it shows what kind of xanga user i am that i am using the week before school starts to blog about graduation, but, well, whatever. coincidentally (sort of), graduation day for both my current school and my original tfa-placement school were on the same day. luckily, one was in the morning and one was in the afternoon so i had the opportunity to see both, and the day was very "best of graduations, worst of graduations." only not really.

the morning one was my current school, a highly successful magnet school in baltimore with top-10-in-maryland test scores, an IB program and a rich 160+ year history. the graduation was in the meyerhoff symphony hall and i (and the other faculty) sat in the luxury boxes overlooking the proceedings, wearing our caps and gowns. the 100+ member school band performed pomp and circumstance on stage and there were two selections from the 75-person choir, fresh back from their class field trip earlier in the year when they sang at carnegie hall. after listening to two guest speakers (one an alumn from the class of 1930-something, the other a school board member) as each of the 200 or so graduating seniors walked across the stage, a huge projector displayed their class photo and what college they were going to, with some going to the best schools in the country (2 of the top 5 in the class were going to MIT, i don't remember the specifics of the others). et cetera.

the afternoon one was where i worked as a tfa corps member in my first two years of teaching. you can learn more about the school here: http://tinyurl.com/aamttv. their graduation was held in a run down converted high school auditorium in what is now a baltimore city professional development center. this was the second graduating class from this school and the first class that was at the school for all 4 years (the previous class had  begun their freshman year as part of a mega-school that got divided up, creating this school when they were sophomores). there were about 45 graduating seniors, only about 35 of which were there. pomp and circumstance was played on a cd player with a microphone being held up to it. the only speaker was the principal and the senior class president and the valedictorian. the teachers sat in the audience with everyone else. those students who had gotten into college had mostly gotten into local community colleges and some weren't even going because of expense. et cetera.

of course, this wouldn't be a tfa-teachers story if it wasn't painfully obvious which one was more touching, more moving, and more important to me. of course it was the original school that made me tear up as students walked across the stage. my classes last year were mostly seniors, so most of my new-school students were the ones graduating, and of course i was happy for them and excited for them, but it wasn't the same as seeing the other class - the first group of kids i taught in my first year - graduate. they were so happy and perhaps a little surprised that i came, and even the kids who had given me a hard time were proud for me to be there. there was C.I., the valedictorian, who had gotten into georgetown and hopkins and was going to the honors college at maryland. there was B.P., who was the student who started the games club with me who immediately invited me to his family's cookout afterwards. C.S., who once walked out of my class when i yelled at him and i followed him down the hall, kicking lockers because i was so mad. L.K., who cried when i wouldn't change her grade so she could play sports. the student i was most happy to see was L.G., whom i thought at one point was the person wasting more talent than anyone else at the school, who came to class about 25% of the time and would get in gang fights with girls and whom i thought had dropped out when i didn't see her for months at school the year after she had my class. yup, L.G. was not only graduating but had earned a full scholarship to a local junior college.

i hate that this is such a ridiculously cliched and sappy post, it wasn't really meant to be. nor was it meant to point out some sort of obvious discrepancy among the haves and the have nots in public education. and i probably wouldn't have even written this if the graduations weren't on the same day, highlighting the differences. really, i think that what it shows is that i can't stay at my current school for very long without something changing. look for an update on this continuing story in february or so.

thoughts on the summer to come sometime...probably around new year's, haha.

see you soon, ttom.

it's been so long and xanga has changed so much that i couldn't even figure out how to add a new blog post. but here it is.

you know how when you haven't talked to an old friend for a long time, you don't call them because you know that whatever conversation you'll have with them couldn't do the conversation you owe them justice? well, replace "old friend" with "xanga" and replace "call them" with "blog on it" and you'll get how i've felt about upkeeping this here thing.

so first, the overall update:
i finished my tfa commitment. two years teaching high school math in southwest baltimore. i also finished a masters degree in the art of teaching from johns hopkins. who woulda thought? the best thing i can say about the masters degree is that now i have one. the second best thing is that it was free (paid for almost entirely by baltimore city with a little bit covered by americorps). there is no third best thing to say about it.

at the end of my 2nd year of teaching, for some complicated political reasons that would be too detailed to get into here and now, i was allowed/asked to transfer to another school. after looking around at a few schools, i was lucky enough to land a job teaching at a public magnet school in baltimore city. i don't want this page to come up when you google search it, so i'll spell the name backwards here: "egelloc ytic eromitlab" read the whole thing backwards. we have a sweet wikipedia page which you can check out, too. it's the third oldest public school in the country. it's 88% african american and 44% free or reduced price lunch.

i teach mostly smart, somewhat well-behaved students, and it basically feels like a totally different profession than teaching at my tfa placement school. i feel very lucky and more than a little bit guilty, like i'm "abandoning" the mission of educational equality, even though i'm probably not. i teach 4 sections of precalculus and have the privilege of teaching IB high level math. this means that i'll have taught 6 different classes in 3 years, which has been a pain. IB stands for international baccalaureate and it's sort of like an alternative to AP testing, but it's a comprehensive curriculum for all subjects. the high level math class is pretty dope, and i get to teach things like vector geometry, calculus, complex roots, number and set theory and maybe some differential equations. the best part (for me) is that by teaching this, i finally REALLY understand it. i wish i could go back and tell my math212-taking self some of the stuff i've learned instead of just relying on old gao tests to get me through the semester. so anyway, i'm signed up to teach another year at the same school, which will make me a 4-year veteran. i'll have been a high school teacher for as long as i was a high school student. or a college student. blah.

i'm very old now. i am closer to 30 than i am to 20. i have car payments, health insurance and a retirement account, into which i put money automatically from each paycheck. i'm so old that i really enjoy hanging out with my parents. i'm old enough that a spring break spent doing my taxes and laundry, going to the dmv, buying and assembling an ikea desk and writing lesson plans is "awesome." this doesn't scare me at all. i think i've always been pretty ready to be old.

speaking of my parents, i just got back from st louis visiting them for passover. it was the first time i've been home for seders in 7 years and the first time i haven't led a seder in 6 years. i love the passover seder. it's pretty much my favorite jewish ritual and everyone is invited to any seder i happen to host in the future. it's everything you want in a religious ritual: it's full of tradition and symbolism, it's for your family and friends, there's tons of great food and wine, and the point is to discuss how its themes can be reinterpreted for all of us each year. i love it.

i feel like i could post a million different things to talk about from the past 2 years or whatever it's been since i last posted, but i figured i'd just wait and see what comes up in the future and just post as i go. hope everyone's doing well.