Tears of Every Kind

Today, I attended Locke's graduation. Over 80 percent of our senior class walked - loads better than the less than 40 percent the previous year. I watched Michael beam as he accepted his diploma, knowing full well that tomorrow he leaves for a full ride at American University. I watched countless first-generation high school graduates stand up to announce their plans to attend college. I watched dozens of kids who would have definitely fallen through the cracks in the past, walk across that stage - some with as many tears in their eyes as myself.

What actually set off my own tears - hard to believe I was never a crier until three years ago - was seeing a single student accept their diploma without the golden medal his peers all hung proudly around their necks. Earlier that week, this student had given it to a friend of his, a favorite student of mine, in the hospital. These two friends had been sitting on a front porch. When one went into get a glass of water, a car drove by, four bullets exploded from a gun, and each one of them managed to hit my student.

Before attending graduation tonight, I was visiting him in the hospital. He did not appear to be in any pain, which is a blessing. He told me he is still in shock, that he hasn't fully processed doctors' news he might never walk again.

Today, they found a pulse in his foot, and we prayed together that pulse would be his miracle. That he might beat the odds and not be a victim of paralysis as well as a random drive by.

This is my prayer for all of my students. That they beat the odds. More students drop out of school in Watts then don't. More than that, the rates of shootings, homicides, drug abuse, and gang recruitment are the highest in the country.

They miss school because of lung conditions, often easily prevented and/or solved by clean air and appropriate treatment. They lose their loved ones when an early diagnosis of Cancer could have saved their life. They go to bed and wake up hungry when guardians struggle to make anything near a living wage. They live as child adults, taking care of younger siblings when their parents are forced to return to a country other than the one they call home. They are abandoned and betrayed by friends and family who are seduced by available money-making crimes.

Many of them suffer from undiagnosed - usually completely unacknowledged - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which could happen to anyone who has seen a loved one brutally killed, had a knife cut them on a moving bus, lain flat on the floor night after night as bullets flew by.

And given all of this, almost four hundred of them were awarded a high school diploma today.

In my third year teaching, the highs and lows of the work only seem to get more extreme. In the same few moments, I hugged a senior I helped pass the California Exit Exam required to receive a diploma, wished a student I helped earn a much-needed scholarship good-bye, and bumped into a student I had had two years prior - a kid still falling through the cracks. I listened as he told me of the past year of his life - which he is not proud of. I offered to meet him at Locke to discuss his options before I sent him off, completely unsure if I will ever see or hear from him again. And I thought of my student in the hospital, with his friend's gold medal hanging from scotch tape on the wall of his room, unsure if he will ever be able to literally walk across a stage.

I find myself stunned and determined. More than ever. And I pray, starting with James, for miracles and grace.

Here was my big break through this week. Daniel answered a question correctly.

That's it. One simple - very simple, actually - question.

Daniel is just one of those kids who publication education has broken. He's not unintelligent, but years in a dysfunctional, abusive school system have convinced him otherwise. Daniel spent the first month of my class doing anything and everything he possibly could to get kicked out. He spent the next month proving to me he didn't care about his education. He's still tricking many of his teachers into believing this.

And yet yesterday, when I asked the class to work in groups to correct a run-on sentence, Daniel was the first to voice the answer.

I almost feel guilty for being so proud of this, to say it's the highlight of my week. His group was proud too. Daniel sits with five academically-strong girls. When he gave the right answer, this quiet group enthusiastically whooped and hollered, practically giving him a standing ovation. All of our faces lit up - Daniel's the brightest of all.

Does it disturb me that such a small triumph can make me so excited? Yes. Especially this late in the year. He's dangerously behind academically, and all I've suceeded in is getting him to answer one question. ONE.

And yet, the next time he decides to zone out, skip class, or arrive inebriated, I'll remember that moment and hold out hope.

