For Bob

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For an earthquake safety drill we have to duck and cover.  When I point it out, my students are astonished by the amount of gum stuck under our desks. We practice “It’s gross!”  “It’s icky!”  “It’s disgusting!”  When the bell rings we crawl out from under the tables and I don a yellow hardhat, carry a sign with my room number and march students to the parking lot.  There’s an orange vest somewhere in my classroom but I don’t spend a lot of time looking for it.  An administrator doesn’t admonish me for not wearing the vest but does point out that my bra strap is showing, the result, I'm certain, of crawling under a gum laden table. 

  

I show my class some drop-and-cover videos and we talk about earthquake kits.  I print bilingual forms from the Red Cross to help families strategize and prepare for a disaster.   I show them my portable cell phone charger and tell them to keep comfortable shoes and cash in their cars.  We talk about water purification and moving beds away from windows.  

“Buy a battery-operated radio,” I implore them.  I show them the map of all the California fault-lines and aver forcefully that an earthquake is inevitable.   

At Casamurphy we usually can’t find a flashlight.  I’m not a big water drinker so I doubt that there’s much on hand.  Our bed is directly adjacent to two large windows.  My car holds about 80 cents in parking change.  There was a screw up from Amazon Fresh and I received twelve cans of tuna instead of the single one I’d ordered, so at least there’s that.  And I do know where the can-opener is. 

As hypocrisy seems to be the theme of the week. (Not that it hasn’t been a theme since the 1960s, but I am having a particularly banner week.)  I am to present a workshop for ESL teachers at a conference. The title is: Refresh and Reboot--How do we make as warm a place for ourselves as we strive to create in the classroom. This ESL teacher is addicted to broadcast and online news.  Not to mention tobacco.  Most of my non-teaching or planning-to-teach time is spent in a prone position switching from CNN to MSNBC and Huffington Post to Politico.  Or, smoking on the front porch. 

In addition to the fun earthquake drill, it is a testing week.  As is next week.  Actually, most weeks.  The tests are not, as my dementia plague mother said, in an outdoor voice, at a crowded theater during the opening electrocution scene of Slumdog Millionaire, "not my cup of tea."  (I thought it was a Bollywood dance film.)  The content isn’t up to date.  There are check and message writing questions and the booklet itself is tacky but not quite enough so to make it quaint. The practice materials, with the exception of an online study by district-licensed Burlington English, are mostly useless. 

My students say that they prefer the high-end videogame-like activities on Burlington.  Literally, sort of like Bartleby the Scrivener, as they file out, my students are barred at the door until they tell me “I prefer Schoology,” or “I prefer worksheets, or the highly more popular, “I prefer "Burlington.” 

Schoology is a districtwide communication system with a function for teachers to create digital assignments and assign them for students to practice on their phones.  Unfortunately, Schoology might take a prize for the most counter-intuitive platform ever created.  The student log-ins and passwords are very long and filled with punctuation.  The site is confusing to navigate and very clunky for making lessons. 

Most of my students have Burlington on their phones and in the morning, I use it on the classroom computers.  Many of my a.m. students, including 85-year-old Celia, have never held a mouse.  The Burlington site is so well designed that students who have never operated a computer are able to figure it out instantly.   

I haven’t bothered with Schoology at my morning branch site but there are six computers in the room.  We use the Ventures textbook.  It doesn’t appeal to me aesthetically but there are several features that I like.  Each chapter is accompanied by printable worksheets designed for three different levels of ability.  There are also printable collaborative activities, which I use.  I was however spending a lot of time cutting up many squares or strips of paper.  The instructions say to have the students cut them up but if they do that, they already know the order of the conversation or vocabulary matches. Now I try to keep  ahead on copying and I get students to cut stuff up about a week before it’s to be used. 

The digital component is called Ventures Arcade.  It’s handsome and there is a good variety of activities.  Arcade aligns completely to the units in the book.  Say I’ve covered Unit 3, section B, the digital corollary only has about 5 minutes of activity, which doesn’t really merit logging on to the computer.  Students continue past what we’ve covered in the book and grow confused and frustrated.  It is best used at the end of a unit, so infrequently. Based on the most recent information I have (not super recent) there is no Ventures Arcade application for cellphone.  

