typical, really

If you weren't aware (and I'm assuming most of you weren't) Saskatoon Public and Regina Public became "partners in learning" at the end of last year.  My understanding was that this partnership was to support both divisions  in their pursuits of renewing their respective collegiates, and the practices that occur there.

You can imagine how dismayed I was, to hear that after visiting with presumably the downtown voices of Collegiate Renewal, all the deputy director took away was that Regina Public was ahead of Saskatoon Public because Saskatoon just built two brand new schools, using the exact same blue prints.  This is 100% true, there is one extra locker in Tommy Douglas compared to Centennial.  Now, I by no means support how the new schools were designed, or that to save money the possibility of making improvements to the original plans for the second school wasn't even considered.  However, the deputy director's statement underlines (at least) two huge misunderstandings about what Collegiate Renewal is.

1)  If, the partnership with Regina was forged as part of our system's plan for Collegiate Renewal, there should be no competition between our divisions.  It's not about who's "further ahead," it should be about using our shared experiences to learn and grow to be better educators.  There has been a large focus about minimizing the competitiveness that can occur between Collegiates in the city so we can focus on collaborating instead of worrying about enrollment numbers.  It seems like a  ridiculous waste of energy to compete with a Division that we don't even share students with when the reality is both Division have extremely large amounts of work to do in regards to updating their practices.

2)  If the deputy director had spent any amount of time with the research on successfully engaging students in their learning, he would be aware that while the physical shell of the school can have an impact on student engagement, it is one of the least cost efficient way to approach engaging students and does not guarantee to engage at all.  If he truly wanted to have a meaningful "competition" with us, I would much prefer he start talking about how much more comfortable his teachers are with new instructional practices, with new assessment models, with responsive programming that respects student needs, with superior professional learning opportunities for staff, essentially with anything a little more substantive than "we're going to build better buildings."  You can have the nicest, most functional, most modern building in the world and if your teachers are still teaching like it is 1851 what good does it do anyone?

Now, I am sure the deputy director thinks in a way that is slightly more advanced that "our buildings are better than theirs," but his comparison undermines all the work teachers here and in Regina are doing.  The programming being put into place in his new building is far more important than the building that houses it.  If our jobs are reduced down to no better than the buildings and equipment we have to work with, the possibilities for improvement are few and our efforts quite futile.  I think I prefer my visions for Collegiate Renewal, and in that respect, you are way behind Mr. Deputy Director.  Luckily, Collegiate Renewal is about learning and growing, so there's a chance you can join us sometime in the (hopefully) near future.

the not quite conculsion

Hoorah!! Marks are in, comments are finished, and it's officially the start of second semester.

Even though they had already negotiated their marks prior to the final, no one in my gr 10 class blew out their final. In fact, only one student was out by over 10% which if compared to a regular classroom and final exam marks almost never happens. I'm not sure if this is because they prepared well knowing they needed to support their chosen mark or if they spent more time during the semester learning concepts so the final seemed easier. Right now I'm so burnt out I'm not sure I care, mostly I'm just relieved this experiment didn't turn into a disaster at the last minute.

Unfortunately this process really highlights the many flaws in my assessment and evaluation practices. Not to mention the very way most of my lessons are constructed and the activities that support. It's big work, overwhelming work, and the frustrating part is "doing little things" as everyone suggests is hard. Doing it all is impossible. So I guess the little things will have to do for now.

An open letter...

To ridiculous co-worker,

I am inquiring as to who exactly you thought would be sympathetic to your incessant bitching today.  You were incredibly vocal at being displeased at having to mark 18, single page (double sided granted) modified math exams.  IT'S FINALS.  Over 90 staff members in our building are  busy marking exams.  The majority of the classes have a minimum of 30 students.  Aside from some sigh-ing, there was no complaining.  You know, because it's their job.  If you did yours, maybe this wouldn't seem like such a burden to you.

