Not Quite Grown Up...

Conferences

2010-10-30T20:43:00.006-05:00

I love conferences.

Of course, at first, I hate conferences. Or rather, I dread them. Even though I regularly stay at school until 6:00, staying until 7:00 for conferences just seems so much later. The conferences themselves are exhausting. I speak Spanish well enough to conduct my own conferences in Spanish, but my mind goes into overdrive trying to think about how to say everything. I'm chatty with the parents, and so my conferences - even though I give myself longer for each conference than most teachers - tend to run over. For this reason, I try not to plan more than a few in a row. I give myself conference-free blocks of 30 minutes ever 3 conferences or so, so that I can catch up. Because of these buffer times, I have to schedule more long days than most teachers. But that's okay.

Because really, I love conferences. I wish I had more time for them. I wish we did them more often. I wish we had an opportunity for some sort of "pre" conference at the very beginning of the year. It would be great to have a time during the second week of school when all parents were supposed to come, talk to me for 15 minutes, and just tell me about their children and their children's family. I learn so much during these conferences, nearly 3 months into the school year, that would have been useful to know during the beginning months.

First of all, I just love to observe the family dynamic. I get to see this a little bit at "meet the teacher" night, before school begins. But, that's not in a one-on-one setting. There can be 10 kids and their families in the room at that time, and the kids are scared and quiet and the families are nervous and checking out the teacher.

During conferences, I was able to see that quiet P--- is so chatty and talkative with her mother - and when she is able to speak in Spanish. I couldn't even get P--- to talk at all during the first week of school. For the next two weeks, she would pretty much only speak when given the opportunity to talk into a microphone (oddly enough). Now, she talks to me and everyone else in the class, but her productive English is low, and she struggles. With her mother and me at conferences though, she was talking and talking, bouncing around the room showing her mother all our books, telling her mother what she's learned, begging and begging to read some of our favorite books to her mom. I also noticed at this time that in Spanish, she has a stutter. I've started to notice this in class a bit, too, as she speaks more and talks using multiple words (instead of one-word responses/questions). Without the opportunity to hear her fluently speak in Spanish during conferences, I may never have noticed this.

I was able to see R--- and his family. I didn't just get one parent, but I got his mom, his, dad, his big brother, and his little sister. R--- was so adorable throughout the conference. After he did his part (reading three notes to his parents about the things he had learned so far, and reading them a book he had practiced) he jumped up and asked me, "can I teach my sister how to count?" I told him that yes, while I talked with his parents about the boring things like "test" scores, he could teach his little sister to count. R--- called his sister over to a big 100s Chart and started counting. "Okay, listen to me" he commanded her, and he pointed to the numbers and counted. "One, two, three... Now your turn." I can tell R--- has been listening in class.

E---'s whole family came. I know that his mom and dad don't live together, and I told them that we could do two separate conferences, if they wanted, instead of just one, since I don't know their dynamic. They said one conference was fine, and E--- ended up coming with his mom, his mom's baby, his dad, his dad's new wife, their new baby, and another toddler. I've never had so many babies and parents in a conference. It was distracting to me, but wonderful to see so many people caring about E--- and his schooling. Everyone asked questions - his mom, his dad, and his stepmom.

During C---'s conference, I found out that she had started kindergarten in Mexico before moving to the US last year. I didn't know this, and it helps explain why her English is so low. I also learned that she lives with her grandparents, not her parents. Her parents still live in Mexico. They basically gave her up to the grandmother so that C--- could attend school in the US. C---'s grandmother (who C--- calls "mom") said that they are trying to help her, but that they don't know any English. I tried to reassure the grandmother that numbers are numbers and words are words. If they do all they can to help her in Spanish, I'll do all I can to transfer that understanding to English.

(In fact, I ended up reassuring a LOT of parents that same thing. It makes me curious - what are the kindergarten teachers saying? Are they telling the parents not to support the children's learning in Spanish? At this point, I have so many students who still don't know the numbers 1 through 20. I don't care if they know them in English or Spanish or any other language - conceptual understanding is conceptual understanding.)

My biggest shock was L---. L--- tells me about his mother a lot. I've never seen her before, but L--- talks about her being pregnant or something along those lines, so I assumed she was just staying home for that reason. It turns out that actually, she is dead. She died three or four years ago, I think with complications from the birth of a younger sibling. (And this is where I wish my "conversational" Spanish was stronger.) The father told me all this in front of L---, so it's not a secret. But, the father also said (again, in front of the child) that L--- doesn't really understand, that L--- thinks she is just in Mexico or something like that. It would have been nice to know this a bit earlier, especially since the mother is a daily topic of conversation for L---. Now I'm looking around to see if there is any therapist or counselor who can talk to L--- about this. At my school, the school psychologist doesn't work with children - all he does is test. But maybe he knows of an outside organization that does free child therapy...

I also love conferences because they help me make a point. People always complain about the apathy of parents. That "parents these days don't care anymore." Or that, "'THOSE' parents don't care." Despite the fact that I work in an "inner city" school, that my students all come from Spanish-speaking homes (and are English language learners), that most of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, that most of the students are first or second generation immigrants - despite all that, the families come (in full force!) and they care, and they want to help. I had 96% of my students come to conferences. I am missing one student. I still plan on calling the parent and reminding them to come in. My goal is 100% attendance. I've done it before, and I can do it again.

Welcome to my 3rd Year Teaching!

2010-10-11T22:40:00.004-05:00

This has been a really hard year so far.

It started the first week of school when students kept enrolling, and getting put in my class. More and more students. It got to be nearly a joke. I got 10 new students over the course of the first week of school.

The part that bothered me the most, though, was that classroom numbers were (and are) wildly unequal at my grade level. Some classes have 10 students fewer than me. The irony is, in my insane state, that segregates children based upon English language proficiency, I am working with the group of students that is supposed to have the smallest class size. Even the State Department of Education advises that classes such as mine have fewer students than I currently have. But, because "language levels" cannot be mixed, and my administration is not willing to find ways around the rule, I have 10 more students in my class than teachers in my grade level with less "needy" students.

I know it's not helpful, or healthy, but every day I look across the hall at the teacher who has so, so many fewer students than me, and imagine all things I could do if I had that number of students. I could actually meet the needs of my students! There would be room in the classroom to move around! I would have enough materials for all the students! It would be a dream!

Aside from the sheer number of students, this is the chattiest group of students I have ever had. So chatty. SO CHATTY. I have tried so many different things to try to get them to use the chattiness for good, not evil. Before we read any story, the students talk about their predictions of every single page with a partner. While we read the stories we have ample opportunities to share with a partner. At the end of the story, students talk with a partner. We're starting to figure out how read-alouds work.

Direction-giving time, though, is still a mess. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the students to pay attention to the directions/rules for games during math or literacy centers. This results in the direction-giving times lasting too long, (since I have to repeat myself so many times, since students aren't listening) and students getting antsy and bugging each other.

And that's another issue that I have not experienced before. Students are stealthily mean to each other. I have had so many parents talk to me, telling me that XXX student and YYY student are bothering their child, and why am I not doing anything about it. I see nothing in the classroom. If I see nothing in the classroom, I'm not sure what to do about it, since I don't know who is telling the truth. We have had "discussions" (which means we sit in a circle and talk). We have role-played. We have drawn pictures, written stories, taken photographs of positive models. I cannot get the children to be regularly kind to one-another, to keep their hands off of other people, to stop calling each other names or threatening to not be friends.

My current goal, in this area, is to figure out how to get students to differentiate between "tattling" and telling the teacher when someone is bothering them in a more serious way. We made a chart today that lists "cheating during centers games," "stealing my crayon" and "bothering me in line to get a drink" as things that do not require teacher interference. "Pinching, hitting, and pushing" and "if someone bothers me after I tell them to stop 3 times" were put under the heading "Tell the Teacher." I don't know if that's right, or not. We'll see if anything come of it.

Aside from teaching, I have spent the last month or so obsessively following all the Waiting for Superman controversy on the internet. For the record, I think the movie Waiting for Superman is a teacher-bashing, charter-supporting, privately funded, harmful piece of propaganda. I've read nearly every article posted by Not Waiting for Superman on their Facebook page. (As a result, I have a renewed love for Alfie Kohn, which is a whole different story...) I just don't understand why people aren't stopping to look at the community and socioeconomic factors that influence schools and the students who attend schools. Some day, when I have more energy, I will write more about that, hopefully...

I also am about 3/4 done with my masters degree. This semester I am working on an action research project, and have been taking reflective notes on some of the things I do in the classroom. I'm hoping I can take some of those ideas and turn them into blog posts, and maybe actually post on this blog! I really enjoy going back and reading my thoughts from student teaching and my first year teaching. I'm sad that I have practically nothing from last year. I need to document my development as a teacher, so I can look back on it in 10 years and laugh (or cry, I don't know which).

Hackers Keep Breaking Into My Accounts...

2010-09-26T00:16:00.004-05:00

That last post from July was a HACKER. This same hacker (or group of hackers, conspiracy of hackers) broke into my other Google accounts as well. I hadn't realized they got into this one, too!

I'm still teaching. Plodding along. Maybe some day I'll have enough energy to post.

In the meantime, I am certainly not stuck in London, and certainly not posting a need for help on an anonymous blog!

Year Two, Done.

2010-06-25T20:47:00.007-05:00

Oh, boy.

My goal is to pick this thing back up.

I'm no longer a second-year teacher. I'm on my way to being a third year teacher, which is absolutely bizarre.

I survived this year, but just barely.

My class was lovely.

My students were incredible. They had their challenges, of course. There was the child who spent the first semester barking under desks and humping the floor, and the second semester making noises so random that I can't reproduce them, and so frequent that when others came in and marveled at the noises, I hadn't even realized they were being made. There was the child who was being a bully, and knew he was being a bully, but couldn't quite figure out how to stop. There was the child who finally, come May, began doing work she should have been able to do in November of her kinder year. There was the child who had compulsive behaviors that greatly interfered with her learning, yet despite many conversations with administrators, I was unable to convince them that these behaviors were serious and detrimental to her own and her peers classroom experiences. Yet, despite the challenges and oddities, the children were just fabulous. The students (even the occasional bullies) were kind to one another. They helped one another. They supported one another. They helped and supported ME. They internalized my love for reading, for writing, for learning. They did fabulous teamwork. They loved to sing songs about math and reading. They believed me when I told them that freshly sharpened pencils were "brain pencils" and would help them access all the knowledge they already had in their brains. They let me read and reread my favorite stories to them. They made excellent text-to-text and text-to-self connections. They LISTENED to each other when they spoke. They responded to each other, to their classmates' comments and stories. They liked listening to one another read. They knew how to gently support classmates who struggled in reading. They internalized my prompts to "think about what you know about the word," to "look for little words you know in the bigger word," to "look at the picture to give ideas about the word," to "think about blends you know to sound out the word." There were moments when I felt like I was an ancillary member of the class. They didn't need me anymore - they could do it all on their own.

They were excellent.

Of course, this is in hindsight. There were moments, days, weeks, that things weren't working. I remember one week, one group of weeks when nothing was working. Nothing was going right. I emailed a teaching coach and told her I needed help. I didn't know why, but I needed help. She came in that day during writing, looked at me, asked what was wrong, and I almost burst out crying in the middle of class. Nothing in particular was wrong. The kids weren't being mean to each other. My lessons weren't bombing. The students were learning. Just...nothing was quite right. We talked that afternoon. We worked it out. I felt a little better. Then my administration pulled a new curve-ball and everything I had planned that long afternoon had to be thrown out.

I struggled with some coworkers. I never felt accepted. I felt like my knowledge and experience wasn't valued. I felt like some people didn't care what I had to say. It hurt. A lot. I had come from a school where, even though I was a first year teacher, I was valued. The other teachers had valued me for my youthful enthusiasm, for my up-to-date pedagogical knowledge. For my passion. At this new school, I felt that people resented every comment I made alluding to something I had done the previous year. They didn't care about my previous experiences. They didn't want me there. Eventually, things got a little better. The zillionth time I mentioned a successful activity/procedure/lesson I had done the previous year, my new coworkers sort of listened. I began to feel a little bit accepted. Then something else happened, and all the team-bonding, the acceptance, it deteriorated. It was gone. I felt hated again.

I struggled with my administrators. This, I can't describe. I don't understand it. I never felt comfortable. That's all. Never felt accepted. Never felt able to understand their motives or thought processes. Never felt the intense connection I had to my previous administrators who, from day one, I could tell would support me no matter what. It was a different leadership style. Different people. A different relationship. No comparison.

I interviewed at a different school, and was offered the position. I debated the merits of moving verse staying. I didn't know which would be better. Everyone not directly involved told me to do whatever was best for me, long term. I didn't know what that was. I wanted to be in two places at once and knew that wasn't possible. I didn't know what to do. I emailed that same teaching coach again. Told her I needed her help. She wasn't at school that day, but I needed the help immediately - time to make my decision was running out. I couldn't tell anyone else at school about this - I couldn't tell them I might be leaving - so I couldn't ask for their advice. This teaching coach, though, I knew I could trust her. And she came. She wasn't at school that day, but after school let out for the day, she came. She could tell something was wrong. That time, I did burst out crying. I didn't know what to do. We talked. We talked and talked. I showed her my lists. Tried to explain my conflict. She told me it looked liked I had made my decision, and she would miss me. I started crying again. I'm not a crier. Never, in my entire life had I cried in front of anyone except my parents. And that hadn't happened since I was young, in middle school, maybe, and in trouble. That's different. I cried. I called my teacher-friend, and cried again. That made two people I had cried in front of that day. The next morning, I made my decision to go. I had was sad to be leaving, but was looking forward to a new adventure. I was about to call and accept the new position. Then something happened. Something big. I got new information about the situation. I wasn't going to move. I mourned that - the loss of something I never had. The loss of a potential new beginning. It had been my decision, and I could have gone, but I didn't. I felt very sad, nauseous, worried.

It was an emotional year. It was probably the most emotional year of my life. I got layed off, again. I updated my resume. Asked for letters of reference. Filled out job applications. I got un-layed off again. Breathed a sigh of relief. But already, I'm worried for next year. I don't think I can survive another potential lay-off. Some people thought it was easier the second time. It was harder for me. It was so much harder the second time. If I get layed off again next year, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't think I'm going to wait. If this district lays me off again, I'm done. I can't deal with the stress, the emotion.

Aside from my own stress this year, I felt a lot for my students. I live in that state, where all the stuff is happening. Where all my students are having to live in fear of being arrested for who they are, or who their parents are. For what they may not have. Or, perhaps worse, for what they do have, but their parents do not. I had students' parents have to abruptly leave the country. Sometimes the kids knew why. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they learned to live with it, making due with phone calls or letters. Sometimes they struggled. They were pulled out of school early once a week to go visit a counselor. They were depressed, unable to understand why one of their parents had been ripped away from them, for a piece of paper they did not have. My students were strong, though. They wrote about it in their journals. They shared their experiences with one-another. They commiserated about the confusion, the pain. They talked about the things they had heard on the news, the whispers they heard from the adults around them. They talked about it in such a mature way. I stayed out of these conversations - I don't have to live with that fear. I'm lucky. I listened to my seven-year-old students talk about mature, life-changing issues. I hurt for them, and was proud of them for being so strong. I worried for them.

It was a long year. I learned a lot. I grew a lot professionally. I changed, too. I also stayed the same. My favorite word is "wonderful." That hasn't changed. I love to teach guided reading. That hasn't changed, either. I'm more cautious now, with what I say. I've learned to do first, and ask for forgiveness later, instead of asking for permission up front. It's counter-intuitive, but that's the way things work around here. I still mourn for what could have been. I mourn for what could have been had my first school not shut down. I mourn for what could have been had I accepted the position at the new school. I worry for continued conflict with coworkers and administrators next year. But that's life, right? Everything is unknown. I can't worry about what could have been. I need to look forward to what will be. And what will be? I don't know.

Welcome Back from Winter Break!

2010-01-04T22:09:00.000-06:00

Welcome back from winter break! We had some highs and some lows our first day back:

The first thing any of my students said as I picked them up from the playground at the beginning of the day was, “Ms. GrownUp! My Dad had to go to jail!” Usually the reason is something like drug possession or something else fairly minor like that. “Oh, I’m sorry…” I said, since nothing more appropriate came to my mind. “He got sent to jail ‘cause he threw something at my mom.” My response then was just, “Oh.” How am I supposed to respond to that? I can’t say, though I was thinking, ‘Well, in that case, I am very proud of your mother for not living with abuse. I know that, while you are a delight, your siblings, especially the one who attends a special school for children with behavior problems, are a huge handful. I can’t imagine having to take care of all of you all day, alone. Your mom is stronger than I’ll ever be.’

Leaves had fallen on the ground during winter break, and there were piles and piles of leaves everywhere. On the way to lunch the class was looking longingly at the leaves, wanting nothing more than to jump in them like excited puppy dogs. One girl looked thoughtfully at the leaves and commented, “I should have brought a rake! A-something-E!” I’m not sure why she felt compelled to explain the spelling of the long-A sound in that word, but it certainly made me laugh.

One student happily shared that his father had come back from Mexico. The father had left a few weeks ago because he couldn’t find a job here. This father is, from what I can tell, a great father. I haven’t spoken to him much, but I know that during conferences he was absolutely beaming as I talked to him about his son. The whole time he just looked in awe that I was saying so many wonderful things about his kid. It was adorable. I am very glad that he was able to come back to the US to live with his family.

As I picked the class up from recess, one of the girls limped up to me and exclaimed (very excitedly), “I stepped in dog poop! I’ve got dog poop on my shoe!” I wasn’t sure what to do, but eventually made her take her shoe off outside. She then very carefully handed it to me, and I carried it with two fingers to the classroom where I attacked it with a Clorox wipe.

I was working with a guided reading group on a word-building activity. The students had an assortment of alphabet magnets (for word making) and a paper and pencil (for recording). One girl was absentmindedly holding two pencils – one in each hand. The boy next to her looked down and couldn’t find his pencil. “Hey! Where’d my pencil go?!” he complained, looking around. “E---, you stole my pencil!” he accused the girl. “What? No I didn’t,” she said (still holding a pencil in each hand.) The boy pointed at her hands, “Yeah, look!” he demanded. E--- looked at her hands and was shocked to discover that she was in fact holding two pencils. She shrugged as if she had no idea how the pencil had gotten into her hand, passed it over to the boy, and went back to work.

At the end of the day I finally let my students go play outside in the leaves for exactly three minutes. It was three minutes of pure joy, excitement, and happiness. (Except for the four students who had lost the privilege to play in the leaves because they did not do their work during math centers.) Of course, I planned poorly and let them play in the front of the school. That meant that all the parents who arrived early saw me and my class participating in utter mayhem – throwing leaves in each other’s hair, jumping on leaf piles that often contained half-buried children, (sometimes resulting in a pained yelp) and behaving completely unlike any other class that exited the building calmly, quietly, and in a line. When the bell rang and it was really time to go, I got most of the children to calm down a little bit and, like in dodge ball, not throw leaves above knee-level. I fear the leaves will be gone tomorrow, and with it the wonderful excitement they brought with them. A little chaos is well deserved at the end of the first day back after a long break.

Year Two, Update Two.

2009-11-22T08:45:00.002-06:00

If you don't have something nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all - especially if it is being posted on the internet.

That's my excuse for not writing this year. My students are fine - they're not causing me any big problems. It's the other parts (administration, coworkers, and policy-rules) that are driving me insane this year.

If I had felt this frustrated last year, I may not have made it to being a second year teacher.

I'm basically frustrated/upset much of the time, have gotten "in trouble" for doing things like going to conferences and assessing my students, (both things that were encouraged last year...) and will probably be layed off again at the end of the school year due to further budget cuts (without hope for being rehired).

But, the kids are great. When I'm not getting in trouble or having my schedule screwed with, I am feeling surprisingly competent in teaching. Many of my students have made awesome jumps in reading since the beginning of the school year, and even though I am not using the new district-mandated math program (because I was never taught how, and it is very traditional/worksheet based, instead of being constructivist which I how I like to teach math) my students are doing pretty well in math, too.

I was so lucky last year to have such a supportive administration and such great coworkers. Maybe someday I'll have the opportunity to experience that again.

Year Two!

2009-10-03T23:37:00.003-05:00

Well, I've been gone for a long time.

The start of the school year has been crazy and busy. But, overall, things have been going surprisingly well.

I have six more students than I did most of last year, eight more than I did by the end of last year. But, we're figuring out how to all coexist in one room together.

I have some students who I have yet to figure out and some students who have been wonderful from the first day of school.

I really like some of the people at my new school, and am having adjustment problems with others, but am hoping to work out some of those issues soon.

One new thing I'm trying is giving the students more "freedom". Last week (the...5th-ish week of school) I decided that we would no longer have assigned desks. Students can sit wherever they want on the rare occasion that we are actually sitting at desks, and can have more than 4 people at a group of 4 desks, if they want. When we are sitting on the rug, they can sit with me on the rug, or they can pull chairs up to the rug and sit on the chairs, or they can sit at desks. During centers and math time, they can sit at desks, on the floor, or on top of the desks. When I'm reading a story, they can lie down, if they want. We've been working with this for a week now, and so far I like it.

I need to record more of my second year (because I'm no longer a first year teacher!!) so that I can view my own progression from year one to year two.

Hopefully I will force myself to write down more. Because with the extra students comes extra humor/excitement/tears/excreted bodily fluids/office referrals/guided reading groups/piles of paper...

Pre School Jitters.

2009-07-15T20:54:00.008-05:00

I'm having way more anxiety for school starting this year than I did before the start of last school year.

Last year, I had no expectations. I knew nothing. So everything was good.

This year I have expectations and I know nothing will look like I am expecting it to.

I'm at a new school with a new principal and new teachers.

I didn't get to choose this school, I was just placed there.

I was going to have one class, and it changed last minute, and it was partially my decision and now I'm regretting it. The option was given to me way out of the blue and I didn't know anything and I should have asked for a night to think about it, but I didn't, and I know it will be fine, but I'm still mad at myself for saying I would change my class.

Everything will be different and I want it all to be the same. Aside from the whole getting layed off thing last year, it was a fabulous year. I loved everything about last year.

A new year will never be able to live up to last year.

I'm trying not to have expectations. I'm trying to go into it with an open mind, an "everything will be fine" mind. But for some reason, I can't.

I am terrified and I don't know why.

Lisa

2009-07-06T08:31:00.000-05:00

(This is my fifth post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Lisa was a very quiet student in my class. Unlike the other girls, she never wears skirts or skorts or jumpers. She only ever wears pants. She doesn't wear braids or barrettes or multiple ponytail holders in her hair. She has either one ponytail or her hair is down. She doesn't usually hang out with the rest of the girls (who greatly outnumber the boys) in my class. Really, she doesn't hang out with much of anyone. Not in an outcast way - the others don't avoid her, they actually all seem to quite like her. Not in a shy way - Lisa doesn't cower on the fringe of groups. She just doesn't participate in the girly giggly, hair playing, actively sucking-up-to-the-teacher activities that most of the other girls do.

Lisa is perfectly behaved, perfectly. She is the best behaved student in the class. I at times called her my "Sticker Queen" because there were days when I would get frustrated and give those who quickly behaved a sticker. Lisa ended up covered in stickers because she was always the first one to clean up, the first one to sit down, the first one to start her work. Like all my students, Lisa is Latina, but was one of the 3 students in my class who was not considered to be an English language learner. She doesn't speak Spanish. In fact, at one point on a school feedback form (that was supposed to be anonymous), her mother complained that all the ELL students were given too much attention and stole the teacher's attention from the English-only students. (Which I know is not true in my class since, of those three monolingual English speakers in my class, one is a significant behavior challenge, one is a always-in-the-middle-of-everything busybody, and one is Lisa, the sticker queen who is praised and used as a model constantly.)

Academically, Lisa was generally just slightly below where I would have liked her to have been. But, she always did her work, always tried hard, and always worked well with others, despite the fact that she wasn't drawn to hanging out in large groups.

One day Lisa whispered to me, "Ms. Grownup, I'm wearing boys shoes." I responded, "Okay. Hey, as long as they're comfy, that's great!" And that was that. They were gym shoes, white/blue/black instead of the girlie white/pink/purple color combination that is sold in the girl's shoe sections.

Lisa was always awesome. I very strategically sat her between two girls. One girl was academically much lower than Lisa and quite hyperactive. This girl, Juliette, sometimes struggled with partners. Lisa was always a fabulous partner to Juliette. Even when they weren't doing specific partner work, Lisa helped her read or sound out the spelling (she didn't tell Juliette how to spell, Lisa simply helped sound out the words). When Juliette got off task, Lisa tried to draw her back. On the other side of Lisa sat Clara, a girl with fairly low self-esteem (both academic and social). Lisa "helped" her academically, even though in reality Clara had advanced quite a bit and was about equal to Lisa in reading ability. Lisa was always there to pay attention to Clara though, which was important. When the two of the worked together, they worked quietly and slowly, but generally got the job done.

During a kind of raucous science activity one day, a student shouted across the room to me, "Ms. Grownup! Lisa says she's a boy, but she isn't." I shouted back, "Lisa can say she is whoever she want to be." And again, that was that. I was going in a thousand directions at the time, and didn't get a chance to think about it until later.

Do these conversations mean anything? I don't know.
Am I reading more into it than is actually there? Perhaps.
Does Lisa feel more like a boy, than like the girl who society wants her to be? Or was the other student misinterpreting something she had said? I'm not sure.

In class, I didn't talk about gender much except to point out that there is no such thing as a "girl color" or a "boy color." To talk about the fact that girls and boys can wear whatever colored clothes or styled clothes they want. To show examples of and talk about how there is no such thing as a "girl job" or a "boy job." I tried to make sure I called on each gender equally for each type of lesson/style of question (though I never charted it or had anyone chart it for me, so I don't know if I was entirely successful in doing so.)

