Category Archives: Radical Tutoring

This Shit Ain’t Radical Anymore : Tutoring for (Not) Fun & (Little) Profit

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When I started tutoring, I did it inside of my daughter’s elementary school and I did it as part of my organizing work within the school – working with immigrant and non-English dominant families to ensure access to information. I did it on a volunteer basis and worked with recent immigrant English Language Learners (ELL’s as per NYC Dept. of Ed.). While many of the immigrant parents I worked with were Latinos. The majority of the children I worked with on reading so that they could test out of the ESL program were Indian. The Indian community where I live are predominantly part of a tight knit Ismaili community. Word got around and before I knew it was tutoring out of my mom’s kitchen.

As a single mom – then raising one, now raising two daughters, this seemed perfect. I could take care of my daughters, be with them, work with my local community and make some money.

I think I tried to insert too much importance into what I should have just looked at as a job. I was especially excited by the fact that the majority of the young people I was working with were young women of color. I imagined having some sort of influence, seeing myself as a mentor I would have liked to have growing up. I imagined what would have been like to understand racism, sexism, colonialism growing up and not painfully crashing into it the way I did as 16 year old.

Of course all of this was to be done within the prescribed NYC DOE curriculum. My students would improve their grades in school, pass all their high stakes assessments, but they would also get support from bullying, family concerns, and engage in critical thinking with and about what they were learning in a way that the current high stakes standards don’t really allow for anymore.

For a while I really felt it was working. Felt like I was contributing something. My students did do well and we also went beyond the curriculum talking about politics, faith, sexuality, gender, community, art, visions and dreams. I felt this was especially important as many of my students transitioned from elementary school, into middle school, and high school. Hell my first student ever, a young man, always greets me in the streets and tells me how college is. This makes me feel happy (but also old).

But as I enter my what, 7th year of tutoring, I am growing disheartened. I am seeing/feeling especially as my students grow older, that unless I am working with the same vision as the parents/schools my work may not have the importance/impact I once imagined. My pareja says that sometimes, in this capitalist system we look for/invent more meaning when it comes to our work when in reality it is just labor/a service. Hearing this made me sad to the point of tears but it also felt/feels really true.

None of my students named helping to create a better world/helping their community among their goals but nearly all of them named being rich as one of their goals. Since I can’t quantify my students’ success beyond the grades/test scores they get in school, my assignments/suggestions are not followed up on. This means that my students still don’t read the newspaper or follow the news via any medium, so generally they have no idea what is happening in the world around them, or even in the city in which they live. They won’t make vocabulary or grammar study cards so that it takes a high school student from one of the best schools in the city/country two hours to read and understand two pages of a book because she doesn’t know what most of the words mean. The students and parents know I am a (sorta) single mother with two kids of my own I am helping guide through this world and yet I feel the disrespect from these two parent families everytime they cancel at the last minute, pick up/drop their child off late, have unreasonable expectations of me (i.e. checking homework via email at 11 pm), and don’t even bother to look at their kids’ work.

Maybe work cannot be radicalized. Maybe work is just work, a way to feed yourself and your family. Maybe I need to be real about my role in this fucked up market/education system. Maybe all I can do is give these kids and their parents what they expect – better grades. Maybe I need to let everything else go and focus on how my life – with my daughters, through my writing, with my pareja, y family and my community – be where the change happens.

As I focus my energies on shifting – moving – physically and spiritually – maybe I need to let go of certain visions if they aren’t shared.

Unnecessary

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As the school year draws to a close, like every summer, I find myself scrambling, stressing and wondering how am I going to make ends meet for my little familia.

During the school year I make about 200 a week tutoring give or take 25-50 dollars. This means that in a month I make less than what my rent is. Factor in utilities, food for myself and two growing children, and transportation and yeah – you can see it’s gonna be a struggle. That is not even counting my poor attempts to pay off debts. I receive child support for one of my two children. Get another oh 100 dollars a month from my political blog and still end up borrowing from one place to pay something somewhere else (like the other editor on the website).

So far I have booked $150 worth of tutoring for the month of June and $200 for the month of August. Far below what I need to barely survive. The mini heatwave we had in NYC already raised by electricity bill by $40.

This morning I tweeted how I didn’t know how I was going to make it through July and August (oh and the rest of this month). ?Yesterday I tweeted that I would probably need to get another job for July and August. Which I probably will do. A follower suggested I don’t spend money on anything unnecessary. Which got me to thinking what exactly is unnecessary – not needed. So I looked at my shopping list and my to do list.