Sincerely,

She who DID NOT mark your exams for you (even though you tried to make her)

P.S.  We all also have a lot of meetings to go to at this time of year, so you likely shouldn't complain about that either.

the interviews

It's finally the time where I had to sit down and negotiate a mark with my gr 10 students. The whole idea made me nervous as who knew what they would say. Would they have greatly overinflated perceptions of their abilities? Would they not take it seriously and just randomly pick a number hoping I would do the "hard part" for them?

I'm about halfway done, and neither of the issues have come up. What have come up are different issues, ones that simultaneously make me feel terrible about the whole process and reassure me that though there are a whole lot of changes that need to be made, this is a step in the right direction.

It had been my observation that marks often get in the way of students really focusing on what they did or didn't know. The number was all they would look at when I gave them back a test or assignment. This semester, my gr 10s had a lot more conversations about what they knew, and what they were still working on. In a class of 33, a very minimal number or students shirked the task of "doing more" when they didn't fully understand a concept, the vast majority of students were quite proactive about redoing questions, getting help, and redoing evaluations. I don't think any of these students are functioning at a level where they would not be successful with traditional evaluations. Anticipating this from the beginning, it never occurred to me just how terrible I would feel asking them to numerically quantify a learning process. Especially when I think about how incompetent I felt helping them along.

I have one student who has not been able to give herself a mark. When we first sat down, I could tell she was very uncomfortable, so we talked a little and she eventually told me "I'm an 80-85 student." A large part of her identity is wrapped up somewhere between those 2 numbers. Anything less than an 80 is cause for a mini-identity crisis and she has no real desire to try to push herself. A 90 is nice, but elusive and almost magical. When I tried to get her to look at her portfolio to talk about what she had been able to show mastery of, she was absolutely lost - not even able to identify what were concepts we spent more time on as a starting point.

Another student's performance was all over the place, but he's had many difficulties with exams - making evaluating his performance more difficult since there are discrepancies between what he does during class time, and what he does on exams. He did a whole lot of extra work at home, and I honestly believe he understands more than he has shown. That considered, I'm not sure he can produce work to quite the level he imagines - yet. He too has a large part of his identity wrapped up in these numbers, and having to assign a number based on performance this early, relative to his learning seems like it will cause more harm than create motivation.

Many teachers, parents and students will argue that grades are necessary and difficult as it may be to believe, I used to be a student who would fight for every last percent and always wanted to know the class average. Once you start looking at the alternatives however, it seems the numbers really fall short of communicating much of anything.

evidence

Wondering what I've been up to lately?  Well I've essentially been consumed by two rather large projects.  

The first is my job.  Specifically the task of gather large amounts of evidence to look at with Dr. Anne Davies next Friday.  Learning Leaders and Principals have been assigned this task so we can have a discussion of what quality evidence of change would look like.  While this sounds reasonable, my math background is putting me at odds with the majority of evidence that we have access to.  You see, none of it will reflect improvement over time.  It all shows very lovely snapshots of the fabulous things going on at our school (which is quite valuable), but we do need some way of measuring that there are more fabulous things going on at this time next year.  On the other hand, measuring things just for the sake of measuring them doesn't make much more sense.  So yes, this is what I think about almost all the time.  

The second is wedding planning.  I saved it for second because it is much more fun.  The internet is a deadly trap though - there are so many pretty things to look at that it is easy to lose sight of what's really important to us.  My love of all things paper doesn't help.  However, I find having a budget to be the easiest way to come back down to reality as the thought of spending $1000 on invites, flowers or even a dress makes me a little sick.  Not only is it not budget friendly it just seems so wasteful.  So I spend an equal amount of time trying to negotiate how we can have a wedding that reflects who we are as a couple and lets us spend as much time as possible with our friends and family.

We've also been doing some minor home renos (I have another red wall!).  We might even get our new kitchen in before we get married.  No guarantees about that one though.  The fabulous JJ came to visit, and we will have more company this weekend.  Christmas is almost here and I can't wait for everyone to be home so that I can have a new hobby of staying up too late visiting and trying to cram 6 months of hanging out into 2 weeks.

interviews

This year's parent-teacher interviews were border line fun.  It's my third year at my school, and for many families their second child through my math classroom.  For the most part they come to check in, and just to visit. However, these families have also been watching from the sidelines as I've gone through some pretty significant growth as a teacher.

