Entitlement vrs. Sharing the Cake

Wealthy school districts usually have good reputations in our country.  I have been substitute teaching in one such district for the last two years.  Many people upon learning of this have said to me; "Oh, that must be great, so easy and nice to work there."  It is true that classrooms in this district have all the latest technology and the majority of their students have all the advantages an upper-middle-class lifestyle brings.  The teacher can scream; "Connor, put away your Kindle/Nook/I-pad right now and pay attention!" rather than "Mohamed, put away that yo-yo and pay attention!"

When I started teaching in the mid-seventies, many of my friends said it was sad I had to teach in the inner city because better jobs in the suburbs were so scarce.  The truth was, had I been given a choice (and I wasn't),  I would have stayed in the inner city.  I liked the poor Mexican school I taught in better than the rich one, and I prefer the other suburban district where I teach without all the fancy technology but with its diverse mix of students.

The realities of education involve money, social class, and, of course, politics.  I experienced this fact in Minneapolis, in Mexico, and now in  two different suburban school districts.  Last week, when Harry and I visited our kids and grandkids in St. Louis, I learned about some education realities, St. Louis style. 

In the lovely University City neighborhood where our grandkids are growing up, our son and daughter-in-law have learned that the majority of the white parents do not send their kids to the neighborhood school.  I had little trouble guessing what the issues involved would be.  The school district consists of two separate neighborhoods, one black, one white, which are adjacent.  The school district boundaries were probably drawn up with the hope of creating integrated schools.

Harry and I walked over one afternoon to this neighborhood school, which was two blocks from the house of our son and daughter in-law.  The school was a beautiful old brick building which had recently been renovated with a new lunch room, playground, tuck pointing, etc. etc.  The high school was directly across the street and it too was physically in great condition.  We wandered over to the playground and in the field nearby we watched as the girls' soccer team finished up their practice.  There were approximately 25 girls in all: two girls were white and the rest were black.  We learned from our daughter-in-law that the elementary school is about two thirds black, one third white, and that the free and reduced lunch percentage is approximately forty percent.  After observing the soccer team one can easily deduce the demographics of the high school population.

If you can afford a Catholic or private school education in this St. Louis suburb, your child can attend an all-white school.  The neighborhood Catholic school is a bargain at $4000, and white parents on the lower end of the upper-middle-class white neighborhood have this as an option.  A nearby non-religious private school can run upwards of $30,000.  (Parents living in Manhattan would find this a steal.)  Or, if you can afford a house starting at the half-million dollar range, you can move to a nearby district and be assured the dominant racial group will be white.

Sending your kids to a good school is the American dream, no matter what your race or religion.  For white people, a good school means one where the children of color are no more than 10 to 15 percent of the school population.  Any more than that and the school is undesirable to whites.   Oh, I forgot to mention that in front of the grandkids' neighborhood school is a sign that says it won a National School Of Excellence Award, which I recall from my teaching days was not easy to obtain.

One of the  current first-ring suburban school districts where I teach does not have a dominant racial or religious group.  The mix of students is like nothing I have experienced in my 35-year-plus teaching career: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Jewish -- the list goes on.  The district does have one predominately white elementary school, a Spanish Immersion School which is right across the highway from our condo.  Once these immersion students get to middle and high school, their fluency in Spanish is nurtured, but these students do not become an elite little school within a school; unlike the kind of school my daughter attended in Minneapolis, where the white kids, including my daughter, enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program and rarely had a class with a student of color.  So much for integration.

The recent open enrollment law passed in Minnesota has encouraged minority students in Minneapolis to attend the other district, richer and less diverse, where I sub.   This wealthy district has a stellar educational reputation and some black parents in the inner city now choose to send their kids across the city boundary to attend schools in this district.  The population of black and other minority students from the inner city attending school in this district has increased over the years, and so has the population of immigrants who live in the limited number of apartments.   I know first-hand the efforts this district has made to adjust to the demographic change which open enrollment has unleashed, because my sister teaches in the district and has been on the front lines fighting for equity.  It is painful to watch the attempts on display to achieve educational equity in a district which knows how to educate white, upper-middle-class students but struggles to learn how to deal with students who are not white and not upper-middle class.  Teachers in the district head off to workshop after workshop to confront educational inequities in the district.  These weary educators return to their classrooms where the majority of students could be described as entitled and the issues of racism for the newcomers abound.