Shampoo – I can probably skip this for now
Pan – I have eggs in the fridge so that should be good enough for breakfast
Shaver – Ay who needs to shave their legs/pits
Avocado : See pan also I have rice in my pantry
Veggies/Fruits – I have one banana and some beans in the pantry
Sunblock – I guess going to the beach is not in my future or I can burn

flowers/cards – I guess those are not needed. I can make a card for baby daddies and amor de mi vida for Father’s Day

Vino : I haven’t had vino since I was in Los Angeles in late April/early May

Get nails done : I have a gift certificate for this but tip is extra. Cut.

Get hair cut : Haven’t had a haircut in about a year now. Look into those free cuts students give in the city (but you have to tip no?) Ay just keep cutting own ends.

Pay off three debts I am trying to pay down : My credit is so fucked up already who cares?

Pay Internet : I just paid half of what I owed so that they wouldn’t cut the internet and I could email the op-ed published in El Diario la Prensa and post other things to make a tiny amount of money/ Maybe I just need to rely on free wi-fi.

Pay Gas Bill : Not having gas sucked because then you have to buy prepared food outside which is more expensive than cooking your own food.

The twitter follower in question told me to look at my cell phone plan – I don’t pay for my cell phone plan at the moment thanks to a generous prize from Credo Mobile that will expire in September.

I was told to cut cable – I don’t have cable.

I am also travelling – which seems dumb no? Mind you they are for conferences and the airfare and housing is paid for as are some of the meals – but what about the meals that are not covered? Ground transport? These conferences have to do with my work as a media maker and an activist and also help me build deeper relationships with other people doing work/living like me but am feeling guilty about the vacation I took in late April/May with my income tax refund.

Maybe the broke ass don’t deserve vacations, conferences?

What is necessary in our lives not just for the survival of our bodies but the survival of our hearts/souls?

Ay and today is rent day.

What Do We Tell/Show the Children?

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Holy winter break batman. When the kids are off from school, I barely have any physical space to myself, let alone mental space to process things out via typed text. In the space I occupy with my daughters, this space between Egypt, Libya, Puerto Rico, Bahrain, Algeria and Yemen, I have woken up on many mornings wondering how, what do we tell/show our children about movement(s), justice, and responsibility?

In the space I occupy with my children somewhere between Egypt, Puerto Rico, Libya, Bahrain y Algeria, in the same country as Arizona, Mississippi and Wisconsin, they bear witness from afar. And when I speak of my children, I am not just speaking of my biological daughters but of the community who sit almost daily at my mother’s kitchen table. I read aloud from the news. Pull out maps and point to these places.

My children are movement children. You can ask my mom and sister, who still laugh at the fact that La Mapu’s first full sentence was “No Justice, No peace”. Poroto, has traded in her “si se puedes” for “Egypt, Egypt, Egypt”. La Mapu has taken a renewed interest in one of her patrias, Puerto Rico, one afternoon surprising me by asking aloud from my mother’s living room as she watched cartoons, “how do the liberation struggles in the Middle East translate to the student struggles in Puerto Rico?”

I nearly cried with pride.

While she fought with her sister on the floor of Julia de Burgos in El Barrio, I noted she argued because she wanted to pay attention. She was watching the videos I have been watching and reporting on for months, of Puerto Rican students getting beaten, tear gassed and sexually assaulted. She was paying attention, on her own terms.

I stopped forcing la Mapu to meetings, conferences and rallies as soon as she was old enough to stay a few hours by herself but she can’t escape that this is the world we live in, impacting loved ones, some whom she has met, some whom she knows through their blogs and twitter avatars. Last night, she cried over the dead in Libya and all I could do was hold her.

But what of the children who are left unaware as I was as a child. When I woke up at age 16 and suddenly realized I had been lied to about history and my role in it, I felt angry, betrayed and motivated. My life has never been the same.

I am participating in an event as a story teller in a local museum in a few weeks. The theme is art and activism. How do I talk with children who don’t witness and navigate these spaces on a daily basis or are like those Central Park horses with their eyes fixed on the tiny camino in front of them, blind to the rest of the world around them that they stand in the middle of?

I have never lied to my children about the struggles that exist in this world. Some of them they experience on their own, some of them through my work/life. But what of the children who are shielded? How to hold their hand slowly, open their eyes slowly so they are not afraid but awakened?

That is the question that has been waking me up for weeks.

I welcome answers/suggestions.