The only thing I was a little apprehensive about this go round was explaining to all my gr 10 parents how and why I was planning on implementing a no marks classroom.  It was a much easier sell than anticipated.  In fact, almost all of the parents seemed to have no issue whatsoever with the idea.  There was one parent who really reassured me that this is the right thing to be doing.

"So what you're saying is that your class is going to be about learning instead of about marks?"

Exactly sir.  Exactly. 

gulp

So I just took the plunge and decided to run an almost entirely markless math class.  The kids seem into it (shhhh, don't tell them it's more work for them in the long run...) so we'll see how it goes.  It will also be a little bit of work for me to make sure I am keeping up to date in holding kids accountable (not a real strong point for me) so I guess we'll all be working.  Wish me luck!

tales of engagement

I had absolutely no idea how wonderful getting engaged would be.  I mean, I knew it would be a pretty fabulous event in the lives of H and I, but I neglected to imagine just how excited everyone else would be for us.  There was a whole lot of congratulations, hugging, screaming, and even some happy crying going on.  If you combine all that with the whole actually being engaged (!) thing, yeah, pretty awesome.

One group of people who I didn't expect to be excited or even really care was my students.  I knew some of the girls would be excited, but as a whole I just assumed my engagement would go largely unnoticed.  Boy was I wrong.

It was adorable.  My grade 10s had already heard from another teacher, and they entered class Wednesday practically dying of curiosity.  Student after student entered offering congratulations and wanting to know all about it.  Even the boys were totally interested in all the details.  They wanted to know all about H, all about our wedding/life plans (I was continually reminding them that we had just gotten engaged, and no, have not planned out the next 5 years of our life), all about colours, dresses, family, you name it.

At some point in the conversation they asked me if I was going to change my name.  I answered that yes, I was planning on changing my name (groans all around at the prospect of having to call me something different).  So of course they wanted to know what my new name would be.  I told them.  Another questions was asked, and then one boy put up his hand and very sheepishly asked

"Mme, what kind is he?"

I just about fell off my chair laughing, as did the rest of the class.  Several students admitted they were trying to think of a polite way to ask the exact same question.  After I stopped laughing we had a mini history lesson on H's family history, which concluded with another kid exclaiming in an exasperated tone,

"You guys, he's brown!"

I suggested they maybe needed to request some supplementary vocabulary from their history teacher as it's clear it's lacking...  Then I remembered who their history teacher was, and could imagine myself having this exact same conversation with him so, I suppose that explains a lot!

je ne comprends pas

Yesterday I went to pay a little visit to my old stretch math class.  The one that when I think about it it hurts just a little bit that I don't get to teach it.  It was my baby.  Those kids, I miss them.  True I was super frustrated with them at times, but I love them.  Really wanting to understand their learning issues taught me so much about being a better teacher.  (gag, I'm sorry, I'll stop now.)

So I visited.  And observed a lesson by the teacher who is not me.  Typically the same resource teacher who was in with me would be in the class but she had meetings so I opted to fill in.  Since the beginning of the year we have been trying to support the teacher who took over for moi - securing planning time, bringing in experts who really helped me out in the beginning, etc.  I have been very pleasantly surprised with how easy my replacement has been to work with.  Considering all possibilities, we've had an excellent working relationship.

Now, I'm trying to wrap my brain around what I observed and how to best approach the issue, if I can address it at all.  Said teacher is going through notes with the students, but the vocabulary is way out of their league.  The examples and speed are excellent!  The notes, they are making little to no sense for the kids.  Teacher keeps bringing focus back to how they don't need to worry about the notes, about how the examples are what are important, but is still having them copy out the notes.  The ones that make no sense with the accompanying explanations, and will certainly make no sense later without an explanation.  

So after the lesson we are chatting, this that and the other thing.  I decide I should lightly give a little critisism (after of course complimenting the speed and clarity of examples) and point out how the notes were an obstacle for them - not understanding makes many students shut down before they even arrive at the examples.  Teacher replies with "Oh I know, that's why I kept putting emphasis on how they weren't really important."  I didn't know how to tactfully say that they should have been removed then but couldn't think of a way to approach this.  