In a perfect world, maybe even in one not so perfect, going to a school that is representative of the culture as a whole could be a good thing.  Growing up in Northeast Minneapolis back in the fifties and sixties meant I had no idea that the world was a lot more diverse and complex than I ever imagined.  This naive, sheltered Minneapolis girI got her first teaching job in the inner city and it was eye-opening.  My career began with a basically black and Native American student population.  Then came the years of wave after wave of immigrants from Asia, Mexico, Central America and Africa that flooded the Minneapolis schools and gave us some great ethnic restaurants in the Twin Cities.

Over the last two decades, the first ring suburbs around Minneapolis have been forced to deal with the realities of changing demographics just as the city schools did in the seventies, eighties and nineties.   As we advance into the 21st century, the new demographic reality, with whites as the minority, will change education and politics in a profound way.  White flight from the city public schools worked pretty well for the population during the last century.  Now, with people of color moving more and more into first ring suburbs and the cost of private school education out of sight for most white families, the failure of many Charter schools means it will become harder and harder to run from the reality of racially diverse schools, unless of course you have lots and lots of money.

My favorite district is ranked #2 in the state, right behind the district nicknamed the "Cake Eaters".  I never thought this was a very flattering nickname, but many students in the district seem to take great pride in it.  I think of Marie Antoinette and the fact that things didn't turn out so well for her in the end: although she had many years where she got to eat as much cake as she liked, she paid a high price for her arrogance and sense of entitlement (though she was on the cutting edge, like the district which perpetuates her reputation!).  It would be nice if all students could be "cake eaters", even those who do not have a lot of money.  Maybe that big piece of cake could be cut up into smaller pieces so everyone has some and gets a head start.  And keeps it.

House, Condo, Assisted Living

Last weekend we went out with old friends for an unremarkable, actually pretty bad, Irish breakfast at a Northeast restaurant.  Our friends are beginning the process of getting ready to sell their beautiful home on Lake Minnetonka where they have lived for many years.   I could see and feel the stress they were experiencing, having been in their place a few years back when we sold the Linden Hills house.  Harry had had enough of my procrastination and told me one weekend that I must not be serious about selling the house I had lived in for a quarter of a century.  I  was tired of his whining and I knew he was right, it was time to move on.  I picked up the Saturday paper, found an advertisement for some new condos being built in St. Louis Park, and off we went.  As it turned out, we bought one of these condos a week later.

What Harry didn't know is that I had silently been grieving the loss of my house for several months.  A house has great sentimental value.  I recall often sitting alone on my beloved front porch the spring before we moved, crying as all the memories came rushing back.  I still find myself driving by the old place every once in a while and trying unsuccessfully to get Harry to swing by there if he is the driver.  The young couple who bought it have three daughters and have remodeled the house substantially over the past five years.  I love to watch what they do to it.  Recently they put on a new front porch and stone  front steps.  The year they moved in they did a major renovation, bumping out the back of the house to enlarge the kitchen, the upstairs bathroom and two bedrooms.  They have also put up a beautiful fence and added gardens which encircle the house.

The process of moving out of a long-lived-in house is daunting.  For us the planning and organization went on for months.  Without the help of our friends and family we never would have made it out.  The attic, basement and garage were the most frightening.  The new condo was only 1400 square feet: no basement, no attic, and our garage consists of a place for the cars and a cage where one can store a few items like golf clubs and Christmas decorations.  We had three garage sales, managed by the creative Jack and Terra, and Harry spent his days packing and packing and packing.  Our niece, Andrea, brought her soccer team and our friends Pat and Bill came to move us out and into our new home.  That night, from our third-floor perch which as yet had no window shades, we watched 4th of July fireworks exploding from Edina, Hopkins, St Louis Park, and Minneapolis. I felt it a good omen.

