Four of my students had to stay for detention. Under the less than watchful eye of the music teacher, they had crawled to the back of the room to play marbles during a video. The video was "We Are the World", a riveting documentary about that amazing moment of 1980's pop-star generosity that powerfully resonated with my 10 year-olds. (and they say sarcasm doesn't come across in writing) I had trouble coming down too hard on them. Their behavior was almost incredibly disrespectful, but at the same time, eminently comprehensible. If only they could have articulated my thoughts... "Mr. E-C, this was music appreciation and he wasn't fulfilling his obligation to teach us about music, so we didn't feel like we had to fulfill our obligation to pay attention." What they did articulate, however, when we were discussing respecting authority, was that three of the four boys know their fathers as alcoholics. One is in rehab ("he's with his friends, learning how to control his drinking"), one is recovered ("he used to have that problem, but now he doesn't drink"), one just revealed this trait to his family a month ago, when he was lurching around the house with a knife. He was too drunk to hurt anyone, though, A--- noted calmly.
---
On board: "Do now. 2-3 sentences. What are you most afraid of? Why?"
On J---'s paper: "I'm afraid of my mom and dad. Thay hit hard. Thay yell."
Reading this last night, I found it irresistible to edit the paper just like every other. I don't know why. This morning, I spoke with the girl's teacher from last year about this, and we both agreed that given her passive-aggressive behavior and extreme awkwardness with authority, it was worth following through on. I talked with the principal, he wanted me to call home and ask about the statement. I defered this job to the girl's special ed teacher, who has a better home connection than I do and is a mother herself. I felt that it was just too odd for this 22-year-old college-grad-of-3-months to be calling a home to essentially inquire, "Hey, are you beating your daughter?"
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Not where I want to be...
It's the end of my first four weeks, and I find myself nowhere near the teacher I wanted to be. I still have no long term plan, I still have no adequate differentiation, I still don't prepare enough for each lesson, I still don't call parents enough or meet enough with students who need help or a little extra push. These things take time and after further reflection, I've come to the sickening and frustrating realization that I just need to invest more of it. More focus in the evenings, more hours on the weekends. Looking back on the last four weeks, I find so many hours that should have gone to these professional necessities, but were instead filled with what I imagined were the bare necessities of "having a life." That was foolish; it was thinking like a college student. Now, I realize that if I'm going to do this as well as I expect myself to, I need to be as little more than a first-year teacher as I possibly can. The blog stays, though. Don't worry.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Back to School Night
"Back to School Night" went fine. The parent I drafted to translate was great, I managed to seem prepared despite a complete lack of time to actually be so. I communicated what little I knew about where we're going this year and how I run my class room. It was brief, but I got a lot of smiles and nods and the connections I need to start making phone calls home.
The problems came when parents started asking questions about how their kids are doing academically. I wanted to say, "Look folks, 16% of these are on grade level in math, 20 in reading. That means out of the 15 of you here, there're only 2 or 3 whose kids are near where they should be. We're going to do something about that, dammit." But there were kids there, so I settled for expressing how worried I am about our writing and arithmetic. And it raises the interesting question... how frank do I want to be with my students about how behind they are? They see the percentages, they may know what they mean. I knew, somewhat, what it meant to be in the 99th percentile, why should I assume that N--- doesn't know what it means to be in the 2nd? Should we rally around our low scores and (formerly) low expectations, or should I just continue throwing the high-expectation-founded quantites and qualities of work at them on the mutually implicit certainty that they need it?
The other problems, ironically, didn't come at all. I was talking with my principal afterwards and said, "None of the parents I really wanted to see, you know, my problem kids, showed up." "Of course," he replied, "that's why you need to see them." Tomorrow, we may walk to C----'s home to track down his mother and see if our forces can combine to keep C---- still in his chair long enough to learn something.
The problems came when parents started asking questions about how their kids are doing academically. I wanted to say, "Look folks, 16% of these are on grade level in math, 20 in reading. That means out of the 15 of you here, there're only 2 or 3 whose kids are near where they should be. We're going to do something about that, dammit." But there were kids there, so I settled for expressing how worried I am about our writing and arithmetic. And it raises the interesting question... how frank do I want to be with my students about how behind they are? They see the percentages, they may know what they mean. I knew, somewhat, what it meant to be in the 99th percentile, why should I assume that N--- doesn't know what it means to be in the 2nd? Should we rally around our low scores and (formerly) low expectations, or should I just continue throwing the high-expectation-founded quantites and qualities of work at them on the mutually implicit certainty that they need it?