Today, I am still annoyed.  Seriously, freaking cross them out with an overhead marker.  Tell them not to copy them.  WHATEVER.   I don't understand why you would have them do things that you know are useless, not just useless actually but counter productive.  Last time I checked one of the learning outcomes was not printing practice.

I know I make tons of mistakes in my teaching.  All the time really.  Likely at least once an hour if not more.  I don't understand purposefully doing things in a way that make your job more difficult in the long run though.  

time warp

I was thinking of posting a week one back to school update. Then I realized I've been back at school for 2 minus a day weeks. How have I been back at school for two weeks?

If you haven't talked to me, myself and the two other learning leaders were in charge of organising our entire staff PD day on the second day back to school for teachers. This involved hours of meeting time, not sleeping Sunday night, more hours of work, and a general feeling that I may have been just a teeny weeny bit totally batshit crazy when I applied for/accepted this job. Guess what? Success! Everyone totally loved the day (for real, not in a we're just saying this so you don't cry, kind of way)! So at least our staff doesn't hate us from the get go. That part can happen a little later when we really dig into things. Just in case you're thinking when I say "my staff" I mean a happy little elementary school staff of 30ish people I do not. I mean 110 cynical high school teachers who instinctively roll their eyes when I get up to talk at least 50% of the time. The love, I rarely feel it.

So, as I'm sure you can guess, all the typical back to school things are good. My kids are great, classes are good, blah blah blah. The teaching bit, I still love it. I'm also really gaining some appreciation for the comfort factor that has really let me become a better teacher 6 (6!!) years later. My new job, however, is best described as challenging on steroids. It's a very bipolar position - one minute I'm just so excited about the dialogue and things happening, and the next I am beyond frustrated. There are lots of little pockets of very exciting things going on, they just happen to be buried under administrivia and garbage, not to mention a huge lack of time, clarity and real direction. I just hope the good parts are enough to outweigh the million frustrations as the year progresses.

So that's my first two weeks back. I'd be kidding myself if I thought it was going to settle down any in the weeks to come.

a little perspective

I'll admit it, I lost sight of the big picture.  I have become that teacher.  The one who is just. so. frustrated.  Your lack of effort?  It bothers me.  Please, there are 10 days left.  Could you just learn this last unit so we can all move on?

Friday, I followed a girl into the bathroom.  I wasn't particularly mad, but I did know she was going to the bathroom to text someone and I planned to catch her in the act.  You know, make her feel sheepish, cause some mild embarrassment and confiscate a phone for an hour or two.  Fun teacher stuff. (seriously, I LOVE catching kids with phones and making them live without them for a day.)  I was not expecting her to exit the stall in near hysterics.

What ensued was likely one of the hardest things I've had to deal with yet in my teaching career.  It's certainly something they don't prepare you for in University.  No one tells you what to do when a student comes forth and tells you their friend is being abused, mentally and possibly physically.  That your first reaction will be to want to go find that missing student, to make sure they are okay yourself.  That luckily you are slightly smarter than that and you will simply offer hugs and an escort down to student services because you sure hope they know what to do in such a situation.  That you will feel just as helpless as the teenagers themselves.  That you cannot imagine living with such a burden at 15.

Math seems very unimportant at times like these.  Two of my students have been carrying around this terrible knowledge and feeling of helplessness for 6+ months.  One has been living it.  In my naivete I blamed hormones, spring, turning 16, typical teenage stuff.  It's just all so much bigger than me and my classroom...

la resolution

Student #1 - We let her stay.  It's conditional of course, she will need to redo two units of her Math 10 in resource in order to receive her Math 10 credit in June.  If this doesn't happen, she will return to Math 10 in the fall.  She also needs to be successful in all of our new Math 20 things, or she will not return with us in the fall.  I would like to pretend that this is enough motivation for her get her priorities in order, but such things take time so we shall see.

