COACHELLA '95, CREATING CLASSROOM PORTFOLIOS at for EVERY STUDENT,

 this is a blog page dedicated to my teaching years at Coachella Valley High School (CVUSD) and prevailing thru various hardships and challenges with excellent student portfolios by each & every student in the English classes (9th & 10th grade). This was the 1995-96 year, when Alex Franco was still the principal and Foch Pensis was the assistant superintendent at the time (later he became superintendent, and apparently is now retired...I am posting this on March 10, 2014. Near the end of my time there I began trying to "document" all my progress & efforts with the students  because at some point the principal and various "colleagues" had negatively pegged me as a "conservative" (which is an "evil" word in most liberal public schools...not to mention that while I may have attended a conservative Christian college, I myself was fairly "moderate" about most issues, and thought I was a very kind & respectful person towards ALL people) and I realized I was NOT going to get a fair chance to be a good teacher, to prove that I enjoyed teaching and was good at it, and cared deeply about the students, most of whom were Latino. I realized that AT LEAST I should prove that I was working HARD with the students and had something TANGIBLE to show for it, so I kept ALL their papers...various worksheets, quizzes, essays, etc from the entire year, and at the end of the year all the students were given their papers back, and were asked to put them together in chronological order, and create their own covers...and then we bound them together to create their own, personal, student portfolios. These student portfolios are the ANSWER to all the school issues in regards to the teacher proving what he taught, or tried to teach, and the students showing what they did, or tried to do. At the end of the year, the students can't make excuses and say, "The teacher didn't teach us anything...blah blah blah" or complain about a grade when they can SEE for themselves their final product compared to others. It also can be used  as tangible evidence for the principal and others in their evaluations (albeit my principal wouldn't even look at the portfolios and failed to comprehensively evaluate me according to the contract; it should be mentioned that I was hired by the previous principal before this principal, Franco, arrived; and after I left, Franco apparently was removed). I also learned about "employee organizations" (ie unions) ...which i was completely unfamiliar about at the time, having come from a Christian school background that doesn't believe in such things. Kent Braithwaite was an active, outspoken person at the time i was there. He had been a teacher there for a long time, and may STILL be there (along with his wife, also  a teacher). Unfortunately, I'm not sure Kent was truly working on my behalf when he purported to be doing so. Anyways, here's my PROOF, as best as I could memorialize at the time...when I was still quite young and not being given a true,fair chance by some others. Needless-to-say, I left CVHS after that year ('95-96) and went back to school for my masters-in-divinity degree ..later coachella became best known (almost synonymous)  for it's music festival...but for me it will always be the two years I spent at the high school, working SO hard against the odds. Also, recently, there was a bit of controversy about the high school's mascot (the arab), but apparently they have decided to keep the name & image.