Monthly Lunch

Our retired teacher group skipped a meeting in August so when we got together today we had lots to talk about and catch up on.  The most common thread of conversation was how much we missed not meeting in August and how we all look forward to our monthly get togethers.

The one thing we all have in common is that we are all retired women from Packemin H.S.  Packemin is large and many of us did not know each other or had barely said more than hello to one another in all the years we worked at the same address.  Our group includes former teachers, secretaries, school aides, lab assistants, and cafeteria workers.  In retirement our former jobs don't matter.

We started this group several years ago and have gone to many different places but we recently found our "home."  Ben's in Bay Terrace not only has good food and good service but lets us use a private room in the rear of the restaurant where we take advantage of lunch menu, and have the space to walk around, talk to everyone and stay as long as we want.

Any  female retiree's from Packemin are welcome to join us.

Message To Administrators

I just saw this on a friend's Facebook page and had to share it here for many of the administrators at Packemin and other schools who read and hate this blog.

This is for all of you!!!  You can't teach and don't know the first thing about your subject area.  You have know idea who is a good teacher and who isn't one.  And, if you did notice a good teacher you would harass that person out of the building because of your fear of being shown for what you really are.

Shame on the Principals who appointed you, and shame on the superintendents who appointed you, poor excuses for a Principal because you know as little as the APs in your cabinet.

I'm gone and have the freedom of saying what others left behind cannot.

Happiness

While teaching my class last week, I told a corny joke which made my students laugh.  I told them I want them to be happy.  At first they didn't understand why, but then I explained:  If people are happy, they do better in life.  By liking the subject, they would spend more time working on it and in turn learn more and do better.  They agreed.

I love teaching and am so grateful that I have the college to continue the career I can no longer have at Packemin.  The AP there didn't appreciate what I did and made my life unhappy.  So glad that is no longer the case anymore.

(And thanks for retirement that gives me the opportunity to see and photograph beautiful animals like the swan above--picture taken at new and improved Oakland Lake -near Springfield and Northern Blvds.)

Segregation In Integrated Schools

Yesterday's Daily News had a great opinion piece about how our schools are still segregated and unequal.  And, while this is true, I think we have to take a deeper look into schools that are integrated and see the racial make up of those classes.

From my experience at Packemin, I saw extreme segregation in classes. AP math classes were white, Asian and South East Asian.  There were a smattering of Hispanics but kids whose ethnicity showed only in their names.  In my last year I did a study to see why this happened.  I found many African American students entered the school with as good or better backgrounds than their peers yet they never made it to the advanced class.  On the other hand, if I looked at the slower algebra and geometry classes, I noticed too many dark faces.

My opinion and this is from my personal observations is that African American students did not get the same opportunities as their white and Asian peers.  If they messed up once, they were out of the path that led them to advanced classes where other races got second chances.  One year I met a young Black girl who wanted to take AP Calculus.  The chairperson said her grades weren't good enough but I picked up a transcript of a Chinese student with lower grades who was admitted to the class.  A back door got the girl in and she did well.  Lack of Black faces in my AP classes bothered me from the day I started teaching them in 1995 and nothing I did made a difference.  I don't know if things are any different now, I have been gone for 4 years.  I hope so.

We do need to integrate schools but we also must make sure that once schools are integrated classes are too and we need to make sure all students have the same opportunities regardless of their ethnic background.

The Wedding

She was a student of mine in AP calculus and I wrote all her recommendations and helped her get into the Time 2000 program at Queens College.  I helped her write lessons when she student taught at Packemin and lost touch with her after graduation.  Several years after student teaching I met her at the community college where she was working, first as an adjunct and then as a full time professor.  (The AP at Packemin did not think she was a good fit for that school.  The college loves her.)

Fast forward even a few more years.  The girl is a young woman and getting married.  I was honored to be invited and thrilled to witness the biggest event in her life.  Pictured above is the tea ceremony from her wedding.

No reward is better than the rewards I have gotten from my students and from knowing the positive influence I have had on their lives.  No negative words from any administrator can take that away.

Packemin Packs Them In

I know hardly anyone reads this blog anymore and I hardly ever write anything, let alone anything interesting yet all I have to do is mention PACKEMIN in the title, body or tag and I get a ton of hits.

People must love reading the dirt on that place and believe me, there is tons of it.  I don't write much of it because doing so would reveal my source.  Still, it is fun to know certain people are sweating just because the word came up in their reader.

Enjoy the Hagar cartoon.  Tell your students another reason they need math is so they can understand the funny pages.

Summer At A NYC High School

It used to be summer classes were provided to help students re mediate and then pass subjects they failed during the school year.

Summer school has a different purpose now and that purpose only involves statistics.  The kids go to school for a couple of hours and get credit for the course.

Fifty kids in a summer class is normal.  Schools like Packemin have no problem doing this in classes like math, English and history, subjects they need to graduate and need to learn to provide college background.

Packemin is rated one of the best neighborhood schools in the city.  How can any school with class size of 50 be rated well?  How can 50 kids packed in a room built for 34 be educated? How can a teacher be expected to help them all?

Anyone Who Taught At Packemin Should Recognize This AP