Dear Admin

Hi Andy Admin,

Thanks for reaching out to inquire if you could ask me a few questions about the school culture at good ole ABT Comprehensive High School. I can clarify any question you, or anyone reading this email, asks–I am always willing to answer questions–that’s how people communicate. Silence helps no one, but power dynamics and personal conflicts often constrain people from speaking. While I prefer the term “goal” to "outcome," I appreciate that you are asking to set specific boundaries. Every conversation in a professional establishment should have set boundaries and specific outcomes they are trying to achieve.

My overarching goal, in any discussion with admin I have, including written ones, is getting those with institutional and systemic power to acknowledge that students are human adolescents, deserving of care and respect, who have so much to offer and can help us in so many ways. Students are the reason everyone in the district has a job. Students are also infuriating, noncompliant, and casually cruel to each other. That is the reason why I do my job–to try and mitigate those impulses, and shift them into more socially acceptable behaviors. That and teach them the importance of metaphors.

At this time, as I have said from the beginning, I do not want to sit down with anyone in administration at this district to discuss the culture at ABTCHS. As I have continued to say, in almost every correspondence I have had with admin this year and previous, unless this is an HR issue, I don’t find meetings productive. They take away from my time to do my job, which is to teach, and they rarely result in a change of behaviors. I would also ask you to consider this question: If your door is open, and no one wants to walk through it, why is that? Does the district have clear boundaries around confidentiality? Not from my perspective. Like I have previously stated, I’m a big supporter of the communal aspect of community, though I do appreciate that there are legal, moral, and ethical reasons for confidentiality.

During this month alone, there have been four committees/focus groups formed or reformed or reactivated, all devoted to the culture at ABTCHS. That seems like a lot of people talking about culture–why do you need me? If I ever believe that joining an administratively created committee will change culture, I have several to choose from. Do any of the committees and focus groups talk to each other? How do you guarantee they are not wasting their time? Do you have clear objectives and goals for your culture building? Can teachers not on committees find these somewhere? On Monday, Vincent VicePrincipal discussed the context of admin creating new academic "houses" through the highly thoughtful use of google forms, but failed to reveal any of the contexts in which the house model is actually meaningful–as a staff, with a little over five months in the academic calendar before we begin something brand new yet again for the third time in as many years, we still have no public answers to WHY it matters that we are in houses. That’s the context teachers are looking for, and it’s what admin consistently fails to provide. Vinny VP referenced physical closeness and the set-up of the new building, but the admin, while scheduling upcoming time in January for the staff to see the new building, failed to reach out to staff BEFORE they scheduled a mandatory meeting which involved the physical setting of the new building as a talking point. We have no context for your contextualizing.

Then two days later we get a mid-week notice with this, three days before Christmas during a pandemic year with rising covid cases, about students that haven’t had an undisrupted year of school or “normal” social interaction in our hallways since 2019 (that’s context): “Some students are under the incorrect impression that it’s a carte blanche opportunity to roam. Needless to say, this is a big problem.” Is it a problem? What are they doing, besides walking? Are they disrupting classes? Destroying property? Do they not have passes? Are they traveling to a teacher’s classroom so they can feel valued and supported? Are they restless and working off steam so they don’t leave the building and get in more trouble? Did they just come out of the hospital and are having problems readjusting while their adjustment counselor is dealing with a crisis with another student? (We have 3 counselors for 1800 kids–to say our counselors are busy is an understatement.) Are they vaping in the bathroom? Dropping condoms full of milk over the balcony? Every student’s situation is unique.

Previous experience tells me that the admin will send out another “Red Alert!!” and tell teachers in some way, as Velma VicePrincipals did during that PD meeting five years ago, to “keep the inmates in their cages.” I will refer back to my goal–to get the admin to treat the students as humans, because they are. One thing I know about the adolescent variety of humans is that if you treat them like criminals, there is a very small but very problematic portion of them that will act like it. Students are keenly aware of how they are treated. That was the original message of those personal texts, and my opinion has not changed. I have also made repeated references to old problems in the new building. I have heard that the new building has lots of “shared, public spaces.” What good are public spaces when the largest segment of “public” in the building - students - can’t use them? Humans never improve if they can’t practice–this goes for academics, sports, skills, and behaviors, like acting appropriately in public, shared spaces.

On a related note, we began this year with Trauma-Informed Teaching PD. Behavior, especially disruptive behavior, can be a sign of trauma. We have to be careful, especially at this time of year, to try and mitigate the harm we cause; even a casual–are you looking forward to the holidays? question can impact children, like my daughter, whose answer to that question this year is, “I was, but then everybody died,” which is a truthful answer. I would ask you to consider her experience before you “lock her down” so she complies. She is one student, but how many are walking around with enormous weights you can’t see? My classroom tends to attract “strangers” during Mask Break as students bring people in to talk to me or to decompress, or just to have some social interaction in a safe space. On Monday, as much as I knew it was going to be painful to some students, I sent away all the “strangers.” I did this because covid can cause lifelong disabilities and death or nothing at all, but I have never really been the gambling sort, and I go with the guarantee of safety every time, especially when it comes to students. So I told every student, truthfully, that they had to be in their C Block classroom because Mask Break lasted 20 minutes and we need as few people breathing infected air as possible. There are other reasons I needed them to go back to their classes, including discipline and social conflicts, but Covid is a reason that avoids judgments about behavior. It is just a thing that is. I would ask you to take that under consideration when composing the 2022 version of the ABTCHS Red Alert!!! bulletin.

If it is necessary for me to reach out and schedule an in-person meeting to discuss culture, I will certainly not hesitate to contact you during school hours. Until then, take care and enjoy your break.

Best,

T. Cher Hope