Keyser Sose Moment

One of my favorite movies is the usual suspects. My favorite part of the movie is the ending montage where the police officer has flashbacks through the conversation he just had and realized that something else was going on the entire time. I am beginning to have a number of these realizations lately. As I look at the school I work I am realizing that it is really not serving kids as it should and then I flash back to the first and realize how things are related to our first year, our first principal and the the things that have since been our legacy.

For example, one of the things our school says, and always has said, is that we don't provide text books because we do not believe that text books are important for learning. Really though, or first year we were definitely going to have books, I went to the PD training for the book that I was going to teach. The book that the science teacher wanted to use was what she had lesson planned out of during her entire student teaching. What ended up happening was none of our books came on time, they only ordered class sets or partial orders, and the students struggled with low reading levels but our special ed teacher spent most of the day teaching gym, and could not help us plan (let alone give us our IEPs). For our own survival the "book-less" class philosophy was created to get through tough questions from students and parents that first year, and then it continued through hiring season that summer and into the following fall, and now, who knows what we did with our allocated book money.

The strings connect back to the first principal of the school, who in retrospect was overwhelmed with our school from the very beginning. The school was not able to run like a school should from the very beginning. I would often say he was more of a philosophical leader, that he was soft spoken, and very good at negotiating with the higher ups. I could probably say now that he made excuses, was afraid of the situation the school we faced, and was sheltered by the privileges given to new schools until he realized the road the school was headed down and looked to take a leave of absence. Most of these characteristics have seemed to pass down to his replacement principal, because that was what most of the staff expected of its leader.
The way that students currently act, and the way staff act towards them, brings back flashes of what we did and said as we planned the school. Perhaps these images will continue to haunt me. As they do I guess I will try my best to set them right in My and mind, and document them here.