There is much I miss about the house: the porch which some years you could enjoy from April through October; the gardens; and the old coal-burning fireplace which required wood chopped up small.  I brought my daughter home to the old Edwardian house and she grew up with her friends Katie and Beth who became her surrogate sisters, living right next door.  There were many fun family gatherings over the years.  Harry and I were married in the house in 2004 when it turned 100 years old.  People often ask if I miss the house and I say no.  My life now is much more simple and free.  We can leave anytime and not worry about shoveling the snow or mowing the grass.  I now garden in pots and can switch on the gas fireplace without having to go out to the porch to get that short, stubby wood.  I make frequent trips to Goodwill as I try to avoid clutter.

Another friend called me from Florida yesterday with the tale of her parents having to move from assisted living to a memory-care facility.  Her father continues to fall and cannot remember to take all his prescribed pills.  They will now have to live in two rooms.  Another friend's mother recently had  the same experience.  The truth is that none of us know what the future has in store for us.  I just hope that if and when I move into the Ebenezer assisted-living and memory-care home currently being built across the street from us, there will be fireworks to ease the transition.



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More Substitute Tales or Let Them Eat Cheetos!

This past week I found myself back subbing in the classroom where all the kids sit on large bouncing balls rather than chairs.  I was better at tolerating a bit of bouncing this time and yes, I do understand the ergonomic benefit of sitting on these balls, difficult though it is to teach a group of constantly-bouncing 5th graders.  I immediately told the students the balls were great but excessive bouncing during a lesson would mean they sat on the floor.  Of course this led to arguments as to what constituted excessive bouncing.  I said I would decide what excessive bouncing was, not them.

This ultimatum did not go over well, as you can imagine, and some of the hard-core bouncers continued to bounce wildly and were thus instructed to sit on the floor.  After an argumentative stretch that went on far too long, I was able to get the morning lessons off and running.  About 10 minutes into the math lesson, several students opened their desks and took out snacks they had stashed away.  I immediately asked them to put the snacks away until snack time and they informed me that their teacher lets them eat snacks in the classroom whenever they wish.  The students were surprised that I did not know that snacking whenever they chose to do so was now considered healthy.  Their regular teacher had been enlightened about this, so where had I been, living under a rock?   I said I found the ripping open of snack packages a distraction, but continued with the lesson feeling like I was already coming off as Attila the Hun and it was probably best to pick my battles.

During an independent reading block, one of the students came to the desk to ask me the meaning of a word in his textbook and his fingers were coated with Cheetos dust.  I told him that getting that stuff all over the textbook was not a good idea and he should go and wash his hands.  He looked at me like the thought of such a thing had never crossed his mind.  Later in the day, the teacher's plan instructed me to read a chapter from the class novel to the students.  I began the chapter and once again students were opening their desks and pulling out the snacks.  I lost my patience and told them I refused to read aloud under these ripping and crunching conditions.

Snacking is a way of life in our culture, and we have the rise in the obesity rate and now in the cavity rate to prove it.  In the other, not so wealthy, school district I sub in, the elementary students also have snack time during the school day.  In this district, however, the snack time is its own brief 10-minute time slot and it is not during academic time.  I have found that many of the teachers in this district insist that students eat only fruit or veggies or yogurt at snack time.  It takes some monitoring to enforce this rule because students will try to sneak in junk food that parents let them bring to school.  It's easier to just let them eat Cheetos, and in the wealthier of the two school districts, if you told students they could only have healthy snacks you would probably have parents calling and complaining in droves.

I often download the New York Times on my Kindle on Tuesdays to read the once-a-week section of science articles.  I did so during my prep time on the day I subbed in the bouncing/ snacking classroom.  This week, one of the articles, cited below, was entitled: Rise in Preschool Cavities Prompts Anesthesia Use.  The story begins with a two-and-a-half-year-old Seattle child undergoing surgery because 11 out of his 20 baby teeth had cavities.  Two teeth had to be extracted and the child needed a root canal and crowns.   Dentists are finding nowadays that pre-schoolers with multiple cavities are not unusual.  Constant snacking and drinking of juice at this age is encouraged and/or tolerated by parents and by our culture these days, and it is one of the major factors in early tooth decay.  Another factor, according to dentists, is that parents give up on brushing teeth because their children don't like it and battling with them is too much effort.  Easier, I guess, to have the child experience oral surgery.

