Learning is more important than math

When I started at Juarez three months ago, I implemented a "check-in", an idea lifted from something described in one of my grad school classes-- it's simply a couple of minutes at the beginning of class, to greet one another and get things off our chests or get ideas out in the open.

Today, the first day after finals, my seniors clearly were distressed to hear that I wanted to help them learn some math today. Their expectations were that the few days after finals are blown off, without any work. As part of their protest, they suggested checking in (which they clearly intended to use as an opportunity to soak up some time, instead of "working"). The first student managed to soak up maybe an entire minute, talking about how he was looking forward to the weekend (this is, I think, a small price to pay for the opportunity to get to know my students better, and to get some buy-in from them). As is often the case, most students didn't have anything particular to say, and took a pass.

The fifth or sixth student almost took a pass, but then remembered that he's upset about his phone being confiscated as he came into school. That led us into a full class period wherein we discussed school safety, bullying, technology, advocacy, civil rights, student rights, the relationships between schools and prisons, and hegemony (yes, by that name). I even read a paragraph of Michael Apple (from the chapter "On Analyzing Hegemony" in Ideology and Curriculum) to my students. One student came up and recited part of a poem that she had previously written on the topic of how non-white children are systemically deprived of opportunity and tracked towards continued poverty.

That's the kind of classroom I want to keep having.