The other problems, ironically, didn't come at all. I was talking with my principal afterwards and said, "None of the parents I really wanted to see, you know, my problem kids, showed up." "Of course," he replied, "that's why you need to see them." Tomorrow, we may walk to C----'s home to track down his mother and see if our forces can combine to keep C---- still in his chair long enough to learn something.
Monday, September 13, 2004
Frustrations
It's 10:40, I'm sick, and I'm going to be in bed by 11, so please turn a merciful eye to the writing that follows.
I joined TFA in June, and they gave me a beautiful backpack. Over the summer, they filled it with heavy, precious tomes of educational literature, weighty notebooks of tactics, double-sided resource guides and reproduceable tool kits. They filled it with the heavy pressure of teaching "relentlessly," of "conveying urgency" to students and family, of setting and striving for "big goals." Then they took me out to sea, yelled "Hold on to your backpack!" and tossed me over the side of a ship. Right now, I feel like I'm still swimming up to the surface, every time I think my head is above water, a new wave comes along and I'm swimming back up again. Today it was dis-engagement, Friday it was non-comprehension, what'll it be tomorrow?
I have plans to swim back down, to catch the backpack, carry it back to the surface and swim to the distant paradise shore of "significant gains," but they both seem so far away and I find myself just struggling to stay afloat. I worry that the pack will soon sink to far, that I will be to late to bring in all of the fine theories and strategies that once seemed so vital and important.
Today brought on an entirely different kind of frustration. I've struggled perpetually to motivate my boys. After a rough morning, I held them out on the porch of my classroom to give them a pep talk. After 3 minutes of struggling just to get their focus, to get C--- to stop fooling around and F--- to stop laughing at him, I started talking and felt like they were just tuning me out. I dismissed all except the core misbehavers and tried again. It was then that I realized that F--- and C--- aren't going to be motivated by my stirring words because, quite literally, I'm not speaking their language. I finally connected W---, C--- and F---'s lack of English competence with their lack of response to my persistent lectures. Sure, they can read my face. They've gotten talks like this before, they know what I'm saying, but how spine tingling is it when you only abstractly appreciate what you're being told? How motivating is it to guess that you're being told that you need to learn? How chastizing can I expect my disappointment to be, in bad 5th grade translation?
Now to sleep. I don't think the kiddies can respect me with a stuffed up nose.
I joined TFA in June, and they gave me a beautiful backpack. Over the summer, they filled it with heavy, precious tomes of educational literature, weighty notebooks of tactics, double-sided resource guides and reproduceable tool kits. They filled it with the heavy pressure of teaching "relentlessly," of "conveying urgency" to students and family, of setting and striving for "big goals." Then they took me out to sea, yelled "Hold on to your backpack!" and tossed me over the side of a ship. Right now, I feel like I'm still swimming up to the surface, every time I think my head is above water, a new wave comes along and I'm swimming back up again. Today it was dis-engagement, Friday it was non-comprehension, what'll it be tomorrow?
I have plans to swim back down, to catch the backpack, carry it back to the surface and swim to the distant paradise shore of "significant gains," but they both seem so far away and I find myself just struggling to stay afloat. I worry that the pack will soon sink to far, that I will be to late to bring in all of the fine theories and strategies that once seemed so vital and important.
Today brought on an entirely different kind of frustration. I've struggled perpetually to motivate my boys. After a rough morning, I held them out on the porch of my classroom to give them a pep talk. After 3 minutes of struggling just to get their focus, to get C--- to stop fooling around and F--- to stop laughing at him, I started talking and felt like they were just tuning me out. I dismissed all except the core misbehavers and tried again. It was then that I realized that F--- and C--- aren't going to be motivated by my stirring words because, quite literally, I'm not speaking their language. I finally connected W---, C--- and F---'s lack of English competence with their lack of response to my persistent lectures. Sure, they can read my face. They've gotten talks like this before, they know what I'm saying, but how spine tingling is it when you only abstractly appreciate what you're being told? How motivating is it to guess that you're being told that you need to learn? How chastizing can I expect my disappointment to be, in bad 5th grade translation?
Now to sleep. I don't think the kiddies can respect me with a stuffed up nose.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Saturday, September 04, 2004
The First Week : Survival
I have survived the first 8 days of teaching... just barely. Friday afternoon came, before a long weekend, and I felt like I was holding onto the attention of my class with completely shredded reins.