Student #2 - Has found a home in modified Math until the end of the year.  If things go well for him there (ie. he shows up and is awake) he will be put back into regular programming in the fall.

So that's that, the start of Math 20 has been good times, it's pretty awesome to see the evolution in these little kiddies.

dilemnas

They passed!  They passed!  Well almost all of them did anyway, which leads me to the dilemmas.

Student 1 - Has been with me since grade 9 first semester.  Decided to go the way of the "bad girl."  Insists on getting into control struggles with 90% of the adults she meets.  You know, because she's female and wants to win.  Somehow, the two of us have avoided that and occasionally she's been known to listen to me, connect with me, and some rare times engage in math class.  I fought hard to get her into the stretch program last year, because her second semester math teacher wanted her to fail, to teach her a lesson.  Not that my coworkers would ever enter into such a power trip with a 14 year old or anything...  Anyway, fast forward to this year.  We can't exactly say school has been a top priority for this young lady.  Faced with failing at the end of first semester it was pull your socks up time or face the reality of repeating her grade 10 math.  She met us about halfway.  She redid a few things with her resource teacher, and appeared to be putting in more of an effort.  She was supposed to redo more things then she did, to bring her mark above a passing grade.  This didn't really happen.  She did however, pass the final (or parts of it, enough to merit an overall passing grade).  She didn't pass it by enough to bring her mark up to above a 50%.  Do I

1. fail her?  She had tons of opportunity to pull her mark up, receive support etc etc etc.   We told her she would fail if she didn't do the list of things we provided and she didn't.  It just kills me to fail kids who are capable.  Not to mention ones that I feel a little invested in.
   
2. conditionnally pass her?  She still has resource and I could make her continue to redo things during that time.  This would be alright if we hadn't already given her this option before...  I mean, how many chances do you give someone?  Eventually there needs to be some follow through...
   
3. pass her but make her leave the program?  We could still make her pull up her mark in resource by redoing some key concepts for us and remove her from our program.  She could handle regular programming in the fall, though she certainly runs the risk of failing due to poor choices not lack of intelligence and less understanding then she's received from us.

Student 2 - Is an ESL student from Japan.  Not the smart kind who want 110% in everything.  The kind with an uninvolved family, who runs the street with various gangs.  He has done a huge nothing for us all year.  Typically he sleeps.  Our EA, potentially the most patient lady ever, tries to work with him when he's conscious.  We gave him the benefit of the doubt - he doesn't understand us.  Thanks to his slightly insane girlfriends, his English has improved dramatically and he certainly understands us.  Needless to say, sleeping hasn't been to condusive to him learning any math.  However, by some black voodoo magic, he passed the final.  Not by much, but enough that says he must have learnt something by osmosis, or recalled some previous knowledge somehow.  Now what do I do with him?  The choices look much like above, only with a please stop taking math addendum.  

les nerves

I piloted a new math program at my school this year. We took the regular Math 10 and 20 classes and stretched them out over three semesters (instead of the usual two). It's nothing revolutionary, and is actually happening all over both systems here in different shapes and forms. However, we really tried to go the extra mile and approach learning math from all different angles, instead of just giving the kids more time to continue to not understand things. This class has certainly had it's high and it's low points, but all in all it has been just an awesome experience watching struggling learners have success at something they totally hate.

That in itself was something of an accomplishment. And no, of course they didn't all succeed all of the time. But, attitudes have changed, work habits have improved, and every student has received good marks on different units. (yay us!)

Now, back to reality. We have to wind up the Math 10 course. We have to have a final. There is nothing more scary to these kids then a final exam. It's one last chance to mess everything up. So we've broken it up, used all sorts of memory recall aids, spent lots of time coaching them on how to get through it as best they possibly can. I'm still feeling very nervous for them. I want them to do well, and I know they can do well, but getting past this whole "I can't remember ANYTHING!" mentality has been all but impossible.

I think we will all be pretty happy come Tuesday and the start of Math 20...

all worth it

Being a teacher beats you down. Students are regularly apathetic, frustrating and lazy balls of teenage hormones. I connect with these little people on a personal level everyday, and that is great and can be quite rewarding. However, there is always the underlying "but they still don't get it!" They don't quite see the potential that I see, and have no idea how to go about achieving it.