Tales from Radical Tutoring : Why Students Are Not Ready for College

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This morning I came across another story proving how the current standards in NY State are continuing to fail our public school students.

New York State education officials released a new set of graduation statistics on Monday that show less than half of students in the state are leaving high school prepared for college and well-paying careers.
The new statistics, part of a push to realign state standards with college performance, show that only 23 percent of students in New York City graduated ready for college or careers in 2009, not counting special-education students. That is well under half the current graduation rate of 64 percent, a number often promoted by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as evidence that his education policies are working.

Many will jump on the loudest bandwagon being led by NYC Schools Head and Bloomberg puppet Cathy Black that says that the answer to this is more school closings and more charter schools.

Except I work with high schoolers from one charter school, one that has been called one of the best in the city and in the country and I can see why students are ill prepared for college and for life in general.

1: Teachers are struggling. Teachers are expected to pass on so much information that conforms to such rigid standards that often they do not have time to actually teach. You know teaching, explaining, giving context, drawing connections. Yeah that. It’s why in a Global Studies class you can be talking about Galileo but have a student who has no idea that Florence, Rome, the Vatican, Venice are in Italy, much less find Italy on a map. Oh and since when did they start calling the Protestant Reformation “the reform”?

2: Testing but no basics. What the hell happened to grammar? How about teaching students to write a proper paper? What about teaching students how to figure out is a source is reliable? How about vocabulary? Isn’t there still a section on the SAT on vocabulary? What I have seen is an effort to keep up with standards and paperwork is too much reliance on new technology that requires no thinking. I see English papers that are not checked for grammar. One of my high school students in her 6 months in school has had one, 1, grammar lesson, which consisted of her memorizing definitions of different grammar characteristics. I see a reliance on the internet but not in a meaningful way. Students are told to use Wikipedia and other online sources without being taught how to check for accuracy, slant, relevance. And do not get me started on vocabulary. Most of the students rely on online dictionaries to give them half awareness of words. So when they read a novel my Toni Morrison, for example, they barely scratch the surface because they barely understand. Some people say that paper dictionaries are obsolete but I have one out with all of my students and I make them use it and use words in sentences and context.

3: Critical Thinking and Connection. These high school students have no idea what is happening in Egypt. They don’t know who their governor is. They read the Bluest Eye in write a paper that not once mentions the word race. The current standards isolate students to their world and from really engaging with literature and other sources of information. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall, really, especially when it comes to the Humanities.

I sit with these students anywhere from 2 hours to 8 hours a week. The schools have them for that much each day my underpaid ass is filling in the huge gaps that the NYC Dept. of Ed has created and it pisses me off and worries me.

Los Nenes At My Mother’s Table

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I already wrote a heart rant over at VivirLatino sharing my thoughts on the contrived controversy around the Park 51 community center/mosque. Pero in the days following that post, in NYC, where I was born and bred (and have bred) things have gotten from hateful to horrific with violent anti-Islamic words and thoughts turning to violence.

First there was the attempted murder (because really when you slash someone’s throat you want to kill them) of a cab driver when he acknowledged his Muslim faith.

Then someone stumbling into a mosque in Queens and desecrating that house of worship with words and foul actions.

This last act of anti-Islamic hate really got me because when I first heard the news, I didn’t know where in Queens the mosque was and my concern was for the mosque just blocks away from my mother’s apartment, the mosque where nearly all of my tutoring students worship almost daily.

Those that follow me on twitter and facebook know that my tutoring is source of great stress, but those of you who also know me in person, know how much I value the young men and women, the children with whom I work almost daily. I don’t just do test prep with them. I don’t just reinforce skills and good habits. I don’t just push them, I try to fill in alot of the gaps. This is why I call what I do “radical tutoring” because I want to inspire them to do more than asked, to see themselves as part of communities and be accountable and hold others accountable.

It has been at my mother’s kitchen table where I have had young Muslim women discuss sexuality, assault, violence and harassment, some of it personally experienced by them, some of it because they are Muslim.

This latest hate act didn’t happen in the mosque where my students worship in fact, it seemed that the older students were not even aware of the rhetoric surrounding the community center in Downtown Manhattan and the actual violence that was targeting those that could be read as Muslim.

The header above was taken from a story in the latest New York Magazine. The title struck me as ridiculous and plain ole fucked up. Did the title refer to Muhammad, the great prophet of Islam? As if before there were no practicing Muslims in New York City/Manhattan? Or were they taking a more general and somewhat stereotypical portrayal of the followers of Islam? The article itself reads as a fluffy conversation with various opinions presented and the writer not taking one of his own but the title bothered me. I showed it to one of my High School students. She laughed at first, finding it silly. Then she looked at me earnestly, “Well, I’m not really a Muslim Muslim”.

