August 13, 2010
Z took the writing and math section of the GED yesterday. I asked her what the essay question was. “You mean the one in the blue book?” she asked. “Yes,” I said, smiling, “the question we aren’t supposed to tell to anyone.” She told me it was, If you had a million dollars and couldn’t spend it on yourself, what charity would you donate to? “I wrote that I would give it to the Red Cross,” she said, “because they help save lives all over the world.” Today she went back and took the remainder of the test. She even dressed up, saw it as a special occasion. Walking into my class afterward, she looked so light and unburdened. SHE FINISHED.
On a less happy note, a couple residents were caught receiving crack cocaine thrown under the fence. Someone must have paid for the deal on the outside and had it delivered. Others use drugs when they go off site to visit families or while looking for work. Yes, there are residents who are still deep in their addiction and still using. It happens all the time. They’re not finished with drugs.
Posted in adult education, GED, parolees, Red Cross | Leave a Comment »
August 10, 2010
My student Z is finally taking the GED. Someone who knows her told me Z has had anxiety attacks all weekend. I am confident we can get her through the exam. My greatest worry is not that she will fail but what a lack of success might drive her to do. Even a small failure can drive an addict back to the crack pipe. She will not have another chance in the program if she relapses.
“I’m going in with all paws,” Z said when she came by school. We agreed no studying today. She takes the test tomorrow. After almost eight hours of testing in five subjects, she will have to wait several weeks for her score. She has been ready for the GED for a long time, but is she ready for the results?
Posted in GED, math, parolees | Leave a Comment »
July 29, 2010
It isn’t often that I write about the dark side of my students though they tumble into my school with long unspoken histories. Most of them have been arrested more than fifteen times and that’s only counting when they got caught. When students get kicked out of the residential rehab it is often for drug use but sometimes it’s because they’ve become angry, even violent. Christopher left yesterday. I ran into him on my way in to work and he said he was leaving to go to another program. “I pushed someone,” he said. Christopher has a mohawk and small curled goat horns tattooed above his hairline on each side of his head. I heard he pushed an older guy on the stairs during a scuffle.
Christopher would come in to my school drunk on anger. If he got frustrated with a math problem he would storm out rather than ask for help. I worked with him to practice multiplication on paper. He was making slow progress in his arithmetic, but had no patience for the learning process. Standing beside his packed bags, Christopher expressed sadness in not being able to finish his math studies. I didn’t buy it but I tried to be supportive.
Posted in math, parolees, rehab, tattoos, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
July 28, 2010
Luis studied the dictionary while incarcerated. He read all the way through to the section beginning with S. He loves vocabulary and asks me for two words a day to look up and learn. Today I gave him inchoate and insalubrious. He knew insalubrious. I need to get smart and start giving him words starting with T onward. I need to be a little more sagacious.
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July 23, 2010
In the week I have not written, Sequoia relapsed on heroin, Winton started drinking and Ricky took his first paycheck and smoked it up on crack. Here’s the good news. My student Z is finally enrolled to take the GED in August. It’s her third and last time at the rehab and getting her GED could be life changing. She has a mind for social studies and math and she writes well, really loves learning. Her self-esteem goes up by increments and then plummets pretty quickly. She went swimming the other day and told me how she barely got through a whole lap. She struggled the last ten feet because of severe obesity and general lack of exercise. But I give her credit for getting in the pool. I told her, “This is like the GED. After you have tackled three hours of math and writing, they will hit you with science, reading, and social studies. It will feel like the last ten feet in the pool. But you can do it. Put the pencil down every 50 minutes and stretch you hands, close your eyes and take a breath, then pick up the pencil and start fresh. Don’t be a tired tester, don’t leave half the test section for the last ten minutes allotted.” I added, “You’re ready this time.”
Posted in adult education, drug recovery, GED, parolees, rehab, relapse | Leave a Comment »
July 13, 2010
I read on the Internet that when a kitten is weaned too early, it doesn’t get a chance to learn about acceptable (and non-acceptable) behaviors from its mom and littermates.
It just so happens that a litter was born four weeks ago at the rehab and I have woven this story into recent posts. At my break today I went to check on the kittens and was told they were all given away to family visitors over the weekend. There are two problems with this. One, they were much too young to be weaned from the mother; and second, I was promised the gray and white one. This is the first cat I would have had in 23 years and I got very attached to the idea of taking it home with me.