I doubt whether I will choose to sub again in the bouncing/snacking classroom (not that they would want me to crawl out from under my rock anyway).   In another 5th-grade classroom this week, two fifth-grade girls came up to me and asked if they could tell me something.  They looked embarrassed and had to whisper.  They said they like me as their sub because I was strict and was not afraid to say no.  WOW!  Maybe we are making a mistake thinking we do kids a favor by giving them endless choices that lead to endless arguments and power struggles.   I find that children today can argue brilliantly about why they should get their way, and not just when the issues are snacking or brushing teeth.  Many of them are used to getting their way.  Sometimes it is almost as if students seem relieved when you do limit the choices and when you say no.  At home they run the show, and that is too much to ask from children.  

Call me old fashioned, but feeling hungry at meal time because mom/dad said no to snacking and being made to brush your teeth early in life is not child abuse.  It's called parenting.  Listening to your teacher read you a good story without the benefit of a snack is not punitive, it may be good teaching.




http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/health/rise-in-preschool-cavities-prompts-anesthesia-use.html?emc=eta1

Downton Abbey / Help!!!

It was a sad Sunday night last week. Downton Abbey's second series was over.  I feel like a kid who can't wait for the next Harry Potter book or movie to be released.  Those Brits really know how to tell a good story.  Being an Upstairs Downstairs fan back in the 70s made me an easy convert to Downton Abbey.  The PBS series, Upstairs Downstairs, was also set in the world of pre- and post-WWI era in England.  Much discussion everywhere, or as my new friend, Mary Ellen, so poetically puts it, much ink has been spilt, about why this PBS program has such a devoted viewing audience on Sunday nights.  We Upstairs Downstairs fans were a small quiet group back in the 70s: rarely did I find someone to discuss the series with.  Downton watchers are a pretty common lot, and it is fun to discover that many of your friends are watching the series too.

When visiting my daughter last month in New York, I overheard discussion of the series in two different restaurants on the Upper East Side near Lexi's apartment.  One such conversation was in one of those small Jewish deli places, so small that you feel like you should join in the conversation going on next to you.  A woman in her early thirties was explaining a recent Downton Abbey episode to her date sitting across the table from her.  I found myself rubbing elbows with her date as I ate my matzo ball soup and it was all I could do not to jump into their conversation.  The young man was doing an excellent job of feigning interest, though men generally do seem to like the series as much as women.  The man told the woman he would tune in for the next episode after the football season was over.  At an English restaurant,  I overheard a group at the bar planning the menu for their weekly Downton Abbey Sunday night dinner parties.  I might just try that when the new season begins!  Any takers?

Many critics are embarrassed and assail the American Downton fans, insinuating that we should all feel guilty because to watch is to delight in the abhorrent British class system depicted in the series.  Gosh, don't these critics understand that our American belief that we live in a country without a class system is a delusion?  Fans watch Downton Abbey to learn about how a class system works.  Can't these critics just let us enjoy our Anglophilia in peace?  Some credit must be given, however,  to the Downton series compared to Upstairs Downstairs.  The writer, Julian Fellows, goes to great lengths to give equal time to plot lines for both the aristocratic and servant classes.  

The recently popular novel and movie, The Help, is the story of the relationship between white housewives and their black maids in the American south of the 1960s.  As in Downton, the lives of the servant class are given equal time in this story.  The day-to-day social interaction between the housewives and the maids in The Help is much more cruel and harsh than the relationship between Lady Grantham and her maid.  The servant class in both stories do get their revenge: a bar of soap in Downton becomes a lethal weapon and an unusual chocolate pie in The Help is served up to the unsuspecting prima donna.  The last episode of Downton ended with the servants' ball at the mansion: upstairs aristocrats dancing the night away with their devoted downstairs servants.  In The Help, white women felt outraged if their black maids used the family bathroom. The idea of a servants ball in 1960 Alabama is rather unimaginable, given the bathroom fetishes of these southern belles.

