I took a couple of days – Friday and Saturday – and went to San Diego to visit an old friend and see a couple of nieces in their various shows.
Pat Devlin and I were close friends in high school, especially in the 11th and 12th grade. We had most of out classes together and shared common friends at Saints and OLP. Pat would show up at our doorstep on Granada Ave. on random nights during the week and he and I would go riding through the streets of San Diego, usually ending up at Mike Greenwald’s (our 9th grade English teacher and the play director at Saints) apartment. Along with John Boyd and one or two others, we would spend rainy Sunday afternoons at the Ken Cinema watching Marx Brothers movie marathons – I can still quote Chico and Groucho lines – and he would sit at our baby grand and play music he had taught himself. We drifted apart once we graduated, but he called me out of nowhere last June and we finally met up and spent the afternoon together. I hope to spend lots more time with him.
We have obviously gotten older – well, I have!
I would say we are both much better looking.
On Saturday I went with Terry and Chris Aaron, KK, Bill and Mike Uberti and Mom to see Amanda perform with the OLP Junior class as part of the Spring Sing. In carrying on the grand Kuglen tradition of high school performance, Amanda appeared as a dancer for her class in the 40th anniversary of the OLP event. KK “sort of” remembered appearing in hers as a senior, and I was never clear if Terry appeared in hers. Amanda was spectacular! Her class performed a salute to Women’s professional baseball in the 1940′s. And to make the event even more special, Saturday was also her 17th birthday!
The Aarons and Amanda
Here it is folks – SIX INCHES of essays, paragraphs, worksheets, journals, quizzes and tests. A good hunk of my spring break.
Take out a ruler, hold it straight up on a table and see just how much six inches is – well over 500 sheets of paper. And the Burbank Unified School District wants to INCREASE my workload!
Spring Break papers
I am supposed to be on Spring Break this week. You know what Spring Break is – a vacation from the day-to-day grind of being in the classroom. Thanks to an increased class size and the ensuing work, I am swamped with work, so I went into my classroom yesterday, Tuesday, to get some work done. My ten week grades are due the Tuesday we come back from break. I spent 6 hours in my classroom entering grades into my gradebook, grading student work, and preparing grades. SIX HOURS and I still am not finished.
I have about 15 more students this year than I did last year. If my students all hand in a 3 page essay, that is an extra 45 pages I have to read, correct, and grade. 15 extra students is exponentially more work for me – and I am already overworked.
My school district, Burbank Unified. has proposed raising the average class size to 36:1 – 5 more per class than I already have (and really, the number of students in the room will more closer to 40 to accommodate classes that are mandated to have lower students counts, like special education classes). Effectively that number works out to assigning me an extra class to teach without increasing my salary – in fact BUSD is actively looking for ways to CUT my pay.
One of the mottoes I heard as we began this school year was “do more with less.” I AM NOT KIDDING. The motto doesn’t even make sense as a paradox.
I know some of you are in favor of teacher accountability and feel like teachers have it easy. I don’t get paid for summer vacations (10 weeks without an income, unless I choose to teach summer school), I am not paid for holidays, I MUST do professional development, I must give meaningless interim assessments, and increasingly find myself teaching my students to perform well on a test rather than get them ready for the kind of thinking and writing they need to do in college or in a business situation. Piling me up with more work while insisting that my students perform at a high level is not incentive for me to work harder. Working for 10 hours over a vacation just to stay current is SOUL KILLING. And I still feel like I haven’t done enough.
Maybe I’ll have a day this week where I can wake up and not fear the work staring me in the face. THAT would be a vacation.