Maybe next year I should talk more explicitly about gender, discussing what students' perceptions are, and why they have stereotypes about gender. In college, the first unit plan I created had a really neat lesson on gender stereotypes. Maybe I'll try to modify it to first grade and use it next year.

Jason

2009-07-03T16:46:00.003-05:00

(This is my fourth post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Jason was only in my class for a few weeks. Four weeks, five, maybe. He came in unexpectedly one day (just showing up at my classroom door with the secretary, as new students tended to do). His cousin began the same day in the class next door.

Jason was a fabulous reader, placed in my super-high group (and in fact, I never got around to testing him all the way, to see how "high" he really was.) His math skills, however, were very low. Basic concepts confused him. Maybe he had been at a school before that focused even more on reading than we did. Maybe they didn't do enough math in his old first grade. Or, maybe he was just not a mathematician. I don't know. I worked individually with him, but he wasn't there long enough for me to really get to know him.

Anyway, one day, after having been in the room for weeks, Jason looked over at the wall and saw our Weekly Reader issue with Obama on the cover.

"Hey!" he shouted with a grin. "I know that guy!"
"Yeah?" I asked.
"Yeah! We talked about him at my old school!"
"Tell me about him," I suggested.
"That's 'Bama! I voted for him! I want him to be president!"
"Well, he is," I reassured Jason.
"Yeah..." Jason responded, still looking adoringly at the picture.

Jason got very excited about things in a very adorable way.

During science one day we were doing observations. He came up to me with the science material and started talking and exclaiming about the object he was observing.

"It's so happy!" he shouted, I think talking about the whole situation, not the specific object he was observing. "It's so cool!" he continued.
"Yeah?" I prompted him.
"Yeah...I think I'm going to explode of happiness..." he sighed with satisfaction under his breath, as he walked back to his desk.

Unfortunately, Jason left as suddenly as he arrived. One day he was absent, and his cousin told me he had moved. "Moved, like, to a new house?" I asked, "Or moved to a new school."
"He moved far away," she answered, shrugging her shoulders. And, I never saw Jason again. His cousin ended up moving a few weeks later as well.

Wherever they went, I hope they're living together still. Jason was a little spacey, a little scatterbrained. His cousin took good care of him. They had lived together when they both went to Awesome School, and I think helped each other in different ways. (Jason helped with the reading, his cousin helped with developing social skills.)

Luis

2009-06-22T23:38:00.003-05:00

(This is my third post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

At the beginning of the school year, about the third week of school, one of my students informed me that she wanted to be called by a different name. I had been calling her by her first name, and she preferred her second name. I was glad she felt comfortable enough to let me know, so I immediately made her a new desk tag and announced to the class that she wanted to go by her second name.

As could be expected, the other students started shouting out random other names that they wanted to be called. Luis wanted to be called "The Hulk." That one, I didn't allow.

Luis was fairly average in most respects. There were times that he drove me crazy. There were times that he worked hard and tried his best.

He liked to write. Luis once wrote a story about La Llorona and The Hulk. This story ended up being about 3 pages long. It was epic and hilarious. (La Llorona and The Hulk were fighting to see who would win. Since La Llorona is a sort of boogywoman, and The Hulk is a fictional charactor, I allowed the fighting.)

Luis was one of the few students I had who generally stayed on task during literacy centers. At each center the students had an activity to do (a computer game to play, a word sort to sort, partner reading to share, a literacy game to play) and they always had something they had write to prove to me that they had done what they were supposed to do. Luis was good at getting those accountability pieces done.

At the first conference in the fall, I was telling Luis's mom how wondeful he was, and she asked about his behavior. I told her that his behavior was fine - not perfect, but on par with everyone else's. She was surprised. She said he was always getting in trouble at home, constantly moving and bothering his sister. I'm glad that I was able to put in a good word for him at that time.

Manuel

2009-06-13T21:16:00.002-05:00

(This is my second post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Manuel began the school year as a very enthusiastic and hard working student. He would sit down and try his best to do what he was supposed to do. Shortly after school began, Manuel started to stand out as being academically quite low. Despite attending Awesome School all of the previous year for kindergarten, his reading level was still at the beginning kindergarten level. He didn’t consistently know all of his letter sounds or his numbers to 10.

But, despite this, Manuel continued to fully throw himself into whatever we were doing. I quickly implemented many interventions with him, trying to bring him up academically, while maintaining his wonderful work ethic.

Manuel always liked to write. And, compared to his reading level, his writing level was fairly high (though still falling far lower than the majority of the class). I hoped to draw upon his enjoyment of writing to help develop his reading skills. I worked with him a lot on his writing, encouraging him to sound out words to the best of his ability, to go back and reread what he had written, to get ideas down on paper in whatever way he could. His writing progressed a bit, and he always enjoyed writing and sharing his writing with others.

A few months after the start of school, Manuel began going to a different teacher for guided reading – one who had more experience working with struggling students, and one who also had a reading interventionist working together with her during guided reading time. For much of the school year, Manuel got two guided reading groups each day. His reading moved a little bit, very slowly. I stopped doing weekly assessments on his knowledge of letter sounds and moved onto assessing his ability to read nonsense words (a popular “testing” skill in first grade, which I should write a whole post about at some point) and his ability to read simple kindergarten passages. His progress from week to week was very, very slow.

Sadly, as the year progressed, Manuel began to realize how very low he was in reading compared to the rest of the class. His behavior worsened a bit, and his focus decreased. His guided reading teacher said that she was having problems getting him to do his centers work when he was with her, and he was always out of his seat, bouncing around the room, when he was with me. He started to make comments about how he couldn’t read. He saw that other kids were reading much more complicated texts, while he was struggling with most anything given to him. I always did my best to reassure him that he was learning to read. I explained to Manuel that it was taking a little longer for him to learn to read than for some of the other kids, and he, for whatever reason, was having a harder time of it, but that just meant that he had to stay focused and try extra hard. I tried to reassure him that it would come, eventually.

When I spoke with Manuel’s parents during conferences, they talked about how Manuel’s older brother had a very difficult time in school. He is a few years older than Manuel and receives special education services for reading. His father stated very matter-of-factly one time that “Manuel’s older brother has the hardest time in school. Manuel is a little bit smarter than his older brother. And Manuel’s little sister seems like she’s going to be a little smarter than Manuel.” It’s not really fair for any of the kids to put them in a hierarchy of “smartness” like that, but it is what the parents have observed and essentially been told by the teachers at the school.

So, throughout the year I worked with Manuel. He received many, many literacy interventions. He ended the year still reading far below grade level, but he did advanced about one year (from beginning kinder level to beginning first grade level) over the course of the school year, so there definitely was progress made.

The exciting thing about Manuel was that all year he seemed to understand math. Whatever his difficulty was with reading, he generally was quite average in math. Toward the end of the year though, Manuel’s mathematical understanding leaped. He wasn’t just average anymore – he was good at math. I told him this every day. I was so happy for him, so happy that we had found an area in which he performed so strong. He has a complex understanding of number sense and is able to talk about numbers, explaining where they belong in a hundreds chart, explaining what it means when you talk about something being in the “ones place” or the “tens place,” and doing a variety of other things with numbers. His one problem, even at this point, was that he still was not able to consistently identify or write the numbers 1 through 20. We had worked on it and worked on it. But, like with reading, there is some sort of disconnect going on in his brain that is making it extra hard for him to read numbers and write the numbers he is thinking of in his head.

I have thought about this and talked about it with many people. Manuel has the concept of the number six strongly in his head – he can picture six of something, he knows at the core level what six means. But, when shown the number 6, he just can’t quite seem to remember that the symbol “6” goes along with the mental representation of six objects he has in his head. Therefore, when he write out problems (and takes those painful standardized math tests the first graders were required to take this year) he doesn’t always perform as highly as he should. Manuel is good at math. He is excellent at explaining the concepts to the class, and through these explanations has proven to me and his peers that he is proficient in math.

During the final week of school, we had an awards assembly. Each teacher was supposed to hand out awards for the two academically strongest students, the two most improved students, and the two student who best exemplified the positive character traits we were supposed to have worked on during the year. (I, being the constant pseudo-rebel that I am, gave out slightly different awards. I didn’t like those categories.)

Throughout this assembly, I was sitting next to Manuel. As kids from other classes got called up to receive their awards, and Manuel received nothing, he kept whispering to me, “But Ms. Grownup, I’m good at math, right? I’m good at math?” I of course reassured him that he wasn’t just good, he was very good at math. Fortunately, both for him, for me, and for his classmates, as his math abilities really began to bloom around April, Manuel’s behavior began to improve a little bit too. He was still unfocused at times, and constantly out of his seat, but now he has something he knows he is good at. Whatever his other academic problems are, he is good at math. I am glad I was able to convince him of that, that he was able to see that and believe it. Because Manuel is good at math and deserves to be recognized for it.

Manuel will need to keep working very hard as he continues in school. I passed along to his new school all the data and information I had collected on him this year – detailing the interventions we worked on with Manuel and their outcomes. I hope that Manuel gets the services he needs to continue developing in reading, and the recognition he deserves for his hard work and excellence in math.

Mary Anne

2009-06-12T07:53:00.001-05:00

(This will be the first post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

I don't think I will ever stop thinking about Mary Anne.

Mary Anne came into my class about a month into the year. I was sitting at the rug, doing some sort of whole-group literacy activity with the class when the classroom door opened. In walked the principal guiding a scared-looking little girl into the classroom.

"Ms. Grownup," she said. "You have a new student. This is Mary Anne." Then she whispered, "Come talk to me later and I'll explain." She shoved an enrollment form into my hand, and left.

Later that day I went to talk with the principal. "What did you want to tell me about Mary Anne?" I asked her.

She explained that Mary Anne had been in a second grade classroom. Mary Anne should have been a second grader. However, she was very low academically for second grade. She had arrived at the school a few days before, and had apparently spend the entire time sitting in the corner of her classroom alone, lost and sad looking. Her previous schooling had been very erratic - she had missed a lot of first grade. She also had a fairly late birthday and size-wise would fit very well into a first grade class. So, the principal has decided to transfer her to my classroom.

Academically, she ended up being one of my higher students. This suited her well. She began to develop and flourish in my classroom. She fit in with my 2nd highest reading group (reading just about at grade level). In math it was clear that she had been through first grade math before, and fit in very nicely.

Much more importantly than the academics though, she began to smile more. She looked happier. She made friends and experienced success. When the principal came in, she told me that Mary Anne looked so much happier and more comfortable than she had in the second grade classroom.

And I loved having Mary Anne in my class. She was a reliable student, occasionally mischievous, but overall very respectful to all adults and peers. She came in tardy very often. Sometimes just moments late, other times minutes, or longer. But, she did usually come to school. Then, she didn't come for a few days. And she didn't come for a few days more. And a few days more. I called her phone number and got no response. I asked the class if anyone had seen her around the neighborhood and no one had. Eventually, 10 days passed without any sign of Mary Anne, and she was dropped from my class list. I was sad, but assumed she had moved suddenly, as the students sometimes do, and just hadn't unenrolled.

About five weeks later I got a call over the intercom. "Ms. Jacobson," the secretary called, "When school lets out, come to the office. You are getting a returning student." I hadn't fully heard her so wasn't sure what she meant. After the students left, I went down to the office.

"You are getting Mary Anne back," she told me. "She has been out of town, taking care of a sick relative with her mom all this time."
"Oh?" I questioned. "Has she been going to school?"
"No. She has not been enrolled anywhere else." I was informed.

When she came back the next day, I was so excited to see Mary Anne again, but terribly sad that she hadn't been at school this whole time, and had been so unexpectedly pulled out of the classroom where she was finally getting comfortable.

Surprisingly, and contrary to any logic, her reading level sky-rocketed during her time away. Mary Anne said that her mom had bought her a workbook which she used. Her reading had actually level developed at the same rate as the other kids who had been in her reading group before. She slipped back into the classroom, almost as if she hadn't been gone for a month and a half. For a while, Mary Anne was very quite, she looked tired and sad and her clothes were messier and she was tardy more often. After a few weeks, she started to become more cheerful again. She began to bond with a couple other girls in the class, she exchanged phone numbers and had playdates outside of school. One of these girls, in particular, really felt close to Mary Anne. This other girl seems to have a fairly steady, supportive family, which at the time I thought was a nice thing for Mary Anne to have the opportunity to experience.

Mary Anne continued to do well in class. She was happy, she was successful academically and socially, she was trying to push the limits of what she was allowed to do, which I thought was a good thing because it signified a type of confidence that Mary Anne had been lacking before. One day in particular, my principal wandered into the room for an informal observation, and got to see Mary Anne absolutely shine during a math lesson. Mary Anne fully understood the math concept we were working on, and was able to articulately demonstrate and explain it to the whole class. Later when I talked with the principal, she glowed with happiness for seeing Mary Anne so successful. She finally felt confident with her decision to pull Mary Anne out of that second grade class so many months ago, and place her back into first grade. The principal frequently marveled over the fact that Mary Anne looked like a completely different child than she had when she was sitting sullen in the corner of the second grade classroom.

Shortly after this, Mary Anne was absent for a day. I didn't worry, figuring she was just sick - germs had been going around. Then she was gone the next day. And the next. I asked the girls who were close with her if they had talked with her, and they hadn't. I waited a few more days. I called Mary Anne, but no one answered. I asked the girls if they had talked with her. They said they had called several times, but no one answered. I slowly watched as her absences added up to ten in a row - that magic number at which students are dropped from the class. Every morning I waited for her to trudge into the class with a tardy pass. She never did. She was dropped, again.

I kept hoping that maybe she would come back, but then felt guilty for that. What I really wanted was to know that she was okay, somewhere. That she was enrolled in school somewhere. No school ever called for her cumulative folder. I didn't clear out her desk. I kept waiting and hoping.

She never came back to Awesome School.

She is resilient. She is smart. Wherever she is, I hope she is continuing to learn and grow and develop.

My Students.

2009-06-10T21:13:00.003-05:00

As I said in my last post, this year was a very special one for me. I absolutely adored my students - each and every one of them. I loved getting to know them all, observing their interactions with one another and with me.

I am going to try to write a short piece (short, ha! I don't know the meaning of the word) on each of my students. A profile of each of them, if you will.

Realistically, I know that I will probably (hopefully!) feel the same way about my class next year. I will grow to admire them all for what they bring to the classroom. When I meet my new students, I'm afraid the memories of these old ones will fade away or meld together in my mind. I don't want that to happen. They all influenced me so much this year. I keep talking about how much I learned. When I said goodbye to my principal, I thanked her for such a great year and talked about all the things I had learned. I didn't even mention everything the kids had learned. That was a given, they're supposed to learn. But, they all taught me so much. They deserve to be remembered - frozen in time as their 7-year-old selves.

So, I will do what I can to appropriately represent them.

They were great.

They taught me how to be a teacher.

The End.

2009-06-06T22:31:00.009-05:00

Thank you for all the congrats and well wishes in my last post. With that excitement of finally being placed, I pushed full-force into the end of the school year. I had to pack the classroom, do report cards, cumulative folders, item check-in, and who know what else.

I finally finished it all.

I can never again use the excuse that I am a first year teacher. I am not a first year teacher. I'm excited and planning and anticipating for next year.

The last day at school was a sad one. Not only was it the last day of school, but all the students and all the teachers are going to new schools next year. The students are getting split up, going to one of three or four different elementary schools. None of the teachers are teaching at any of the schools the students are going to, so they will not see their old teachers, as they are generally used to doing.

All throughout the last day, I had children hanging on me. Coming up and randomly hugging me. Telling me they love me. Just being there, next to me.

The students are sad to be split up, and worried about next year. Even on the last day, they were still asking about why the school had to close. Commenting that today was the day they had been dreading, the day that the school would be shut down.

I had a student come up and ask me, "Ms. Grownup, Why does the school have to close?"
He knows the reason. We have had many conversations about it. "You know why," I told him. "We've talked about it before. Why is the school closing?"
He sighed. "It's because they don't have enough money," he sadly and knowingly explained.

And it broke my heart a little more, because so many of the students hear that as the reason for so many disappointments in their lives. This child especially. There's not enough money. There's not enough money for a uniform without holes or a snack after school. And now there's not even enough money to keep the school that he's gone to for the last two years. The school that he has come to trust as the good place. The place that helps to take care of him, and teach him, and feed him. Of course, he'll go to a school next year that will do all those things, and he will be fine. But he doesn't know that now. None of the students know that. They will all be fine. All of us will be fine. But the uncertainty, what almost feels like broken promises for the children, that's not fair. There's not enough money to keep the school.

But aside from the sadness, it was a good day. I love these kids. They would come up and tell me they loved me, and I would respond by saying I loved having them in my class, because it didn't feel appropriate to tell them I loved them back, but I do. They were my first class. I think there has to be something special, something magical about one's first class.

My goal for the year had been to survive. And despite my posts of frustration throughout the year, I did much, much more than that. My goal had been to teach them just enough that I didn't completely embarrass myself. To teach them just enough that they were able to make up whatever deficits I had caused when they reached second grade. But, somehow, we all learned together. I have no doubt that I learned more than they did. I learned so much. But really, so did they.

At the end of the day, the moms came and hugged me, gave me a kiss on the cheek, thanked me for teaching their children. I loved the parents, too. I had some really wonderful parents in my class. The location of my classroom allowed me to see the parents every morning as they dropped off their children, and every afternoon as they picked them up. I chatted with them at the time. I spoke to them in my sometimes shaky Spanish, and they repeated themselves as many times as I needed until I understood. I loved talking with the parents. Conferences were some of my favorite times of the year. Even the kids who sometimes drove me crazy, who I tried all year to figure out, I loved talking to their parents during conferences - commenting on the areas they needed to develop, but expounding on the areas in which they were awesome.

It was a good year. Even without the extreme test preparation that I had used other quarters, more than 90% of my students "exceeded" on the district math test. 80% were reading at or above grade level. Only 30% were "meeting" for fluency, but despite the fact that the district and my administrators cared a lot about fluency, I really didn't. I worried more about comprehension and decoding, and that most of them were able to do. We did some science, we did not nearly enough true social students. We developed inside jokes. We became a class.

I can only hope that my next class is as fabulous as this one was. We had our struggles. If all the students I had this year had stayed in the class, I would have had 12 more students than I actually ended up with. We had a lot of movement. But, we bonded. We talked until the end about the students who had gone. (And they were all able to articulate why students sometimes need to move suddenly in the middle of the year.)

If I created such a community this year, in my first year, I suppose I'll be able to do it again next year. Right now, it seems so daunting though. Wow. They came in barely knowing their numbers to 20, reading at kindergarten levels, and they left being able to answer complex questions about number sense and mathematical reasoning and most reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level. First grade is so neat. We made it. Together we made it.

For the first time since November...Good news.

2009-05-18T22:38:00.004-05:00

So... after being officially layed off...

My district recalled me.

I got a phone call today informing me of that fact.

My school is still closed, but I will be teaching the same grade at a different school.

I'm working up to true excitement. I'm currently resting in the area of relief. Or maybe shock. I'm not sure.

The excitement will come, I just have to give it a few days.

I knew the possibility existed, and when my classroom phone rang in the middle of guided reading, I instructed the class to be silent, "I think this might be a very important phone call" I warned them. "Be quiet." And I think they were, I'm not sure. I wasn't listening to them. (I do know that J--- was standing 2 feet away from me, mock listening by holding his hand up to his ear.)

When I hung up, they asked me what the phone call had been about. "You know how I said I wasn't sure where I was working next year? Now I know. It's not at the school that any of you will be going to, but I have a job." I informed them. Not that they really cared or understood, but at least I had told someone.

I went back to guided reading but was distracted. I finished my groups, gave a few early literacy reading fluency tests (it is testing season, after all) and then it was lunch time. I practically flew out the door with my class, excited to inform another teacher who will also be working at this school, that I would be joining her. My class diligently followed me in line to lunch, and waited patiently while I giggle/exclaimed to this teacher that I had been placed and would be working with her. The news slowly spread across the school. A few of the other layed off teacher were recalled, too. Not all of them, but a few of us.

I have a job teaching the same grade. I will have another year to improve and learn and reflect and work to bridge the gap between where I am now and the awesomeness to which I aspire.

It will be good.

Continued uncertainty, continued complaining

2009-05-03T13:25:00.007-05:00

The district is trying to give out false hope, again. That is - they passed out letters last week telling us pretty much nothing, but doing everything in their power to hold on to those of us who have been reduced away, just in case they end up wanting us back. Basically, the note said said "If you wait another month or two, this time we really think that maybe we might possibly be able to hire you back, if everything works out right." By now, I have learned to not trust it.

My principal pulled me into her office to tell me that she really thinks it's going to work out this time. She really believes whatever it is that was written on that note. She really wants me to stay in the district. She reiterated how impressed she is with my development over the year, how I'm such a wonderful asset to the district, how the students need a teacher like me, and how she hopes I choose to stay in the district even though I won't be able to work at her school. When she says things like that, it is nice and flattering, but at this point it really just makes me even more frustrated. Why does she say those things? It doesn't matter what she thinks of me or my development. No one has any control over whether I am or am not offered a contract. I could have had a disastrous year. I could be the worst new teacher in the district and I would have the same chance of getting a job next year as I do now, having the full support of my principal. Yeah, if I'm offered a contract, maybe I'll stay, but first I need that one important thing to happen - I need to be offered that contract. And, ideally, it needs to be with the knowledge that I would have a first grade position. Because I really like first grade and think that right now that's where I would be strongest. Down the road, once I have more experience, I would enjoy venturing out and teaching other grade levels. But right now, when I'm still so new I need to continue to develop my teaching and practice in a grade level familiar to me.

That rant down, here's another.
We need to pack up our entire building to move to another school in the district. Much of it needs to be backed well before school is out. All checked out materials (from the library, book room, resource rooms) need to be returned a full month before school lets out. A MONTH!! I'm not sure how I'm supposed to teach guided reading without appropriately leveled guided reading books. My class ranges from mid-kinder level to high-third-grade level in reading. I frequent the book room a lot. This is going to be a new special challenge to add on to all our other challenges.

We'll also need to pack up and move our math manipulatives pretty soon. And we use a very constructivist math program, so we can't really teach math without the manipulatives.

It's going to be a "fun" last few weeks of school.

Even more fun because I am getting increasingly worried about next year, since it seems that nowhere is hiring teachers.

I'm sad that my first year of teaching, which teaching-wise has been so surprisingly wonderful, has been clouded and negatively impacted by this whole "reduction in force" thing. My teaching quality has dropped as I have had to simultaneously plan for teaching, and plan multiple possible other futures. Last year when I was applying for teaching jobs, the applications where in and of themselves practically a full time job. I was really glad I was working as an aid, so my day ended at 3:00 and I could spend the rest of the afternoon worrying about, writing essay questions for, and filling out job applications. Now though, I work all day, get home at 6:00/6:30, still have things that need to be done for school the next day, and fall asleep by 9:00 or so. That doesn't leave time for the job applications. At the same time, I am always constantly worrying about the job applications, which distracts me from trying to prepare for the next day at school. Neither is ever getting done very well. (And for this reason, and this reason alone, I am secretly hoping we get closed for a week due to the swine flu. That would be one marvelous week in which I could write the essay questions for applications, make phone calls to ask about positions, and maybe get something done.)

Maybe something magical will happen and one of the districts to which I have already sent applications will actually have a position to interview me for. Maybe my current district will get its stuff together and offer more contracts. Maybe my principal is right. Maybe she's wrong. Maybe I'll give up, run away to Mexico, and try to find someone to pay me something to teach English. Maybe, maybe, maybe. (I'm tired of all the maybe.)

A post as disorganized as my classroom and my life

2009-04-14T21:24:00.010-05:00

Thanks to everyone who responded to my last post. I've spent my days trying and trying so hard to be upbeat. Some days I do a really good job. Some days I'm just appropriately sarcastic. Some days I'm inappropriately sarcastic. Some days I'm just sad and frustrated.

I had been hoping that things would work out and I would be given a contract - just later than the others. Now it's not looking that way at all. Because of that inappropriate hope, I haven't yet sent out any applications, which I know was a very bad idea. (Though, for my credit, I have also been waiting on letters of reference. The principal has had quite a back-log of letters to write, what with the school closing and many of the teachers getting layed off or put into positions that they really don't want.)

I occasionally have "ohmygod I love teaching" moments when I can't imagine being anywhere else doing anything else. And then I have other "ohmygod what am I doing with my life" moments where I think I might as well just give up. Really though, I think my problem is that I am afraid that I will have much more "what am I doing with my life" moments and fewer "I love teaching" moments working in a different school with a different administration, different coworkers, and different materials. I know I have been so incredibly luckily to have had this year. I have been allowed to grow so much. My school is unique, at least compared to other schools in the district. I don't know how I ended up so lucky to work at such a great place, but I did and I just need to remember that whatever happens next, wherever I am and whatever I am working with, I was given such great growth opportunities at my current school. What I have learned will help me wherever I go and whatever I do that is teaching/educating related.

In the midst of my crazy bipolar emotions (I have never felt so bipolar in my life. One minute I'll be bouncing up and down excited about something my students have done, and the next minute I'll be sitting depressed staring at my interactive whiteboard, mourning all that I will be losing.) some good things have been happening in my class. Little moments are good moments.

-My mom knit a...thing for me. One day I was telling her how I wanted something to throw at the students who got off task while I was testing or teaching a small group, just to reorient them. I was mostly joking, but she knit a creature that could be used for that purpose. I didn't end up throwing it at them, but I did show it to them and tell them it was my new pet and it had just shown up at my house one day. I have had them write about it on several occasions. They wrote about where it came from, what it was, what it liked to do, how it played, etc. This has been fun.

