Trying to Love Teaching in October

October is the long stretch for teachers, week after unrelenting week without a vacation and with the build-up to the Devil’s Holiday, Halloween. (Teachers and the Christian Right are unusually united in their mutual distaste for October 31, if you don't know why, ask any teacher.) It is not, contrary to popular belief, rough for us teachers because we are lazy and unaccustomed to working as hard as people with “real jobs.” It is hard for us because it is hard for the children. The children then make it hard for us. Smart kids don’t pay attention, up-and-down kids go down at the slightest prompting, and the nasty ones seem to have a field day preying on the weak and our nerves.

But I’m trying to keep a better attitude these days, so I’m trying to focus my attention on the things that I enjoy and the things that are going right.

Newcomers : Every morning, for an hour before school, I teach the 10 newest 3-4-5 kids “survival English.” It’s a heap of fun, I can’t believe they pay me for it. There are a million ways to have fun teaching body parts, days of the week, basic prepositions. Today I found myself sitting on a desk with a 3rd grade sitting under the desk and a student who’s been in the U.S. since August saying, perfectly, “Mr. AB is on the desk. C---- is under the desk.” The curriculum is actually somewhat usable, and I supplement with language games and Starfall. The kids brim with excitement to learn anything, even at 7:30 in the morning, and their attitude is infectious. Best of all, their progress is palpable; by the end of each activity, let alone each day, I know that they’ve learned something.

Competent Kids : I’ve found a favorite type of kid. I call them the "competent kids" because they are not necessarily the smartest or highest-scoring, but they come to school, every day, ready to learn and they let few things get in their way. They are more organized than me, always appear in uniform and never forget their homework. They are not teacher’s pets, they are too saavy for that. I get the vague feeling they realize we teachers are each just one part in a twenty-year journey, can't get too attached to one. My favorite competent kid moment came when a student came up to me, against class policy but during a transition. She asked me a pointless question in a very loud voice, also unusually. Then she surreptitiously handed me a note, informing me that a student was eating banned Hot Cheetoes in class and walked away. Not a vengeance-inducing or lesson-interrupting snitch, just a polite FYI at a down moment. I watched the kid and decided to intervene. G---- discreetly nodded with approval.

Data: I’m a data fiend. I love tracking progress, taking averages, comparing performances and disaggregating big piles of scores. I love logging the grades and making big spreadsheets of color-formatted cells that turn red, yellow and green with the scores, giving me a tapestry of information about who’s learning, failing and what I need to teach and teach again. I love sorting the data to watch for correlations, finding that only the students who’ve mastered x had a chance on y. I love the way the data mimics the daily life in the classroom, the unbroken stream of failures stemming from the absentee, the unwavering success of that student who’s hand is always in the air.

Progress: Every week we take a timed math facts test, 100 problems in 5 minutes. 4th and 5th graders should be working on multiplication and division, but this year we started on subtraction. Even at that, only 4 students passed the first week. The Man said it best: “It is not that you can’t do this, it is has never before been asked of you. Now it is being demanded.” We spent 10 minutes the next day in class learning the word “demand.” As of last week, over 50 students have passed and the vast majority are in range. I take real pride in that because I decided to stop teaching the district’s math curriculum that never would have addressed their incapability. Without out my intervention, and the flexibility I was given to make that intervention, we probably would’ve sent them to middle school with only a tentative grasp of the most basic of arithmetic. Now, we practice subtraction at the beginning of every day and in every down moment. Now, we’ve re-understood the concept and we’ve learned new ways to do the operations fast. They may be 5th graders learning subtraction in October, but they are learning something desperately important and they are learning it because of me. Knowing that will get me to Thanksgiving.