And my heart broke a little.

“Spectacular”ly Bad Messages About Sex for Young Women of Color

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So there have been a ton of responses and discussions online in various spaces about Kiely’s song/video “Spectacular”. I’m not going to repeat the conversations. My mujer Bianca Laureano has a really good collection of responses to the video and links to commentary.

I think I was a little too old when the Cheetah Girls came out or maybe that was just never my tip, so I admit that I had no damn idea who Kiely was. My older daughter was never into the Cheetah Girls or any other sorta fake ass Disney’fied girl power marketing tool so she didn’t know who the hell Kiely was either (my younger daughter is more “girly”, if you will, in some ways so I may have to deal with that crap yet).

That said, when I saw the video, I shared the opinion of many that it was whack in more ways than one. It looked cheap and I’m not talking about Kiely. I also agree that at one point in the video it looked like Kiely wasn’t doing the “walk of shame” as it’s called in the video, but rather trying to get work if you know what I mean. Which is fine but then you get into equating sex-work with non-consensual drunken sex.
Si, that’s what I called it porque if you are too drunk to ask the person you are with to use a condom, it’s prolly non-consensual and it prolly wasn’t that spectacular either.

I’m not coming down on drunken sex or one night stands or that walk/subway ride the morning after. Jesus and los santos know how many times I’ve been there and done that. Pero if you need to get drunk to have sex, then maybe there is a problem. I’m not talking a glass of wine or two cuz everyone knows Mala likes her vino, but semi-conscious sex isn’t a healthy way to approach your sexuality.

Now I don’t think I or women like me were the intended audience, which made me wonder who the hell was? Was it young women coming into their own in terms of their sexuality? When does this happen? What age?

Of course young women are as varied as adult women in terms of their sexuality and that is something that needs to be recognized. I wasn’t planning on talking about the Kiely video with the young women of color I work with, some who are in their early teens and I wasn’t planning on talking about it with my daughter but it just so happened that sexuality conversations happened so I threw the video in there.

The first convo I had was with a student of mine who wanted to talk to me about an assignment her charter middle/high school had given her. The assignment was to find an ad or example in pop culture that promoted sex in an unsafe way (this was for her NYC DOE mandated HIV/AIDS prevention course which I have found so woefully poor that I have been known to host learn how to use condom and this is how your body really works sessions in my mom’s kitchen ). The young woman, who in many ways has internalized alot of the negative portrayals of gender, said that she thought of Victoria’s Secret. This kind of took me aback. Not because Victoria’s Secret is a great example of positive sexuality, but to me Victoria’s Secret is about selling sexy underwear to skinny white woman with an occasional token woman of color thrown in. Pero this young woman thought that being in your underwear = sex. This led to a conversation about the portrayal of sexuality in such binary terms (good/bad) with little room for young women of color to think positively about creating and owning their own sexual identities. This young woman, who did know who the Cheetah Girls were, thought the video was disgusting and that Kiely was acting “like a slut”.

Later that same night, la Mapu was telling me about the sexual antics of her friends, which at 12 means pointing out when boys get hard ons in class and who has a boyfriend/girlfriend and what that actually means. Somehow this ended up going to a conversation about sex toys and if I thought it was ok for young women to use sex toys. While making fish for dinner, because such conversations are not that uncommon in Casa Mala, I told her of course it was ok.
“You mean you wouldn’t get mad if if a young woman went to a sex toy store?” she asked all shocked.
“It’s not like she’s going to buy crack or something” I told her laughing,”
yeah it’s cool and masturbating is pretty much one of the safest types of sex you can have. She then asked if I had ever been to a sex toy shop and if I had any sex toys (girl knows I do already, they were all over the damn place after casa mala was broken into). This led to another convo about positive sexuality and ownership of sexuality and yes we talked about the Kiely video to which la Mapu just rolled her eyes and said, “why do you and your friends always find this crap?”.
Meaning she didn’t take the Kiely video all the seriously.

But what about young women who don’t have outlets or access to information regarding their sexuality. Do we leave them to the school system and Kiley? How do we engage the young woman of color in our homes and communities in terms of allowing them to learn about healthy, safe explorations of their sexuality?

Maybe we need a field trip to a sex toy shop.