our school is undergoing redesigning -- a lot of growing pains when you are trying to recreate hogwarts. for those who don't know, hillsdale high school is the "weird school" in the san mateo union high school district. right now, our weirdness extends to the creation of "smaller learning communities," whose sole purpose is to create a more personalized education for students who get lost in large comprehensive high schools. so this year, we split the freshmen class into four houses -- kyoto, constantinople, marrakech (that's me!), and florence houses.

i think it's had varying degrees of success ... you'll have to read some of my old posts to see my ups and downs ... but since we're in the process of getting ready for year 2 -- and adding another set of houses for next year's freshmen (we'll be teaching the same group as sophs) ... it's been a pretty interesting time. there is a lot of behind-the-scenes district level drama ... lots of squashed toes (or perceived squashed toes) and budgeting trouble ... so we asked linda darling-hammond, a professor at stanford and like THE leading genius in the school reform movement to come help us problem-solve.

seriously, when i was at stanford, i never understood the hoopla. people said "linda darling-hammond" the way i'd say "fried chicken" or "johnny depp" in the same starry-eyed manner. but having had dinner with her in a dine and discuss meeting last night ... i can see that this woman is every inch the genius everyone claims that she is. i may be no fan of school reform books and articles, but her ability to listen, compartmentalize problems and encourage creative thinking and solutions is truly phenomenal. i FELT smarter just being in the same room with her. and the really neat thing was that this meeting really gave me a chance to reflect on why i thought i liked teaching in the first place. being in a room with all my administrators, superintendent, genius, and colleagues, and thinking and working things out together was AWESOME. the room was actually HUMMING. and for the first time in a long while ... i felt hopeful about my situation with my school and my kids. linda helped to redirect my thinking to see past my kids' attitudes and apathy and helped me to try and rethink the direction and culture of my house.

my house has been really discouraged, mostly because we feel like we have the greatest number of entitled, bratty honors kids and the great number of low-achieving deadbeats. the deadbeat number seems to be growing exponentially -- more and more kids who don't do their homework, and who generally don't give a damn for school, no matter how much help and love you lavish on them. it's pretty discouraging. but after our meeting with linda, i had an epiphany of my own. there's this new book, queen bees and wannabes, and i realized what my house's problem is. we have a queen bee. she's heather #1 in heathers, only the best teenage angst movie of the late 80s. there's this one girl who is truly the biggest pain in the butt EVER. and i realize all the other behavior attitudes and consequent failures of other students can be almost directly attributed back to this girl. it's pretty astonishing. all the other girls want to BE her, while all the guys want to be WITH her. the vice principal even said -- every kid in my house will go to bat for her, just to save her ass when she gets into trouble. you have to be a pretty powerful personality to be able to manipulate a whole bunch of fairly strong-willed kids. or perhaps there are more lemmings in my house than i realize.

in any case, realizing that we have a queen bee actually makes me feel a lot better. that there is a concrete reason why we are failing. not to say that the blame for our failures falls squarely on the shoulders of our queen bee, because we've made a lot of mistakes that we'll have to correct. but ... the kids aren't just failing because. there are a lot of other reasons as to why they really suck wind right now. and it gives me the tiniest plip of energy to want to not give up on them for next year. there is hope for them. we just need to yank them out of the queen bee's orbit.

i can't say much more than that, just because who knows which kid has access to all my life's woes nowadays. sufficed (or is it suffice it? -- i've never been too sure) to say ... i'm glad i went to this mtg with linda. she's not magical, but her warmth and heart for the success of students in a small way help me to let go of my jaded-ness about teaching and my kids. kids are worth helping ... even if they are mostly baked (as janice would say) and a bunch of turds on more than several occasions.