More About School Climate

Back in 2002 or ‘03, I worked for the nonprofit Building With Books where I got the opportunity to help students at six different high schools to complete community service projects. It was a fantastic experience partly because I got the chance to go inside the schools and work with students on their respective turfs instead of dragging them out to the University like we did during college. I remember classifying the schools; Leadership where the teachers and students all seemed on the same page; Burton which was so giant that everyone was virtually anonymous; Tech where the overachieving students hid in the shadows like mice. And there was DeAnza High School where reminded me most of my own high school experience as a student. Both schools have a bad rap (which I’m reminded every time someone raises their eyebrows upon learning I taught there last year) but both have a ton of programs and teams and activities…I mean, positive things are going at these sites.

Anyway, since returning from Seattle in late 2005, I’ve been able to spend significantly more time at other schools (this time as a district employee) and with that, the chance to interact with teachers as well as students. At DCP there is a master plan of sorts that all of the staff buys into and everyone seems willing to go the extra mile for the students. And they must do that in order to maintain that 99% college admission rate or whatever it is; DCP is such a community asset. At Chavez MS, the staff was divided into small, collaborative families, but that seemed to isolate staff members who belonged to different groups. At Hayward, it seemed everyone was a freelancer where everyone asked or cared how or what the other person was teaching. That sounds harsh, and I can understand how veteran teachers would appreciate that independence and autonomy, but it is a dangerous system because there is no peer pressure to check teachers when they become disengaged from their work.

At Walters, the interactions among teachers and between them and their students remains to be judged because there are still three days before students show up (God, this extra vacation time is BADASS.) but so far the cynicism I’ve detected is alarming.  Our principal and VP are both ambitious and positive, but they don’t seem respected by much of the staff.  It was to the point where teachers were talking over her during the staff meeting and repeatedly leaving and not doing the training tasks she assigned.  And I know that prep days can be inane but there’s still a responsibility to the job (and a paycheck).  The veteran teachers were the perpetrators of this behavior, too.  One of the other new staff and I commiserated about the whole scene and we weren’t impressed by the staff’s imitations of junior high students.  Hopefully professionalism will make a grand entrance once classes finally begin.