It's a strange addiction - being an educator. The sense of doom and failure can bring on physical illness. The incessant thoughts can become all consuming and prevent sleep. And yet all it takes is one moment of strength - one hit - and all this is forgotten, or at least, worth the price you have pay.

Wisdom from a procrastinating teenager

Today, I had my journalists quickly reflect on the importance of deadlines. I needed to give a pep talk to half the class for missing our latest deadline. Here is the five-minute response from one of my girls.


Deadlines are very imperative to me, not just in journalism, but in life. Not meeting dealines can cause personal problems such as failing a class, but it can cause bigger issues, such as delays with the paper, and problems between the students in class.

As an assistant editor, I have failed you. As a writer, I have failed you. And most importantly, I have failed myself. There is no need to bring up excuses that I have, regardless of whether they are excusable or not because I know they are not what you want to hear. When life throws curve balls at you, you have to learn how to duck and dodge them sufficiently. I have not. I've been letting things as small as sickness to things as big as family issues hold me back this semester. Not just from your class, but other important classes as well.Yet, I still find time to go and be with my crew, to escape the harsh realities I sometimes have to face.

I am failing. I'm failing myself, this class, my teammates, my teacher. But I am not a failure. And I have not failed to a level in which I cannont rise up. Though I have procrastinated a lot, I am trying to catch up for the time that has been lost. It's pretty hard because time doesn't stop for anyone, not even the most desperate person. This is my life, without it I can't survive. And you know my potential. You know what great things I can do, which is why I ask you to not remove me from this class, not to remove me from my spot. If I haven't proved myself yet, I swear to the heavens high above that I will prove myself, and I'm going to start right now. Now excuse me, I have a paper to write.




All that in five minutes, yet she can't get her articles done when she has two weeks. Oh darling.

Cross Country

Waking up at 5:30 Saturday morning to help drive our Cross Country team to their meet reminded me of what my high school experience was like - and how different it stands from our students'.

We arrive at Laguna Hills High to a traffic jam of buses and shiny, fancy cars. "Miss, everyone here is really white and really skinny," Victor says as my lovely '95 Camry, unwashed since before summer break, rolls up to an orange vest.


He initially directs me to the left, then looks in my car and asks, "Wait, you're not running are you?" When I tell him that yes, the four kids dressed in black and flannel are indeed runners, he has me swing to the right.


I successfully parallel park between a dumpster and the type of monstrous truck that never ceases to bewilder and annoy me while filling up California roads and compact parking spaces, and we head to a practice football field to find our team. Swarms of skinny white kids in matching warm-ups and moms with snacks greet us at the entrance. Their impressive numbers and professional tents briefly prevent us from finding our 14-member team and their belongings spread on a single tarp.

It seems our team found the other culturally diverse one in attendance and set camp alongside them. Long Beach High was reassuringly brown, albeit somewhat rude and unsharing of their bagels and orange slices.

Sully passed his team their uniforms fresh from the bag. The kids, without matching sweats to stay covered, rushed to find places to quickly get the uniforms on underneath their denim before anyone saw - none happy about the length of the short, a complaint Sully silenced with, "Find a different sport."


The kids know they have a good thing going here. Even without buses, moms and fancy tents, they have a strong team and a qualified coach who worked with them all summer, resulting in multiple personal bests this weekend. Even the two slowest on the team, who found themselves lapped by two different races, are equals in the eyes of their peers.


As we pull out of the lot and head to In-N-Out, Victor daydreams outloud, "I would like to go here. It's nice and you could get really good training." And as I look back on the gateless school, able to host large competitions that expose their students to all parts of L.A. - where a kid with Victor's natural ability will at least be a contestent for a medal, I think to myself how my goal is for him to go to a place like that too.

We'll see.

Hands Around Locke

Two years ago, I signed up for Teach for America and joined a revolution reforming education in our country. I came with high ideals, a strong work ethic, and an empty bank account. Somewhere along the way, my ideals were torn to shreds, my work never was enough, and my net worth became a growing negative sum. After plenty of steps forward and back, my value was looking up: my finances recovered, my work began to show results and my ideals returned, tempered by hard lessons learned and failures endured - what I like to consider wisdom.