Throughout our training, Teach for America kept reminding us that despite all of our prior success and over achievement, we were just notgoing to be good teachers, at least at the start. "Yeah, yeah, not me." I thought, but I've quickly found that I am no exception. Every day, I find myself recognizing that I have never done something so significant, so badly. Sometimes, I even feel worse than the average first-year teacher. I have credentialling class Mon/Wed, and this week even Thurs, and it leaves me with far too little time to prepare. I don't have time, each day, to prep a captivating five-step lesson for every subject. Differentiation, making lessons appropriately challenging for each student, seems impossibly far away. I haven't had time to formulate a long term curricular plan, I've barely looked at my students' cumulative files and diagnostics, and as of yet, I haven't even sent out a parent letter. So much of my training seems to have gone out the window in the face of reality. I hope to get caught up this weekend. We'll see. I feel like I have one more week to prove to them it's going to be a furious year of learning before they give up on me and check out until June.
The kids are a tremendous mix of personalities and attitudes. I have one girl who walks through every assignment I give her and patiently raises her hand to wait for more work. I promised to have a more challenging math program figured out for her soon. I have a team of boys who are scattered to the far corners of the classroom, surrounded by quiet girls, and will still find ways to fool around. I have a boy who is almost certainly ADD, interested in the material, but near tears with frustration because he cannot summon the focus to do his reading at a reasonable rate. Another boy is occupying my front-center prime seat, seems to be bright, but still refuses to domore than, almost literally, twiddle his thumbs all day. My best students are almost all girls, and I worry that it intimidates the boys who would excel from performing publicly.
To some degree, I am enjoying it. There are moments when I geteveryone engaged or excited, when the students seem to be actually learning, that make my work seem not entirely ill-planned or poorly-executed or futile. I'm learning how to push their buttons in order to hook them into a lesson, how to manage through disappointed glares and peer-centered shhhhing rather than points and cards and detentions, how to slowly deflate their psuedo-sophistication and get them into something as uncool as learning vocabulary.
I'm reading aloud Maniac Magee and on Friday, for the first time, the whole class gave that melodious, earnest, heart-warming, "Awwwww!"when I put the book down. TFA prescribes that we try and raise our kids performance by 1.5 grade levels, but I'd be satisfied if I couldjust infect them all with an enjoyment of reading.
Alright, back to work...
Throughout our training, Teach for America kept reminding us that despite all of our prior success and over achievement, we were just notgoing to be good teachers, at least at the start. "Yeah, yeah, not me." I thought, but I've quickly found that I am no exception. Every day, I find myself recognizing that I have never done something so significant, so badly. Sometimes, I even feel worse than the average first-year teacher. I have credentialling class Mon/Wed, and this week even Thurs, and it leaves me with far too little time to prepare. I don't have time, each day, to prep a captivating five-step lesson for every subject. Differentiation, making lessons appropriately challenging for each student, seems impossibly far away. I haven't had time to formulate a long term curricular plan, I've barely looked at my students' cumulative files and diagnostics, and as of yet, I haven't even sent out a parent letter. So much of my training seems to have gone out the window in the face of reality. I hope to get caught up this weekend. We'll see. I feel like I have one more week to prove to them it's going to be a furious year of learning before they give up on me and check out until June.
The kids are a tremendous mix of personalities and attitudes. I have one girl who walks through every assignment I give her and patiently raises her hand to wait for more work. I promised to have a more challenging math program figured out for her soon. I have a team of boys who are scattered to the far corners of the classroom, surrounded by quiet girls, and will still find ways to fool around. I have a boy who is almost certainly ADD, interested in the material, but near tears with frustration because he cannot summon the focus to do his reading at a reasonable rate. Another boy is occupying my front-center prime seat, seems to be bright, but still refuses to domore than, almost literally, twiddle his thumbs all day. My best students are almost all girls, and I worry that it intimidates the boys who would excel from performing publicly.
To some degree, I am enjoying it. There are moments when I geteveryone engaged or excited, when the students seem to be actually learning, that make my work seem not entirely ill-planned or poorly-executed or futile. I'm learning how to push their buttons in order to hook them into a lesson, how to manage through disappointed glares and peer-centered shhhhing rather than points and cards and detentions, how to slowly deflate their psuedo-sophistication and get them into something as uncool as learning vocabulary.
I'm reading aloud Maniac Magee and on Friday, for the first time, the whole class gave that melodious, earnest, heart-warming, "Awwwww!"when I put the book down. TFA prescribes that we try and raise our kids performance by 1.5 grade levels, but I'd be satisfied if I couldjust infect them all with an enjoyment of reading.
Alright, back to work...
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