Social class makes for good drama.   Both of these immensely popular stories, one in the early part of the 20th century and one in the middle, depict human beings who enjoy the good life thanks to those whose life is not so good.  The sort of thinking that justifies a class system can justify a lot of bad behavior towards the not-so-fortunate group.  Other people do all the grunt work for the group that does little all day but dress up for dinner.  In The Help one group has babies, the other group raises those babies.  One group lives in a mansion or a nice rambler while the other lives in shacks or small rooms in the mansion.  Sometimes it is even necessary to build separate toilets for those who do all the child raising, cooking, and silver polishing so those in the grunt-free group don't have to be exposed to their germs.

Ah yes, it is good that in America we don't have a class system.   On New York's Upper East Side, one cannot help but notice that the majority of the baby carriages being pushed along the streets contain white babies being pushed by black or Hispanic women.  In our country, one group can make doctor's appointments, while the other group has to sit in the emergency room for hours before being able to see a doctor.  The fruits and vegetables we enjoy eating everyday are picked by those who make a subsistence wage while hoping not to be arrested and deported.  The smart phones the majority of us now carry (except for Luddites like my husband) are made in China where workers live and work in conditions few of us can imagine.

I will miss Downton Abbey, but thank goodness the show Bethenny Ever After made it's second season debut on the Bravo channel Monday night.  In the first episode of this reality show we find Bethenny, again in angst, talking with her therapist.  The pressure of having made 100 million dollars upon the sale of her Skinny Margarita cocktail to Jim Beam is just too much for her to handle.  She is in the process of buying a huge New York City apartment that she wants to be perfect.  We all know what that must be like.  Talk about pressure!  Granted her apartment in Manhattan isn't the size of Downton, but still: how do you get good help nowadays?

First the Chinese and now those damn French!

Americans become very defensive -- no, more like hostile -- when they feel their child-rearing practices are being scrutinized: ie, American kids are fat, lazy, and talk back.  Last year when Amy Chua, author of Tiger Mom, went on a book tour, she had to travel with security guards due to the angry emails and threats of personal violence which she received upon publication of her book on parenting the Chinese way.  Chua, a Yale law professor, is in town this weekend speaking to a packed house at the University of Minnesota.  I guess the anger and hostility has died down into a healthy discussion mode.

Chua thinks many Americans coddle their children, not preparing them for the demands of the real world.  Chua's book details how she raised two now highly accomplished daughters, using the techniques and philosophy her Chinese immigrant parents used on her.  Chua has admitted that she was often mean and unfair to her daughters, making them practice their musical instruments for hours on end every day and rejecting their hand-made gifts because they were poorly constructed.

Tiger Mom did not allow her daughters to watch television or attend sleepovers with their school chums, and she demanded that they make straight As.  (Sounds like child abuse to me.)  In truth, the tale she tells about putting one of her daughters out barefoot on the porch in December for an extended period of time when she would not practice piano as she had been instructed upset me greatly.  I had an abusive father and this story came a little too close to home.  Chua has admitted she would do many things differently now and says there are many positives in how Americans raise their kids.  Her daughter, the one sent to the porch, now attends Harvard and writes a blog, probably to show that although Mommy was indeed strict strict, her daughter has not, as yet anyway, landed on the shrink's couch.

Last week, a new book about raising children was released, Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman.  The author is an American Expat who has lived in Paris the past six years.  She is married to a Brit, whom she calls a curmudgeon (as I and others have always called Harry), and has a five-year-old daughter and twin sons aged three.  Most  reviews of the book have been harsh and a bit glib, in my view.  In 2004, the book Why French Women Don't Get Fat was published, and we Americans learned that disciplined moderation, not starvation, Weight Watchers, or Slim Fast shakes is the French secret to keeping a trim figure. Now we learn that same disciplined moderation, not exactly a trait common to our culture, is also practiced by the French with regard to their child-raising.