Two years ago, I began teaching at Locke High School. I taught a group of freshmen reading at or below a 3.5 grade level - terrifying, considering the federal government takes a look at third graders' reading scores to determine how many new prison beds to acquire. I was trained in a curriculum designed to help bring these students up. Two years ago, three days before my first day in the classroom, LAUSD informed me that they would not pay for the curriculum they payed me to receive training in. They essentially told me that these students had nothing but me to help them - an act that should have been illegal.

For months, I failed these students. I became a part of a system that has failed them since before they entered school. I watched ninth graders come to school less and less. I worked to build relationships with them and cried when I saw them slipping. My heart broke when I saw them skipping classes repeatedly and grew furious with myself for not helping them. Why should a student go to classes when the only way to learn is to sit in front of a text book they couldn't understand 80 percent of? Why couldn't I figure out how to change this?

I've witnessed race fights and gang fights, fires and people inhaling the fumes from fires, teachers drinking during class, teachers getting away with skilling class, administrators and staff cussing out students, 14-year olds smoking pot, 14-year-olds on things much worse than pot.

And somewhere along the way, I began to witness change. Change that began long before I stepped on campus. Change that began before 1965 when Locke became the first public high school serving the Watts community in Watts. A school built in the center of five neighborhoods - a different gang owning the streets of each side.

I began to see students light up and choose to try. At the age of 14 - where my life choices consisted of what to wear to parent-chaperoned dances - these students were choosing to struggle with education instead of struggle on the streets. I saw them choose the believe in themselves and the possibilities of their future.

And from there, I've seen them still fail. Because I wasn't a good enough teacher, because it literally wasn't safe for them to walk to school or be in school, because they viewed higher education as something that happens if you're lucky and slanging drugs as a sure income, because they broke their own parole.

And I've seen them succeed. I've seen students jump from reading at a third grade level to above a ninth grade level in one year. I've seen the quietest student present to an entire class his personal vow to not end up like the 12-year-old drug addicts who live on his street. I've seen a student who at one point threatened to "slit my throat" make a point to stay after class to receieve extra help in writing, growing from writing without a single punctuation mark to writing clear, coherent thoughts.

This has very little to do with me - and this is not false humility. The point is these children want to learn. But when you live in a world where honor and affiliation are the only securities you can rely on, where staying after school to work and learn means putting yourself at risk on the walk home, where shootings happen often and the only therapy for Post Traumatic Stress is a hardened heart and a hero's sense of humor, an education - exactly what it is and how one achieves it - becomes something untangible, unrealistic, a waste of time.

These kids who have figured it out walk differently through the halls at Locke. There's a confidence that stems from something other than reputation. Nothing in our failing education system is to thank for these kids. But it is my belief that the right system - equipped with the right people - can steer every student to this course.

Moving forward, yesterday, I stepped onto Locke's football field along with students, parents, grand-parents, children, colleagues, the mayor, district officials and community ministers as we all held hands and gave thanks. We gave thanks to our individual answered prayers as we prayed as one that the rest of our hopes for this community come to fruition.

I have trouble identifying the specific moments that have changed my own life. My memory tends to clump events together. But yesterday, there was a definite shift at Locke. You could feel it in the air, like the air that escapes your lungs after you get inside your car, alone in the middle of a dark and empty lot.

People often say that our students can't learn because of their community. I wish every single Republican - I mean person - with this misconception could have witnessed this community yesterday - crying with relief and gratitude. I wish they could see the 1000 parents who have signed up to help with the Locke Transformation. I wish we could jump to the end of this year and have a 100 percent retention and graduation rate, instead of last year's 33 percent.

It's been a while since I've written anything other than a model five-paragraph essay. So, if you choose, bear with me this year as I record what I hope to be many more answered prayers, and the daily trials attached to them at the new Locke High School.