Praxis of Pedagogy Day 27

Today I had to cover for a co-worker for a while in the morning cause her car was stalled. The tobacco and drug prevention class was over and the students are going to do gardening now. We didn't have gardening gloves but we did have latex gloves so I had students put on gloves and start weeding the garden. A lot of students didn't want to do anything but that is typical. Anyways, we overturned the whole garden and are going to start over. On the way we pulled potatoes and carrots which we are going to give to the cooking class to make up some food.

In Meta...it was better. Not so much craziness. Not great. But better. For a journal we had them draw a picture of where they will be in 20 years. Just as a change up from what we normally do. Then we talked about extra credit work. Lots of students need to do extra credit if they want to pass the class so we talked about extra credit. They can do a project on social justice, war, the person the school is named after, and other progressive social stuff. Then we handed out credit sheets and talked about credits that students need to graduate from high school and where they were now in terms of credits earned. This was a real eyeopener for students. I think that for a lot of them this was a wakeup call. Some people don't have the credits to be in the grade they should be in and some don't even really have credits to their name. Then we talked about 4 year and community college. Some students started thinking that they could drop out of high school and just go to community college and start their grades over. We had to talk them away from this option as much as possible. Things like having to pay for college instead of getting a free public education, learning the skills in high school so they won't have to catch up in college, and not getting into the habit of dropping out when things are hard.

After the class was over I got on a bus and went up to Sacramento to protest Arnold. They say it was the biggest protest in Sac-town in over 20 years. The place was thick with heads. It was great. Teachers, nurses, firefighters, correction officers, and many more. It was a great showing of people and very encouraging. Momentum is building to fight the wacko powers that be and this was an example. Sacramento was hot though. I was sweating like crazy. I hope carnaval isn't going to be like this. Anyways, there were firey speakers and people chanting. News crews were all over. It was a great gathering of people. Allison and I definitely had a fun time for a great cause. The right wingers are destroying New Deal benefits and shifting everything onto the people's back. While at the same time they are taking the people's money and waging war overseas. It's ridiculous that people have to fight for a proper education. One would think that in the year 2005, education would be a political third rail. But we are constantly struggling against the forces that would try to dehumanize us.