A Riot, Not a Protest

Monday. When I arrived at school, Ms. S told me all about an impromptu meeting the staff had had that morning to discuss a walk out that the students were supposedly going to hold. 

Out of the loop again. No surprise. 

Fourth period. Two students showed up. Out of a class of seven. (It's special ed. Smaller classes.) 

At about the last half hour of class, a third student showed up with a late pass. Emilio had gone to the protest. And... it didn't go well. 

It started out on campus. Administration had opened the gym to the protestors. But then they were going to march on city hall. I think. Emilio wasn't terribly clear on the plan. He was clear on the gates being open, so those that chose to go could go. 

(The gates are usually closed and locked during the school day.)

They walked for miles. Emilio described where they went, and I recognized the locations. I've driven there. Walking from campus? It was a hike.

But sadly, it didn't go well. Fights broke out. There were weapons. Emilio told of a girl who got heat stroke. He got her water. He was upset that no one else seemed to notice her distress. 

Then the police showed up. They had the choice of going back to school or being arrested. Emilio chose to go back to school. 

As he was telling the story, Tatum, who had not joined the protest, responded. At the end of the story, she summed it up thusly: "That was not a protest. That was a riot."

Sadly, I think she was right.

What was this all about? Immigration. The school is very heavily Latino. The threats of ICE raids hits them hard. 

(Tatum made a snarky comment about Mexicans. She's a proud Filipino.) 

Anyway, not a lot of graphing happened that day. (This is one of the math periods as opposed to the history classes.) 

Protest Fail

Last week was spring break. As is my custom, I saved my subbing posts from the week before the break to post the week we're back in school. 

Wednesday. 11:59 AM.

The bell rang to begin fourth period freshman geography. But several students were hovering in the doorway. 

It was the third day of a four day assignment, and while I had many tardies, this was unusual. What was going on?

A student showed me a post from social media. (Instagram? I didn't get a close look.) It was a graphic for a student walkout at noon.

(I hadn't heard anything about this before that moment, but I later heard about it on the evening news. Here's a website explaining the plan. And here's an article talking about how it went down elsewhere.)

Ah. That made sense. They were going to walk out. Okay, then.

But... A couple of them were unsure what to do. And I had one student wanting to be marked present even though he was planning to walk out. 

Ah, freshmen...

I had no problem with them protesting. But I wasn't marking students present who weren't in class. 

(It was the timing that sucked. If class started five minutes earlier, I would have had time to take roll. Five minutes later and they wouldn't have come to class.)

It was like they wanted permission to leave. I couldn't give that. I wasn't going to object, but I wasn't going to encourage it, either. (It was a protest. The whole point was them going against what they were supposed to be doing.) 

A bunch of them left. Well, not a bunch. Less than one-fourth of the class. 

And... 

I mean, it wasn't like they were truly missing anything. They were having a "workshop day" where they were completing assignments for the unit they were working on. They knew this. They had asked me the day before, and I had confirmed that was the assignment. 

Five minutes later, three students returned. Then another two a bit later. Then a bit after that, another two.

Apparently, this "protest" wasn't much of a protest. It was a bunch of students aimlessly walking around campus. The freshmen got bored and came back to class. 

Deep sigh. What a great opportunity wasted. 

(Someone should have taken the lead. They've done this sort of thing before at the school.)

Today's A to Z Challenge post brought to you by the letter

French to Me

Seventh grade English. It was a Friday, so of course there weren't enough subs to go around. I was covering a math class for the rest of the day, but for fourth period, I ran across campus to cover this class.

As they were getting seated, I perused the lesson plans. I hurriedly passed things out because apparently they had a test, and we were late getting started.

(This is normal for covering an extra period. It takes security a while to get to the room to open the door. And then it takes me a bit to get up to speed while they settle in.)

I passed out the test. And they balked.

"It's in French..."

From what I could gather, they'd been studying how to figure out unfamiliar words using context clues. And by "gather", I mean that on the teacher's desk were papers indicating that they had been going over this concept for at least a couple days (if not longer).

Then, the instructions on the paper they had in front of them clearly stated that while the passage was in French, they should be able to figure out what information the questions were asking for.

(But nobody ever reads the directions, so...)

I mean, the first question asked how old the person in the passage was, and in the first sentence was the number 16. Come on! That's kinda obvious.

I read the instructions to them. I read the teacher's instructions to them. Then I focused on getting them silent as this was a test.

"But he speaks French."

The students pointed out a boy in the second row.

The area we live in, it's likely there are students who speak Spanish. There are various other languages that they may speak at home as well, considering the mix of ethnicities in the area. (Off the top of my head, I would not be surprised at Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, or Arabic. I know of one boy who speaks Russian.) While I would not expect French, it's not out of the question.

So, I did the only thing I could do. I turned to the boy.

"This will be really easy for you," I said.

And I made a note of this for the teacher.

As for the rest of them... It was a simple passage asking for simple information. And if they'd been studying context clues, it should not have been beyond them to figure out the questions which were in English.

But seventh graders react first and then think... Well, not second. Fifth or sixth, really.

Starting Monday, I'll be doing the A to Z Challenge. But you likely won't notice the difference.

The Right Not to Protest

You may have heard that last week there was a little national walkout (#NationalWalkoutDay)...

All week I covered a chemistry class (well, Tuesday through Friday). 10 AM occurred just after the start of third period.

We had just finished correcting their homework. I looked at the clock. It was nearly 10 AM. Not enough time to start their quiz before, so I hit pause on the lesson. Whoosh. The students all got up and left...

Well, not everyone.

"I'm going to stay and do my homework."

One boy told this to his friend. The friend was urging him to go. It wasn't like he was going to miss anything as practically the whole class had gone.

They argued. But the boy didn't really want to go.

I opened my mouth to urge the boy to go. This was one of those moments where someone can stand up for what's right. As the school was supportive of the walkout, it wasn't like there was going to be any blowback for him going.

But I realized that just as the rest of the class wanted to go, he didn't. And pushing him to go when he didn't want to was as bad as keeping kiddos in class when they felt it was important to walk out.

So, I said if he wanted to stay, he could stay.

In the end, three students remained in class (out of a class of twenty). I don't know why they stayed in. It wasn't my business, really.

From the sounds of it, the majority of the school walked out. They returned shortly. And once they were all back, I gave the class their quiz. After, we went on with the rest of the lesson. (They quiz took them five minutes.)

I kind of wanted to see the walkout, so I was sad to have to remain in class. But then again, I've been working through a cold, so it was nice to sit and rest for a bit.

How did the walkouts go where you are?