-Every single day I re-remember how glad I am to be working next door to my neighboring teacher. Every single day. Of all the things this school has that I have benefited from, she has probably been the more important. I forget how amazing it is, but our level of collaboration, cooperation, sharing of ideas and students and teaching philosophies, is all so great. We're such different people in so many ways, (she's old enough to be my mother, she's an observant Christian, very full of faith and belief in god, she's been teaching for 20 years, she's from the South). I guess I should be embarrassed to even think those differences are important. I guess that makes me something of an adult to realize that they aren't. But every single day, before school, during lunch, after school, during our preps, occasionally in the middle of teaching, we go into each others rooms to ask questions or share an idea or a success. She has said that during my phone interview, in the middle of the interview, she whispered to the principal that she wanted me hired and she wanted me next door to her. So, for her it's been an ideal pairing since before I was even officially hired. For me it's been an incredible journey. She's had a tough year teaching-wise. Her class is different - different than any she's had before. It's been great for me to see someone with similar teaching ideals sticking to those ideals even after 20 years and with such a difficult class. For her it's been good to see me - fresh and idealistic - supporting her despite the struggles she's been having. We work in a wonderfully symbiotic way, nurturing one-another, helping one-another, supporting one-another. She's taught me so much, encouraged me and supported me.

-I am getting more and more proficient (and I might even say expert) at using my interactive whiteboard in effective ways. I love it and spend way, way too many hours each weekending making games and activities for my students to do. One of my biggest (and most realistic) fears is that I won't have the technology resources next year that I do this year. My AP loves technology and so pushes for funding to be used for that. We have great technology. I have 4 classroom computers (one teacher computer, and 3 old and clunky iMacs) and my interactive whiteboard (though admittedly it's not a real interactive whiteboard - it's a less expensive system that runs on the same software). It's not that our school has a huge amount of technology, but that which I do have, I lovelovelove and cannot imagine working without. My teaching would be (will be) totally and completely different working without this interactive whiteboard thing. I teach every lesson every day all day using it. It is on at all times as a reference tool, or for a quick "game" (word sort, cloze activity, boring things made fun), or a reminder to the students of what they should be doing.

-My students are learning to read. Only 5 of them are not currently meeting at the end-of-the-year reading level. When I started the school year, I had only 3 students reading on grade level - and two of those students have moved. Confusingly, despite the fact that many are reading "on grade level" according to the assessment, the books they can actually read without being overly frustrated are quite a few levels lower. This is something we have been puzzling over for the past few days. (So, they're reading at a readinga-z level "I" according to the benchmark assessments, but when given a book to read, even with a lot of support, they can't read much higher than "F". (We don't actually use readinga-z for our reading assessment, that was just an example.) Has anyone else experienced something like this? Their accuracy and retelling puts them about 2 levels higher than they can actually read in their guided reading groups. I'm perplexed, as is my veteran neighbor teacher and the literacy support teacher who works with us.

-I got very kind letters of reference from the people who have given them to me. That's nice. Though I wish I didn't have to be getting letters from them in the first place.

-A girl said to me, "Ms. Grownup, how do you spell cereal? I forgot." We figured it out together, she waited a moment, and then exclaimed, "Hey! That's how you spell it in Spanish!" This one girl is really the only one of my students who is being taught to read (and write) in Spanish at home by her monolingual Spanish-speaking mother. She is also the strongest reader in the class. I'm pretty sure the two are somewhat connected. (That is, the support she is being given at home by a parent who stresses the importance of literacy in Spanish, is greatly effecting her English language acquisition and her English language literacy.)

-At a staff development the other day, we were not allowed to sit together with our grade levels, which is how we usually seat ourselves. I ended up sitting at a table with two other teachers and the principal. (We were supposed to have a variety of grades and positions at each table.) My principal declared that she had gotten the good table. Then, when I made a comment about the topic we were discussing, she volunteered me to share my idea to the whole staff. I'm such a horribly embarrassing teacher's pet (even when I'm the teacher...) but I do love knowing that my principal thinks highly of me and my ideas, despite my many struggles as a first year teacher.

-On the topic of being a teacher's pet, I also stupidly volunteered to be observed by a huge group of people. I have no idea why I decided this was a good idea at the time, because now I know it was a move whose only outcome will be immense amounts of stress. It's not like I'm going to be working with these people next year. Nothing I do, no matter how good or bad, will impact my employment situation in the district. I have nothing to prove to anyone. Except, apparently, I like the challenge of being observed by a large, judgmental team of important people from my school and district office. (Ironically, I think the only two teachers in the school who volunteered for this observation were myself and my neighboring teacher. Again - we're similar in so many pedagogical/teaching ways.)

Employment status: unknown

2009-03-12T21:30:00.007-05:00

I don't know how to write this all without being too specific, which is why I haven't written anything in a while, but we'll see what I can do.

I have been on a roller coaster ride concerning my employment status. A few weeks ago during our staff meeting we got a visit from District Bigwig. District Bigwig informed us that, despite the fact that they had been reassuring everyone all along that jobs would not be cut in the district reorganization, they had been wrong. In fact they would end up needing to cut jobs - a lot of jobs. Most 1st year teachers would be reduced out of the teaching force. District Bigwig had a magical list on which each teacher was placed according to seniority. Those of us first year teachers were sitting at the bottom and a great majority would be kicked out. District Bigwig told us to call or email or go to set up a meeting to learn our numbers on the list. I emailed immediately the next day and received an email response saying that I needed to call instead of email (even though we'd been told the previous day that emailing would be okay).

So, I called.
District Bigwig was busy.

I called again.
District Bigwig was in a meeting.

I called again.
District Bigwig was in a meeting. ("The same meeting as before?" I asked. "No, this is a different meeting," the administrative assistant informed me.)

I called the next day.
Nobody answered.

I called again.
District Bigwig was in a meeting.

I emailed District Bigwig, explaining that I had called many times without success, and could I please find out something via email?

Someone called the school secretary, who informed me that District Bigwig wanted me to call, again. So I did.

Guess where District Bigwig was?

This went on for about a week with me growing increasingly frustrated each time I made the phone call. Everyone at school kept asking me if I had found out what number I was on the list, not expecting me to explode with frustration each time I was asked this question. It got to the point where District Bigwig's administrative assistant recognized me by voice. One day when I called and asked, "Can I please speak with District Bigwig?" She responded, "Bigwig is in a meeting right now...Is this Notquite Grownup?"

Finally, finally I somehow got into contact with District Bigwig. Upon doing so I was informed that I was surprisingly high up on the list. High enough that, while I wouldn't automatically be rehired, there was a 95% chance that I would end up being rehired shortly after regular contracts went out.

I was elated and shocked and didn't tell anyone for a few hours. Finally at a staff meeting I let it slip out, and the principal made me announce the excitement to the whole school. Each grade level was supposed to mention something good that was happening with their grade level, and my grade chose to share out that I was high on the magical list. It was marvelous.

That day I called the University in town to see if I could still apply for grad school for the summer, assuming that I would have a job and be staying here for the next few years. Over the weekend I emailed a professor to ask her a question about the program, I stopped worrying so much, I almost kind of relaxed.

Then, the next week I was in class teaching a whole group lesson. The students were engaged and working well when my class phone rang. I gave them the "freeze and be quiet" sign, and went to answer the phone. Usually it's the secretary asking for a student to come to the office, or informing me that I forgot to submit my attendance, or something like that. I quickly answered the phone, while glaring at the students to stay quiet for the moment.
"Ms. Grownup," I answered.
"Yes, hello," said the voice. "This is District Bigwig."
"Oh? Hello." I was confused as to why I would be getting a call from District Bigwig.
"Yes," the Bigwig said. "Unfortunately, we made an error in the list. You are not actually where I told you that you were. You're quite a ways further down. We forgot to include a whole category of people when we initially created the list, and this whole category is above you on the list."
"Oh..." I said. As the class was done being good and started to devolve into chaos.
"Blah Blah Blah Explanation Blah Blah Blah." The Bigwig continued for several minutes, as the class stared at me while I stood mostly silent on the phone as my heart was slowly breaking into bits. Or rather, rebreaking after nearly a week of being on the mend. I occasionally made active listening noises, ("uh-huh," "okay," "oh,") while trying to simultaneously listen to the District Bigwig and will my students to keep quiet on the rug. I didn't know how to stop the awkwardness of it all. I didn't know why District Bigwig chose this time, in the middle of class, of all times, to call. (When I relayed the story later, others pointed out how it was an excellent example of how out-of-touch District Office really is with how teaching actually works.) I started making faces at my students to keep them entertained as they gave me quizzical looks, questioning why I was on the phone for so long instead of teaching them. Finally, after an incredibly long and uncomfortable 5+ minutes, District Bigwig finished the prepared speech, and hung up. I took a deep breath, trying to collected myself, and went back to teaching.

Later that day, we had staff meeting and my principal announced that things around the district were still changing constantly, "And here we have Ms. Grownup as an example. I just heard that she got a phone call from District Bigwig in the middle of class, kind of explaining to her the situation, and informing her of her number-change, while her class of six-year-olds went crazy in the background."

And that's where I am now. District won't know about certain state funding things until the end of June or so, so district won't know how many teachers they actually need until that time. I'm hoping to have a new job lined up before the end of June. If I don't figure something out before then, I may or may not end up with a position in the district, depending on this elusive state funding.

So, it looks like this experiment into the Southwest has been a failure. Unless I get another call interrupting my precious instructional minutes and informing me that actually I'm back at the top of the list, I will be packing up and shipping out of this state after school is out. Where I'll go and what I'll do, I haven't a clue.

I had so many worries and fears going into teaching, coming to this state all alone. What has happened here was never something I had imagined would happen. I was afraid I would hate the school, not get along with my coworkers, not enjoy teaching. In reality though, I love my school, do get along with my coworkers, and am finding teaching so much more satisfying that I had initially though I would. It's the district that doesn't want me. My principal praises me, my literacy/math coaches praise me, my coworkers praise me. Unfortunately, it's not up to any of them. I'm booted out and I need to accept that.

The only way to describe my emotions right now is to say that my soul feels tired. One week I had a few days where I barely taught anything - I was worried and stressed and couldn't focus. I kept distracting myself and couldn't get a whole sentence out in class before forgetting what I was going to say. The poor children are suffering as I suffer. They're not learning because I can't focus to teach. I'm past that, finally, most of the time. Right now though I'm just living with constant butterflies in my stomach. I don't know what I'm nervous about - I'm nervous about everything. I'm tired of uncertainty.

Testing frustration

2009-02-19T21:33:00.000-06:00

I wrote this and was going to email it to an old professor. Then I realized I couldn't do that - I'm too frustrated to write something calm enough to send to anyone. So, the blog gets it.

Hi Professor,

I hope you're doing well.

This email is coming to you out of frustration. I remember that last year at the end of my students teaching I lamented that I felt I hadn't assessed my students enough. I had been looking at everything through a rubric I made, and through just general observation. You had commented that teachers don't give themselves enough credit - their observations and the fact that they know and work with their students every day is worth more than it may seem.

Well, that may be true, but it doesn't matter. Teacher observation doesn't matter anymore. My poor students get so many, SO many tests. We're currently in the midst of preparing for our quarterly multiple-choice math test, as mandated by the district. This means I have to give them practice tests nearly constantly, because while many of them do a fine job of answering the question if given it in an open-ended way, the testing system the district uses manages to create horribly confusing multiple-choice questions for their assessments. My students can explain to me what a fact family is, why we are learning about them, how to know if a number sentence is or isn't part of a fact family, and how to know what else to put in a fact family, but when they are given multiple choice questions about fact families, they still tend to get them wrong. Apparently teachers know nothing. I may think my students understand, but they obviously don't. After all, the test says they don't, so they must not, right?

My students spent 40 minutes today working on a 5-question multiple-choice assessment, which was ridiculous. What did I teach today? Well, during the 5.5 hour school day I taught 2 hours of literacy, 20 minutes of math, 25 minutes of writing, and the rest of the time was pretty much spent testing or doing test preparation activities. That's not good. There's no way that I can interpret that as having been a productive day.

Next year it's going to be worse. District already has it in their plans to implement more district-mandated standardized tests for first grade. They're thinking about adding some tests for kindergarten, too. Occasionally I like to pretend I'm a teacher, and teach something. When that happens, I end up finding myself horribly behind with the mandated testing schedule.

Is this a normal first year teacher rant? Does this happen to all first year teachers at this point in the year? Do we all get to the point where looking at another test makes us want to throw it down on the floor and go cry in the corner of the classroom? Because that's how I'm feeling today. I don't want to do this part anymore. I enjoy my students, I like finding ways to make the content accessible to them all. I do not like the extreme testing. With the testing, it doesn't matter if the material is understood by the students, it matters that they know how to take the tests. I have been changing my teaching style to teach more traditionally, more directly. Because while my students truly understand some of the material, they don't understand it in the blunt overly simplistic terms used on the test.

I hope today was just a particularly bad day. I hope I'm able to deal with this all a bit better tomorrow. I hope I find a way to get past the testing, because it's not going away and it's not going to get any better any time soon.

Do I want to continue to be a teacher? Yes, I think I do.

If that is the case, I must learn to live with the testing. I must accept that it is here. It is the new wave. It is damaging at times, but it is what it is.

Sincerely,
A disgruntled former student

Reading testing!

2009-02-09T22:36:00.004-06:00

A good handful of my students are becoming readers! They are walking, talking, reading beings. And this is great! Yippie!

Unfortunately, since they are doing such a fabulous job, I need to retest their reading level. Many of them are at a wonderfully annoying stage wherein the reading test takes between 30-40 minutes per student, one-on-one. First the students need to preview the pictures, then they read the book, then they retell the story. If the book was too easy or too hard, I need to repeat the whole process with a second book, which tacks on an additional 30-40 minutes.

This means that for the last two weeks I have done nothing except test reading levels. I have come to memorize the text of these books. About 2/3 of my fabulous little ones are actually at or really really close to grade level and I love it! However, I have been spending my entire afternoon every day testing (while I throw the rest of the kids in centers of some sort). I have been spending my lunch (and the poor students' lunch) testing. I have been pulling the children out of their special class for testing. I have been testing during guided reading groups. I have been testing during math. I have been testing NON-STOP. It seems that there must be a more efficient way to do this, but I haven't found one.

But I need to remind myself. This should be a celebration! They are getting to that stage where they can actually read! I have, for the most part, stopped translating the directions on their homework, telling them that they can read well enough now to read their own directions. They don't need help. (And in some cases, yeah, this is a stretch, but overall they should be able to read the instructions on their own.)

This excitement is partially hindered by my extreme disappointment in their lack of effort and focus during literacy centers, but that is a whole different post and a whole different issue. For now, reading = yay! Testing to confirm reading ability = tedious!

The good, the bad, the rambly

2009-02-07T17:22:00.001-06:00

Things that make me love school:

On a Friday I was wearing jeans (for casual Friday) and a plaid-patterned button-down shirt, and my hair was in a braid (it's usually down or in a ponytail). We were standing in line outside the classroom, about to walk to lunch.

Carla: Ms. Grownup, are you a cowgirl?
Me: Huh?
Carla: Well, Ms. Grownup, you've got your shirt, and your hair is like that, and your pants, and you look like a cowgirl.
Andy: Well, you're missing some things.
Jose: You just need one of those things for your head.
Raquel: Yeah. Ms. Grownup you're almost a cowgirl. You just need a hat.
Andy: And a horse and a rope.
Elizabeth: And you need the boots.
Various students: So Ms. Grownup, are you a cowgirl?
Me [Laughing hysterically]: I kind of want to be a cowgirl.
Me [Still laughing, trying to quiet them down so we can walk to lunch]: Shh, bubbles in your mouths.
Andy [sighing]: Ms. Grownup, you're turning red again.
Raquel: You are turning so red again!
Me [trying not to laugh]: Lunch! We're late!
Jose: You're turning a little bit not red now.
Me: ...
Jose: You're turning redder again.
Me: ... Lunch! Now!

Later in the day...
Carla: So Ms. Grownup...are you a cowgirl?
Me: What do you think, Carla?
Carla: I think yes.

- - - - - - - - - -
We were talking about symmetry.

Me: So, if you split my body down the center, that would be a line of symmetry. Both sides would be exactly the same.
Class: No, take off your ID tag, your watch, your paper clips, (etc.)
Me: Okay, now both sides of me are symmetrical.
Juliet: But Ms. Grownup, what about your heart?
Me: Huh?
Juliet: Your heart, it is on the side.
Me: Oh, gosh. You're so right.
Andy (gleefully): But Ms. Grownup, if you RIP IT OUT, then you'll be the same on both sides again!

Sometimes they're so smart! I was ready for them to tell me to take off my watch and ID tag. But, I never even thought about my heart! It's true! Because of my heart, I am not symmetrical!

- - - - - - - - - -
I had an all day meeting one day, so had scheduled a substitute. I stopped into my classroom in the morning to set up, greet the sub, and hand him my plans. The sub had gone to pick up the class from the playground, and I was still in the classroom. As I walked out all the kids saw me. I told them I was going to be gone that day, but the sub would be there, so they should be good. "No, Ms. Grownup! Don't leave us!!" "Don't go!!!" "Think about the poor children! We need you!!" I had to pry them off me to leave for my meeting. It's always nice to feel wanted.

- - - - - - - - - -
We were working on surveys and graphing in math. Pairs of students went around to survey everyone else in the class. One group's survey question was, "Do you prefer water or soda?" I heard one particularly astute child exclaim in response, "Water! I don't want to get fat!" Then, after receiving a perplexed look from the survey-giver he explained, "Soda makes you fat." This was complete with his hands motioning out in front of his body to indicate, 'fat.'

- - - - - - - - - -
I was helping another teacher give an assessment to her class. I was talking to one of her students in Spanish - he had just moved to the class the week before and knew no English, so I was asking the questions in Spanish to see if he understood the concept at all. Another one of her students was sitting next to me and this boy, mostly doing his own work, but half listening to us. He sighed and commented out-loud to no one in particular, "I really need to practice my Spanish more..." Keep in mind this was a Spanish dominant student in a class for only students who have not "passed" the English proficiency test. So his comment was quite amusing. I told him I needed to practice my Spanish more too, so he could practice with me.

Things that make the job crazy and stressful.

We had a lockdown the other day because there was a disturbance on campus, (or rather, a person running through the open-air campus trying to escape the police). As I quickly instructed my students to leave everything exactly where it was and line up at the door to the connecting classroom, tried to explain to the Spanish-speaking parent volunteer in my room at the time that, "hay algo afuera y no se que pero tenemos que ir al otra sala," and crowded us all into the classroom connected to mine, (which is on the "inside" of our open-air campus, while my room is on the "outside") the other teacher sarcastically commented, "and they wonder why our students sometimes struggle." An hour later, when we were finally allowed to turn the lights back on, open the blinds, get the children off the floor, and make noise, I had to agree. In a 3-year-old-having-a-tantrum way, it's just not fair.

(However, my students behaved amazingly well the whole time. If they started wispering or moving around, I never had to do more than give them a threatening glare for them to quiet back down. I was proud and impressed with how well they behaved. Luckly, they didn't understand what a "Lockdown" meant. They could sense that it was very important for them to behave, but they did not show any indication that they knew what was actually going on. A teacher of an older grade later told me that her students spent the whole time talking about "bad guys" and guns and shooting - they knew what a lockdown was actually for.)

- - - - - - - - - -
Student: Teacher? Can you test me now?
Me: No, not right now.
Student: But Teacher? That's my favorite thing.
Me: Testing?! That's your favorite part of school?!
Student: Yes.

And this makes me sad. A first grader should not say that testing is his or her favorite part of a school. A first grader shouldn't have testing - the concept or the word - at such the forefront of his or her mind. I should not have to brainwash my students into getting excited about testing (which I have done). I should not have one-on-one testing be the only time my students get one-on-one attention. Which is pretty much what is going on right now. Because of so much one-on-one testing, I have my students doing independent work or "center" work so much of the day, that there is no more time for individual attention outside of the testing times. I'm not giving the interventions I should, because of the testing I have to do to make sure the interventions are effective. (Except I never really get to the interventions, so the testing is kind of pointless. But if I don't do the testing I get in trouble - that's apparent when I don't have the data. The actual interventions, no one sees whether or not I do them.)

- - - - - - - - - -
I have had students either join or leave my class 15 times so far this year. That means that, on average, at least every other week I have gained or lost a student. That's another, "well, no wonder they sometimes struggle" moment.

My principal once commented that an interesting dissertation topic would be to examine the correlation between English language proficiency in ELL students and their frequency of school movement. My classroom may have a lot of movement, but compared to my partner teacher, I've got nothing. Her class has had so, so much movement, and her class is comprised of students with lower English language proficiency (such divided by state law). I agree that it would be an incredibly interesting dissertation topic (I would like to reserve it for myself for some day - so no one steal it!)

- - - - - - - - - -
I was kind of sick all week, but didn't call in sick any days of of school (both because I didn't realize how bad I felt until I was there, and because the thought of having to plan for a sub was just way, way too overwhelming to even contemplate doing while sick. Ironic.) At one point, I had developed a fairly irritating headache and decided to cut math short to have the class listen to a book-on-tape as I flipped the pages in the story. It was right at this point that the principal walked in for an informal observation. That certainly wasn't the most intellectually stimulating lesson. At least I had the required 85% engagement! The students love listening to the stories on tape.

Why tests screw with your head.

2009-02-01T10:46:00.004-06:00

Our school focuses a lot, a lot on test scores. Even the first graders are given standardized tests several times during the year (once each quarter for some tests, three times during the year for others).

This fact screws with the teacher's head. It makes us think things we don't want to think, things we shouldn't think.

As a grade, we performed poorly on the last test. We got a stern talking-to from the higher-ups, and promised to do better next time.

I had a student move recently. That's nothing new, I loose a student or get a new one every two weeks or so. This student, though, is one that I really liked. (I really like them all, of course.) She was hilarious - goofy and sarcastic, but a really hard worker. She always listened and did what she was supposed to do. If she had questions, she asked.

Despite this, she was academically pretty low. She was in my lowest reading group, and had made very little reading progress from the beginning of the year.

And when she left, I mourned as I always do and was sad to see her go, but I couldn't help thinking, "at least she was a low one. Her being gone will make my class's scores look just a little bit higher for the next time we take a test." And while I had that thought I hated myself for it, but it's true.

It makes me sad that I have those thoughts. They're completely logical thoughts. I am sad she's gone. And unless I get another academically low student, my class's scores will look just a little higher next time.

So, that was my class's first step toward performing better on the next standardized test - loosing a student falling below the district expectations for success. Of course, we are doing other things to make everyone else's scores rise, but loosing a low student certainly did hurt anything.

The Inauguration

2009-01-21T21:49:00.007-06:00

I missed the actual moment of inauguration.

We were finishing up literacy centers when the announcement came over the loudspeakers. "Teachers, the inauguration will begin on CNN. Turn to channel XX on your classroom TVs if you plan to watch." I quickly tried to wrap up my guided reading group, have the rest of the class clean up from their centers, and get everyone quiet enough to move on. As they were cleaning up, I went to my computer to start the CNN streaming of the inauguration. I had hoped to watch it on the big screen - projected onto my interactive whiteboard. That didn't work, but the television did.

The students had been excited for this all morning. Another teacher at our school had traveled to DC to experience the inauguration in person, so we knew to be on the lookout for the teacher among the millions in attendance.

I finally turned on the TV and Obama, President Obama was in the middle of his speech. The kids watched intently for quite a while. As they were watching, I explained Obama's speech them them in kid-friendly language.

"Now he's talking about how people of different religions need to learn to work together. Like when we were studying Diwali and Christmas and Hanukkah and Las Posadas - everyone celebrates different holidays but they can still work together and live together."

"Now he's talking about how he thinks people should fight with words instead of with wars. He thinks we should find ways to talk about our problems instead of fighting because too many people have been getting hurt."

"Now he's talking about how we need to not be wasteful. Like when we leave the room we should turn off the light. And when we are going places nearby, we should walk instead of drive because driving takes a lot of gas and that is wasteful. Or like, we need to recycle so that we aren't cutting down so many trees."

I grossly oversimplified everything, but the kids were really interested in just watching the screen, seeing it flash from Obama ("Look! Obama!!) to any old white man ("Look! John McCain!") to the swarms of people watching in DC.

After about 15-20 minutes, some of them were beginning to loose interest and get antsy, so I decided to leave the TV on, but start the next activity which was to just write letters to Obama. They could ask him questions, tell him how they felt about the fact that he was becoming president, tell him things about them or their family - anything they wanted to really. I just wanted them to make a connection between Obama and their current realities.

They were really focused on both writing their letters and occasionally gazing up at the TV screen. When the national anthem was sung toward the end, one girl spontaneously stood up and put her right hand over her heart. Others followed and joined in the song.

Their letters were adorable and sweet. In her letter, one girl explained that she and her family wanted Obama to be president because he is a "good learner" and he "make[s] the city better every day."

Another explained that he "Vote[d] for [Obama] because [Obama] didn't want a war to happen."

A lot of them told Obama that he was "cool" and "smart" or they asked him if he was happy to be president ("circle yes or no").

I don't know what they will remember of this momentous occasion 20 years from now. I know that I remember nothing of the elections that took place when I was in kindergarten, and very little about those that happened when I was in 3rd grade. So, in all likelihood, they will remember nothing. But at least they experienced it. They were involved and they participated in the whole process - from discussing the candidates and their issues before the elections all the way through the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Crazy liberal teacher.

2008-12-20T17:27:00.003-06:00

The other day we were playing a graphing game involving dreidels. (Basically, I had an extreme compulsion to teach about as many holidays as I could during winter time because while I was student teaching my CT forbade me from doing anything multicultural. We ended up getting through about 5 holidays.)