My morning class is dinky and far less energetic than my evening class.  My morning ladies ask me about the evening class.  “You like it better.  Right?”  “No, of course not!” I lie.   It occurs to me that most of these women are stuck at home, taking care of kids.  They whisper and giggle in warm sorority during our break, while I urge them to partake heartily of all the student breakfast leftovers.  While they lack the spirited curiosity of my evening students, they teem with empathy and sensitivity.  While I love the raucous nighters, I am the teacher and they are the students.  My morning ladies don’t really have the liberty to explore their environs but unlike my night folks, they are curious about me.    And they very much enjoy the Youtube video about making French toast with stale bread.  Sometimes it is difficult to figure out managing a small number of students at vastly different levels of proficiency, but they are patient if a lesson goes awry and it is always cozy. 

This week it’s the CASAS reading test, which is administered three times during the school year. Test answers are recorded by students on a bubble-in form.  There is a completely different column for practice questions, and it is difficult to convey to beginning students that the practice questions are recorded on a completely different part of the form.  The form is recently modified.  “Non-binary” is a new selection.  Cool.  But couldn’t they have gotten rid of some of the confusing junk while the form was being revised? 

Carmen, wan and shaking slightly, approaches my desk. She’s applied for MediCal.  She has a letter from DPSS with instructions in about seven different languages.  They are difficult to comprehend in the two in which I am familiar.  I don’t know about the others.  I am able to suss out that she’s been issued a case number and that there is a number to call for a status check.  Her landlady has told her that the letter means that she’s being deported. Perhaps she wants Carmen to move out of a rent-controlled apartment.  I assure Carmen that Social Services is separate from Immigration.  We both need a Kleenex.  I explain to the students that while the textbook teaches the word “tissue,” most Americans use the brand name. 

Marvin tells me he’s struggling with Charles Bukowski in English and I turn up my nose. He is relieved that he doesn’t have to like him.  I suggest that if he has a penchant for great literature, at this point, as a very high achieving Level 1 student, he is better off reading in Spanish and waiting a bit on the American canon.  I suggest Roberto Bolono and he is happy with this choice. Marvin is my go-to guy.  "Erase the board."  "Help Eva."  "Hand out these books." He lopes out and I yell at him, “Where are you going?  Make sure that the iPads are plugged in." I reward duties performed with the name of a band that I think he’ll like.  He’d gotten my attention on the first night, arriving in a Joy Division t-shirt.  I haven’t conveyed to him the extent to which he’s alleviated my morass.  I’ve been on an “all-news, all the time”/Camel non-filter diet since the 2016 election and have deprived myself of music.  Now, the challenge of finding artists that Marvin approves of reopens this avenue of pure pleasure. 

For the first time, Marvin is absent.  No big deal but then, he misses a second night.  I text him. “You ok?”  Radio silence.  My first thought is ICE.  Marvin has no idea of the extent to which my psychic wellbeing depends lately on finding tunes for him.  The next day I text him half a dozen question marks.  I am tempted to phone him but fear that would seem too stalky.  Finally, he texts me, “I’m ok.  Just moving.”  He returns to class in time for the CASAS test. 

I make students put their finger on the practice column and walk around the room to make sure that they understand, practice questions are on one side, real questions are on the other.  I don’t need to bother checking Marvin out.  He’s in the middle of Bolano’s 2666 after all.   Marvin turns in his bubbled form, and I notice that he’s written in numbers by hand.  I interpret this as some sort of fooling-around-with- the-boring-test gesture until he fesses up that he’s completed the practice questions in the wrong column.  “The computer isn’t going to get it,” I explain and make him take a picture, erase the whole test and re-bubble his answers in the correct spot.  He grudgingly complies and I give him a twofer of Steely Dan (Aja and Can’t Buy a Cheap Thrill) which I suspect are up his alley.   

This post is dedicated to my best friend, Bob Harper, who turns seven years older than I am on the day this will publish.  Bob is one of California's best advocates for adult education.  I met him at my first teaching gig a zillion years ago.    Only due to his tutelage of my eldest son, is Bob displaced as the designated creator of my funeral mix tape.  I was fortunate to meet him at what he claims is the last CCAE conference he'll attend and was very proud to introduced to scads of admirers as his best friend.  Happy 10-26

Illustration-Paula Rego, 1969 Sit

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