Salmon and Souvlaki

Last night we had a really major thunder and lightening storm.  I
was talking to Meggan during the beginning of it and she could hear the
thunder too.  We had some really impressive noise going on!
And sadly, when I got to school this morning, I discovered that the
storm had knocked out our transformer and school was cancelled for the
day.  What?  You mean I can’t teach a bunch of kids who are
“so done with school” in a 91 degree classroom?  Oh please, let me
stay!  Boo hoo hoo!

So here I am, suffering at home in my air conditioning, having already
gone shopping at Target and gotten gas.  And it’s only 9:27.
Whatever will I do with my day?

Have a fun weekend!  I have a wedding and a goodbye party to go to tomorrow.  It will be a full day.

Only 5 more days and 2 half days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s a few pictures from graduation!



Here’s my friend Sahayini and I.  I’m wearing a salwar khameez that Anu gave me before she moved back to India in December ().
I decided to wear it because it’s beautiful but also because I wanted to
honor Anu, who did so much to get me through grad school!

Here I am before the procession (and before the rain!)

Here I am processing in!

Now here we are afterwards, having finally been allowed to come inside
out of the rain, looking a little wet and bedraggled.  I’m with my
friend Paulette who also came for part of my ceremony.

Here I am with my “diploma” (and my hood on)!  I just gave the cover back since I got my real one in September!

This is my program director and favorite professor, Christa.  (Note how we look a little soaked…)

It was a fun morning, in spite of (or perhaps a little bit because) all
of the rain!  Last night, I drove by my campus and I felt like I
was really finished there, even if I have been technically finished
there since August.  So it’s nice to have that sense of
completion.  Christa asked me when I was going to apply to the PhD
program.  I didn’t give a good reply!

I’m graduated!    My
friends Sahayini, Paulette, and I went to the ceremony this morning,
listened to Bob Schieffer (of the CBS Evening News) speak, and then
while he was speaking, the heavens opened!  So we stuck it out for
a few minutes but got totally soaked.  So they moved us indoors
and
they just read my name as I walked across the stage and got my
“diploma” – I really got it last September!  It actually worked
out pretty well that it rained because we didn’t have to sit through
about 300 undergraduate names before they got to the master’s
degrees.  I was number 479!  I  had a fun
time.  I saw lots of people I knew and especially got to reconnect
with the director of my program (who was also far and away my favorite
professor).  We took lots of pictures but I don’t have the cable
to download them.  So I’ll return the camera to Julie and she’ll
help me download them.  Then I’ll put them here!

This year, the county decreed from on high that all students who scored
either basic or low proficient on MSA (Maryland State Assessment) had
to be put into this very specific remedial reading program called Language!,
which I’m sure they paid big bucks to get.  (Some salesperson
really scored.)  Because of course almost all of our kids scored
basic (they don’t know English!), this has completed changed our
program for next year.   We’re really not happy at all with
what’s happening – the program really isn’t at all for ESOL but we’re
going with it because, well, we have to.

This applies not just to ESOL but to all the bad readers in our
school.  Among the American kids, there are only about 30 or so
non-special ed students who will be in the program.  Of those 30
students, only one student was white and the student’s parents pulled
him because they didn’t want him to be in a class with all black
kids.  In the meantime, the school’s Gifted and Talented program
is heavily white.  This is NOT a case of deliberate segregation or
racism (in my opinion).  The reality is that the majority of the
kids who are zoned to go to my school are white with well-educated
upper-middle class parents.  They went to good elementary schools
before coming to my school.  So of course they can read!
Many of the African-American students get bussed to our school because
their parents have elected to have them go somewhere else because their
zoned middle school has been persistently failing.  So they have
the right to send their kids elsewhere under No Child Left
Behind.  Basically the kids in the remedial reading program for
next year came to us vastly underprepared as compared to the kids who
went to the good elementary schools in the area.  I am sure that
there are significantly more kids in the Language! program at their
zoned school.  There is a reason why it turned out this way.
Nonetheless, it looks horrible.  And it is horrible.

Yesterday, in church, there was a presentation about Baltimore Christian School,
the school that my church started about 12 years ago.  One of the
women said something like, “We are committed to providing these
children with a quality education because it shouldn’t matter where you
live, what race you are, what gender you are, what class you are – you
are entitled to an excellent education.”  And yet, it does
matter.  It especially matters where you live and if your parents
can afford to get you out of the public schools.   It matters
immensely.  And sometimes the sadness and inequality and
unfairness of it all overwhelms me.  My pastor said once that he
thinks that education will become the civil rights movement of my
generation.   So I say bring it on.  This is a battle
Christians have to fight.