When Druckerman began living in Paris, she found French children very different from their American counterparts.  I had the same reaction when Harry and I spent a week in Paris a few years ago.  I remember thinking I never saw a child throwing a tantrum in public, but even more importantly the French seemed to delight so in their children.  I thought there must be something in the water!  The author says that in six years she too has never observed a French child throwing a tantrum in public, and when she visits French homes, children are amazingly well behaved.  The author goes to great length to examine the historical and cultural elements that may account for the French style of parenting.

In England, the same year we took our Paris trip, I frequently found the Brits to be verbally abusive to their children in public, painfully so.  I witnessed parents yelling at their kids and criticizing them in the supermarkets, in restaurants, on the streets, and kids yelling back abusively at their parents.  A toddler tantrum in public was as common in the north of England as it is here in the States.

So, just what do the French do to raise these calm, seemingly happy, well behaved, non-tantrum children?  Well, lots of things, subtle things, many of which Americans would never do because patience, consistency and moderation are required. Our culture, with all its diversity and complexity, seems to be evolving ever faster towards the ever more intense need to instant gratification.  We do, after all, text and drive.  The French government also supports young families in ways that our government never has and never will.  Young families get help in France that would make Tea Party members even more hysterical than they already are.  The French birth rate is up while many other European countries are in a state of steep population decline. This is worrisome for those living in these low birthrate countries who plan on retirement some day. 

The French gently teach their children to wait, and the waiting starts in the hospital nursery.  Learning to wait, they believe, teaches children that the world is not always going to give you what you want instantly so it is best to learn the lesson early.  Being able to wait shows respect for other people who have rights too, even parents.  A newborn in Paris is gently taught to sleep through the night by the age of three months.  It is expected of them and they do it.  After all, mommy and daddy need their sleep too.  Toddlers eat scheduled meals, three healthy ones and a once, I repeat, once a day snack. Part of the culture in Paris is to teach very small  children to bake a simple cake which they are made to wait to eat at snack time in the late afternoon (recipe below).  Toddlers and young children can sit in a restaurant with their parents and not disturb everyone around them. When the family leaves the restaurant, the waiter or waitress does not have to bring out a broom to sweep up all the food on the floor.  French children play frequently in parks without their parents monitoring their every move.  The French do not believe that dragging your children to a bunch of lessons after school or on the weekends is necessarily good or desirable.
 
Years ago my sister, who lived in Colombia at the time, said that all children were potty trained there soon after they could walk.  I did not believe her.  She came to visit me one summer when Alexis was a year or so and gave me the book, Potty Training in a Day.  I remember thinking, well, why not try it, diapers are a pain?  I read it, followed the protocol, and we trained Alexis in one day.  I was thrilled as a working mom and so was her babysitter, Sonia, who had several other toddlers in diapers at the time.

I vividly remember the competition between the Suzuki parents when Alexis took violin lessons as a child.  "What song is she playing now?"  "Oh, my Susie played that months ago." French parents find this sort of competition distasteful.  So did I.  In an adult English class I taught a few years ago I remember a Japanese woman explaining how Japanese mothers teach their children to stop eating well before they are full.  There is little obesity in Japan or in France.

Parents with self control usually have children with self control: as a teacher I know this to be true.  Just watch an episode of The Nanny if you don't believe me and you will never again question how children can become so rude and demanding.  Yes, it is quite simple: if children are rude and demanding, it is because the parents let them be rude and demanding.  The French believe that parents must set firm limits.  Too many choices only confuse a child.  Within the strict boundaries, however, children enjoy much freedom in France. They allow for much unstructured playtime, without adults hovering overhead. 

It should also be noted that French mothers rarely breast feed their infants.  Fear of droopy boobs, perhaps?  French mothers scoff at natural childbirth.  Why would you if you can have an epidural?  I also doubt there are many home-schooled French students; few French mommies would be willing simply to stop their lives for a few years to give their child the luxury of a one-on-one tutor.  French women are so selfish! 

There are a million books and websites out there telling parents how best to parent today. This book is just one more to add to the pile: one which, I would argue, should be taken off the pile and read carefully here in America.  There is some wisdom to be had!!

