show me, teach me, blog me

We have a handful of school days left before Thanksgiving. The honeymoon is long over, but at this point the kids know the expectations and proceedures so little time is wasted doing the things that drive teachers crazy. I’m loving my students at this point in the year. I do have a couple of kids who are a handful, but nothing that I can’t handle. The most stressful part of the year, report cards/conferences has passed without any major incidents. I doled out honest grades, many kids with D’s and F’s. I was honest with the parents that their child was not performing on grade level, and that with focus and hard work they were capable of growing. I think the parents responded well to the strategies I gave to them for working with their child.

The administration has changed this year for the better. I am feeling supported a million times more than ever before. I am being observed weekly and I receive feedback after each observation. The principal has given all the teachers a rating, advanced, proficient, basic and below basic. I am happy to know that she considers me to be proficient. She asked me to attend two conferences in the past month - a leadership conference in Anaheim and a math teaching conference in Nashville next week.

In an effort to keep my sanity each year I selected a subject and really focused on strategies for teaching that subject well. First year was math, second year was reading and this year is writing. My students are really enjoying their writing projects this year and they have been able to actually create books which they love to show off. I have been splitting each lesson into two parts, the grammar portion and the writing project portion. It helps to keep the structure that that kids know to expect. I find structure and consistency to be the most important parts of a successful elementary classroom.

I think I won. I know it’s sounds silly that I feel like I have been in an epic battle for control of my classroom between J.C. and myself and I won. Today she wrote on her assignment (after she finished it early, by the way) “Ms. D is my best friend!” I was so happy that she has gone through the hating me stage and into her role as the student and she actually likes and respects me. Now I just need to keep her at this stage.

S.P. pooped his pants for the 4th time today. I’m just at a complete loss for what to do. I truly feel like I have had more crazy situations in under 3 years than any other teacher in the world. It makes it worse that I don’t realize it has happened until I smell it. I ask him discreetly if he had an accident and he always lies to me. I have to ask him over and over until he finally admits it. Once he told me without me having to ask him and I praised him for coming to me. I thought since I was so positive about it he wouldn’t keep it a secret. I mean, I understand that he is embarassed, but doesn’t it add insult to injury when he sits in it for undisclosed amounts of time. If anybody out there has had a student with this problem, please let me know what I should do about it.

I’ve begun literacy centers and they are going over well. I’ve been observed many times by administrators and they are very positive about what is already going on in my classroom. I feel like I am still practicing management in my classroom, but they said that they can’t even tell, it seems completely under control. I guess that is a good sign, that my struggles aren’t even visible to administrators, maybe the kids don’t notice either.

I think this year will be a fine year, it’s just a different group of kids that I have to adjust to. The dynamic in my class is very different because 2/3 of my class is male when I’m used to a female heavy class. Last year my male students’ test scores improved significantly more than my female students test scores. This kind of breaks my heart as I feel like somehow I didn’t reach my female students, but I am hopeful that I will be successful with this class of mostly boys.

I hate this part of the year. I’ve gotten through 3 days and it is making me realize how lucky I was last year. I should have looped with my students from last year. I miss them dearly. I hate the monotony of going over rules, proceedures, rules, proceedures, rules, proceedures over and over until I want to rip my hair out. I’ve already lost my temper once which I swore I wouldn’t do this year. A parent called in wanting to know about her child’s academic progress (Um, on day 3 we are lucky to be doing a bathroom break correctly, forget about learning academics). She is so worried about him being held back. I guess I should be glad that she is being proactive and I promised to call her later next week when I have some data about his reading fluency and lexile. Anyway, my students were having a free for all while I was on the phone and it was, ahem, a teachable moment after that. I even had to “pretend” to be on the phone to have them practice modeling the appropriate behavior. They knew I meant business after that.

I have a student T.C. who was such a challenge yesterday, and then he didn’t bring back his behavior sheet today. His excuse was that his mother broke her hand and couldn’t sign the paper. I didn’t buy it. Since mom doesn’t have a working phone number and I instilled a deep fear into him he gave me his grannys number. I called her and couldn’t understand a word the lady said. She seems supportive, but it gave me a better understanding of his home situation. I had a heart to heart with him in the morning, turns out his dad’s in jail and last night his stepfather and mother were fighting which is why he didn’t get the behavior sheet signed. I feel like kind of an ass for being so hard on him, but I think we connected. He gave me three big hugs throughout the day and was seriously a perfect angel all day long. I have absolutely no delusions that this will last forever but now I know he is capable of excellent behavior and I will hold him to that standard.