I leave work every Friday, and on Mondays I return to a board with the names of students who were kicked out of or simply walked out of the rehab. More often than not, one of my students’ names is listed on the board. I’m never really surprised or disappointed by who left because it comes with this kind of job. But to suddenly find the kitten I was promised missing really threw me for a loop. Even if the kitten miraculously returned I would put it back with its mother.
I realize that I am a bit of a mother figure to my students. I try to help them practice acceptable behavior, an attitude and manners that will help them in the workplace. When they get aggressive or needy I call them on it and steer them back to the reason they are in my school: holes in their early education. They were weaned too early from math and reading.
Posted in adult education, cats, education, math, parolees, reading | 1 Comment »
July 7, 2010
Every day I go to work I feel blessed because I love my job. I don’t keep my job – it keeps me happy. Finding work is hard enough with an advanced degree and a decent resume, imagine trying to pound the pavement looking for a job with over fifteen felonies, visible tattoos, and no employment history. It’s no wonder my students end up in telemarketing or, worse, back taking rather than making money. So it’s always a good thing to see a student get a job.
One of the oddest jobs my students have ever done is count cars. A few of them were hired to sit on certain corners and observe automobile traffic. They loved it. Others are such skilled tattoo artists they are snapped up by tattoo shop owners as soon as they are free. We’ve also had semi-pro athletes at the rehab who fell from grace; no going back there. Many of my students have made more money in an hour dealing drugs than they could make at a tax-paying job in a month. The majority have never held a real job for more than six months. When I see one of my students get all dressed up and go out for a job interview, it gives me a surge of pride. They’ve gone from handcuffs to cufflinks.
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July 1, 2010
Six kittens! The calico mother cat has moved her litter to a high place in the shed accessible only by ladder. Today I climbed up and saw the kittens for the first time since I got her to begin taking care of them. I even snuck a quick picture. The guys set up a nice bed for them and have been cleaning out the kittens’ eyes and feeding the mother cat.
Meanwhile some of my other students are getting caught with cell phones, smoking pot in the dormitory and planning their exit out of the rehab. It’s a typical day with over a hundred residents on site. I am planning my own escape to a three-day weekend, one spent reading and writing — perchance to paint? Watercolors not my house, I’m not that ambitious. As for the new mother cat, she will not be getting any time off.
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June 28, 2010
We hear a lot about meth abuse but math abuse damages people too. One of my students complained that every time he sat at the computer to practice long division he would get a pounding headache. Learning long division in your forties is enough to give anyone a headache, but I always see it as a red flag. I asked him, “Did you ever have a bad experience around math?” He sat and thought. “Yes!” he said with sudden awareness. “When I was young I would sit at the kitchen table doing my math homework. My mom would stand behind me and when I got a problem wrong she’d hit me on the back of my head.” As bad as this sounds it’s not that uncommon. Many of my students have traumatic math memories, from the teacher who humiliated them at the chalkboard to the parent who used math skills as a barometer of intelligence; they leave math in the dust and never look back.
Some of my students still need to memorize their times tables. Henry hates math and he begged me not to make him do it. “What happened to you?” I asked. “My elementary teacher promised us an ice cream sundae if we memorized our times tables,” Henry said. “I memorized them and she never came through, she never made good on her promise.” Although it wasn’t a strike to the back of the head, what Henry’s teacher did scarred him for life.
I tell my students math is a puzzle (they like puzzles) and when you get good at it, it actually becomes fun. My goal is to create math addicts.
Posted in adult education, education, math, parolees | Leave a Comment »
June 24, 2010
Franklin has been cleaning my classroom. Chatty fellow, always has a smile. He told me his father was born in 1903 in Mississippi, a sharecropper. Franklin’s in his sixties but looks about 20 years younger. He comes from a big family and has a sister who is 81. Today he said he’d bring in a photo of his parents to show me. It’s hard to imagine Franklin committing a crime or spending his days smoking crack. He seems so at peace with himself at this point in his life.
A parole agent once told me that men reach a certain age and their testosterone decreases and they no longer have the energy or stamina to run the streets. Essentially, biology itself reduces recidivism. When a twenty-something guy comes in and tells me he’s tired of running, this may be true, but hormones have a drive and momentum of their own.
Posted in crime, parolees, photographs, rehab | Leave a Comment »