In math we have been working on discovering different ways to record data, and then comparing the data. (Which has most? How do you know? Which has least? How do you know?) For this game, then, the students would roll a dreidel and record which letter it landed on. At the end we talked about which they rolled the most, the least, etc.

On a dreidel, one of the letters is called "gimmel." So, I was demonstrating the game as we would play it with a student as my partner, while everyone else was watching. One of the students shouted out that the dreidel landed on "gimmel."

"Hey! You said gay!" accused one of the boys.
"No, I said gimmel," the other responded.
"No. You said gay and that's a bad word. He said gay!" continued the first boy.

At the time I was trying to cram this game into the last 10 minutes of school before the PTO came in to give out bags full of candy to the children. Because of this, I didn't go into it the way I wish I had. All I said was, "Gay isn't a bad word." (Which is a problematic response because if they are using the word "gay" as an insult then it needs to be stopped and is not something they should say - so in that sense it's kind of a "bad word" in the way that they understand "bad word," though truly it isn't a bad word.)

Now though, I wish I had taken the time to discuss this. If first graders are already under the impression that "gay" is a bad word, it will be harder to teach them later what it truly means and how it should appropriately be used. If this comes up again, I will stop what we're doing and have a conversation.

I will start by asking what they think "gay" means and why they think it is a bad word. Depending on their responses, I will go on from there. I doubt that any of them really have any concept of what the word means - they probably hear it used as an insult from older siblings

The good thing about having my school close at the end of the year is, I don't really care if I somehow get in trouble for discussing issues with the students that some people may not think are appropriate. Chances are, I won't have a job next year anyway...

I think these kids could handle it though. I wouldn't go into it a lot, I would just define "gay" as a man who likes and wants to marry another man or a woman who likes and wants to marry another woman and tell them that there is nothing wrong with that. (And of course, that's not technically a definition, but it is a concept comprehensible to first graders.) I live in a republican state that recently ammended its constitution, so there would be the potential for backlash from even such a simple (but loaded) definition. But, like I said, I don't know that I'll have a job in the district next year anyway, so why bother holding back teaching what I feel is important? It is in my (unwritten) teaching philosophy to try my hardest to stop prejeduce and clarify misconceptions and that is what I would be doing if this comes up again.

Returning student

2008-12-07T11:07:00.004-06:00

Last week the secretary called me over the intercom in the middle of class to let me know that I had a new student, who was actually a returning student, and to make sure to check my box before I left school so I could see who it was.

I was actually quite excited to hear this, going through in my mind which of my past students I may be getting back. I and the teacher next door to me both had an embarrassingly low number of students (her especially), and I was actually starting to worry that They (whoever "they" are) may decide soon that we have too few students and do something drastic about it. So after school I went to the office to see who my returning student would be. It turns out that it is a student who was dropped from my class list about 7 weeks ago due to too many days in a row of non-attendance, and no contact from the family. I had tried calling this student a few times, but couldn't find any working phone numbers, so had assumed they had quickly moved, and that was that.

Apparently that is not what happened. A family member (not in the nuclear family, but in the extended family) had been sick, and for some reason this necessitated that the child not attend school, any school at at all, for nearly 2 months.

This child is a pleasure to have in class, and I was sad when s/he stopped attending and had to be dropped from my class list. I am glad s/he is back. I only wish s/he had been somewhere else the past while. This child was already struggling in many ways, and had been dropped back a grade earlier in the school year (to my class from a grade 2 classroom). Hopefully the child is able to remain in my classroom (or any classroom) consistently for the rest of the school year.

There may have been other things going on making it an obstacle for the parent to get the child to school, and obstacles are understandable. However, this was not fair to the child. If I see the parent next week, I hope to let her know that if a similar situation comes up again to let the school know if there some major difficulty in getting the child to school. We are very eager to help in any way we can at our school and will do nearly anything to help the child get to school.

Thanksgiving from my perspective.

2008-11-26T12:46:00.007-06:00

Sometimes I forget that I am a first grade teacher, and first grade is when you are supposed to learn a lot of things, or at least build the foundation to learn a lot of things. Now, I'm not talking about reading, writing, and math. That I know I am supposed to teach and my students are supposed to learn.

I'm talking about things like Thanksgiving.

In first grade, they may not already know that Thanksgiving is traditionally taught as, "The Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower, had a tough winter, befriended the Wampanoag Native American Indians (or whatever combination of words is politically correct at the moment) and were saved when the Wampanoag taught them to farm and helped them hunt, and shared a huge feast with them."

I can't make myself teach it like that. We did no crafts. I never brought up the word "turkey." I never talked about the wonderful meal shared between the two groups.

I showed some of the audio/video clips on scholastic.com about the long trip on the Mayflower. The highlights of that discussion included:
- They were on the ship for nearly three months! Can you imagine being in one room for 3 months?
- They had to stay below deck. That's like being in a basement for 3 months. (None of them know what a basement is. I forgot that basements are mostly protection from tornadoes and the Southwest has no tornadoes.)
- They had no toilets. They had to use chamber pots. That means they went to the bathroom in a bowl, and then had to go dump it in the ocean. (This was my favorite part. Because chamber pots are funny to both 6 year olds, and apparently 23 year olds.)
- There was a storm and they kind of got lost a little.

We talked about the clothing worn by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag. Highlights included:
- Pilgrim boys wore dresses until they were 7. Boys, you'd all still be wearing dresses.
- Pilgrims had no belts. They had to tie their pants to their shirt so they wouldn't fall down.
- The Pilgrim girls and boys had to wear very many layers of clothing.
- The pictures of the Wampanoag show them wearing very little. The kids found that hilarious. I pointed out that they had all their "private parts covered" and that it was just like they were wearing a bathing suit. Still, the children were quite scandalized.

We talked about the different types of dwellings the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag lived in and the different types of schooling the two groups had. Those discussions were mostly uneventful.

We also talked about how the Pilgrims came to what we now call The United States of America from very far away (further away than California, Mexico, and even Puerto Rico) because they were hoping to live a better life. They wanted to live somewhere they would feel safer or maybe have a little more food to eat.

Then we talked about how most of the students knew someone who had come to the United States from another country for the same or similar reasons. Much like the Pilgrims, they came to the United States because they were looking for somewhere that they could feel safer, or maybe have a little bit more money, or maybe have enough food to eat.

I hope that by going at Thanksgiving from the direction I did (compare and contrast of the Pilgrim and the Wampanoag cultures, and a comparison of the Pilgrims coming to the US to the students' families coming to the US) I am not depriving them of learning about the traditional conception of Thanksgiving. However, while they may not have been presented "Thanksgiving" in the form of hand-print turkeys and smiling Pilgrim and Wampanoag friendships, I think they were able to make connections between some of the things experienced by the Pilgrims (coming to a new country where everything is new and different, and maybe not quite as good as they had imagined it would be) and their own lives and experiences.

The students are worried, too.

2008-11-19T21:17:00.003-06:00

This morning when I went to pick my students up on the playground before school, the first words spoken to me were, "Teacher! They're going to close the school?!"

"We'll talk about it," I promised. I kept putting off the discussion, but later in the day when they asked again, I decided it was a good time.

Me: So, people have have been talking. What have you all heard?
Students: Our school's going to close!
Me: Okay, yeah. Awesome School is probably going to have to close at the end of the school year. You'll all go to different schools for 2nd grade. I'm not sure where exactly you'll all go.
Student: We going to go back to kinder?!
Me: No, don't worry. You'll all go to 2nd grade, it will just be at a different school.
Student: But I don't want to leave you!!
Me: You'll have a different teacher next year anyway!
Student (runs up to hug me): I'll miss you Ms. GrownUp!
Me: I'm not going anywhere now. We still have a long time together.

Student: I know too it's 'cause people are leaving our school, like Alicia and Cristofer and Valeria (three students who recently moved away).
Me: That's partly true. One reason they're closing the school is because a lot of people are moving away in the whole district, because they don't have enough money to live here or their parents can't find a job here.
Student: They have to live somewhere else so they can be good, huh?
Me: Yeah, they have to find somewhere to live where their parents can get a job and they can have enough money.

Student: Yeah. They're closing our school 'cause it don't have money, too!
Me: You're right. Another reason they are closing our school is because the school district doesn't have enough money. When they don't have enough money, they have to close a school.
Student: Teacher, I'm gonna bring money tomorrow.
Student: Yeah, me too. I'm going to ask my dad for money so that we can keep Awesome School.
Student: I have money and I'm going to bring it too.
Me: That's really nice of you all, but it's a LOT of money that the district needs. A real lot of money.
Student: Well. I'm not leaving Awesome.
Student: Me too. I'm never leaving Awesome School.
Student: I'm not leaving too. I love Awesome.

And later in the day during writing, one of my students wrote this plea as a letter to the principal:

"Dr. Principal is nice. I want to be in my classroom. Don't close the school. I like the school. I want to be in third grade and fourth grade and fifth grade."

I tried to reassure this student that s/he would be in all those grades, just not in this building, but I'm not sure how successful I was in that attempt.

Slightly more articulate anger and frustration. (Only slightly, though.)

2008-11-19T06:25:00.005-06:00

The closure isn't immediate. It's just that next year, we won't exist. One of the TWO highest performing schools in the district of 20+ schools will not exist. It's due to budgeting issues. Which is understandable, except again for the fact that if they're going to close a school it seems that it would make more sense for one of the many underperforming (nearly failing) schools to close instead of our school which was one point away from the 2nd highest performance level (out of 6 levels). I know that many of the schools in my district are, if not bad exactly, at least VERY different than my school. My school is very invested in (the ever popular edu-term) the PLC model. And we seem to pull it off quite well. Most of the other schools, the underperforming and failing schools, have poor school-level administration and a staff that does not work together and communicate in the way that I am now used to and wholly rely on. If I hadn't ended up at such a strong school I wouldn't be as concerned and instead may think of this as a fortuitous opportunity for change. But, I am so happy with where I am and I was so miserable student teaching (due to a lack of communication and support all around the school). I don't want to go backward. I don't want to risk being miserable again. I don't think I could stand it for a whole year.

In theory the proposed changes have not technically been decided on yet. The board still hasn't voted. However, I have no hope that it won't be passed. Money talks. Cutting our school will get them some more money. They have some reasons why they chose to cut our school instead of others. Clearly, I still think the school performance level should hold some weight. In a district where something like 15 of the schools are failing or near failing, and only two school are really doing well, why cut one of those two successful schools?

But cutting a succeeding school, the disrict will then be telling our students that they must choose one of three other schools to attened, all of which are performing two or three levels lower than the school they currently attend.

Also, due to open enrollment, we have a large number of students coming from around the district to attend our school, because it is a strong school. In fact, a note was recently sent home to parents of one of the near failing schools telling them that, due to their poor performance status, they may send their children to one of the other schools in the district. My school was suggested as one of these where they could send their children. We have already had new enrollments from that near failing school.

(And I should mention that I don't love the term "failing" when referring to a school. Because of course there are some good things happening and the school isn't truly a failure in all respects. However, it would get messy putting it in quotes each time I write it. Also, I'm trying to make a point in compairing those "failing" or "near failing" schools to my school.)

I really don't love this city and the only reason I was planning on staying was because I love my school, I adore my principal, and I appreciate and respect the people whith whom I work.

Without that, I would be unhappy. This city is kind of soul-sucking. It's polluted and very conservative and doesn't have very many independent stores. It was the school and the people at the school keeping me here. Without a reassurance that I would get to keep at least some of that, why bother staying? It may sound extreme and defeatist, but this whole moving to the Southwest thing was an experiment. I alway said that, if after a year I don't like it, I can always move back to the Midwest - to home state or college state or somewhere else where the snow falls.

And, maybe I will move. Maybe I won't.

If I move, maybe I'll look for a new teaching job. Maybe I won't.

I don't know. And I'm not sure how to decide.

bad changes

2008-11-18T04:16:00.002-06:00

my school is being closed. it's not due to performance. we're one of the highest performing schools in the district.

i'm devastated. sad. and angry.

i love my school. absolutely love it. i think the only way i am surviving and happy is that i am at this school, working with this partner teacher and this principal. without all that, i don't know that i want to keep teaching.

and that makes me feel sadder. i'm not ready to give up on teaching yet, but i don't know that i want to risk being miserable somewhere else.

i don't know what to do.

Observation, team teaching, and my failure at maintaining a well behaved class

2008-11-16T16:58:00.005-06:00

- I had my formal observation at some point since I last posted. It went amazingly well. That is, the children are apparently terrified of the principal so they behaved perfectly for the observed lesson. I presented the content in a dynamic, interactive, multimodal way. The students interacted perfectly with the many materials that were used in the lesson and created products that demonstrated an understanding of the lesson objective. During both the whole group portion of the lesson and the time when they were at their seats, most of them were attentive and on task.

The downside to all this was, the principal didn't get to see how they usually behave, and therefor was unable to give me any helpful advice on how to deal with the usual behaviors. In my most conference meeting, I told the principal that their behavior was quite atypical. S/he kept apologizing for the effect s/he had on them. It was kind of funny.

- I have begun team teaching, teaching two blocks of math and sending my students off to my team teacher for guided reading. It's working out well and is giving me a chance to focus on the math. (Of course, next year the district will implement a new math program that is very different than the one we currently use, so I won't be able to use these newfound math teaching skills to make next year easier.)

- I have one student who I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get to behave. This student just doesn't seem to care. My "warning" system has no effect. Making the student come in for recess has no effect. Allowing the student to help if rules are followed has no effect. Talking to the parents has no effect on the student (though the parents are appropriately concerned about their child's behavior and want to help in any way they can. Without my prompting, they take away video games for bad days, and have offered a reward in the form of a cake for a stream of good days).

I am at a total loss. At the end of one day, after I had spoken with one parent already that day, they both came back and the other parent was really angry. I have to say, I was kind of scared with how angry the parent was.

I haven't sent the student to the office yet, because I guess I am a wimp and I'm not really sure how. Starting next week though, I plan to. This needs to stop. This student acts out the same way during special classes and in my team teacher's classroom. This student is fairly smart, scoring average on most tests (which puts the student above at least 75% of the students in the grade). Being given more challenging work or leadership roles does not change this student's behavior.

This student needs to be on task and following directions so that s/he can learn, and so that the surrounding students can learn.

The Election.

2008-11-02T18:31:00.004-06:00

I have about 5 half written posts that I should finish and well, post.

But first I have to say that trying to teach first graders about the election is a hillarious, sometimes disturbing, thing.

I'm really working on getting the students to use the two main candidate's names. They are currently referring to them as "the white one" and "the black one." Sometimes they are "the black one" and "the old one."

"Ms. Grownup" one of the students said, "That man is really old."

"Yes. Yes, he is," I replied.

They also think Cindy McCain is ugly.

"Teacher," a girl said. "That lady is UGLY!"

"[R]! That's not very nice!" I replied. But the fact that I was laughing probably didn't help the situation any.

The school is doing a kidvoting election with the 1st through 5th grades on Tuesday, so I have been trying to come up with ways to kind of explain some of the issues so that they don't just vote based on whim or what they have heard.

I tried to explain how the two differ on education. "Obama wants everyone to get to go to pre-school! Obama wants to help people who don't have a lot of money be able to go to college. That required an explaination of what college is.

I tried to explain how the two differ on the war. "Obama doesn't want to be in a war. He thinks too many people are getting hurt and it's not really helping very much. McCain thinks the war is very important and will help the United States become better." That discussion just devolved into a discussion on guns and how it's okay for police officers to have guns, because they are trying to keep people safe, but that 1st graders should not be touching real guns, ever.

So basically, I have failed on discussions of the election so far. However, on Thursday my students were absolutely convinced that Obama had already won. I opened the morning by allowing them to vote on which of two books we would read, ("just like you're going to vote on Tuesday," I explained to them). When I said the word "vote," they all began bombarding me with "Obama is going to go to the White House!" and "Obama is the new president!" I couldn't say anything to convince them otherwise. I was being observed at the time, so was trying to be serious about it all, but couldn't help laughing because it was all so hillariously rediculous. Perhaps they had seen the Obama infomercial on TV the night before and thought that meant he was president, or something. I don't know.

Anyway, on Monday and Tuesday, I am going to try to tie together discussions of race with discussions of the election in an effort to get them to stop referring to the candidates by their skin color, and also to work with the racial and skin color issues I discussed in the previous post.

Conferences: 1

2008-10-22T20:27:00.003-05:00

Conferences were a lot of fun. I really enjoyed them. My interpreter decided my Spanish was too good, so left me for the majority of the conferences. She stayed to help with a few that required more in depth discussions of issues.

One parent brought up an issue that I had not previously been aware of at all.

The child, like all but one of my students, is Latino - Mexican specifically, but has a very fair complexion. His brother calls him "el güero," (meaning, essentially, "one with a fair complexion") as do other students occasionally when not in the classroom. I was under the impression that this was generally a form of endearment or a statement of fact. (In Mexico, my host mother often refered to that fact that I was very "güera," like her daughter, so needed to be sure to use sunscreen or wear a hat. There were other times, too, that my classmates would be talking about something and simply state the fact that I was "güera," because it is true. I am fair skinned.)

His mom said that the other kids make fun of him for being lighter skinned and having green eyes. She said they tell him that he's not really Mexican, that he can't really be Mexican with his pale skin and lighter hair. They accuse him of being too American (in a bad way). She thinks this is related to the other children's parent's resentment of white people because of their racism toward Latinos/as. (Many of the conservative whites living here in the desert are very anti-immigrant.) She's afraid that he is starting to resent his own Mexican/Mexican-American culture because his peers are pushing him away and establishing him as an "other," not one who belongs with the rest of them.

She said he wants to be a police officer when he grows up and she is afraid he is going to unfairly take out his anger/agression on people (Latino/a people, I think she was insinuating) due to his growing anger and resentment now toward his peers. This last part I didn't entirely understand, but I do get that she is worried that whatever is going on now is going to have a lasting negative impact on his cultural pride and own well being.

I want to do something about this, but I'm not sure what. There were many issues brought up in this conversation, but dealing just with this child's feeling of exclusion is my first goal. There are several other students who, like him, speak Spanish at home, come from Mexican or Mexican-American households, and are fair skinned. I'm not sure why the students would be picking on him in particular as opposed to the others. I also have not seen this happening at all in the classroom, though that doesn't mean that it is not happening in the classroom. Just that I haven't observed it or picked up the students' possibly subtle actions. (Though really, they're 6, so their actions can't be too incredibly subtle.) While this could be happening in the classroom, it's probably happening more at lunch and recess when there is less supervision.

I can't think of any book or song that says, "I'm a fair-skinned person, but I'm still Latino and proud!" There are plenty of materials that I could find that say, "I'm Latino and my skin is brown and my hair and eyes are brown and I am proud."

And it's ironic (maybe?) in a way because, well, it tends to be the fair-skinned people who get the prominent roles in Mexican film and television. There are plenty of famous Latino/a actors and singers who are fair-skinned. And of course, many of the Mexican politicians are fair skinned too. Like in many countries - the few who are pale, who look more "European," are those who tend to control the country (economically or politically). So, where this child to live in Mexico, he might have an advantage. Fitting in with his classmates though, he feels like an outsider.

I'm basically at a loss as to what I should do about this. I will keep my eyes and ears open for other students saying or doing something like the mother described. It very well could be happening. But at the same time, it also could be that he said something to her once, and she read a lot more into it than really existed. The mother made it sound as if everyone was ganging up against him. If that were true, wouldn't I have seen something? There could be a few students though, saying things to him, accusing him of not being Mexican enough to really be Mexican.

I've been thinking about this for a week now, trying to figure out what I can do about it - how I can help. This feels different to me than a standard form of exclusion because it is someone being excluded from a group that he is part of. It's not a white student not being included because he/she is white and comes from a different cultural and linguistic background than the majority Latino/a and Spanish-speaking students in the class. It is a Latino student feeling excluded from the group he is a part of. Really, it shouldn't be that different than any other type of exclusion, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do about it - how to go about developing a lesson or a series of lessons dealing with this type of issue.

Coincidently, I was talking with someone the other day about young children's perceptions of race and gender. This person is a PhD candidate in education, and is teaching an undergraduate class to elementary education program students. Her undergraduate students didn't believe that young children should be or could be exposed to social justice issues. Having never really worked with young children (she has worked with mostly college-aged students) she thought and believed that even primary-school-aged students should be exposed to discussions and lessons on social justice, but didn't have any concrete examples of how or why. I gave her a few examples to share with her students, but I think this is another strong example. As I said to her before, children - even young children - can see race and gender the same way high school students and college students can. Even six-year-olds have misconceptions, can be influenced by their parents, and can develop misconceptions of their own. Because of this, even first graders (and younger, too) can and should be exposed to both tangential and deliberate discussions of race and gender.

One way to make this week more exciting than the last...

2008-10-12T21:58:00.003-05:00

I have conferences coming up, as I'm sure many of the other teachers do too.

Luckily, my first conference will be my absolute easiest. This child is perfect in every way. S/he always listens. S/he participates not excessively, but often enough. S/he is doing quite average in literacy and math. S/he always wears a wonderful grin. Some days, s/he ends up with too many stickers to fit on his/her shirt.

I have interpreters for most of my conferences with families who speak no English. However, there are a few that I think I'm going to need to do on my own. I made sure to get interpreters for any tricky conferences though.

I have a few conferences that are going to be a challenge. I was told by my AP to ask a series of questions to one mother, culminating in the question, "Have you discussed [you child's] difficulty with focusing on any one thing for any period of time with your doctor?" This will be made especially tricky by the fact that I told the students to come along for the conference - I want to have it be a goal setting conference as well as showing the families what we have done so far this year. I'm not sure what to do with the child when I am asking this question (and others) to the mother. Should the student be there listening? Should I tell the student to go look at a book for a minute while I talk to the parent?

The majority of the conferences will be fun (though a bit stressful). My students are a wonderful bunch and I enjoy them all immensely - even those few boys (and the fact that it is all boys says something to me about my teaching, I think) who have recently been receiving way too many "red" days on their behavior charts. Like I said when I was talking about the Family Subject Night, I truly do enjoy talking with parents/families.

So, this week will probably be even worse than last week, due to the conferences and the testing (which I failed to finish on time, so will continue throughout this week) and the insanity that is first grade.

I have to just keep telling myself that I can make it through the week. I can make it through the week. I can make it through the week. And when Friday comes along, I will reward myself with the gift of pan dulce and going to sleep at 7:30. (I live a sad, boring, wonderful life.)

Overwhelmed to the next step, I guess.

2008-10-08T06:51:00.006-05:00

My classroom is covered everywhere in layers and layers of papers. I spend 12 hours each day at school. I am usually the first one to get there and the last one to leave. During those 12 hours I get very little planning done. I'm mostly just trying to catch up on the paper, which doesn't stop multiplying, seemingly exponentially. With all the papers, I loose everything. It's not funny anymore. I loose papers that the kids can't help me find. They're there somewhere, in some pile, but I haven't a clue as to the exact location - I don't even know an approximate location.

I forget to do things and I'm always one step behind where I think I'm supposed to be. I don't know how to catch up and restore my sanity. I'm too confused to feel very effective, or even a little effective. I'm trying to get it all done more efficiently, but that's not working.

The fact that I learned to educate using theory books (my cheerleaders, plus Vygotsky and Freire and folks like them) as opposed to practical books (none of which I can even cite) is, I think, part of the cause of my absolute cluelessness. I don't know how to teach! I don't know anything about teaching. And, yeah, there definitely is a difference. I do know about education. I know a lot about education and can pull out articles and research without much of trouble. But when it comes to practice - I've got nothing.

I've been told by some of the people who observe me that I am a "natural" at teaching, which is ironic since I don't believe in such a thing. However, their notion of my competence is, I think, covering up the fact that I feel that I am not teaching much of anything to the children. I may look good when they come in with their notepad and watch, but I haven't a clue as to what I am doing, what I am supposed to be doing, or how one teaches.

Instances in which I may be sorely lacking in sympathy.

2008-10-04T01:03:00.002-05:00

Student: "Teacher, sometimes I cough so hard I think I'm gonna throw up."
Me: "If you think you're going to throw up, please do it over the garbage can."

Me: "For homework tonight, I need you to read. You all have plenty of books I have photocopied and sent home with you, so you all have something to read."
Student: "Teacher, I moved."
Me: "If you move, you need to make sure to take your books with you."
Student: "But Teacher, they're in a box."
Me: "You need to find them.

Student: "I'm bleeding."
Me: "Oh, it's not that bad. Just go wash your hands with soap (to get the blood off) and I'll stick a band-aid on it."

They come and they go.

2008-10-01T22:20:00.006-05:00

The class list gods must have heard me griping about getting another student, because one of my students left without warning. Today when I went to take attendance, the online system told me that "I-- F-- has been dropped from your class. Please press OK." I didn't want to press OK! But, I needed to take attendence, and it wouldn't let me do so without pushing OK.

This girl was the absolute worst student to leave because she was strong in Spanish and English, and she could read (she was one of the very few students already reaching my principal's reading goals), and she was an amazing model and teacher for the other students. "Remember Teacher, if you want us to calm down go like this," she would remind me. Or, during reading groups, "No, Miguel, you have to read a sentence, and then stop to make sure that the words match the picture so that you understand. Then take a breath. Then go on." She memorized exactly what I would say, and then would MAKE SURE her partner was doing exactly that. I always strategically partnerered her with a few kids, and I was really starting to see improvments in the work of her seatmate, a very quite student who, while testing "proficient" in English is still very much developing, and also struggles a bit academically. Sitting beside someone who could always explain and understand what was going on was fabulous for I--'s seatmate.

Some other teacher will be very, very lucky to get I-- in his or her class.

Does it ever get less sad when students leave from your class without being able to say goodbye? I know it happens with some frequency - it happened when I was student teaching, too. But it's simply so sad. One day the student is there, and then *poof!* he or she is gone forever, hopefully off to experience success in another classroom somewhere else.