Editor's note: I wonder whether impatience will become an adaptive behavior in the new world from which I increasingly opt out in order to practice being a curmudgeon.

Writer's note:  Harry needs no practice in being a curmudgeon.

GATEAU AU YAOURT

2 six ounce containers plain whole mile yogurt  (use the empty containers to measure the other ingredients)

2 eggs

2 containers sugar (or just one, depending on how sweet you like it) 

1teaspoon vanilla 

Just under 1 container vegetable oil

4 containers flour

1 and one half teaspoons baking baking powder

Creme fraiche  (optional)  

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Grease a round cake pan or loaf pan

Gently combine yogurt, eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil.  In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until ingredients are just combined. Do not overmix.  You ca add a container of frozen berries or chocolate chips or any flavoring you like.  

Bake for 35 minutes, or more if the cake does not pass the stick in the knife test.  It will be crispy on the outside and springy on the inside.  Let is cool.  Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche.  (found at Lunds or Byerlys in Mpls.)  

 










  

Want to cheat? Your cell phone can help!

The richer of the two districts I sub in, the one with all the amazing technology in all its classrooms, is experiencing serious technological problems: students use technology to cheat.  I know this district is not alone.   Last Friday was the end of the the first semester and  I took a job at the high school.  The job turned out to be assisting in a math class where they were taking an end-of-semester exam.  The regular math teacher told me my job would be to circulate about the classroom as the students took the test.   He would deal with the test protocol.   I was to stay on my feet for two two-hour periods, watching for students who might pull out their cell phones, take pictures of the test, and text the photos to their classmates who had not yet taken the exam.  He told me this bad behavior had happened three times the day before.

When the students arrived, the teacher informed the class that three students had been sent to the office the previous day for cell phone cheating and had received a zero on the exam.  He went on to say that no cell phones should be seen at all for the entire exam period.  Those who took out their phones at any time would be sent to the office for disciplinary action.  He didn't bother to introduce me to the students in the first exam period, so before the second session started, I jumped up and introduced myself.  I felt it polite for students to at least to know the name of the person who was going to be spying and ratting on them.

The teacher rose from his computer at the front of the room a couple of times to help those who had trouble launching the computer part of the exam.  The rest of the time he did not get up from his chair in front of his computer screen: surfing the web perhaps?  In the two testing sessions, the teacher threw out a total of six students, sending them to the office for reasons that were unclear to me.  He yelled at them from the front of the room to get out, saying that he had had it with them.  They must had done something to annoy him other than taking out their cell phones.  I was on the job after all.  

Both districts where I sub, beginning in kindergarten, have a test protocol such that students are trained to put up folders to block the student next to them from being able to see their test.  I guess the presumption is that everybody cheats, even in kinder.  Students in all grades often sit at tables nowadays.  Individual student desks, which offered a little privacy and autonomy, are becoming a thing of the past.

Students finished their math exams at different rates, some being done in 30 minutes and some taking the entire two hours.  Several who finished before the allotted time, handed in their tests and sneakily took out their cell phones -- not to cheat, just to do what we all do with our cell phones.   I quickly made a judgement call and decided to go up to the students and quietly remind them of what happened yesterday and that they should put their phones away.  I then smiled and said, "Why don't you just take out a book from your backpack to read?"  That remark prompted all but one to look at me as if I were crazy, but they did all politely put their phones away.  (Geez! and here I thought students still read books in their free moments.) 


I was amazed that the students who took out their phones were so good at hiding the fact.  The regular teacher, glued to his chair and his computer, would never have noticed from his vantage point that they had phones out even if he did look up from the front of the classroom.   It became clear to me how easily cell phone cameras could be used to cheat if a teacher did not spend the test period walking around the classroom. 

Students today bring cell phones to school, be they in elementary, middle, or high school.  In 2006, New York City banned students from bringing cell phones to school, and parents sued (and lost), arguing that their children's safety was at stake.  The policy in most schools across the country is that students are not to use phones in class, but of course students do anyway.  Teachers threaten to take phones away if they see them out in class, but often when you confront students they have a ready reason for why their phone is out: Mom just sent them a text and they have to call her immediately; or Dad was supposed to drop off the lunch box that was forgotten on the kitchen table and the office has not called to tell them it arrived.  Do you really expect them to go without lunch?  Truth is, kids are just as addicted to their phones are we adults are.   