But then they do. Today a student I taught for the last three semesters, who was nothing short of brilliant, who I had the most interesting conversations with, who just would not do homework and assignments, and who's mark hovered around a 50% the entire time I taught him came to see me. He came to share that he had just received his average for his current math class - and it was an 80%! This is nothing short of miraculous for a student who is truly gifted but just could not be bothered to put his current book down to see what unit we were studying.

It makes all the frustration worth it to know that these little people care enough to share their successes. To know that they do eventually sort out how to balance the different parts of their lives without compromising what they really consider to be important. Even better when they come let me know so I can celebrate with them!

wow

Turns out I might not be quite as at odds with the universe as it feels some days.  Remember my wants post from not too far back?  Well a month and a half later here's the update.

I want my arm to stop hurting.

My shingles cleared up in what could likely be considered record time if family history is any indicator to how much you should suffer.  The rash is still visible, but I don't think there will be any scarring.  Yay!

I want my Pom girls to do okay tomorrow in their first performance.

They did okay.  The season is now over, and it was an okay one.  I'm not willing to give it more than okay, cause, well, I re experienced what being a teenage girl is all about (and it's not pretty...).  I'm pretty happy to be finished for the year, but am going back for round two next year.

I want Buns to get the job at my school cause she'd be awesome and a perfect fit.

She did get the job, and she is a perfect fit.  I love working with her (we co-teach a class) and know that she is doing a super job everywhere else she works.  I'm also pretty pumped I've got another person on staff to back my crazy proposals.  

I want you all to put yourselves on the Bone Marrow registry.

I don't know, did you do this?  Canada has just switched to the super easy cheek swab method so if you just couldn't make time to go in and give a tiny vial of blood now you have no excuse.  They send you the kit, you swab and send it back.  Do it.

Most importantly I want Erica to be well, to know we're thinking of her, to find a donor - life is so f'ing unfair to the most amazing people.

SHE'S FOUND A MATCH!  An imperfect one, but a viable donor.  I won't lie, I cried with happiness when I found out while watching this.  Now there's quite a few things that need to happen before the transplant and let's all really really really hope it all goes perfectly.

I also got a few wonderful things that weren't on my wants list, but more on that soon.

really now?

Overheard by the phone by the front entryway, right after the beginning of first period:

"No, I guess I like totally don't have school today."

Is this all the imagination we're requiring of our youth?

totally floored

The original desire to win a pizza party, followed by the desire to be the winning class, has somehow lead to my class raising over $500 for the foodbank this Christmas. My class alone raised what the entire school set as its goal this year. The generosity of these 25 students is totally amazing, especially since I know for almost all of them it was their own money they donated.

already?

Seriously, how is it already November? The good news about this must be that Christmas will be here before I've really registered that's it's November.

Things are still just as crazy as previously mentioned. Last week, while running late, I even managed to have a shower and not wash my hair. For those of you who don't know about my self-cleaning policies, on most days this is the only purpose of even having a shower. So by 7:45am, I'd already failed in one of my more important daily goals. Of course, there was no real way to rectify this situation until 6:30pm. Gross.

This is also the time of year when I leave the house in the dark and don't get home until it is dark. If my classroom didn't have windows I could viably look into becoming a vampire and have it not affect my daily routine in the least. This would simplify the difficulty I seem to have finding quick protein sources for one.

Have I mentioned most of my students are grade 10s? Typically lame at the best of times, entering into these thankless weeks before Christmas really brings out the best in them. I mean, currently I'm expecting them to breath AND stay awake at the same time. I know, my expectations, they are too much.

How many days til Christmas?

happy coming out month!

I've been meaning to post about this for a week now, but I have literally been so angry at the whole situation that it just hasn't been possible.

