A New Year

My new school year begins feeling relaxed. This is the first time I have felt this way in years. Now that we have a new interim superintendent--and now that he has returned ALL subjects to the daily schedule--there is a feeling of normalcy once again. I am so grateful.

The photo to the left shows a pepper tree (similar to a willow tree) being constructed in my classroom. Although not yet finished, I can already tell it is going to be soooo awesome. My artist, Kathi Briefer-Gose, designed and built this beauty. The arts and crafts store in town, Michaels, ran out of the pepper branches, and had no more in their warehouse, so Kathi has friends mailing branches quite similar to the ones you see here. They are coming from outside the city, so we await their arrival via UPS, or the US post office. I will add white lights, too, so it promises to be magical.

I am feeling accomplished after 10 months of continuous work, first with Andrae Gonzales' successful campaign in October/November (for me) of last year, which saw him ascend to the board with more votes than any other candidate. His victory created a new synergy with other board members, and he went to work right away with transparency issues. His diligence paid off, and we are now awaiting a permanent replacement to former superintendent Mike Lingo (he retired early).

Shortly after Andrae got elected, we co-sponsored the screening of a movie titled Race to Nowhere, with my teachers' union, the Bakersfield Elementary Teachers Association, or BETA. It highlights the insanity of the federal law No Child Left Behind, and the crazy things it has done to our public schools. I worked for about a month on this, getting a screening date, a theater (Andrae got that), financial backing (BETA & Andrae's Children First group), and then creating enough buzz to generate interest. Our union president, Brad Barnes, helped by printing color flyers to advertise this event, and they went out, en masse, to our members. Andrae whipped up interest via his Children First group. The results were a full house of interested teachers and community members.

I also served on the Bakersfield City School District report card committee (resulting from trustee, Bill McDougle, questioning the old number system that no parent understood). As a result of my participation on the committee, I brought important issues to the attention of our interim superintendent, D. Kent Ashworth. One being, if we are going to leave science, s. studies, art, music, and PE on the new report cards, we will have to teach them (in many of our low performing schools, these subjects had been omitted from the daily schedule) As a result, he met with district admin, and returned all subjects to our daily schedule. I feel proud, and overjoyed that this fella' acted immediately.

I participated in several Bakersfield Elementary Teachers Association protests, informational pickets, and one grade-in, where about 75 teachers went to the Marketplace, a local outdoor shopping mall, and graded papers to show how much work we do after hours. Our voices were heard, our protest signs were seen, and we added necessary visibility to educational issues.

In much of my spare time, I wrote e-mails and letters to Powers that Be about the dreaded No Child Left Behind Law. My opinions are added to others. We need to continue to chip away at this.

I have attended all but one school board meeting, and video-recorded many parts of the meetings since Andrae was added to the board. Although I have discontinued the video-recording (to give myself some much needed downtime), I will continue to attend the monthly meetings.

Also, I am a part of the District Leadership Team this year. We are shaping a new vision for our district. I am thrilled to be a part of this process.

21 new first graders sit in my classroom, and we survived the first week. I love my new lil babes! It's going to be a great year! God, what an awesome feeling to be happy again. :-)