One must steel oneself to work in at Title I school

I was just reading this post from Elementary, My Dear...

She mentions hurting for her students who are so impoverished that a foam snowflake is enough to make their day, seeing as how they'd otherwise have no gift at all. I can relate. My students (and my daughters' classmates, as they attend the same school) are a struggling lot. Homes filled with extended families or multiple families. Parents without jobs. Parents in jail. Older siblings and cousins in gangs. Parents who've lost these kids to foster care. (Some parents who perhaps should lose the kids as they're not doing a heck of a lot of active or healthy parenting, but I digress). Homes without heat, where the baby's formula freezes solid when you set it down for a half hour. Immigrant families who don't speak much English and are hoping for something to improve for their children. Hard working, underpaid families surviving through the food bank and thrift stores and pawn shops and food stamps and unemployment (for as long as it lasts) and the free clothes closet at the school and Operation School Bell. Dustboard furniture and chipped plates and dollar store barbies and no time or energy for checking the kids' homework folders or reading a bedtime story.

And local legislators are planning to vote against tax adjustments on the wealthiest that would not improve the schools' budgets but would just maintain them at their current too-low levels. Disgusting.

future focus

I've been thinking a lot about the future lately, and it's made me aware of the calendar-centric nature of academia in general, regardless of the level. Because I'm a graduate student working on a degree in elementary education, I'm completely immersed in the world of education at both ends of the spectrum. For my personal work as a student, the focus is on my own growth and my future career. For my students, little kids who are just starting out, it's as if their lives are nothing but future! Preparing them for their lives as participants in our society is the whole point, and we accomplish this bit by bit within the yearly calendar. Sometimes I feel like everything is about tomorrow. But, as a stay-at-home mother for a decade, my focus was on the present so much of the time that it mostly feels refreshing to look up and out and think about the grand scheme of things more.

In other news, though there is the expected whining from those whose standard of living might be affected if they can't adjust and live within their means, Congress has placed stricter than expected caps on executive bonuses. As someone who's hoping to see some of the stimulus package dollars make their way into my local classrooms, I can't help but be a bit pleased by this. I'm cautiously optimistic that our schools could end up benefiting from this bill. And it's pretty hard for me to work up much sympathy for someone who'll be "limited" to only half a million dollars a year income. My school district sure could hire a lot of highly qualified teachers for one of those folks' yearly pay. *sigh*

In other news...

My winter student teaching is going smashinly well. Unfortunately, my brilliant cooperating teacher/ mentor had a rough car accident and will be out for a month or so. Fortunately, she'll be fine and is in good spirits. Unfortunately, this means that I'm taking over every last bit of it right away, starting with the report cards I completed the day after said accident. Fortunately, the long term substitute they hired is fabulous, just retired after teaching for 30 years, and can definitely help guide me, especially on classroom management.

All in all, I'm feeling more fortunate than un- lately. The kids are responding well to my instruction and rules and so on. I've been receiving wonderful support from the administration at the elementary school, all the other teachers there, and my university faculty advisor. All of this is making me feel pretty confident about my chosen profession!