9/30

            The Ladson-Billings read is a reiteration of what we’ve learned since the start of our journey. What is incredible to me  is that I have yet to see these ideologies in action and I desperately want to. What made me cringe as I was reading this text is the voice of one of my students who always complains that the texts we read in class are too boring and she has a hard time connecting with them. I find myself reprimanding her for these outbursts out of respect for my CT who finds nothing wrong with the texts, although I feel the same way she does. She says that she uses these texts because they resemble what they will see on the STAAR and wants them to be prepared. I get that. However, it seems that the scope of these students’ education is limited to the even more limiting concepts that the STAAR tests them on.

            As I listen to the teachers come up with these thoughtless lesson plans; I wonder if they would use those same plans for their children. And honestly I don’t think so. The teachers here really do not see these kids as capable human beings and that is really frustrating. They say terrible things about them too. The other day one of the first year teachers on my team decided to speak to me for the first time in a month. And in that conversation I learned that I did not care to have any more conversations with him, and it was probably a good thing that he had been pretending I was invisible. He basically told me that this 9^th grade bunch is stupid. I guess he thought that I would be okay with that statement because it is a great representation of what I hear all the time from the professional at this school.

            Overall, I wish that I could work with teachers who demonstrate some of these values or who at least attempt. Often, when I try to make the lessons relevant to the students or bring in what I feel supports the work of people like Ladson-Billings, I feels self conscious because I feel that it is so different from what  my colleagues are doing.