I'm the chosen one, apparently...

2008-09-29T21:44:00.002-05:00

My school seems to find it amusing to give me a new student each week of school. I'm starting to see a pattern. If we keep this up, I'll be out of table space (I use tables, not desks) by the end of the quarter. The other teachers aren't getting all the new students. I'm not sure why I'm special...

Family Subject Night

2008-09-28T18:49:00.002-05:00

Last week we had a Family [Subject] Night. (Insert a specific subject name, removed to maintain vagueness). The goal of the evening was to have families come and participate in Subject activities with their children. We also shared some "tips" with the parents on ways they can help their children practice Subject at home.

I had about 29% of my students show up. I was hoping for closer to 40-45%, but 29% was okay. I'm not sure how many people from the other classes came, so I don't know what our grade-level percentage was.

Regardless, I had so much fun. It's great to see the students in a more relaxed environment and to watch them interact with their families - their parents and siblings. I was able to talk to some of the parents and tell them how wonderful their children were, which I don't have the time or the mental capacity to do (in Spanish) before or after school when I'm trying to do zillions of other things simultaneously. (My level of Spanish speaking/comprehension doesn't allow for multitasking.)

I didn't prepare for this evening as well as I had hoped to. (I showed up at school that day having completely forgotten that the event was that evening...) However, I am excited for our next Family Subject Evening. At least, I think we get to have another. If we don't, maybe I'll plan one of my own for just my class. (If I'm allowed to do that.) I think it's such a great opportunity to establish the school as a welcoming place, a place where the children can come to do fun things in addition to the regular school things. And also, it is great to have the chance to interact with the families informally. If I were to do another Family Subject Night on my own, (or with the rest of the grade) I hope to actually call the families to personally invite them. Maybe that would help me get to my goal of 40% attendance. (I say this all so optimistically, like I have the time to plan an evening all on my own. But really, it doesn't take an incredibly large amount of preparation. Maybe some day I'll actually get around to planning an Subject Night of my own.)

Thoughts on team teaching?

2008-09-27T11:06:00.006-05:00

Seeing as how most everyone on my grade-level team is quite overwhelmed, one of the teachers suggested team-teaching with me. That is, she would teacher literacy/social studies and I would teach math/science.

I am very seriously considering it, but I'm not sure.

The main reasons to say no:
-I am afraid that I would screw over TWO classes of kids on math. (And I'm not trying to be self-deprecating. It's just that I know I am a new teacher, and I know that our math program is one of the funky new ones where you're not allowed to teach the addition algorithm, the kids are supposed to "invent" or "discover" it on their own. So, there's some pressure to encourage that discovery.)
-I have always thought of myself as a "literacy" person. Doing this team-teaching would mean that I no longer teach guided reading groups. It would also take social studies away from me. And while I have yet to actually teach social studies this year, in theory it is my favorite thing to teach.
-I wouldn't get to see my kids develop in small group literacy/guided reading groups.
-My schedule is kind of sporadic. I haven't quite gotten things down to a perfect routine yet. If I did the team-teaching, I wouldn't be able to continue on with an activity past the alloted time due to an activity going really well, or due to an activity going really poorly.
-I wouldn't gain the experience of teaching everything.

Advantages to team-teaching:
-It would force me to follow my schedule. I would have to end things on time because it would be time for the kids to leave/switch classes.
-I would have one or two fewer things to plan for each day. This would allow me to spend more time perfecting the lessons that I do teach.
-The other teacher has 5 fewer students than I do. I would get to teach a class with fewer than 20 students for a while each day.
-My principal decided that we need to become a school performing at the second highest (out of 5 levels of performance) level recognized by the state. This means we need to get 25% of our students exceeding state standards. This is a very lofty goal. I would have a bit less pressure on me, if I weren't the one teaching guided reading groups.

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I need to decide soon, because if we were to team-teach, we would begin in a few weeks. There are such strong positives and such strong negatives about team-teaching. Am I a literacy person? Maybe I'm not. Maybe I can make myself be a math person. I enjoy teaching math, and find it really challenging with our fun reform math curriculum. I'm not sure that I'm serving the kids as well as I wish I was during math or during guided reading groups. The teacher I would team with is an experienced teacher, but new to the grade. She is an amazing teacher from what I can see, but struggling to figure out first grade. This would help us both fine-tune our craft in the respective subject areas. Perhaps later in the year we could switch subjects, even.

Technology is Neat.

2008-09-22T22:01:00.003-05:00

I got something that I lovingly refer to as a "mini magic board." It is similar to an interactive whiteboard, but cheaper, not as high-tech, and is in fact not actually an interactive whiteboard at all. (It is interactive though.) I used it a few times today and it was so much fun. It would be even neater if I had an actual interactive whiteboard, but what I have is great, because I have it (and the district can't afford the whole interactive whiteboard). I'm not sure if it is a time saver or a time waster, yet. Once I learn how to use it and take advantage of it, I'm sure it will be even better. Today when I used it was already worlds better than last week when I first tried it, so my use of it will improve with time. Regardless, it is really exciting and I can continue being the grade tech-geek. (Yay.)

Also, today I kept loosing everything. My classroom is a mess of piles of paper and I could not remember where I had put the pile of papers I needed at one specific moment. I dawdled on stretching out the opening discussion for an activity much longer than I wanted to, while I wandered around the classroom digging through piles, looking for the papers I needed. At one point, I finally asked the students. "Where did I put the pile of papers I had put on this table a few hours ago?" One child suggested I look over on the round table. I looked over on the round table and there was my pile.

I need to remember to rely on the children more often. They're observant little ones.

Reading just for fun.

2008-09-18T22:30:00.002-05:00

I have to admit something.

I read "Frog and Toad All Year" yesterday for 10 minutes and today for another 10 minutes just because I wanted to. I didn't tie it into the reading theme, (who are the characters, what's the setting, retell the story.) I didn't tie it into science, (what is the difference between a frog and a toad?) I didn't tie it into math, (If Toad went to sleep in November, and it is April now, how many months has he been sleeping?) I didn't tie it into social studies. I just got them ready to go home a few minutes early, gathered them on the rug once they were ready, and read to them. I mostly just read, and they mostly just listened, and I did comment on the fact that Frog just wanted to be with his friend, and Toad was feeling grumpy, but I didn't really dwell on anything.

It was great but I felt guilty the whole time which is ridiculous because who should ever feel guilty for reading something as wonderful as Frog and Toad?!

But if I was able to have those 10 minutes for Frog and Toad, shouldn't I have used them for something "better" like a mini-lesson on...something. I don't even know.

But Frog and Toad is good story, and the children liked it, and it made me happy and no one came in with an observation sheet at that moment looking for my objectives posted and trying to figure out what state standards I was or wasn't meeting, so it worked out okay.

Goal One: Elimination of Robots

2008-09-15T22:04:00.003-05:00

I have been teaching the kids sign language. ("Now you're going to know three languages!" I tell them, "English, Spanish, and sign language!") I think it's fun, and it helps them to be quiet and keep their hands occupied. Sometimes I just have them say "yes" or "no" in sign language, so while it's an alternative to the "thumbs up or thumbs down," it's not really much different. Other times I have them do different things, or I try talking to them using signs. They seem to really enjoy it. (And I really enjoy it, which sometimes is just as important...)

I still haven't had a chance to do science (or social studies, or writing) since that first lesson last Monday. I'm trying and trying and trying, but I just cannot get myself to do things efficiently enough to get anything except for literacy and math done. I'm hoping that once I tighten up my transitions (which are quite poor right now) I will buy enough time to get both of the "core" (tested) subjects taught, with time for the other (equally important, but not tested) subjects of science, social studies, and writing.

I know that I should be able to find ways to incorporate the other subjects into literacy, but with the constraints set forth by the reading program my district uses, it's really difficult to do. The reading program, like I've said before, is FULL - it comes with all of it's own books (some of them really good!) and has a very prescriptive program for everything. And truly, it is a great program - or it would be if I worked at a KIPP school and taught for 8 hours each day (or whatever crazy-large number of hours it is that KIPP teachers work) instead of 5 or 6 like I do now. Getting through the day's literacy activities takes up a large majority of the day. As I navigate my way through the program, I'm sure I will find ways to make it more interdisciplinary so that I am able to teach the children to be (as OnTeaching said in my comments) and to develop multiple ways of thinking and learning, instead of just teaching the children to (hopefully) score at grade level on tests.

So those are my goals for right now. Aside from the making-it-through-the-day thing (which sometime is a struggle), I am working on teaching the kids more sign language, and developing more efficient ways to make transitions (between activities, between centers, entering the classroom, and getting in line) so that I can buy myself extra time to teach lessons that will help the children develop into people instead of into reading/counting robots.

And just like that, a week has passed.

2008-09-14T12:11:00.003-05:00

It was a long week but it went by really quickly. (My internet is not working, so that's the reason I have not posted.)

The child who was perplexing and challenging me ended up being moved to a different classroom, with a more experienced teacher who actually knows how to manage a classroom and therefore will be better able to manage both a classroom and that child, as opposed to me who hasn't a clue how to do anything except make it through the day.

This was most certainly not a suggestion I made, but after talking many times with my principal and VP, just asking for advice and affirmation that I was doing the right things with this child and not screwing him/her up (by setting really bad expectations), they decided that the student would be better served in this other classroom. I am sad, but relieved. And sad and ashamed that I am relieved. But ever since this child was moved, my classroom feels like a different place - my interactions with my students have changed, and I am able to put my focus and energy on the other needy students in the class, the ones who were pushed to the background in comparison to the other child who was moved, but who really should be receiving a lot more of my time. My principal said that s/he wants me to be able to "develop [my] craft" this first year teaching, and could see that was not what I was doing with this child in my classroom. This was cited as the main reason for the student's move to another class.

This situation helps me see, again, how absolutely wonderful my school's administration is. That's what I had heard coming in, and that is what I have experienced since I have been here interacting with them. I'm still in shock every day that they are so great. (Should I be so surprised that I have a competent and supportive administration? I have heard so many stories about bad administrators, and very few wholly positive ones.)

Also this week, every time I turned my head, I realized there was someone in my classroom observing me. This wasn't unique to me - all the new teachers get observed a lot, sometimes in more formal ways, sometimes in less formal ways. Regardless, it got to the point that, when someone came into my room to just ask me a question, I totally ignored her because I thought she was just coming to observe me. Oops. (I was observed more times than there are days in the week...)

And, aside from the stress and the occasional freak-outs (which happen, and I just have to reassure myself that they will pass, and the next day will come, and then it will end, and we all will have survived), school is going surprisingly well. I still don't think I'm really teaching my kids. I don't know that they'll perform particularly well on the tests which assess their learning, and therefore my teaching. But, they are doing activities mostly following the materials we are supposed to follow, and the standards we are supposed to meet. I am hoping that with the zillions of observations I have been getting, I will continue to be given guidance on actually teaching - on making sure that my lessons are reaching the students in the way that I intend them to. And with this guidance and direction (from the amazing higher-ups at my school) I will do better at teaching for learning and teaching for the tests (instead of just teaching kind of for the fun of it without seeing any real results).

Now it is time to get ready for another week. I will take a deep breath and jump on in, as I have been doing, knowing that come Friday I will have found my way back to the surface where I can take a quick breather before plunging in again for the next week.

Ahhhh!!!!

2008-09-07T21:06:00.003-05:00

It finally happened.

I finally feel totally and completely overwhelmed.

I have no idea what I'm teaching tomorrow, not because I don't have enough content to fill the day, but because I have entirely too much. I don't know how to best fit it all in. I don't know how to worst fit it all in either.

Tomorrow's going to be chaotic and disjointed.

Also, we're probably not going to do science or social studies, again. It's the 4th week of school and I have pseudo done social studies a few times, I haven't done science at all.

Changes?

2008-09-05T20:59:00.002-05:00

Today during my class's special (and one of the three planning blocks I have the whole week), instead of doing anything productive I just sat there. Collapsed in the chair. Too tired to get up and grade or organize or analyze test scores or do anything, except sit and stare at the clock, waiting for the big hand to touch the magic number that meant it was time to go retrieve the children from their special (PE/Art/Music/Library).

Then, after school I had another discussion with the administrators. There may be a change in my class list some time next week. If it happens, it will be horribly bittersweet. I don't know how I feel about it. I'll think about it more if the change actually occurs.

The two above paragraphs may be more strongly related that I originally thought. Issue B is likely partially the cause of issue A. Or if not the cause (in statistical terms), the two are at least strongly correlated with one another (r=.70)

(Oh boy. When I start trying to be funny by joking around with statistics, I know I'm tired.)

My passionate liberal idealism is a pain during PD sessions.

2008-09-02T22:56:00.005-05:00

I keep being shocked at how well educated/informed I am about certain things. In all my hours of professional development regarding ELL things, and working with "at risk" student populations, people around me seem to be having "ah-ha" moments, whereas I am just like, "um...I discussed that during college, and did a research project/lesson planning project on the book you give as an example." I can't tell if I'm being a snob, or if I really did have a wonderfully enriching education, regarding the socio/cultural/linguistic/gender aspects of education.

When it comes to actually teaching something, I'm pretty clueless. I had never given a "running record" before last week. I don't have experience with any specific writing programs. In the classroom I fumble my way through the day, hoping that my students can feel my idealism (hey! my idealism is back!) and magically absorb that enthusiasm. I began the first two weeks of school following the scripted curriculum pretty much to the script. (I'm doing a bit better now. Not a lot, but a tad bit better.) When it comes to professional development about how to teach reading, or writing, or math, I'm all ears and my pencil is ready to take notes. When it comes to professional development about understanding the "culture" of our students, I begin the session optimistic and enthusiastic, and end it kind of disappointed with everyone involved. How did people not discuss these issues in their education programs? Was my education program really that different than everyone else's? (Apparently, I am coming to see, yes. Yes it was.) Am I really that much of a flaming liberal? (Apparently, yes. Yes I am.)

I feel like that annoying kid in class who can't be taught anything because they think they already know everything. And I know I don't know everything. I thought I knew nothing. But when I compare myself to these other teachers at the PD sessions, I feel so much better informed. Maybe, hopefully, if I were participating in a graduate level class, I would be introduced to new concepts and theories. As it stands though, in these PD sessions, I end up frustrated and disillusioned with some of the stated beliefs of the other teachers.

If one is going to be teaching in a community that is 98% Latino - mostly Mexican, I just assumed that one would work to develop at least a rudimentary knowledge of some of the cultural aspects of their students. Or rather, to develop a knowledge of some of the emotionally meaningful aspects of culture. Everyone in this PD session (where my least favorite author was praised, again) was caught up in the "if we have to learn about their culture, why don't they have to learn about our culture" and the "my students just shout out in class, I guess because they're used to just shouting out at home. Their culture doesn't ask people to take turns when talking." No one seems to care to discuss what seem, to me, to be the more meaningful aspects of the cultures of our students. I don't even know what specific examples I am thinking of, something along the lines of the value of family, the fact that immigrants come to the United States because they want to have opportunities that they did not have in the country from which they emigrated - this includes, often in large part, educational opportunities.

I don't even know what the point of this post is, except to kind of rant about the fact that I want to learn more, but I am not comfortable with the content I am being given. It's probably going to come out all wrong, but I just feel like people should be better informed about some things - which I suppose is what they are trying to do, but it seems very misguided and not very effective to me. Instead of naming differences and talking about how they are different, why can't we figure out how to use what the students come with to make our classrooms a better place?

Why can't we all just get along? Let's hold hands and sing, okay? We'll hold hands, and sing, and eat meals together, and end wars and world hunger, and we'll stop the depletion of the ozone layer, and plastic bottles won't cause cancer anymore and everyone will be happy.

I'm sorry, Covington.

2008-08-31T20:43:00.005-05:00

I started something with the student mentioned in the previous post wherein I have a timer go off ever X minutes (a painfully short amount of time), and if the student is vaguely on task (meaning, kind of paying attention to what is going on, and NOT using classroom materials I have explicitly said not to) the student will get a sticker. After collecting X stickers (a painfully small number of stickers) the student is allowed to use the one classroom material that always engages the student.

I began this after spending an afternoon fishing for advice from anyone and everyone who would give me some. This was kind of a conglomeration of of the advice I culled from a handful of different people.

This worked amazingly well, for one day. That first day, this student filled up something like 4 charts, receiving a sticker nearly every time the buzzer went of. The one downside was that the rest of the students were startled/districted when the buzzer went off ever X minutes ALL day - especially when we were in the middle of centers; (They thought that the buzzer meant it was time to switch centers). After a few days though, they began to distinguish between the two different buzzers. One is my watch timer (which goes off every X minutes) and one is the kitchen timer that I have used for centers and to signal the end of activities since the first day of school.

The first day I thought "wow, this is a lot of work, but if it works, I'll do it!" After that day though, it didn't work as well. The student kept wandering off to use the one forbidden classroom material without being given permission to do so. Since being allowed to use this material is also the reward for good behavior, it kind of screws up the whole plan when the student sneaks around and uses it without first displaying the good behavior.

This whole plan would make Covington (and wow! You can read the entire book Making The Grade on Google Books, I think!) cry, and it does kind of make me cringe. It makes me even more uncomfortable when I think about it in the abstract. Though of course, that is where it would make me most uncomfortable. In practice, it may work to some degree. When I think about it in the context of everything I believe about learning and motivation though, it makes me want to take my stickers and throw them out the window.

In my comments, On Teaching had mentioned that she had a student who, as is my student, was very smart but had an incredibly difficult time focusing in class. Her student was a few years older than mine, but she had given him extra/additional assignments. Of course, this is really the best thing to do - much better and more effective in the long term than bribing (motivating?) your student with stickers and a few minutes using the coveted classroom materials. So, I guess that's my ultimate goal. It's not going to happen in any truly effective way for a while yet, probably. I'm spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to plan around this student the way it is. The other grade 1 teacher I have been talking to the most keeps commenting on how it is not fair to the student or to me that we were placed together, but I don't think that's true. Or rather, it's not fair to the student that s/he was put with an inexperienced teacher (when a more experienced teacher has more tricks up her sleeve), but it's perfectly fair for me. I signed up to teach whoever was put in my classroom. This student is in my class, so I will keep working my hardest to find ways to simultaneously accommodate both him/her and the rest of the class.

I like a challange.

2008-08-26T22:15:00.004-05:00

I had an almost perfect moment today at school and I have to remember that moment because there were other things that weren't quite so great.

But my almost perfect moment had my students acting out a repetitive fable while I narrated and the kids were so into it, both those playing the roles of actors and those in the audience, and we went through the whole story, and yeah, I had to glare at some kids to get them to continue paying attention, and I had to remind the kids more than once not to get too wild. But overall, really, it was neat. I was reading, and the kids were goofy acting, and when we finished the entire group burst into applause, so much so that I had to make a rule that after a performance we clap for 10 seconds and then stop. They asked to do it again right away, and I said "no" and I'm glad I did because twice in a row would have been too much. Later in the day though, right before we went home, I let them act the story out again, this time with the other half of the class playing as actors, and it was neat too. Not quite as magical as the first time, but it worked out quite decently.

However, at the same time, I have a student who I can't figure out, and the only way that the above was able to happen at all is because I esentially ignored the student for most of the day, allowing the student to do whatever s/he wanted. And this was HORRIBLE of me, but this student played literacy games on the computer for about 2/3 of the day and it was horrible, horrible presidence to set and I'm going to hate myself for allowing it later. But today, if I don't think about that fact, I feel happy that I was finally able to get through a lesson, a few lessons, actually. Without having to stop every minute or two, to try to unsuccessfully reorient this student, the rest of the class was able to really got into what we were doing. They were able to consume an entire 15 minute lesson in 15 minutes, instead of in 3 minute chunks as they had up until now, as I would switch between teaching and trying to get this other student to attend, in any small tiny way, to the lesson.

Since the first day of school I have been talking with other teachers and administrators at my school, trying to figure out how to successfully work with this child. It would seem that I am not in this alone, although I kind of am. People can give me as much advice as they want, but when it comes down to it, I'm the one in the classroom with the students for 6 hours a day. It's up to me to find something that works, something that allow this student to learn, but doesn't take away from the learning of the 20 other kids in the room. Talking to a teacher at my grade level, this other teacher said s/he had asked the administration what they were thinking when they placed this student in the classroom of a Brand New Teacher. The response was, apparently, that the other alternatives (meaning other teachers at the grade level) were worse options. The teacher who I was talking to could not take this child for other reasons, though I think this student would respond really well to that teacher if they could be together.

I will continue trying, and so will the student, and together we will figure out something that works for us and the rest of the class.

Week two and I'm feeling fine, though quite sleepy.

2008-08-25T23:05:00.003-05:00

I'm tired.

I have a student I cannot for the life of me figure out. I'm working on it. It's only week two and it will get better. Until then though, I am spending about 90% of my energy trying to figure out how to keep this student, um, contained and not distracting the rest of the students, and only 10% of my energy working with the rest of the kids. I do not like this one bit. It is not fair to the 20 other kids in the class that this one student is taking so much of my energy. Intellectually, this child is absolutely brilliant. Behaviorally this child is a work in progress. And we're working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it a lot. We'll find something that works. We have to. If we don't, Team LastName's test scores will plummet because no one will ever learn anything.

Also, I am amassing articles critiquing Ruby Payne. I have a growing collection. I'm waiting on some friends with university library connections to maybe get some of the the more scholarly ones. There are many, many, many.

I still like school. Week two and I still like it. Yay. I have fun with the kids and the day zoomzoomzooms by, because there is so much to do.

I am not good at doing one-on-one testing (DIBELS-style) while trying to get the remaining 20 to quietly do center work (computers, worksheets, literacy games, reading, books on tape, etc.). I borrowed someone's aid for 2o minutes (only the classes with the students with the lowest levels of English proficiency get aids, and I am not one of them) and was able to get about 2.5 kids tested. There is more testing that I could ever imagine. I don't know when I'm going to start really and truly teaching. So far, all I've done is testtesttest. The DIBELS-style testing, the district testing, the school/grade-level testing, the running records/miscue analysis type testing. And after I finish it now, it has to be repeated next quarter. AAHHHH.

Maybe something more coherent with more complex sentences will come tomorrow. Maybe not.

The literacy lesson, the bloody nose, and the unclaimed peach.

2008-08-20T21:54:00.002-05:00

Location: Grade 1 classroom.
Date: Fall, 2008
Players: 20 children, 1 teacher, a peach.

The class was minding its own business. School had been in session for about one hour, and they were participating in a literacy lesson, nothing that was going to change the world, but something that would help the children become better readers.

All of the sudden, a student calls out.

Boy: "Teacher! Teacher!"

Teacher: "Hector, if you want to say something please raise your hand." The teacher reminds the students often, since it is the first week of school.

Boy: "No! Teacher, she's bleeding." He points to the girl seated beside him who does indeed have a bloody nose. Nothing too extreme, maybe she had picked it a few too many times, and the skin on the inside gave out a little bit.

The teacher walks over to get a nurse pass and fills it out with the student's name.

Boy: "And teacher, there's a peach on the ground."

The teacher looks up. She looks over. A peach on the ground? Why yes indeed, there is a peach on the ground. The question now is, what is it doing there, and to whom does it belong?

Unperturbed, the teacher finishes filling out the pass and hands it to the girl, telling her to go to the nurse. The child, however, is still feeling the first week jitters and doesn’t want to go to the nurse. The teacher suggests she have a buddy walk her there, the girl reluctantly agrees and the two of them head off to the nurse.

Now the teacher goes back to the important matter at hand. Where did the peach come from, and how has no one noticed it for the first hour of school? The teacher picks up the peach and examines it – it is still in perfect condition and looks delicious. She raises it into the air and looks out at the children.

Teacher: “Whose peach is this?”

The children stare back with confused looks on their faces.

Teacher: “Is anyone missing a peach? Did anyone bring a peach for lunch or breakfast?” In fact, none of the children actually bring their own lunches to school, so that was a silly question.

The teacher continues: “Really? This isn’t anyone’s peach?”

The children continue to stare. The teacher puts down the peach and returns to phonemes or vowels or whatever subject she had been dealing with before the excitement began.

Another hour passes and it is time for lunch. The teach looks over at her desk and sees the peach still sitting there. She picks it up again and examines it for a clue as to its origin. “Team!” she tries again. “Who is missing a peach?”

As before, no one responds. The teacher laughs. The children laugh. The teacher laughs. The children stare in bewilderment.

At the end of the day the teacher watches the children leave and closes the door to her classroom, tired but mostly satisfied with the day’s proceedings. She glances over at her desk. Still there, sitting among papers, pencils, and the teacher’s mostly uneaten lunch is the peach. The mystery peach. The peach who wanted to become a first grade student. The peach who wanted to join the Team.

We are slowly becoming a team.

2008-08-19T21:29:00.001-05:00

Today was perhaps a bit messier than yesterday, but we are starting to get routines down. After only two days, I have kids starting to make my "quiet down" hand signal if the class gets too loud - even before I do! (And this signal is strange and one I have never seen before. I think I have an aversion to the "give me 5" hand signal left over from student teaching. It didn't work for me then (though it was my fault, and not the fault of the hand signal.) I "invented" this on the spot yesterday when I wanted them to quiet down. They basically raise a hand and wiggle their fingers around. If nothing else, it looks funny. Since I chose it, I need to follow through now and make sure they all quiet down when they see the wiggly fingers.

I also seem to be training them on the idea that we are a team working together to learn. We were doing an activity and a few kids kept saying "I win!" I stopped the class and reminded them that we are working together. We are a team and we want everyone to learn and everyone to succeed, so there are no "winners" or "losers" in our class. Later in the day, I heard one student correct another after he had announced himself the winner of something. "We are a team," she said. "There are no winners. We work together." So, at least one of them is understanding that idea.

