| | I had to subdivide the rant.
Teachers always have excuses not to let us take care of our bodily needs. We're not allowed to eat or drink in class because "that's what lunch is for." Yeah, right. We have 30 minutes to leave class, eat, and get back. Sounds like a lot, right? It should be- but it's not. If the teacher hasn't covered all the material before lunch, he or she keeps you after the bell. If you have an errand to run, or a test to make up, you have to do it at lunch. The administrators treat it like it's their time, not ours.
And if you actually get to the cafeteria, you're still not guaranteed a meal. Sometimes it's hard to find a seat, and if you come from farther away, you have to get a friend to save one for you. If you can't find a seat, you're not allowed to leave the cafeteria to eat anywhere else. I tried today, and got chased away by a teacher, so I had to skip lunch. (And yet they're always telling us to eat good meals!)
If you're not lucky enough to bring your own lunch, you have to wait in line. And wait. And wait. Sometimes the lines run out, and the people at the later lunches have to go hungry. And if you want to use the restroom at lunch, you have to wait in line there, too.
Going back to the excuses. "Can I go see (Mr. T/Mrs. G/Ms. M) to (make up a test/pick up an assignment/insert other activity here)" "No, you do that on your own time." What other time? Should we leave another class instead? Aren't all of our classes equally valuable? We can go at lunch, as I mentioned, IF the teacher has the same lunch period as we do, and spends it in the classroom (one teacher is notorious for asking students to make up tests at lunch, and then not being there. Then she asks us why we haven't made the test up yet). We can come before school, since the teachers have to be at school an hour before it starts. But the teachers can't run errands during the day, either, so they do it before school. Or they hang out in the teachers' lounge. We can stay after school, IF we can get a ride home, and IF the teacher is willing to stay after as well.
And my favorite excuse: "May I go use the restroom?" "No, you're supposed to take care of that between classes."
Well, Jonathan Kozol expressed it better than I ever could, interviewing kids at Fremont High School in Los Angeles (which makes my school look like an imperial palace. I do know what I have to be grateful for):
"High school students, when I first meet them, are often more reluctant than the younger children to open up and express their personal concerns; but hesitation on the part of students did not prove to be a problem when I visited a tenth-grade class at Fremont High School in Los Angeles. The students were told that I was a writer, and they took no time in getting down to matters that were on their minds.
"Can we talk about the bathrooms?" asked a soft-spoken student named Mireya.
In almost any classroom there are certain students who, by the force of their directness or the unusual sophistication of their way of speaking, tend to capture your attention from the start. Mireya later spoke insightfully about some of the serious academic problems that were common in the school, but her observations on the physical and personal embarrassments she and her schoolmates had to under go cut to the heart of questions of essential dignity that kids in squalid schools like this one have to deal with all over the nation.
Fremont High School, as court papers filed in a lawsuit against the state of California document, has fifteen fewer bathrooms than the law requires. Of the limited number of bathrooms that are working in the school, "only one or two . . . are open and unlocked for girls to use." Long lines of girls are "waiting to use the bathrooms," which are generally "unclean" and "lack basic supplies," including toilet paper. Some of the classrooms, as court papers also document, "do not have air conditioning," so that students, who attend school on a three-track schedule that runs year-round, "become red-faced and unable to concentrate" during "the extreme heat of summer." The school's maintenance records report that rats were found in eleven classrooms. Rat droppings were found "in the bins and drawers" of the high school's kitchen, and school records note that "hamburger buns" were being "eaten off [the] bread-delivery rack."
No matter how many tawdry details like these I've read in legal briefs or depositions through the years, I'm always shocked again to learn how often these unsanitary physical conditions are permitted to continue in the schools that serve our poorest students—even after they have been vividly described in the media. But hearing of these conditions in Mireya's words was even more unsettling, in part because this student seemed so fragile and because the need even to speak of these indignities in front of me and all the other students was an additional indignity.
"The problem is this," she carefully explained. "You're not allowed to use the bathroom during lunch, which is a thirty-minute period. The only time that you're allowed to use it is between your classes." But "this is a huge building," she went on. "It has long corridors. If you have one class at one end of the building and your next class happens to be way down at the other end, you don't have time to use the bathroom and still get to class before it starts. So you go to your class and then you ask permission from your teacher to go to the bathroom and the teacher tells you, `No. You had your chance between the periods ...'
"I feel embarrassed when I have to stand there and explain it to a teacher."
"This is the question," said a wiry-looking boy named Edward, leaning forward in his chair. "Students are not animals, but even animals need to relieve themselves sometimes. We're here for eight hours. What do they think we're supposed to do?""
(The full article is available at http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/American-Apartheid-Education1sep05.htm ).
Our restrooms are open at lunch, as I said, but otherwise, you have six minutes to pack up (many teachers don't let you pack your bag before the bell rings), get to your locker, if you're lucky enough to have one, and get to your next class. Our campus is awfully spread out, and the bathrooms are in only two locations, so you only have a chance to use them if your schedule takes you by them.
Enough ranting. Today, I was fortunate to see a meeting between a teacher and a dedicated group of students, starting a new organization. They've got some great things planned, and I think they'll have a lot of fun. It's people like this who make me enjoy my school, despite it all. |
| | Posted 9/22/2005 6:45 PM - 22 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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