In case you were unaware, October is international coming out month. Now, I don't really know why (and haven't really bothered to look into it too much either...) but regardless, coming out month. My GSA, being the crazy awesome group they are decided my school should celebrate coming out month. True, they didn't ask the school's permission, but who doesn't love a celebration? For the first of the month the decorated the hallways - rather sparsely, it is a huge school - with posters and set up our closet. The closet says "closets are for clothes" and everyday of the month another celebrity "comes out." Huge kudos to the kids in our building - our posters have remained up and our closet remains intact.

Imagine our surprise, when last week, one of our APs approaches my co-advisor with a few concerns. It appears he has had a few complaints from other staff members about the "offensive" posters the GSA has up. Not really wanting to get into this discussion, she politely asked him to our meeting, which just happened to be at noon that day. My co-advisor is a force to be reckoned with so I'm sure he figured that would be a much simpler way to attain his goal.

Our meeting was already underway by the time he decided to grace us with his presence. The girls quickly wrapped up whatever business we were tending to so that our very busy AP could get back to whatever it is APs do. It all went downhill after he stood up. You see, because after he stood up, he opened his mouth. As often happens, words came out. He opened with a long list of people he knew. This is never a good sign, the simultaneous assertion of importance and confirmation of "common allies." He was searching so deep for these common allies that he was bringing out the siblings of my co-advisor. I could barely contain myself from rolling my eyes.

He then launched into full on "it's not me but" mode. He stated that a couple teachers had sought him out to tell him that they found two of our posters offensive. That we needed to be respectful of people of different mind sets then ours. That some people who are not homophobic might take offense to the fact that we are saying there are homophobic people in our school. When he was done talking, there was silence. For a few seconds I was very concerned none of the students were going to be able to say anything, and I was already fuming angry at this man and his ridiculous claims. So I not so respectfully told him, and the room, that those people were ignorant and it was their choice to be mis-interpreting what our group was saying and doing.

Almost as soon as I opened my mouth, the hands started creeping up. It was almost as if they needed a little push, just an "it's okay, we are not going to let this man come in here and undo what we are doing." Never in my life have I been prouder of a group of students. They were polite, they were articulate, they were logical, they were all of the things we worry young people won't be. Our poor AP didn't see it coming. He was completely unprepared to be dealt with in this way. So he started digging himself a hole. A large hole. He gave these kids more ammunition then they ever could have hoped for. Some gems include

• we don't want to encourage the "gay lifestyle"
• he knows gay people
• we don't put up posters about being Christian or Muslim (when really, we do, we have an ISCF)
• well, I had to answer in an "old school" kind of way (when asked how he responded to the complainers)
  

On top of this, he keeps falling back on his argument that he's not telling them they need to do anything, he's not asking us to take down our posters, he really just wanted to come and let us know that he had had two complaints. It is becoming more and more obvious he has no reason to be at our meeting. The kids are far too polite to point this out. So me - now with permanent contract! - asks him flat out "So, Mr. AP, this is a building of 1500 people. We have over 100 staff members. You keep telling us that you have only had 2 people approach you with concerns, and that you aren't asking us to take down our posters. So what are you doing here?" He couldn't answer. There was time for a few last questions and remarks before lunch was over.

I was shaking I was so mad. This man is supposed to be a leader in our school. This man is supposed to set aside his personal beliefs and advocate for students. Instead, he is a bully. A passive aggressive bully. I cannot believe he honestly thought he would walk into that room and magically "deal" with the GSA and their rainbow posters, just in time for Parent-Teacher interviews I might add. It is his own fault, that he never even dreamed this story could have another ending. He has stirred something in these kids that was likely dormant in most of them. You see, until now, it was all fun. Sure, the issues were out there, and there was work to do in raising awareness in our school. But making positive space posters, holding a day of silence, having coffee with other GSAs, bake sales, marching in the pride parade, etc. it was all fun because most of these kids had never really seen what the ugly two faced beast of homophobia looks like in person. He made it personal. He made them see that there is a fight here, and instead of beating them down like he was hoping to, he wound them up.

I'm not sure he's realized his mistake quite yet. But he might by the end of the year when instead of carving themselves a little niche in the school the GSA has permeated the very fabric that it is made of.