I haven't forgotten to go to anything, and I haven't been overly late for specials/lunch/the final bell, yet. That was a big problem for me when I was student teaching, so I am being careful to leave a good amount of time to line up and get places. As the class and I figure out how everything works, hopefully I won't have to allot quite so much time, but I am happy with the fact that I am arrive places on time and not rushing to get them out the door when the bell rings.

This week already, we have to begin grade-level and standardized assessments, both of which are done one-on-one. I have never given any of these, but tomorrow I will begin to try. Hopefully I don't screw it up too much. Some of these assessments I am excited to see the results of, though. These students seem to be much stronger academically than I was expecting, based upon my experiences while student teaching. Once I give the tests, I'll see where the kids really are, but I keep accidentally introducing concepts that I wasn't planning on talking about, because the kids bring it up themselves (not necessarily on purpose). We talked about compound words and punctuation today - because the kids noticed these things! I keep being pleasantly amazed at what they are doing.

As I work more and more with these kids, I get more and more worried about the kids at the school I was student teaching at. While the community where I student taught is very different than where I am working now (a small town with a concentrated minority of Hispanic families vs. a large city with a very high percentage of Hispanic families), the families are somewhat similar (mostly children born in the US whose parents were born in Mexico). And while, from reading that book by Ruby Payne I would be led to think that all of my students (or rather, those 90% or so who live in "poverty") live in dysfunctional families, all the parents/aunts/babysitters/adult-type-people who I have met seem to be kind, caring, and supportive. (Which is what I would expect, having formed ideas about human beings before reading that book. And at the same time, I'm not naive enough to believe that all of them are living perfect lives - I know that many of them have their fair share of problems, and then some.)

My goal for the next week is to actually plan ahead, so I don't stay at school until they kick me out, and then go to the library to work until the library closes, and then come home and work a little more. I've been writing my lesson plans out step by excruciating step. Already though, tomorrow's plan is about half the length of Monday's, so give me a few more days and maybe I'll be able to crank a lesson plan out in only a few short hours, instead of many, many hours.

One down, only 179 left to go!

2008-08-18T21:50:00.003-05:00

Today was the first day of school and it was amazing and a lot of fun and just so neat.

Adrenaline is a wonderful chemical and I was just so excited throughout the entire day. Everything went better than I was expecting. The kids were pretty great and we're all going to learn together, them how to be first graders and me how to teach first graders.

I told them that we are a team and we are going to work together to make this an awesome year. We're all going to work hard to learn to read and write and do math and be good friends. I told them that instead of calling them "boys and girls" or "children" or "first graders" I will be referring to them as Team LastName, because we are a team and I want everyone on the team to succeed. (So I guess that answers that question.) I'm working on developing unity and a respect and pride for the classroom so that they take care of it.

I did the first half of this lesson (via ReadWriteThink) today, and plan on doing the second half tomorrow as a way of understanding why we are at school and what we can do to make it a good place for learning.

I wish I had the time to go through the whole day step-by-step, moment-by-moment, in way more detail than anyone on the internet cares to read, but unfortunately I still have essentially nothing planned for tomorrow.

I did smile though when, as I was closing the door after shooing the parents out of the room, I heard one of them comment to another that, "Suena bien la maestra." At least they approved of the five minutes of activities I allowed them to watch.

Let's see what tomorrow will bring!

(Also, I do still plan on writing about that book. Maybe over the weekend. Maybe not. But it will get done because I am passionately critical of the book and want that broadcast over the Internet.)

Advice.

2008-08-11T22:27:00.003-05:00

I'll write about the book tomorrow or Wednesday. I have to admit that the second half of the book wasn't as bad as the first, and actually had some things in it I may find useful (or at least not hurtful).

In the meantime, I will give this advise: Never, EVER find your roommates off the internet. Mine just made me cry. And I don't cry.

However, my classroom is turning into a classroom and at one point today, when I was moving bookshelves and piles of materials, I had the realization that I am a teacher. After all these years and the doubt of whether or not I actually wanted to be a teacher, now I am one. It's going to be really neat.

Silent Cheerleaders

2008-08-09T10:07:00.002-05:00

I wasn't planning on bringing my education books to school. I have them all nicely set up on my bookshelf at home, color coordinated just like before.

However, after being told to read the book "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" and nearly tearing my eyes out in pain and frustration at that book, (in depth post to follow explaining my critique) I decided that I may need some cheerleaders in my classroom to help encourage me when the going gets tough (and oh boy will it ever).

So my goal now is to prominently display a row of silent cheerleaders in the classroom. When I feel that I'm failing or am floundering around trying to figure out what in the world I have gotten myself into by agreeing to teach FIRST grade, I can just look over and see the smiling book spines of such wonderful thinkers as Guadalupe Valdés, Jerome Bruner, Carol Avery, the Freemans, the Banks, Ana Celia Zentella, Martin Covington, Sonia Nieto, and several others. These people are responsible for me ending up where I did, so it will be their job to keep me motivated as I find my way through the halls of my new school.

Alphabatizing, gender, and horseback riders.

2008-08-04T23:10:00.002-05:00

Today I went into my classroom for the fourth time. It's finally starting to feel a little bit like it's "mine" (and maybe soon I'll stop adding a tally to my counter each time I go in). I haven't really created any bulletin boards or personalized the room yet. I'm still sorting through all the materials available for me to use.

I spent a lot of time today alphabetizing materials or putting them in numerical order. At first I thought that this was a stupid waste of time (though this thought wasn't stopping me from doing the sorting) but then I realized that meticulously going through and examining things like I am is helping me really see and understand the materials in my room.

I got really excited when I found two sets of picture cards. One was just basic vocabulary and the other was social studies themed. Looking through the first box, I thought about how they would be a really great tool. When I was student teaching I constantly printed out pictures to help illustrate and describe what I was talking about. With such a great assortment of photo picture cards, I won't have to do so much printing.

However, when I started looking through the social studies cards I got really disappointed. Under the category of "Occupations" there were 30 occupations listed. Of those 30, women appeared in only 7 occupations. Want to guess what those 7 occupations were? Nurse, teacher, chef, hairdresser, mail carrier, food server and florist.

When I first looking through the cards, I thought I noticed a trend in that direction, but I didn't realize how bad it was until I went through a second time and counted. I looked at the publication date on the cards, and it was 2002, which wasn't exactly the dark ages. What happened to the mid 80s when everything was overly politically correct? When school posters showed almost comic amounts of gender and racial diversity? Eight out of thirty - that's 26.7% female. I wouldn't usually say that chef and mail carrier feel entirely stereotypically female, but when you compare them to some of the other professions illustrated with males it certainly feels like a slap in the face. Some of the "male" professions were doctor, plumber, construction worker, carpenter, electrician, barber, firefighter, and police officer. There were no stereotypically female jobs represented in the photo cards by males. This shouldn't really upset me as much as it does. After all, I don't have to use these cards. I just found them on the shelf and thought they might be useful. But really Lakeshore? Really?!

The first unit I ever wrote in my first methods class, was about "community members." In the first lesson in that unit, I would name off various roles that community members hold - doctor, teacher, garbage collector, nurse, firefighter, etc. As I named off each community member, I had the students draw a quick sketch of someone in that role. I assumed that students would predominantly draw some roles as female, some roles as male, and some roles without any gender preference. We would then go on to question why we had these assumptions, and look for people we knew who didn't fit into the stereotypes presented in the students' drawings. Because this was my first methods class, I never actually taught this lesson to anyone (it was aimed at 3rd graders or so.) Of all the units and lessons I have created over the past 3.5 years or so, this is probably the lesson I would most like to teach. I really am very curious about what the students would come up with and what type of discussion would ensue.

Maybe that's why I feel so personally offended by the box of photo cards. Third graders - okay, they haven't seen a lot yet so might put people into certain roles based on gender. But a large educational product producer should know better. They should know much better.

Aside from that, today I saw a man wearing a cowboy (cow...person?) hat riding a horse down the side of the road. This actually isn't really out of the ordinary. I live in a weird little town just outside of the big city that is the most confusing mixture of large city/suburbia/rural cattle farms that I've ever seen. What made this horse-rider noticeable was that he was also chatting on his cell phone. While riding the horse past a brand new gated subdivision. The juxtaposition of it all made me laugh.

All in all, I think I'm getting acclimated to my new life quite well.

Really vague hoops.

2008-07-31T20:58:00.003-05:00

I just registered for a test to prove to my new state that I am qualified to teach here. Unfortunately, the test registration website will not tell me what time the test is at, or where it will be given. I was able to choose "Central/West City" or "South East City." I live in the south west portion of the city, and since I couldn't get a street address, I didn't know which to choose.

I just hope they tell me before the test day where I should go, and when I should be there.

Or maybe, this is the test. If I can find the testing sight and get there on time, I pass. If I don't, I fail. And am required to pay another arm and leg to sign up and try again.

Brillante Weblogs are Everywhere

2008-07-30T21:11:00.003-05:00

When I am tagged for a meme, I usually start doing it, and then get distracted, hit "save now" on Blogger, and forget about it for good. I'm determined to do this one because it's easy.

Sisyphus over at the Academic Cog gave me the wonderfully bilingual Brillante Weblog award. Thanks Sisyphus. I aspire to someday be able to write as wonderfully complex analogies as you frequently do.

And there are rules. (Of course, rules are meant to be broken.)

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Add links to these blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog.

I think the following people are deserving of this fun award.

- Leesepea at But Wait! There's More... because she always updates and it's always something worth reading.
- La Brown Girl because she paints wonderful pictures with her words.
- Ms. Sigh Ants at Red Fish, Blue Fish because, even though she hasn't updated for a while, I still wonder how she's doing and how she finished out the school year.
- Mildly Melancholy because she wanted a change (a new school) and she made it happen (and blogged about it).
- Ms. ABCMom because I always find her blog enjoyable to read.

And that's all. Five is enough for me.

Where do I live?

2008-07-30T16:04:00.002-05:00

Today was my "orientation" which means that I went into the district office with about 20 other people to fill out paperwork.

As would be expected, I needed to put my address on a lot of the paperwork. Unfortunately, I am having a really hard time remembering my new address. I've only lived here a week, and yes, this is something I should learn, but it's just so hard!

So the first time I needed to write my address, I wrote what I thought was my address, and then proceeded to copy that address onto the oh, 20 other papers asking for my address.

When I got home, I looked at my address. I had been wrong. In my 4-number street address, I had changed the order of three of the numbers, and added a completely incorrect number to the mix. I called the district administration building and admitted this to someone, who transfered me. I admitted this to the second person, who transfered me. I admitted this to the third person, who finally was the right person, and was able to assure me that my paperwork would get fixed, while only mocking me a little bit.

Back-to-school savings vs. gas consumption

2008-07-28T21:02:00.003-05:00

I've been to Staples three times today and once yesterday, buying their "great deals" but needing many more than the maximum purchase limit. Unfortunately, my distance from Staples, and the fact that I live in a new-to-me area in which I get very turned around very easily means that in all likelihood, I have spent my savings in gas getting to and from Staples, and getting lost along the way.

Where I will teach.

2008-07-26T13:26:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I went to see my classroom for the first time. MY classroom. MY classroom.

How neat is that? And, how did it come to be my classroom?

In late May I came down to Southwestern state to look for an apartment and visit some of the schools in the district. (At the time I had already been hired by the district, but had not been assigned to a specific school or grade level). In the weeks leading up to my visit I called the recruiter who had initially hired me at the job fair in April. He kept insisting that I would hear from schools any day now and should have at least offers by the time I came to visit. I still heard nothing. And then I heard nothing. And then I heard more nothing. These nothings were interspersed with phone calls back to him. I still had heard nothing when I got to Southwestern state to visit, and then began to really pester the recruiter. I called him on his cell phone over the weekend emphasizing the fact that I was in town for about two days and really needed to tour/interview over that time. He promised he would talk to people and call me the next day.

As promised, he called me early the next day, unfortunately while I was in the shower, and told me that he hoped I could interview at a school with a 1st grade opening in about 20 minutes. As I was staying with a family friend all the way across town, this wasn't possible. The recruiter said he'd set something else up and call me back in a few minutes, again.

Eventually, I had a schedule set up to visit four schools during the day. I would visit one school all morning. This was the same school that I couldn't interview with earlier that morning. Last thing in the afternoon I had an interview set up at that same school. I was scheduled to spend so much time at that school because the recruiter said that they were "very interested" in me. Between the morning tour and afternoon interview at that school I had three other tours/interviews set up at other schools in the district.

So, off I went to find that first school. I was given an extensive tour and introduced to way too many people. Along the way, I grew very impressed with the school. Every teacher I talked to was enthusiastic and optimistic about the school. Everyone simply raved about the principal and mentioned that their school was the best school in the district. At this time I was pretty excited to come back in the afternoon for my interview. I hadn't been able to meet he principal or vice principal because they were at meetings all morning (hence the interview for the afternoon) so I was looking forward to meeting them as well.

I told my "tour guides" (the literacy and math coaches, I think) that I would be back later for the interview, and went to schools number two, three, and four. I had a quick tour and an interview at school number two, a super quick tour and scheduled a phone interview for school number three, and a tour and set up a phone interview for school number three. After that, I drove back to school number one and told them I was there for the interview.

"Oh..." the secretary said. "Um, actually, that position has already been filled. I'm sorry." So, confused and disappointed I left.

HOWEVER.

A few days later I called the school back and left a message on the principal's phone. I thanked her for allowing me to tour the school, commented that it seems to be a great school with really positive teachers, and added that if on the off chance she had any more openings I would love to interview for them.

And lo and behold, the next day she called me back and said that actually, she DID have a new 1st grade opening and would like to interview me!! I set up a phone interview for later in the week. In the meantime, I had my two other phone interviews (one of which took place in my car, mostly in a parking lot and partly while driving due to some scheduling gaffes on my part) and was offered two positions in the district.

Finally I had the phone interview with that first school. Like all the others, there were a ton of people on the other end - I seriously have no idea who they all were but there were at least 5 people, and I think a few more came in part way through. I felt just as excited about the school during the interview as I had when touring it. At the end of the interview I hung up the phone expecting to wait a few days to hear back about this interview.

About five minutes later my phone rang again. It was the interview crew and they said that they would like to "unofficially" offer me the 1st grade position. (The job offers have to go through the central administration office to be official.) Excitedly, I said that I would like to "unofficially accept!" And I did.

And that is how my classroom ended up being my classroom. Soon I will begin teaching 1st grade at Suerte Elementary School. Pseudonymously named Suerte Elementary School because it was hopefully good luck that after the first missed interview, the long tour of the school, and the second canceled interview I was finally able to interview with and accept a position teaching at this school.

(And through this entire process, no one ever asked for a portfolio. So all that stress was for nothing.)

I have arrived.

2008-07-24T22:06:00.002-05:00

After a long three days in the car, watching the thermostat go higher and higher as I drover further and further south, I have arrived at my new home. I have set up my room, more or less. (There were a few obstacles, the biggest being that the Ikea bed I purchased would not fit into my car, and was immediately returned in favor of this bed purchased off the internet.

Last year when I graduated, I was given a gift certificate to a teacher store which I finally used a few days before the left the Midwest. Tomorrow I am going to bring that eclectic collection of teacher stuff (border, stickers, posters) to my classroom. MY classroom. I will finally get to see the room. School doesn't begin for a few weeks still, but I cannot even imagine how to start planning until I see what materials I actually have available to me in the classroom and what my room looks like. I don't know that I'll be able to do a whole lot until new teacher training which isn't for another week still, but just seeing my room and familiarizing myself with the space will hopefully help.

Hiatus: Over
New life: Begin

Move!

2008-07-17T23:45:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow I'm cramming everything I can into my Corolla and starting my drive from the Midwest to the Southwest to begin my new life as a first grade teacher. (Did I ever mention that? That I'm for sure teaching first grade?)

Maybe in a week or so, once I'm pseudo moved-in (aka: I own a bed or some suitable substitute, and my clothes are no longer layered between books in moving boxes) I will actually write more often than once every, oh, three months or so.

I'm excited to move, and terrified to teach, so nothing's new there. Hopefully more intelligent introspection to come!

Likely transparent request

2008-05-06T22:08:00.004-05:00

Okay, so it seems that there is someone who visits here every once in a while who (according to my stats counter) is coming from Mountainous Southwestern State's capital city (named after a bird which presents itself in Greek mythology). Um, if you exist, would you mind leaving me a comment or sending me an email? I have a question to ask you...

RBOC: Really random and really boring edition

2008-04-29T22:14:00.006-05:00

Things I feel compelled to share with someone, even if that someone is the hypothetical people of the Internet:

- Thanks for all the congratulations. When I think about moving to the Southwest and teaching in Large City I alternate between feeling an anxiety induced nauseating terror, and a guarded hopeful optimism. My time is currently split about 75:25 (Terror:Optimism). I'm expecting the two to average out a bit more as time goes on. At least, I'm hoping the two average out a bit more as time goes on.

- The State University, which will be a conveniently short drive from where I will be moving, has an interdisciplinary PhD program in Applied Linguistics with a concentration in Educati0nal Linguistics. I dream of some day applying to the program. It's doubtful that it will ever happen, but a girl can dream.

- I just impulse bought a new book. I realized I still had gift card money left on my Amazon account, and decided to spend some of it.

- Today I taught a third grader about the "cut" and "paste" functions on word processing programs. It was awesome -

Student: "Ms. Grownup, I typed my introduction down here at the bottom, at the end of everything else. But I need to make it be up at the top because it's the intro."

Me: "Okay. Highlight what you want to move, and then press "apple" and "X" at the same time on the keyboard. And don't freak out because what you have highlighted is going to disappear.

Student: "Okay." (She held down the apple and the X keys, and gasped. Because everything disappeared!)

Me: "Good. Don't worry, it'll come back. Now click where you want the paragraph to go. And then type "apple" and "V" at the same time."

Student: (She did as instructed, and her paragraph appeared at the top of the page.) "Whoa!! Neat! How'd it do that?!

She then jumped up and ran to teach this super-cool new cut/paste feature to a friend. I love technology and teaching kids how to use it to their advantage.

- I had a conversation with a student about mammoth extinction. He was insisting that "no one will ever know why mammoths are extinct." I was trying to ascertain whether that was something he had read somewhere, or something he was making up. Since I do know several different theories people have as to why mammoths have become extinct. I tried to explain archeology to him in a very, very small nutshell. I think he was starting to get it, but then we had to change subject.

- Also with the same student; he said that no one would ever know what happened to mammoths until we died. I asked how we would know when we died -

Student: "Because we'll be in heaven" he reasoned.

Me: "Okay, but how will that help us know about the mammoths?" I continued to question.

Student: "Because the mammoths will be in heaven too and so we'll be able to know then. Because all animals go to heaven and people and mammoths are animals.

Me: "Okay," I relented. That was well-enough reasoned for me for the moment.

- I finally watched Juno. I cried at the end when she was giving up the baby. I kind of hate that I cried at the end when she gave up the baby. I don't know what to think about that movie. (I know my reaction is a half a year too late. I'm slow to watch movies.)

I made a (terrifying) life decision!

2008-04-24T19:55:00.005-05:00

So... I did it. I took a leap, made a decision, and faxed in my signed "letter of intent" to work at an urban school district in a large city in the Southwest. I won't know until the end of May what grade or at what school I will be teaching.

Shortly after I submitted my intent, I received a phone call informing me that I was being offered another job! This, a position at a school district in a rural border community in the Southwest. This was a position that I had been flirting with the idea of, but didn't think that I would actually be offered. Apparently though, I did a good job of convincing the (phone) committee who interviewed me that I was seriously considering moving to this very rural border community. And I was seriously considering it. I would have loved to for so many reasons; I enjoy the rural lifestyle, I student taught in a small, kind of run-down, sleepy town and really liked that feeling, I would be working with the student demographic who interests me, and the district would be close to Mexico which is always neat. And also the people who interviewed me seemed really nice (my would be principal, a coworker, an assistant, and a parent) - when I voiced concern about being able to find a place to live down there if I were offered the job, they all reassured me that the town has a great community, and I would always be able to find a couch or floor to sleep on if I couldn't find an apartment right away. However, the one huge downside would have been the fact that this town is so rural - 2+ hours away from the closest medium-sized city, and I would have very few "peers" in the town.

So...I guess it's a good thing that I eliminated this rural border possibility by accepting the offer in the Large City before I was forced to make a decision between the two.

(And, embarrassingly, it is a little boost to my self-esteem that there are two districts who wanted me (and well, maybe more had I turned down this first offer and waited to hear back from other places).)

In trying to convince myself that I made the right choice (because I did and it will be good) I will make a list of the positive aspects of moving to the Southwest and working in this district.

1. The students come from the demographic I would like to work with.
2. The district has a new teacher mentoring program, which, even if poorly implemented, should be better than no new teacher mentoring program. (Right?)
3. The district is located within fairly close proximity to a University with a pretty strong Education program. (For my grad school aspirations.)
4. The southwest has nice weather.
5. I get to start an adventure!

Of course, there are downsides as well.
1. The Southwest is really far from the Midwest. (Google maps charts it as longer than one full day/24 hours by car.)
2. What if I hate the heat and sunshine? After all, I'm used to wearing long underwear through mid-April. What if I miss the absurd clothing layering I go through to keep warm in winter?
3. I'm very pale and have a family history of skin cancer. I will have to liberally apply sunscreen every day. (It sounds ridiculous, but it's true.)
4. I don't know how to make friends. How does one make friends in the real world? I have absolutely no ties with anyone in Large City, or even in Southwestern State at all. (This I would have to go through most anywhere.)
5. What if I really do like it and never want to move back to the Midwest?

Regardless of the "pluses" and "minuses," I made a decision and I am excited. I'm taking a risk and we'll see what happens! I will experience my dream of living among cacti, (well, when I leave the city). I do know, from past life events, that I adjust quite well to new places, and this will be another opportunity for me to experience a great adjustment. This will be at the least a year of my life, at the most...who knows?

Whatever it is, it will be good.

So confused!

2008-04-20T22:15:00.004-05:00

Last weekend I was offered a job at a school district in Large City in Southwestern state. I have to let them know within the next...four days whether or not I want to work for their district. I don't know what school I would work at or what grade I would teach.

There are other schools I am waiting to hear back from. Some schools I have done screening interviews with, and the screening interviews went fine, I think they went pretty well.

So I have several theoretical options, one true option, and a handful of most-likely-not options.

I have no idea what to do. Do I take the one offer I've been given? Do I decline and wait to hear back from other schools (most of whom are just now starting to hire externally) and just hope that someone else will hire me? I don't know, I don't know, Idon'tknow.

I don't want to be snotty and decline this offer, which would be a great offer. There are a lot of things I really like about the district. The demographic is one I really want to work with (high percentage of English language learners). There seems to be a fairly strong new-teacher mentoring type program. I think the pay is okay.

With all these positives going for it, shouldn't I just take the job and be done with it? I wouldn't have to worry anymore. I would still interview with principals to see which school I would end up working at, so not everything would be decided. But it would be so nice to just know. To be done with all this uncertainty.

On the other hand, I don't want to just take the first thing thrown at me. My other theoretical possibilities are good too. I think I would be happy enough at any one of them. In general I'm a fairly optimistic and go-with-the-flow person overall, so I truly feel that I would meld myself to fit anywhere. But these theoretical possibilities are just that - theoretical. They aren't offers. What if I declined this one offer I've been given, and then no one else wants to hire me? Then, I'm the idiot without a job who could have had a job had she been less choosy or indecisive or over-confident.

The thing is, in the long run, it just does not matter. Most of these places would be completely new-to-me places, so I would have to learn to adapt to the new city and the new job. And if I teach for a year or two, and absolutely hate it, I can pick up and go somewhere else to teach. I can give up teaching and apply to attend graduate school full time. I can give up teaching and apply for a completely different type of job. I am so lucky that I have the ability to decide to move wherever I want to and live there for however long I want to (as long as it ends with the school year - I would never desert a class in the middle of the school year).

My "endless possibilities" are frustratingly open. I have nothing holding me back from going anywhere, really. And I have no real preference, really. So this decision thing is causing a whole lot of mental anguish.

I guess, in four days, I will have made some decision. Whatever decision that ends up being. (In the meantime, I have more interviews scheduled, to add to the confusion. I wish people would stop interviewing me.)

Filling out all those applications pays off.

2008-04-14T21:05:00.005-05:00

So...

I got offered a teaching job at a school district in a Large City in Southwestern State.

I haven't a clue as to what I should do about it.

I have to decide within the next 10 days, though.

In the meantime, I am waiting to hear something back from a school district I interviewed with in a Medium-Large City in Southwestern State (I should hear back within the next 3 days), and I have a phone interview scheduled with a school district in a Rural-Border-Town in Southwestern State in about a week.

I had this whole complicated Life Plan set up with a very specific schedule that I hoped to follow. Up until this point, I had been following the schedule, but then was worried that I wasn't going to be able to find a teaching job by April as I had originally hoped - especially after so many people I talked to told me that they didn't get hired for their first jobs until July or August. Now though, with things oddly speeding up, I might know really soon. Like, within the next 10 days. A thought that is simultaneously terrifying and an incredible relief.

Additionally, I think that I love interviews. Really, where else do you get a captive audience to listen to you spout out your educational goals/philosophy/beliefs/experiences for 30+ minutes? It's fun! Really fun! I want to a job fair, scheduled four interviews - three with schools I wanted to work at, and the fourth at a school I didn't really care for but thought I'd interview with anyway. When I was told that one of the schools would offer me a position, I canceled the last interview. But I almost went through with it anyway, just for the experience of it all. Interviews can go up there on the list of things that seem very out of character for me to enjoy, but which I nonetheless am competently and confidently able to pull off. (I am incredibly quiet, very introverted, and though I deny being shy people don't believe me. However, I am always excited to give presentations or speeches, and an interview must go into that category somehow.) At least, I'm competent and confident from my perspective, this may or may not be indicative of my actual performance during interviews, but regardless, I feel good about it.