I have a very large number of students with parents in jail this year. It’s certainly going to be something I am concious of when I talk about families.

Speaking of jail, I have this student, J.M., who I had heard horror stories about, but I am loving so much. He had an incident last year where he would touch girls butts. His mother found a man who brought him to a juvenile detention center to scare the bejeezus out of him so he would never do it again. It certainly made an impression because he talks about it all the time. The thing that is so funny about it is that this child is a very tiny 8 year old (he looks about 5 years old) and he is so happy go lucky that the thought of him being “scared straight” makes me laugh at the absurdity.

I received my first “I love you” note from a student this year. It says: “Dear Ms. D, You is the best teaher evner.” I think the testament to that statement will be if she is able to spell those words correctly by June.

So I gave my third grade students the end of second grade math assessment that I’ve given my students each year. Once again they bombed it hard. I have identified 6 students who have a good grasp on most 2nd grade skills and will be fine once I brush off the summer rust. That leaves 26 who are way way way below grade level. 6 of them are completely absolutely clueless and couldn’t answer ANY question correct. Not telling time, not shapes, not graphs, not money, not adding, not place value, not greater than or less than.

Sigh.

I have had the same results each year and each year I feel so angry that the education system has failed them thus far. Of course I will try my best, but the reality is that with 32 students in my class I am going to be extremely hard pressed to find the time to devote to the needs of each of these students. Some of my TFA colleagues at school have offered after school tutoring to some of the kids who most desprately need assistance. I’m considering doing that this year. With our school days and school year already much longer than most schools I don’t want to wear myself weary. Maybe my time would be best spent tutoring the kids that are in the middle, or upper-middle since they are still behind grade level but they don’t get the kinds of services (like title 1, special ed, SES tutoring) that the lowest kids are offered. I feel like that would be strategic, but maybe it would be the best use of my time. I feel kind of guilty like that would be the most likely to help out the school MAP scores, but maybe it’s what needs to happen. I had 7 students last year who were within 10 points of missing the proficiency cut off point on the state test. It’s hard because they were SO close. I hate the idea of teaching to the test when others “need it more” I mean it’s like deciding, who am I going to leave behind. I know that it’s completely un PC to say but that’s the reality of education today and it really sucks.

I began this year very relaxed and not nervous in the slightest. After my two years as a teacher I feel like I have experienced (and survived) every single crazy situation that could possibly come my way. I felt confident that any strange situation that might pop up would not be any match for the super teacher that I have become. All except for one situation. Poop. Yes. I had a 3rd grade student poop his pants on the first day of school. I was uumbfounded. I ended up catching an administrator in the hallway and has him help the boy to clean it up, but we were already 30 minutes past dismissal time and I didn’t know what to do! He had no phone number so I didn’t know how to reach the family.

Other than that boy (who was a challenge to say the least) I had a decent day. Although my principal says that everybody leaves day 1 feeling good, it’s day 2 you have to watch out for. So onward to day 2. It’s certainly going to be less fun for the kids as I crack down on them. I know I have a great batch of kids (again, how did I always get the best class?) so I’m sure it will be yet another wonderful year.

Oh, and my roster is up to 32 kids now since one parent talked to the principal and demanded that her child be put in my room. Honestly, with this one I don’t mind since I had his sister 2 years ago and he is adorable, brilliant, and angelic. I guess having too many people WANTING you to teach their child is a great problem to have.

I’m officially a TFA Alumni, and I just graduated from my master’s degree program this weekend. I am returning to teach the same grade at the same school. Yesterday the new year began (no kids yet, just teachers) and I was absolutely dreading going into school. However, once I got there I was very happy to be back and see all my colleagues. I have the best coworkers in the world, which is the main reason I chose to stay at my school. I have the same classroom again, so it makes set up very easy.

I’m feeling quite excited about next year, which is a nice feeling. Two years ago I was having panic attacks every night as I prepared for my first year. Last year I felt better but still nervous. This year I’m just feeling happy and ready to meet the little kiddos. I’m still a planner by nature, but one thing I have learned as a teacher is how to roll with the punches and to always have a dozen tricks up your sleeve in case things don’t go as planned (and they NEVER go as planned).

I used my local freecycle group to have a beautiful wooden rocking chair donated to my classroom. I hope to be able to use them more often because you can’t beat the price. I am so excited to do my first read aloud of the school year in the rocking chair.