I had my own personal wake up moment with regard to cell phone use in a classroom several months back in the same school district.  I was subbing in a middle school math class and I learned that a certain boy went to the principal after class to complain that I was too strict: strict meaning that I did not let the class deviate from the regular teacher's plan for the period.  This student had become very defiant so I told him to sit in the hallway.  When this child got home, his parents called the principal saying that their son had used his cell phone to tape me and I could be heard swearing at the students in the class.  The principal called me into his office the next day, as I was subbing in the building again, and told me what had happened.  I asked him whether he had heard the tape of me swearing and he said no, but the parents were going to bring in the phone and play him the recording tomorrow.  He asked if I had sworn at the students.  I said of course not, and he said, "Well, they have you on tape and I will meet with you after I meet with the parents."   I never heard back from this jerk, I mean principal, and I don't chose to sub in this school anymore.        

I do not presume to know the answer to the problem of cell phones in the classroom.  I remember sitting in church in the front row, years back, and my phone went off during the sermon (the only ringing oration I remember!).  It rang several times before I could turn if off.   Last month at Lincoln Center, a man's phone went off during a performance of the New York Philharmonic and the conductor stopped the concert.  

Cell phones are here to stay and they are both wonderful and terrible, like the many other technological devices that fill up our days.  I hate the idea that if students are not watched at every moment during an exam they will cheat.  There will always be students who lie because they do not get to do what they want in school.  The realization that students may be recording you in the classroom is a bit sobering, however, it is probably good to know it could be happening to you at anytime.     

Good thing I don't swear at the students I teach, but as I walked around the classroom that day for four hours, I did have my Kindle in my hands reading the New Yorker.  When the battery went dead on the Kindle, I took out my cell phone to read a book as I continued looking for cheaters.  A good teacher can multi- task because she has those eyes in the back of her head.  Luckily, the regular teacher did not send me to the office for taking out my cell phone.  I guess he did not want to do my job.  He did use a couple swear words though that day so I hope no one got him on tape or he might have been in for some disciplinary action from the office himself.       

Shopping for a Wedding Dress in NYC

I have been going to NYC, once, twice, sometimes three times a year since my daughter, Alexis, moved there in 1999. The first week in January was my first trip to The Big Apple this year.  I fell in love with NYC when I was 16. My high school English teacher, Miss Sandquist, took a group of us by train to New York City for a week.  She took us to four Broadway play including Man of the Mancha and Cabaret.  We climbed the old wooden steps all the way to the top of the Statue of Liberty and had front row seats at the Copacabana night club where we saw the Supremes.  Miss Sandquist had the bartender make us Shirley Temple cocktails.  I remember eating my first bagel with cream cheese and walking around the city for hours in a state of complete awe.  I was, after all, a northeast Minneapolis girl who thought a trip to downtown Minneapolis to see a movie and eat spaghetti at Cafe Di'Napoli was the height of excitement.

On this trip to New York Alexis and I went to the garment district to what to me seemed like the largest bridal shop on the planet. Alexis had been to the shop the week between Xmas and New Years with her undergraduate college friend, Eliza, to try on dresses. She spent a couple hours trying on dresses fighting the hoards of brides and brideszillas in the shop that day.

On our trip to this huge shop the brides and bridezillas were in short supply and we had bridal dress expert, Cheryl, all to ourselves for nearly two hours.  Alexis took several dresses off the racks to try on and Cheryl picked out four dresses she thought would be perfect for her.  Alexis never put on any of the dresses she had taken off the racks. The very first dress she tried from Cheryl's choices turned out to be her #1 choice. The woman knew her stuff!!  It was a day I will never forget.

*I have been suffering with ear and sinus infections this month, thus I did not do any blogging.  My beloved editor has been in England the last two weeks as well.  He returns Tuesday and will undoubtedly tell me this blog is full of errors.  All well, what's life without a few errors!