Ramblings about teaching applications and a plea for help.

2008-04-07T23:54:00.002-05:00

After much (much) deliberation, I finally decided to apply to work as a classroom teacher at the school I currently work at (as an aid-type-person). I absolutely love the school, the staff, and the students. So I'm not quite sure why it was such a tough decision, and why I still don't really think I want to work at this school permanently (or at least semi-permanently). I think I had hoped to get at least a little bit further away from home, even if I continue to live in Home State. This is actually the first application I have submitted to a school in Home State, so maybe that's where my conflict lies. Also, I work at a small school and I know all 28 kids who would be my students next year. And I'm not sure how them and all their energy will fit into the classroom that would be mine. (Again, this is all silly theoretical stuff, since I haven't even been granted an interview for the job yet. I've gotta avoid counting, housing, and feeding all my chicks before I've even gotten the eggs.)

Aside from that application, I have applied to work at, I think, seven schools in Southwestern State, three schools in College State, and one school in Midwestern State Neighboring College State. Apparently, that only puts me at 12 applications. Considering the fact that I spend all my energy researching schools and filling out applications, it certainly feels like more than just 12. Also, I think I probably need to throw a lot more applications out there.

Luckily, filling out these applications is a bit like pulling off a band-aid. The first 8 or so caused bouts of nail-biting and intense introspection. By now though, I've gotten the basic cover letter down and I've answered enough of those "short answer" type questions that I have a basis for those too. I only obsess over applications for like 5 days now, as opposed to the two weeks of days yore.

My current worry is the teaching portfolio. While my college prepared me wonderfully for a career in education grad-school, they did not do a whole lot to help me figure out how to get a job. This includes absolutely no discussion of a teaching portfolio beyond the statement that, "you should have one." This puts me at a disadvantage over those people who spent their whole student teaching creating beautifully scrapbooked/crafted/html-ed teaching portfolios. If anyone has any advice on what a teaching portfolio should include or look like, I would very much appreciate some ideas.

Did I really change that much in three months?

2008-03-25T14:02:00.003-05:00

I'm preparing for my fake interview, (at least, I'm telling myself it's fake to calm my nerves a bit). In preparing, I was looking at my Binder of Everything from student teaching. In it, I found this lovely note sent by my CT to my professor in mid August:

"I just wanted to let you know that NQGU is doing beautifully with Student Teaching! She is conscientious, helpful, knowledgeable, and very good with the kids! These are all things that I am sure you already know about her. She is fitting in well at ST School and has adjusted remarkedly [sic] well to our schedule and the unique ways we do things in a dua1 1anguage school. "

Now, I want to know what happened between August and November that made this glowing review change into a relationship that I still, nearly five months after last seeing her, absolutely cringe to think about? And more importantly, why do I still care?!?!

Why it is important to listen closely and think before you act.

2008-03-24T20:03:00.003-05:00

The other day I turned on my cell phone after school. The screen flashed "New message!" so I dialed my voice mail.

Verizon Voice: "You have one new message. To play your messages press 1."
Me: (In my head - "Okay!" I press 1.)
Voice mail: Hello. This is Skjfksldj Ljlksdjfd from School District Number 12. We would like to set up a screening interview with you for early next week. Please call us back today to set up a phone interview. Our number is XXX-XXX-XXXX.
Me: (In my head - "Oh, yipppie! I don't remember the name or phone number, so I need to listen to the message again.")
Verizon Voice: "End of message. To delete your message press 7. To save you message press 5..."
Me: (In my head - "Save!" I press 7.)
Verizon Voice: "Message deleted."
Me: Nooooooo!!!!

After a short freak-out, I became thankful that I at least remembered which school district called me. I called back the HR department of District 12, and awkwardly explained that, "Someone called me and left a message asking me to set up a screening interview. But I accidentally deleted the message instead of saving it, and I don't remember who it was or what number I was supposed to call." This, of course, is a fabulous way to prove to a school district that I am smart, organized, and should be in charge of 25-30 of their children for 6.5 hours a day. After being connected to the appropriate person, I unprofessionally babbled my way through setting up an over-the-phone screening interview.

Now, I know that a screening interview means that I will just be interviewed for the district at large, I guess to see if any of the schools want to look at me more closely. But, what is asked in a screening interview? I don't have an over-the-internet portfolio, so I can't show that. (Though I suppose I should make one.) Will the person just be asking me interview questions? ("Describe an effective teacher." "Tell me about a success/failure you have had with students." "How would you manage a classroom?") Will something else be happening? I didn't have one of these for my current job.

Also, I bought the cheapest cell phone at the cell phone store. And the really poor reception I receive is a direct result of that. I'm trying to decide if I should mention that I get poor reception at the start of my call, so that the person understands why I may be frequently asking her to repeat what she says, or why my responses may be delayed as I try to decipher her garbled voice.

I wish that a different school/district had asked for an interview before this one. I actually want the job I applied for at this district, whereas at some of the others districts to which I applied, I would like the job, but working there wouldn't be much different than working elsewhere. I wish I had a "trial" interview to screw up on a bit before this one, that I actually want to succeed at.

I'll do my best. And prepare by answering the list of 30 practice interview questions I have. Oh, and also by reading over old notes I have from education professors reassuring me that I'm smart and knowledgeable and competent enough to be a teacher.

New Way to Organize

2008-03-09T22:04:00.003-05:00

I decided to come up with a new way to organize my books. So, I organized them by color. It may not be the best organizing system. But it is creative and pretty. White, beige, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue, turquoise, dark blue, green, brown, black. It's like an oddly deformed rainbow.

Yes, there were many other things I perhaps should have been doing, instead of arranging my education books by color. But...now they are so pretty...

In more productive news, I did send out a handful of job applications. I'm starting to get the hang of it, though I do still get hung up on some of the "short answer" questions. I'm getting a little better at just letting go, accepting that my responses are as good as they're ever going to be, and hitting the Send button or putting the application in the mail (depending on the district).

Go Test! Go Test! Go Test!

2008-03-03T21:33:00.002-06:00

So, the children start big-time NCLB testing soon. Some of them will do great. Some of them will do okay. Some of them will struggle.

We recently had a big "pep rally" to pep the kids up. It came complete with teachers dressed as cheerleaders, face paint, a whole lot of cheering, singing, and dancing, and teachers running through paper banners with the name of the test on it.

It was hilarious, both because it was really cute and fun, and because it felt to me like its whole existence was kind of sarcastic. Of course, that was probably just in my head. But the whole point of the assembly (k-5 students attended, though not all of them will be tested) was to get the kids excited and ready and enthusiastic for The Test. And The Test is so ridiculous in so many ways. And like I said, many of the student will do really well, and many of the students will not. The pep rally felt like it was mocking The Test, in a way.

It was saying, "You may take up two weeks of instructional time. You may test our students on a year's worth of material 3/4 of the way through the school year. You may make the teachers pull their hair out in frustration, at times. But look! A pep rally! Pep Rallies are ridiculous too! But at least they're fun! Whoo!!! Go Test! Go Test! Go test!"

I need to stop obsessing and just send out applications...

2008-02-26T20:50:00.004-06:00

In my continued filling out of job applications, I have two problems.

1. I'm seriously bad at answering the "what are three reasons you want to be a teacher?" question. And the fact that I have a hard time coming up with three concrete reasons doesn't seem like a very good sign for my future as a teacher.

2. I'm afraid that I'm going to sound too "liberal," "idealist," "hippy," "naive," "deluded," or whatever you want to call it, when responding to many of the questions, again such as "what are three reasons you want to be a teacher?"

Why do I want to be a teacher? Because I want to be an advocate for my students, because I want to show them that learning can be fun and useful and valuable to them, because I want to help them develop into educated global citizens.

Is that too sappy?

A little bit of optimistic pessimism.

2008-02-23T09:32:00.003-06:00

I just found a school that I have absolutely fallen in love with. Which is bad, because they'll only hire Highly Qualified X State teachers, and I don't even have my license from Y State yet, so... I can't apply for an X State license. But oh wow. It feels good to at least be excited about a teaching possibility, however improbably the reality of getting the job actually is.

I've been feeling kind of "meh" about teaching, as in I cannot imagine teaching full time for a year, or two, or 10. But this school, it has an extra something going for it, which I could see being able to hold my interest for a while.

Again, I'm not going to get the job, and that's okay. (Though, applying will be a first step in getting rejected.) But, it's just good to realize that I can still get excited about teaching and that I can imagine myself sticking this whole teaching thing out for at least a little while.

Grr. Arg.

2008-02-21T17:11:00.005-06:00

I just got a wonderful letter from the State Board of Education. I expected it to contain my teaching license, finally.

But no, no it did not.

It contained a note and a blank fingerprint card. Apparently the FBI didn't like the fingerprints I sent them THREE MONTHS AGO and are requesting a new set.

This means I'm not going to get my teaching license until three months from now! And my temporary license is going to expire soon enough. And I can't apply for licenses for other states until I get the license from College State.

Which means I'm NEVER going to be able to get a job. (Which I know isn't technically true, but it's a whole lot easier to get a job when you HAVE A LICENSE. And have at least applied for the license for whatever state you are hoping to work in.)

And I can't figure out how to find a person to talk to at the State Board of Education to make sure I'm sending the new fingerprint card appropriately, and to beg for an expedited sending of the fingerprint card.

It's not fair!!!

I'm going to go sit in the corner and throw a temper tantrum now.

NQGU and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad job applications

2008-02-20T20:14:00.004-06:00

Everything I try to write in the short answer portion of my job applications ends up sounding horrible. EVERYTHING. Cover letters aren't even my problem. It's those questions, "What instructional strategies would you use in order to prepare lessons and instruction to meet the needs of all children in your classroom," that are driving me crazy.

I could easily write a 10+ page article on the topic, but I don't know how to sum it all up in one short paragraph.

I'm doing what I was doing before. I'm hoarding half filled out job applications. And as before, half filled out does just as much good as not-at-all filled out.

I'm going to go stare at more applications. Maybe some inspiration for writing clear, concise, and brilliant responses to really important questions will come to me. Maybe.

Example number two.

2008-02-13T20:14:00.002-06:00

This is the second example of why I'm kind of a bad teacher-type-person.

I was going to buy the children pencils instead of boring valentines for Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, I work with too many kids, and I couldn't find any inexpensive decorative pencils, so I ended up not being able to do that. (The exact same pencils I found for $2/14pack in College State cost $5/14pack in Home State. Crazy.)

I should have just bought little valentine cards instead. I didn't.
Will they notice? Probably not.
Will I feel guilty? Yes.

I need a geographical change.

2008-02-12T21:23:00.005-06:00

Perhaps in contrast to the sentiment expressed in my last post, I actually am actively looking for and applying to teaching jobs.

I currently reside in the midwest (home of even more snow).

I am thinking about applying to teach in kind of randomly chosen school districts in the southwest (home of much less snow).

I have a question for people who have at some point in their lives acquired teaching jobs -
Is it a bad idea to blindly apply to school districts? Or rather, apply to school districts based only upon what I can find out about the district and the town using a combination of the district website, wikipedia, and ZIPskinny? Will I end up in a really bad situation if that is what I do, or is that how people usually find jobs?

(At the same time, I'm applying to teaching jobs in bilingual schools throughout Latin America, which is a post-in-progress, at the moment. Needless to say, these out-of-the-country schools are my "reach schools," in college application speak.)

Untitled due to lack of creativity or motivation.

2008-02-12T20:26:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been thinking I'd make a horrible teacher (for various reasons). The following is one example of my heartlessness.

Scene: a 3rd grade boy, Teddy and girl, Madison are bickering at the computer.

Teddy: Ms. GrownUp, Madison keeps telling me the answers and I don't want her to.
Me: Madison, let Teddy figure out the answers on his own.

One minute passes.

Teddy (whining): Ms. GrownUp, Madison is still telling me the answers, she won't stop.
Me: Well, then tell her to stop telling you the answers, you can deal with this on your own.
Teddy: But I did, and she won't stop.
Me: You can work this out on your own.

I walk away.

Three minutes pass.

Teddy: Ms. GrownUp, Madison called me a sissy girly girl.
Me: Just ignore her. It's time to clean up anyway.

Boy walks away.

Two minutes pass.

Students (en masse): Mrs. Teacher, Teddy is crying.

Classroom teacher looks over at Teddy who is in fact crying (not unlike a sissy girly girl). The students all stop what they're doing and watch. None of them make fun of Teddy for crying (as I just did in my parentheses which shows my true level of maturity).

Classroom teacher takes Teddy and Madison out of the room to talk to them. I laugh silently on the inside at the fact that I thought 3rd graders were above crying, though apparently that was a misconception. I hate myself a little bit for finding this so humorous.

End scene.

Dwelling on my future.

2008-02-06T18:18:00.001-06:00

The glut of snow days we've been having in the Midwest these last few weeks has been giving me way too much free time to dwell on my future. I don't like this.

No more snow days, please.

Teacher Clothes Redux

2008-02-05T22:33:00.000-06:00

For the 90% of people who come here searching for teacher clothes (and really, I don't understand why google thinks you all want to come here when you type in the search term "teacher clothes") I have three words for you, Ann Taylor Loft. Teachers get a discount, and they have the only stylish petites section I've ever seen. And if you wait until they have a sale on already reduced items, and you use your teacher discount on top of that, you can actually afford the clothing. Suffice it to say, about 75% (and growing) of my teaching wardrobe comes from The Loft, 15% comes from Limited, and the remaining 10 percent...well...actually, after my last Loft shopping spree, the remaining 10% probably come from Ann Taylor Loft, too. (I go through a fairly limited rotation of clothing, so I don't have an extreme abundance of Ann Taylor Loft clothing, but that which I do own, I wear very often.)

And that's the last I'll say about that. Happy dressing.

Linguistic Loans

2008-02-05T18:40:00.000-06:00

Wonderful, wonderful conversation serving as an example of the influence of the English on Spanish use in US society.

I had the following conversation at the end of the day with a 2nd grade male who speaks English quite fluently, but does get pulled out of the classroom for English Language Development. His home language is Spanish.

Boy: Do you know a word in Spanish?
Me: I know lots of words in Spanish!
Boy: Can you tell me one?
Me: Yeah, well, which word?
Boy: Do you know "apple"?
Me: Yes, manzana.
Boy: Right. Umm... how do you say "folder"?
Me: Carpeta, right?
Boy: No...carpeta is carpet.
Me: Hmm, mmm, okay. Yes. I think it can also mean folder.
Boy: No. No, folder is...um...umm...
Me: There are different ways to say it, but I'm pretty sure carpeta is one way to say folder.
Boy: No, because carpeta is carpet. Folder is... ....
Me: ...
Boy: Oh! Foldér.
Me: Okay.

Carpeta is a commonly used English loan for "carpet", though it also means "folder" which makes it all a little confusing. As far as I know, foldér doesn't mean anything in Spanish, aside from being an English loan taken from "folder." Overall, it was a really fascinating conversation.

Random bullets of moments so far.

2008-01-30T22:01:00.000-06:00

- Due to being closely located near several forms of loud and/or inconvenient forms of transportation, (who know it was possible to get stuck in airport traffic on the highway, and then get stopped by three different train tracks once getting off the highway?) this school will be called Transportation Central Elementary, TC Elementary for short. I have yet to figure out a convenient way to get to TC Elementary, seeings as how it takes me anywhere from 25 to 65 minutes to get there in the mornings. Traffic is quite unreliable (which is a big change from my rural student teaching placement, wherein my big traffic worry was getting stuck on a one-lane road behind a slow moving tractor).

- I was finally told I was “pretty” and “beautiful” (by a kindergardner) on my fourth day at school. I was first told I was “too beautiful” on my first day of student teaching. I must have lost my appeal. Or College State kids are more easily impressed than Home State kids. (I was told that I was “very pretty” again by a different student on my seventh day here at TC Elementary.)

- On my second day as I was leaving school I walked past a custodian and said goodbye to him. “Goodbye,” he responded. “You know,” he continued “You look like you could be a student here.” I agreed. “I hope I didn’t offend you,” he added. Oh, whatever, I thought. I’m used to it. And I am. (Though it is a bit irritating, nonetheless. So if you have a tiny young colleague, please don’t tell this person that they look like they could be a 10 year old. It’s not a great way to boost their self esteem.)

- In the computer lab with one class, two boys started chatting in Spanish. “Habla en ehngles,” interrupted the teacher in oddly accented Spanish. “I don’t like them talking in Spanish because I don’t know what they’re saying,” she explained to me. (I, maybe inappropriately, added, “Oh, he was just telling the other boy to do X with the computer.”) This provoked PTSD-type flashes back to my student teaching experience.

- In one class the teacher had the students watching a totally and completely non-academic video. If a teacher had done that at Student Teaching School, he or she would have been tarred and feathered on the spot. The principal would have found out and the teacher would have gotten into huge trouble. Apparently, it was not inappropriate here. (I need to comment, I am not judging this action on the teachers part - just commenting. From what I've seen, this is a very competent teacher. I was just a bit shocking coming from the school I had come from.)

- Connecting with the above comment, the school seems so much more productive than Student Teaching school. The schedule is so simple (It runs on a 5-day cycle, just like real life! The kids have the same teacher all day, except for specials or pull-out help).

- I’m not used being called Ms. Grownup. I’m having a really hard time responding to it. When I was student teaching I officially went by Ms. G., (due to my cooperating teaching and I sharing a surname) although in reality the kids usually just referred to any adult as Teacher. At TC Elementary, I officially go by Ms. Grownup, and some of the kids actually do call me that. Though many of them get lazy and just call me Ms. Grown or Ms. Gr…what’s-your-name-again? (Well, actually they call me Miss or Mrs. Lastname, but that is one thing that I don’t fight.)

- There as a magnet on a teacher's desk that said, "Miracles are made in the classroom" or something along those lines. I don't know why they bother me so much, but sayings like that truly offend me. Nothing that happens in the classroom is a miracle. It is the result of a lot of hard work on the part of the teacher and the students. There is no "miracle" there. The teacher plans an effective lesson, the students interact well with the lesson, the teacher, and each other, and then, yes, good things can happen. But what is happening should by no means be considered a miracle. It is the result of a series of deliberate actions made by the teachers and students.

- Hopefully some day soon I’ll find the will/energy/initiative to write something real instead of random bullets. (Or, even more optimistically thinking, maybe someday I’ll find the energy to apply to jobs for next year. Um, that’s my main goal right now.)

They hired me.

2008-01-14T19:22:00.000-06:00

Yay.

Now I wait by my phone.

2008-01-10T12:05:00.000-06:00

I forgot how bad I am at interviews.

(Especially when I am too nervous to sleep the night before, so despite going to bed with the possibility to have 8.5 hours of sleep, I ended up only sleeping for about 2.5 hours. Not a great way to start it all off.)

I look really good on paper.

I look pretty good in action.

But in interviews? I kind of suck.

Now I have to wait a week to see if I suck more or less than the other candidates.

(And, I know you're supposed to have questions prepared to ask. So I prepared six questions. And the principal answered every single one before I could ask them. She's too comprehensive. I had to kind of re-ask things she'd already told me, but with a slightly different focus so that I didn't look questionless.)

I hate new shoes.

2008-01-09T19:16:00.000-06:00

I have an interview tomorrow and I'm totally freaking out. I even bought new shoes. And I hate shoes. (I'm probably the only female ever to say that.)

I'm not sure how to deal with the interview because it's for a teaching assistant job, but I have experience being, and have been (in the student teaching capacity) a full teacher. So I'm not sure what I'm going to be asked and how I should respond to it. I don't want to sound too much like a regular teacher, because well, then won't I sound overqualified? But I don't really know how to respond otherwise. So...we'll see?

(And this makes me wonder again, am I underselling myself? Should I be going for something else? But I don't want to think about that.)

Accepting where I am.

2008-01-08T21:51:00.001-06:00

In December, as I was driving through a hundreds-of-miles-long heavy fog to Hometown from College Town, for the last time, I was talking with a friend on the phone (which was slightly dangerous considering the driving conditions), lamenting about how I felt kind of lost or without a place. For the first time since I was two years old, I was not on winter break. I was just...done. Coming home to come home, with nowhere to return to. As I said at the time, "I'm not on winter break, I'm just on...winter..." A break indicates a return to something, but I had nothing and nowhere to return to.

This idea was unsettling to me. I couldn’t (still can’t) really fathom the idea of this finality. I am embarking on something entirely new to me. Student teaching, though different in many ways from college itself (I spent 9-10 hours a day at an elementary school nearly an hour’s drive from College Town, where I was living) was still just an extension of the college “experience.” And College, well, that was just like high school (only, I was in a different state and I lived without my family). And well, High School was just like middle school, which was just like elementary school, which was just like pre-school.

But now, I’m temporarily living back in Hometown. For now I can just pretend it is winter break. If I were returning back to a school somewhere, I still would be on break right now. However, the reality is, I am not on break.

At the time, on my transitional car ride, my friend had suggested that I think of myself as simply being on hiatus. I laughed at the idea at first, but actually, being on hiatus is kind of a comforting way to think about it. It takes some of the guilt or pressure away from me to make these few months action-filled and one-thousand-percent beneficial to my future career and life. I’m on hiatus. On hiatus, I need a job, and I will get one. But it doesn’t need to be the best job ever. It doesn’t need to lead to many amazing and wonderful things. It needs to get me a paycheck and a reason to wake up and get dressed in the morning.

In the in-between hours, I can work on fulfilling my future life plans. I can apply to teach at International Schools starting in the fall. I can study for the GRE. I can take the GRE. These things will advance my future self. It’s okay, acceptable, that I am not doing great things right now.

Maybe I’ll be a teacher assistant working with students who are English Language Learners. Maybe I’ll be a substitute teacher. Either of the two have benefits (unfortunately though, not necessarily health insurance-type benefits). The former would give me the opportunity to work with students who are learning English – this would give me additional experience to talk about in my applications to teach abroad, and additional experience to refer to when I eventually apply for jobs in the US (which could be sooner rather than later if the International Schools don’t work out). The latter, substitute teaching, would give me experience working both in a variety of grades, and a variety of schools. This would be beneficial in giving me an overview of the ways things are done in different places.

So really, either path I end up taking, I will be helping my future self. I am not just wasting time. I’m simply on hiatus.

It’s like when your favorite television show is on hiatus, and they show a really bad reality program for a few weeks, and you don’t love it, but you watch it anyway because you’re used to wasting that hour each week. That’s what I’m doing now. Maybe it’ll be a really good hiatus; maybe it will be just that – a hiatus. Not amazing, but something to fill my time.

Regardless, this is where I am. I have to accept that, not obsess about what I am not doing. No, I do not have a full time regular teaching job. That’s okay. It will come. No, I do not attend grad school. That’s okay. It will come. I will make these things happen, in time, just as I am making myself take advantage of the opportunities available to my right now.

2007 - Year in review

2008-01-01T23:42:00.000-06:00

I have read so many people's postings of this list, or a similar one. I decided to participate.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?

-I graduated from college.
-I student taught.
-I bought a car.
-I lived all alone (no roommates, just a borrowed pet).

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don't make New Year's resolutions. I don't make resolutions in general because I tend to break them, and then I get upset about not following through like I wish I had.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

A cousin.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

Just the US.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?

I don't think I can really compare this upcoming year with the last in this way. I'm going to be in a completely different place (mentally, emotionally, developmentally, financially).

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

I actually don't remember the date, but the day of my college graduation, maybe?

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

-I graduated college.
-I survived student teaching.
-I wrote the longest paper I have ever written.
-I gave an hour-long presentation with a question-and-answer session.

9. What was your biggest failure?

My relationship with my cooperating teaching.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing more than a cold, knock on wood.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

-Best? A new laptop.
-Most expensive? A car.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My professor. For not throttling me when I whined so much about my student teaching situation, and for actually sympathizing with me.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Not necessarily appalled, but depressed? My cooperating teaching. We had issues.

14. Where did most of your money go?

My car. I bought a less-than-five-year-old car, and paid in full. I have no interest, but I also have no money left.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

-Returning to Undergrad College after studying abroad.
-Living with the two coolest people (aka, my closest friends) at Undergrad College, for a semester.
-Student Teaching.
-Ending student teaching.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?

I listened to After All by Dar Williams a lot driving to and from my student teaching school. I hadn't listened to it a whole lot before.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

a) Compared to this exact time, I'm a bit happier. I was going through some uncomfortable reverse-culture-shock upon returning to the US after studying abroad which was keeping me pretty upset throughout January of 2007.
b) Oddly, substantially thinner.
c) Poorer. Though hopefully richer once I find a job.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

More writing following intense bouts of thinking.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Complaining

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I don't celebrate Christmas, but my family usually congregates at my grandparents' house, since everyone is off of work and everything. We actually celebrated a late Hanukkah on Christmas.

21. Did you fall in love in 2007?

With Vygotsky? Yes. With a living person? No.

22. How many one-night stands?

None.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Good Eats on Food Network.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I don't like to hate anyone. There is a person toward whom I have strong negative feelings, that I did not know at this time last year.

25. What was the best book you read?

Growing up Bilingual by Ana Celia Zentella.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Not so much a discovery, but I realized that I really like Dar Williams.

27. What did you want and get?

I didn't really want it, but I needed a car, which I got.

28. What did you want and not get?

A perfectly positive student teaching experience. (Though I do value what I had, and learned tremendously from it.)

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

I don't enjoy movies.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I heard a presidential candidate speak. I turned older than 21, but younger than 25.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

I was pretty satisfied with my year, overall.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?