We took the SRI test today to gauge reading lexile score. My understanding (from TFA) is that an improvement of 100 points would be the equivalent of a year’s growth. With that understanding, 150-200 points growth is a good TFA style goal for reading improvement. My class’ average growth so far this year is 116 points! Woohoo! We are well on our way to surpassing the goal! Last year the average growth was 190 in my reading group so I hope I can pass that up. I had 7 students grow over 200 points already. I had a few who decreased lexile score. I’m hoping that is a fluke and they will show more improvement next time we test in the spring.

Halfway done with the second year and I haven’t cried once! It’s really remarkable how much better this year is and how much I am enjoying my students. I had 6 who didn’t show up for school today, including my two trouble makers, so it was a very peaceful day. I spent some time this break working on creating literacy centers for the kids. I spent way too much money on lamination, but I feel like I have some really great centers for the kids now. I’m sure that they will like them and have a lot of fun while learning. We are in cruch time for the MAP test now. I mentioned it for the first time a week before winter break and beginning today it will come up every single day. I want them to be ready to conquer it and since our math benchmark success next month I am sure they will be able to do an awesome job. I’m a bit nervous that we aren’t going to be able to do it again this year. That our MAP scores will remain below 10% proficiency. I guess I just need to stop thinking that. My students are so smart that it’s not fair for me to wast time worrying about that.

I took 3 students to the annual St Louis TFA ice skating party and it was so much fun, once again. We stayed until the afternoon to skate with Santa. The kids were beside themselves, they just LOVED holding Santa’s hand and skating around the rink with them. It is amazing to me how quickly the kids can pick up on skating, which is not an easy thing to do. After a few times around the rink they were flying faster than me and didn’t want any help at all. It was really fun to watch them and to get to know the kids in a different setting. I love doing Saturday trips with my students.

One of the kids I brought was K.Y. who I talked about earlier. It was remarkable to see him come out of his shell, he talked more than I have heard him all year. He was so helpful, helping up the other kids who fell on the ice and throwing away all the trash from our pizza lunch. He also blew me away with his memory. He had every classmate’s birthday memorized. I would have never guessed he had such a thing for dates! It was so cute when he asked for Multiplication flash cards for Christmas from Santa. (By the way, he passed his x2 tables on Thursday, and there are still about 8 kids in my class struggling with those facts, I was blown away! I guess all the interventions ARE working after all!)

I was looking through my computer files and I read this from about 2 years ago when I was applying for TFA. It made me realize how much my life has changed in that time.

Teach For America: Essay

As an undergraduate at Michigan State University, much of my energy was focused into organized student activism. When something bad would happen and people complained, “Somebody should do something about that,” I found that I was usually the person taking action.

By the time I was a sophomore, a once-innocent tradition of yelling at midnight throughout finals week had morphed into an ugly habit of sexual harassment and intimidation. Living as a Resident Mentor in a housing complex for approximately 2,500 undergraduates, I was mortified to discover throngs of unruly men gathered in the courtyard pounding on dorm windows, chanting “show your tits,” and verbally harassing women who were outdoors.

As a frustrated student, I called the campus police, hoping they could control the situation. Disappointingly, I was told that there was nothing they could do, as the behavior was protected by the First Amendment.

As an activist, I refused to accept that answer. I talked about my outrage with anybody I met – neighbors who lived in the complex, professors, officials, and fellow student leaders. People who had seen the spectacle shared my indignation; people who hadn’t heard about it were shocked that this behavior was condoned.

The factors working against me were numerous: the event took place at midnight, when very few staff members and even fewer administrators were on campus; the campus police would not allow officers to interfere; and furthermore, I faced hostility by many of the male students who found this tradition to be nothing more than harmless fun. But if I am presented with a roadblock, then I find a more creative way to achieve my goals.

It was essential to get the administration involved. At first I printed and distributed fliers with the contact information of every relevant administrator and university decision-maker, encouraging concerned students to make their voices heard. That approach did not produce any results; I needed something bigger. After organizing my fellow student activists, I sent out news releases to the local media and held a press conference. I was interviewed by the local newspaper and several Lansing and Detroit TV news networks, which sent out cameras to film the midnight mob. The negative publicity created by the media was exactly what we needed to spur the university into positive action.

The following night the Director of Student Life, Director of Student Housing, and even the Vice President of Student Affairs were out at midnight to witness the mob. The outcomes were plentiful. As the principal organizer of these changes, I was invited by campus officials to participate in numerous women’s advisory committees. The midnight screams were a major topic across the university for months, and the committees were able to use their influence to alter campus police policy. The following year the midnight mob had entirely disbanded, and I knew I had made a lasting impact at my university.