2015 Blog Review

This is post number 33 for 2015. I hoped to post 4 posts per month, 48 for the year. It's the third most in a year for this blog and readership is pretty steady. Thanks for tuning in, y'all.

My third most visited post for the year is "The End of Our Fertility Journey." It summarizes the long journey David and I took to complete our family with lots of links to previous posts I made along the way. I hope couples struggling with fertility might stumble upon this blog and know that their struggle is one many couples share and that wherever they are on this journey, the only way out is through.

My second most popular post is part of my 12 Days of Blog Posts: "Two Kid Life." I introduce my 12 Days idea and describe the gratitude David and I try to feel as we live out our two-kid dream.

My most visited blog this year and of all time is "Fasting Again..." I've written a great deal about public education and the attacks from the corporate education reform movement. This post summarizes my one-day fast to show support for a school in Chicago. I'm not sure if it is the labels I posted or the desire for people to understand the subtext behind struggles for schools like the one going on at Dyett, but over 3,000 people visited this post, way more than any other I've posted.

There were three other posts that managed over two-hundred visits, so I think I'll link to them as well.  I think they do show that my blog is a little bit all over the place. After all, these are random bits.

"Remembering To Kill A Mockingbird" about teaching, reread, and writing about this classic American novel.

"Back to the Grind" about heading back to work after maternity leave.

"Culmination Address for the Class of 2015" about the end of my journey this past school year.

So, with that, 2015 is in the books. See you in 2016!

Fasting Again as the War Against Public Education Wages On

I know, I look tired and hungry. 

I'm fasting today in solidarity with #FightforDyett, a community movement in Chicago to save a beloved school.

I fasted during testing in 2003 to protest the high stakes testing and punitive measures of No Child Left Behind. I blamed Bush for NCLB, but as congress revamps the bill this week, most democrats, even the most progressive, continue to support the "accountability measures" that corporate education reformers use to foster distrust in our public schools, shut down campuses like Dyett, and privatize our public education system.

With deep pockets in The Gates Foundation and Walmart's Walton family, the reform movement's attack on teachers and students can feel too big to fight, but we are fighting back. We will not surrender our classrooms. Communities like Dyett are fighting back. Representatives like Mark Takano, a former teacher and public education advocate, are fighting back. Our unions who represent our teachers are fighting back. Our parents who send their students to us and trust their public schools are fighting back. We will continue to fight against the failing school narrative and show that our teachers are teaching, our students are learning and despite what they throw at us this is happening at schools everywhere.

Today I fast, but I also teach. Then, I go home and get my little ones to bed. With an empty belly, I write this hoping that when my kids are ready to attend our neighborhood school, it is still there. I hope the attacks will cease, that our schools will be fully funded and filled with joy and music and play and sport alongside the academics. I hope our schools have all they need, in my neighborhood, in South Los Angeles, in Chicago, and New Orleans. That is what our families and communities deserve. That is what I fight for it.

For more about my fight for public education, explore these posts:

To Test Prep or Not to Test Prep?

Fighting for Democracy: Some Lessons From Egypt

Testing Season Is Upon Us! But It Doesn't Have to Be...

My Take on Waiting for Superman

Testing Fast Anniversary

Thank You Patriots, Our Public School Parents

The Schools Our Communities Deserve

Civil Disobedience

Testing Fast Anniversary

Ten years ago this week I fasted as a form of personal protest against testing. Ten years ago I sat in the same room where I watched the Towers in New York fall and decided I had to do something about the way we look at our public school system. I wrote this on April 25, 2003:

I am opposed to high stakes testing.  The No Child Left Behind Act requires these types of tests to evaluate students, the professionals who instruct them, and the school communities where they do their work.  These test results, good or bad, are used to determine the quality of education at a school, but reveal an incomplete picture of our academic communities.  They oversimplify the educational needs of America’s diverse student population and all those who are hard at work in American public schools. 

Since 2003, Bush left office, No Child Left Behind ended, but in its place Obama launched Race to the Top which continues to value high stakes testing and pushes to link test scores to teacher evaluation. Now, rather than schools qualifying for federal funds, districts must apply and plan to integrate Department of Education policies. Education has become a race rather than a right with the influences of corporate philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad holding more weight than educators.

Noah reading his poem at our class open mic.

But day-to-day life in my classroom, in most classrooms, probably doesn’t look so different. Since 2003 I have taught thousands of students. We’ve read books, write stories, essays, and

poems; we discuss novels, ideas, and grammar. We take tests. But my school has changed. We have lost half of our enrollment, some to new much-needed neighborhood schools, but many more to charter schools.

Caro and Yisel's poem battle on independence!

No Child Left Behind succeeded in causing the public to lose faith in our schools. But I haven’t and I am here in the trenches. I know on every campus, no matter what the API label, there are good teachers, bright students, and hard-working families making sure their schools work. Every morning I head to school. My students are there and we do the work of learning. Our school, even though it’s been labeled a failing school for a decade now, succeeds in so many ways, ways most will never see by looking at our test scores.