A Reflection on Centinela Valley

I have pondered many things since I survived long-term subbing in Centinela Valley Union High School District.

For a teacher who survived, nay thrived (at least for a year in South Gate), I could not understand why I struggled like a first-year teacher in those schools. It cannot be the students -- exclusively. As a recently editorial in the Wall Street Journal related, there is no one reform that will improve public education. Still, I knew that somethings, many things were wrong.

I took some comfort, though, in knowing that I was not the only teacher struggling just to get by. One mature lady working at the same high school as I, a pro with 37-year of urban education experience, was so frustrated with one class, she did not know what to do. Still, misery in company does not diminish misery or halve sorrow, as the Swedish proverb suggests.

I have never endured so much use and abuse and misuse in all my life. I would not repeat the experience for all the TV's in Fox Hills, but I cannot say that I did not learning anything for the experience, either. In fact, I realized what I was really made of, what the boundaries have to be in order for a teacher to succeed with students, no matter what their background.

What were the issues, exactly? At one school, I stepped in at the last minute after two other teachers had taught the class -- and this was only after the first week of school. For one thing, the students and I never knew if I was going to be the full-time teacher or not. Only months later did I realize how often students in that school, and in many school districts, have suffered with one long-term substitute after another. No wonder most students get jaded and uncooperative. Not to mention the undermining, corrosive element for a teacher who cannot command respect from students who assume that I would be there one day, then gone the next.

Administrators seem unable to keep up with the messy politics that pervade local schools. From fear of lawsuits, ongoing drug use, and irate parents who scream "Racism!, administrators seem cowed down by the worst of circumstances. Beyond that, an insistence on standardized testing over student achievement has done in the best of teachers, many of whom feel pressured to get through the book instead of getting through to the student.

Lack of preparation, lack of will, lack of insight, lack of understanding -- I had these in spades when covering a long-term assignment that year. You really have to know who you are, an idea of who you are, what you want, and what you want to do to get it. Life is not struggle, it is receive or retreat. Perhaps a principled retreat in due time would have better served the students, the school, and myself in that situation.

Still, I am pleased to run into students from the two local schools where I subbed long-term, students who told me that they miss me, that the other teacher was not as good as me, that they had a lot of fun. One of the students whom I had the most trouble with even shook my hand as soon as I saw him. Another wondered if I still remembered him. Then there was the course of enthusiasm from those who were gladly surprised to see me again.

I had to learn something else that day, too: not to take things to personally, and not to trust the negative rhetoric that runs through my head sometimes. We can be our own worst persecutors, permitting ourselves to believe the worst about ourselves in the face of certain success or acceptable achievement.