the ocean always dreamed blue dreams

Ah, February, stuck with the onerous task of being the dreariest month of all, having only a trumped-up holiday, bedecked with tawdry frippery, to decorate it.

It's dreary at work, too. This is the month during which we pursue, with all the fanaticism of a zealot, the ability of our students to...read and write, in order to pass a test of minimum skills. We've got to succeed, all of us, kids and teachers alike, so we've been told, this year and for the last three, that if we don't we may lose our jobs, and the kids may not graduate. For our students, many of whom are LEP (Limited English Proficiency) the idea that they may not graduate is just too far away to have any real meaning.

Many do not read at grade level, so mastering the basic skills is tricky and challengeing. By the end of the month they are tired of endless classes designed to help them pass the test, of being pulled out and tutored so they can pass the test, of going to afterschool tutoring so they can pass the test. We are all weary at that point. Last year we didn't meet the AYP by only two students. At first we were told we had met the standard. But after a closer scrutiny of our statistics, it was discovered that we had not. A crushing discovery, to say the least.

That's the national standard. Apparently there's a state one, too, and they are different, so it's confusing. Why can't they be the same? It almost seems like they don't want us to succeed. But that couldn't be, could it?

So anyway, last week we worked on adding sensory details to our writing. One of the things they have to do on the test is write an essay. They don't specify what kind, and the prompts are extremely general, so we usually steer them toward a personal narrative.

On this day we read Thoreau's "A Young Kitten" and picked over the story looking for sensory details of sight, hearing, and touch. After we did that they were to fill out a graphic organizer where they wrote down sensory details they could use in an essay they would write about a puppy. The two classes that had this lesson reacted so differently. In the first class, I googled 'puppy' images, but they weren't satisfied with any of the choices. They laughed at the wrinkles of the the shar pei pup, the beagle was too cute, and so on. "Put in pit bull, Miss," they called. "OK, but I warn you that they'll be cute, too, because they're puppies," I said. I put in "pit bull puppies" and found this little charmer:







which they grudgingly agreed to write about. At least they wrote.

My other class, on the other hand, liked this picture:






One wrote of his dog, Smiley, the other included me, as the owner of Pablito. One kid, who worked only rarely last semester, said, "Look, Miss, I'm doing my work." He sounded a little amazed. It was easier for him to write about the puppy. His tutor told me that when he had to write in her class, he wondered why the people who wrote the test had to "get all up in his business." So at least writing about the puppy took the heat off him, if only momentarily.

And so it goes. I hope you are all glad to know that the wheels of education were turning in our little corner of the world, if somewhat creakily and rustily.

I'll close with my ode (if such it can be called) to February. At least March will soon be on the horizon, huffing and puffing.

February herald
unriven gray with clouds like patchy mold
under this shroud, the children at play do not seem to gambol,
much less the clouds; emerald
cat eyes wait to peek from tree limbs; meanwhile, hopes congeal
my thoughts sliver on the ice, slice coherent
silver melodies into apparent
golden dice; beware, dawn has died and the father's sins reveal

Qimissung