.. Let's cut math and f...

Shit is just flying all over the place because it’s the week before winter break. Vacation is just around the corner. When I was in high school, this particular week involved taking lots and lots of finals, so I was either cramming for exams or playing Goldeneye . Or both. Those were the good old days. To be completely fair, our trimester system doesn’t coincide with winter break; we’re nearly a third of the way through our second trimester. This means our first trimester finals already passed and our second trimester finals won’t happen until end of March. So basically, there’s nothing important happening this week. Shhh, you weren't supposed to know that kids. So as you probably guessed, attendance has been horrific (less than 55% some days). Some of the students who are actually still coming are acting out of control: there’s a ridiculous amount of chatter, foul language, inappropriate conduct, etc. Some seem to be showing up to first period [on a sugar?] high or quite simply...

Students of mine will immediately know who I'm talking about in this post. For the sake of writing online, let's call this student Kevin. Kevin has been a problem child at my school since day one. Profanity is at the bottom of the list of concerns regarding Kevin. He frequently disrupts the learning process, uses stereotypes, has anger issues, talks about getting high 24/7 and quite frankly, exhibits behavior which would lead one to assume he does not want to be in school. For a majority of teachers, he's a royal pain in the ass, although we may not admit it. There are teachers that care about his small successes - personally, I haven't seen any in my classroom (but that's just my class). But since when is it acceptable to only show success with teachers that you can "connect" with? That sounds like a spoiled brat to me. Honestly, at first I didn't know where I stood with him. But now I do. I can see through the daily bullshit and I'm sick of ...

The past two days have been unusually challenging for me. The majority of my school's students have been rude, disruptive and careless. I'm really feeling stretched right now given all the other shit going on. Here's the thing: I have all my lessons up online. I e-mail my students with reminders, send them review packets, make myself available by cell, text and e-mail. I even pack myself a sandwich everyday because kids feel my classroom is a "safe space" during lunch and use the classroom to socialize, study or just do homework. I can't say no to that... I also keep a spreadsheet which I update daily with all my students' grades to track trends in performance. I spend hours on each lesson and presentation to make sure it's clear for visual and auditory learners. I throw in real-life examples for those who need to be able to relate in order to understand. So why the fuck isn't everyone acing this shit??? If I'm doing everything I can t...