Don't forget to brush your hair. Don't forget to zip your zipper. Don't forget to tie your shoes. (I don't so much have a fashion sense.) Maybe... Ann Taylor Loft Sale Rack.

33. What kept you sane?

Being able to talk to friends. Having people who would listen to me talk and rant about the things that were bothering me.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

None.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

I don't know.

36. Who did you miss?

-My host mom from Mexico.
-My two roommates from last spring semester.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

My 50 wonderful students. They helped me realize where my passions and beliefs as a teacher lie. Without them, I wouldn't be the person/teacher I have developed into.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.

-Sometimes, institutional politics are not fair. Sometimes, life sucks.
-Communication is so, so, very important. People cannot get into my head, and therefore I have to explicitly say what I am thinking.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

(January began with me having just left Mexico.
May had me leaving Undergrad College.
December had me leaving Student Teaching.)

"Me Voy. Que lástima pero adios."
(I'm leaving. It's a shame, but goodbye)

Internet baby-sitter

2007-12-30T21:22:00.000-06:00

Because I am such a wild and crazy kid, I decided it would be economically beneficial to baby-sit on New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, I am in Hometown, and all the people who I used to baby-sit for have either grown too old to need a baby-sitter, or have found a new baby-sitter since I left Hometown to go to college.

As I was perusing Craig's List, passively looking for a teaching-type job, I happened to came across several requests for baby-sitters for New Year's Eve. I responded to one request, from a neighboring town, and the the poster called me a few days later.

So now, I am going to baby-sit for someone I found on Craig's List. Is that sketchy? I'm not sure.

I am kind of over-charging them. However, I figure, they're posting in a public forum, less than a week before the date, begging for a baby-sitter. I am responsible, have experience working with children the age of these children, and am currently unemployed. If they need a sitter that badly, I'm charging New Year's Eve rates. (And really, although they baulked a bit on the phone when I stated my price, it really isn't too extreme - considering the fact that I am a college graduate and it is a high-demand-for-babysitters night.)

We'll see how this goes.

On the job-seeking front, I am hoping to actually send in the job applications I have half-filled out. My main obstacle, as of now, is that my letters of reference (which I have at least a few of, after finally asking people to write them for me) and my college transcript are being held hostage by the Office of the Registrar and the Office of Career Development at my college. (And by "held hostage" I mean that the offices are closed, and will hopefully be open next week so that I can access these materials... This was quite poor planning on my part.)

Adventures in Elementary School

2007-12-26T18:38:00.000-06:00

On the last day of my student teaching experience (because it certainly was an experience) we had an adventure.

That afternoon, we were scheduled to have an intruder drill (is that what they’re called? - the drills where there is an alarm, and you must turn off the lights, lock the doors, close the blinds, and hide under the desks in the corner of the room, so as not to be seen from the doorway.

We were given the exact time that this was scheduled to happen, and had it planned into our day. We had warned the children ahead of time that this would be happening, reminded them how they had participated in the same drill in school the year before, and talked about how they were expected to behave during the drill.

About 20 minutes earlier than expected, an alarm went off. We assumed that there had been a time change for whatever reason, so we closed the blinds, herded the children to the floor, turned off the lights, and went to close and lock the door.

As my cooperating teacher and I directed the children to the corner, the paraeducator went to close and lock the door. She went out in the hallway for a second, then came back in, confused.

“I think it’s a fire alarm…” she said. And, it was.

So, after being told that they must quietly hide under the desks and in the closet, the students were then told that, “actually, we have to quietly, calmly, and quickly walk in a line down the hall to our class’ fire-alarm meeting spot outside. Upon exiting the building, we realized that it was snowing, quite hard. And the children were mostly wearing thin long sleeve shirts, short-sleeve t-shirts, or the occasional tank top. (They don’t always dress weather appropriate.)

For a few minutes, it seemed that we were missing half of the school. Because we were. The students and teachers in one half of the school were, apparently, still locked in their classrooms, hiding under the desks, waiting for further instruction. They hadn’t realized that there was actually smoke somewhere in the building, which had caused the fire alarm to go off, instead of the intruder alarm. Someone ran to get these well-hidden classes, and moments later they came filing out the doors of the building.

Finally, 20 minutes after the whole ordeal had begun, and 15 minutes after the children had begun standing, freezing, in line in the heavy snow, we were told that the smoke had been isolated and we could return to our classes.

Later, the truth was revealed. Someone had burnt popcorn in a personal microwave, which prompted the fire alarm.

Needless to say, we did not end up completing the intruder drill.

My theoretical future.

2007-12-08T22:20:00.000-06:00

So, I may never get a job (see previous post), but I have written out a life plan.

I hate making New Year resolutions or personal goals.

However, I absolutely love making life plans.

The final thing on my list, currently, specifies that around 2019, if I have taught at least 5 years over all, and 4 years in the US, I can start thinking about applying to PhD programs (as long as I have already gotten a masters. I think that's listed as being begun by 2013).

But seriously, none of these things are going to happen if I don't get a job first. Basically, the thing that's holding me back from applying is that I need letters of reference, and it's around final exam time, and I feel bad asking my professors for recommendations now. Can I ask them now, though? Because I can't get a job without a letter of reference (three, actually), and I need a job.

(Also, I'm working on a research paper and presentation about specific methods I used during student teaching, and I'm seriously having a blast writing this. It's hard. I've done a lot of research, read/skimmed quite a few books, read many articles, reviewed things I have read in the past. So far, my paper is more than twice the length of anything else I've written, and it's just kind of neat to create something that's relatively long. I'm not done writing yet - I have more to add, and things to cut out - but it is fun to get the chance to do the field research, the literature review, and write it all up in one big pile of papers (or actually, one big pile of megabytes).)

How to not get a job.

2007-12-04T22:52:00.000-06:00

I've been half filling out online job applications. I've half filled out four online job applications.

Unfortunately, half filling them out is equal to not filling them out at all.

(The semi-completed job applications have been happening in between spurts of working on a research project/paper about specific methods I used during my student teaching and the outcomes of those methods.)

Multicultural/Intercultural/Nonsexist Education

2007-11-17T23:37:00.000-06:00

I am a big believer in the absolute necessity of constantly teaching with a multicultural perspective on everything. It is always important, regardless of the demographics of the school I am working at. If the school is comprised of upper-middle-class monolingual English-speaking white kids, their home cultures need to be valued and other perspectives need to be introduced so as to build a basis for understanding and acceptance of differences. If the school is comprised of Latino kids who speak Spanish at home and live in poverty, their home cultures need to be valued and other perspectives need to be introduced so as to build a basis for understanding and acceptance of differences. It does not matter who I am working with, what the students’ home lives are like, what their previous experiences are, who they live with, what language they speak; they should know that their lived experiences are valuable and important and so are experiences they are less familiar with. I believe that all children have the capability, and quite frankly, the desire, to learn about other people, other cultures, other ways of living.

This is a belief of mine which has most certainly been nurtured and developed in conjunction with my education courses throughout college and the specific professors with whom I have worked. I always forget though that not everyone has those same beliefs. And that is where we get into the murky distinction between “doing” multicultural education and incorporating it wholeheartedly into every aspect of the classroom.

My CT likely believes in multicultural education in theory. I’m sure if I had asked her if she taught with a multicultural perspective she would have said ‘yes.’ After all, the school is 75% Latino, to her that certainly means that the school is one which values multiculturalism. But, it’s not. At least her classroom doesn’t teach what I consider to be a value of multiple cultures and an understanding of gender equality.

There were several times throughout my student teaching when I wanted to do activities directly related to the cultures that are not the dominant white middle-class. Because despite the fact that the school has linguistic and cultural diversity, it always felt to me that the school was more acultural than anything else. It seemed to me to be lacking culture, as if my CT figured that by being a school with inherent diversities in the students, nothing else had to be done to “do” multicultural education.

I proposed several topics to her, for lessons that I wanted to teach. One lesson was related to Día de los Muertos. I wanted to incorporate Day of the Dead into the lessons I was teaching on other topics. I felt that the discussion of Mexico in the picture book I had checked out of the library would help maintain the students’ interest. I had several neat activities we could do involving Day of the Dead and the other specific activities I was supposed to be teaching. When I first started talking about this with her, I wasn’t asking her if I could teach this lesson – I was just informing her what my plans were. I didn’t think there would be any problem with it. She told me that she didn’t know if we were allowed to talk about Day of the Dead, and that I should email the principal to ask if I could teach my lesson. So, I emailed the principal, explained my rational and proposed activities, and asked if I was allowed to talk about Day of the Dead. A few days later, the principal saw me in the hallway and told me that he/she was going to email me a response the next morning. She/he never ended up responding to my request. My CT, a few days later, decided to tell me that I couldn’t teach that lesson.

“You can’t just teach something because you think it sounds like fun,” she said to me condescendingly. “Besides, I don’t think they need to learn about that cultural stuff yet. They’ll have time in the upper grades.”

I think my only response was a timid, “okay.” There wasn’t any arguing with her. I was confused though. Why did the principal never respond to my email? If my CT didn’t want me teaching the lesson in the first place, why didn’t she just say so? Why did she tell me to email the principal? Had they talked about this together and decided that I shouldn’t teach that lesson? (My CT is on very comfortable terms with the principal.)

So, I didn’t teach about Day of the Dead. Since then, there have been a few other times when I proposed a lesson with a multicultural or nonsexist theme and was basically shot down.

I’m actually afraid I may have offended her one time. Though I don’t think I am sorry about it. She suggested to me a graphing activity where each student would get a piece of paper to add to the class graph to chart their preferences of something. She got out a baggie of di-cut shapes that I could use that were very much gendered (one shape was clearly meant for the boys and one was clearly meant for the girls). I looked at the papers, looked up at her, and confusedly said, “I’m sorry. I can’t use those. I can’t give the boys [paper A] and the girls [paper B]. I’ll make my own cut-outs.”

She said just said, “okay” in an ‘fine, do what you want you crazy girl’ tone of voice and put the papers back where she had found them. We never spoke of it again. However, looking back on the incident, I think that may have been the start of the second phase of our relationship (read: the beginning of the intense passive aggressiveness on her part and the beginning of me asking fewer questions.)

Recently I asked her a question about something mentioned in the grade-level topics-to-be-taught schedule. It said that during the winter season the students are supposed to learn about ‘multicultural winter holidays.’ I asked what exactly that meant. She responded that the previous year she hadn’t actually done anything on that topic, but that some of the other teachers had done lessons on how Christmas is celebrated in other places. I asked about other holidays, like Kwanzaa and Chanukah, since when one thinks of ‘multicultural winter holidays’ Kwanzaa and Chanukah usually complete the list of three holidays talked about. Again I got the response of “oh, the kids don’t need to learn about that. The cultural things are too much for them, they shouldn’t learn about that yet.”

And really, that just killed me. It hurt me to hear her say that. I’ve been going back and forth in my mind for days, mulling over her response. Her total and complete dismissal of the idea of talking about non-Christmas holidays. Are the kids too young? Would they understand? Would that be valuable to them, learning about holidays that they don’t celebrate? Would they just be confused? I’ve been doubting myself, my own beliefs.

I don’t think they’re too young. I think that the seed for tolerance should be planted young. If students aren’t exposed to the ideas of traditions different than their own at a young age, these differences will be shocking to them later in life. It will be harder for them to accept the “other” if it is completely foreign. Besides, I have worked with preschoolers who have had lessons on ‘multicultural winter holidays.’ They can most certainly handle it. Yes, you have to make sure the lesson is at the students’ level. You have to make sure it is accessible to them. But you have to do that for any lesson you are going to teach them – a lesson on holidays/traditions is no different.

I feel that my desire to incorporate multicultural content into my lessons was at times discourage by my CT, and at other times outright forbidden. That makes me feel sad and frustrated. In a way, I was prevented from incorporating some of my core beliefs into my lessons, and that may have played in to the feelings I had of monotony and just going-through-the-motions. I wasn’t allowed to teach in the ways I feel to be most important. I continually had to be who my CT wanted me to be. I hope that when I have my own classroom I am able to let the true Me show through in creating my lessons. I hope to demonstrate my belief in the importance of a curriculum valuing multiple cultures and gender equality.

Additionally, I feel that if I had incorporated more cultural aspects into my lessons, made it so that my students could relate better to what we were doing, I may have had a different time with classroom management than I did. I know that nothing is a fix-all. However, the few times when I was able to incorporate aspects of the students’ home cultures into my lessons, they absolutely loved it – they were much more focused and attentive. Had I been able to create lessons they could relate to more than I did, I think they would have responded by maintaining attention.

I guess these are all things I will be able to explore more once I have my own classroom. I will have the control to implement the classroom practices that I find most valuable.

I'm either delusional or creative.

2007-11-06T23:02:00.001-06:00

My lesson today was mediocre to poor. I was observed today, and the person observing me wouldn't admit to my lesson being bad. All I wanted her to do was agree with me. Or better yet, engage me in a thought provoking conversation, which she didn't do. So instead, I wrote the dialogue to the conversation I wish I had had. In doing so, I kind of ended up having the conversation. In my head. (Hopefully this doesn't make me seem too crazy.)

Me: My lesson today basically sucked, I feel really bad about it.
Imaginary Professor: What makes you say that?
Me: Because it was really bad - I didn't teach the kids anything.
Imaginary Professor: What makes you think that you didn't teach the kids anything.
Me: Because while I was up there, I thought two things. 1) I am doing way too much talking. I'm just talk-talk-talking at the kids. And 2) What I was talking about wasn't really closely related to what my assessment was. The two just weren't connected in the way they were supposed to be.
Imaginary Professor: Why was that?
Me: Because, maybe...I don't know. Because I kind of had two objectives I guess. Talking about international [somethings], and talking about how [something] comes from [a crop]. The first objective was kind of blah - it was interesting because it was cultural, but it didn't really have any content aside from that. I didn't go far with it - just mentioned surface level things. The second objective was more important - it had some facts and some knowledge that the kids were supposed to gain, but I didn't teach it well. I didn't really teach it at all.
Imaginary Professor: Why do you think you didn't teach it at all?
Me: For two reasons. One of them is that I realized that I didn't know how talk about what I wanted to talk about - how to talk about how we get from the [crop] stage to the [something] stage. I have [crop], then [crop] being combined, but then after that it's all fuzzy, it just kind of POOF turns into [something]. And also, they couldn't demonstrate that they had understood. My worksheet, which required them to put in order the different stages of [something] making, had a couple problems with it. One was that I never thoroughly or clearly or really at all explained to them the concepts being evaluated on the worksheet. And also, one of the pictures, the most confusing picture of all, wasn't clear.
Imaginary Professor: Okay.
Me: And it just sucked. It was a bad lesson. Nothing meshed up well.
Imaginary Professor: What do you mean by "nothing meshed up well"?
Me: Well, I don't think my objectives really matched up with my assessment.
Imaginary Professor: How could you have made them match up better?
Me: Um, well...I could have just, made sure they matched up better. I guess I didn't really do that.
Imaginary Professor:
Me: Next time, or in general, I guess I have to really make sure that I have an objective (or two or three) and that those objectives can be evaluated by my assessment, either formally or informally.
Imaginary Professor: Yes, that does sound important.
Me: Yeah, I always know that is important, and that is how it should be done, but I tend to just...forget. I get an objective, and an assessment, and I forget to make sure the two are connected. Which leads to a very disconnected lesson in which not much gets accomplished.
Imaginary Professor: And you are always talking about how you don't have enough time for everything.
Me: Yeah. I need to make sure to use the time I do have wisely, responsibly, so that the kids get to take advantage of their time at school.
Imaginary Professor: Mm-hmm.
Me: Yeah. Thanks for talking through this with me. I mean, I know how to write a lesson in theory, I just tend to get distracted or mentally caught up in other things, and then the lesson ends up being a bit disconnected. I need to always ask myself how my objectives connect to my assessment. Always, always.
Imaginary Professor: Yes. That sounds good.
Me: Okay. Thank you.

Compensation vs. bribery

2007-10-28T12:41:00.000-05:00

For my student teaching, I am conducting an acti0n research project. In order to do this, I am required to get inf0rmed c0nsent from all of my students, or rather their parents/guardians since they are very much minors.

That’s just not going to happen. There are certain things I need to include in the c0nsent form, which results in a page long note, which is quite long. I translated the letter into Spanish, as a bit more than half of my students require all forms/letters going home to be in Spanish. While all the parents will have the physical capability to read the letter, I feel that many of them won’t understand parts of it – I described everything as simply as I possibly could, but still, it is referring to academic concepts so there are some terms that are kind of academic in the letters. And also, one whole page is long. I’m afraid that many parents just won’t get around to reading and sending the form back. Another issue is that some parents really don’t want any record of their child available outside the school, due to immigration status. While I reassure, several times, that although I will be taking photographs and video, no names will ever be connected with the students, I’m afraid that won’t be enough. Some parents just cannot risk their child being studied in that way.

And, because of all that; because I’m afraid parents won’t read the letter, or will forget to send it back to school, or won’t understand it all and not return the form for that reason, I plan on essentially bribing the students to bring the consent for back.

I suppose that technically I am simply compensating the students for their time and participation. When I say it like that, it doesn’t sound bad. I have participated in psychology experiments and was compensated for my time by receiving extra credit in my psychology classes or by being given money. It isn’t really any different for the students. They are participating in my study, so will be compensated by being given a really neat pencil, or some stickers, or a mini-notebook or something like that. And while there is nothing technically wrong with my compensating the children for their time, I am willfully taking advantage of the fact that by being told they will receive a small gift for participating, I am bribing them. These children don’t have things. They take pencils and crayons from the classroom because they don’t have any at home. They stash stuff in their desks because they want something that is their own. I know that by telling them they will get a gift for bringing the form back, they will pester their parents/guardians to sign the form and return it. I know this and am willingly using it for my own benefit. Because if I don’t get their consent, I can’t use any of the video that I take, since when I videotape, I am recording the whole class. If I don’t get the whole class to consent, I basically have no data.

So, on the day that I hand the c0nsent forms out to the students, I will show them what their gift would be for participating in my study. I will wave it in front of them so they can see what they’d get for bringing the form back. I will be showing them their compensation, their bribe, the only hope I have for actually being able to analyze and write about my research in the way I am hoping to be able to.

I suppose this is always a problem in educational research (or any research involving human participants). It will always be a problem for me if I ever (get over my fear of taking the GRE and) apply for and get accepted into grad school, and end up doing more educational research. Is there a difference between bribing people to participate, and compensating them for doing so? Is the difference in the way the compensation is presented to the participants? Is it in the probability that the participants would participate without compensation? Are compensation and bribery really the same thing?

1st grade crushes.

2007-10-26T17:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday and today, a boy named [M] who is in my class was absent. He is, for some reason, the boy that all the first grade girls have crushes on.

Today a girl literally kissed a picture of [M] that we have on our wall. "[J]!" I exclaimed. "Did you just kiss the picture of [M]?!" She simply gave me a sheepish grin and went on her way.

Finally!

2007-10-25T22:36:00.001-05:00

Today was, thankfully, better than all of last week, and this Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Statistically speaking, it was about time I had at least one semi-decent lesson.

My successful lesson was for science. I used a computer-to-TV-screen (that is, what shows up on the computer shows up on the TV screen) to show some really neat pictures that I found on the internet about our subject. I used an awesome song I found on a kids' science music CD. The kids loved getting to look at the TV screen, even though they weren't actually watching TV. The song was simple enough that they could sing along right away, but it really taught science, and wasn't just a tangential audio-aid. I wasted very little time trying to re-orient the kids' attention. (Very little time relatively speaking...but it was much better than it has been).

What I need to do now is figure out how to replicate this afternoon's lesson.

I frequently use music - as often as possible. I always use visual aids (though I never have used the TV screen before). And, well, I have to admit, I may have allowed the kids to get a little too loud. Or rather, I knew they were chatty, but I was okay with it because they were chatting about the pictures we were looking at. When my CT came in she chastised them for being too noisy/out-of-control.

And I think there, in a way, is where all the very negative feelings I have been having about my lessons and my capabilities as a teacher are lying. Every time she chastises the kids for being too loud, I feel as if she is chastising me for allowing them to get so loud. Sometimes she truly is talking to the kids, but in this instance I felt that there was an undercurrent of a comment directed at me that said, "See, this is why you're having such a tough time with classroom management. You allow them to get like this and they think they can behave like this all the time. If you made sure they were politely listening at all times, you wouldn't have the problems you do have, with them chatting inappropriately and being rude to you and their peers." And I don't know, maybe she wasn't saying that to me, but it certainly felt like it. It certainly frustrated me. I was actually having fun and was excited about what I was teaching for the first time in weeks. Literally weeks. I've been going through the motions, but the motions were kind of bland. My lessons always included visual aids, frequently music, ocassionally partner activities, etc. They weren't bad lessons, but I simply didn't care about them. I taught them and acted enthusiastic maybe, but really wasn't feeling it. This lesson though, I was totally into - I was excited and the kids could tell - they were certainly reflecting my excitement.

Then, when my CT chastised them for being too rowdy, at a time when I didn't feel they were acting particularly inappropriate, it kind of crushed me a little bit.

I think that I have to think more, and hard, and a lot, about my beliefs on classroom management. Or rather, I have to keep trying and failing, and maybe discovering that her way really is best, I don't know. She's had many years of experience and I have had none, so she really should know better. However, I truly was enjoying and satisfied and happy with that lesson, until that point. Maybe it's just my (at the moment) overly emotional self reading things into those comments that are not actually there. Maybe.

Regardless, I very much liked this lesson and the way it turned out. I feel that my objectives were met and the students were actively participating most of the time.

I'm going to be optimistic and hope that tomorrow will result in me feeling as satisfied at the end of the day as I did today.

Incoherent pile of emotions.

2007-10-23T22:25:00.000-05:00

I realized recently that I'm just not having fun. Usually, in the past, I just have fun with kids. They're neat! And these kids are neat, they're awesome. So, I don't know what it is that is making me dread every day. I simply am not enjoying myself at all. I'm trying to change that. I feel as if I'm stuck in some type of rut. Wake up, shower, drive 40 minutes to school, get there, run the marathon that is every school day, organize and do some prep work after school, leave to come home at about 5:30, sing to music in car on the way home so as not to fall asleep, quickly stick food in mouth, go to campus to really plan for the next day, come home at about 11:30, wash Tupperware from lunch, set timer on coffee maker, crash into bed. Rinse and repeat.

There is no fun. No frivolity. (No exercise, no friends, no actual cooking, etc.) I'm planning/prepping nearly every waking minute and I'm always, always behind. Which is strange since we never actually get to many of my plans, since I can't figure out how to calm the students down enough to get much work done (see previous posts).

On top of my regular school planning, I have reading and assignments to do for my student teaching university class that goes along with student teaching. (And oh my, I truly love that class - it is the one thing I look forward to every week.) My mind is in mental chaos.

I keep hoping that the next day will be better. I will find the magic solution to my classroom management problems, and suddenly I'll be able to teach again, instead of just manage.

Maybe this was good for me - pull me out of my idealistic bubble. It's never good to be in a bubble anyway. At least now I understand when people say they paid their debt working in "tougher" school districts and then flee to work in the wealthy suburbs. I can see where they're coming from. I dream (literally) of the kids I have worked with in the past, from different neighborhoods. Kids who don't have the complications of poverty, parents being deported, etc. On the one hand, I don't feel that I could really go back and do that now, not permanently anyway. (I may work one more summer for the same camp I have for many years). These kids I'm working with now really pull me in and make me want to search for that elusive something that will allow them to momentarily push aside all the obstacles put before them, and allow them to just learn at school. I'll only be here for a few more weeks. I don't know what I'm going to do when I don't get to see them anymore.

Basically I feel many mixed emotions. I love the kids but hate that I cannot teach them because they won't quiet down for the 2-3 minutes it would take to give directions. I absolutely love the ideal of a dual-language immersion school, but really dislike many of the scheduling intricacies that basically make it so that the kids never have any idea what classroom they are supposed to be in.

I love teaching in theory, in reality though...I'm currently feeling kind of ambivalent. I'm waiting though. Waiting and hoping to find my passion again. I know it's there, it's just been pushed aside by the harsh views of reality. I'm looking for a way for my idealism and the existing realities to share a space in the forefront of my being.

Classroom management? What's that?

2007-10-21T15:02:00.000-05:00

Last week, I somehow seemed to have lost all control of the children.

I literally felt like nothing got accomplished at all on any of the 5 afternoons of the week. In the mornings, a little bit got done, but in the afternoons I couldn't figure out how to get the kids' attention.

The thing is, I don't expect them to listen for long - I just need them to listen for 3-5 minutes so that I can give instructions. They can't read, so I need to tell them and show them pictures about what we are going to do. But, even when we were doing really neat hand-on activities, I just could not find a way to be more interesting to them than their classmates.

I have a handful of strategies that I use to try to redirect attention. I do hand clapping patterns, I "count eyes" (also teaches them how to count by 2s), I make the school hand-signal that is used to mean "eyes up here, listen to the teacher" to name just a few. I can't seem to make any of them work. Or rather, the students do clap my pattern, look up at me, or give me the hand signal. It's just that they simultaneously chat with friends.

When I try to talk it through with my CT, she points out that it's not just the kids fault - it may have something to do with my teaching. Which, yeah, I know - that's what I'm trying to tell her. I'm certainly not blaming it all on the kids. I need some suggestions on what I can do in regards to my classroom management and teaching to get the kids to pay attention to me (or their peers, if their peers are talking/helping me teach).

I don't want to be out of ideas, but I really don't know what else to do. I hate keeping kids in for recess, because I think they need the outside running around/chatting/shouting time if I'm going to have any hope of them calming down during class time. For that reasons, I don't really keep kids in from recess. But, should I? Will they know I'm serious if I keep them in? I don't know.

More then being frustrated, I just feel guilty. I'm not teaching them anything! We went through a whole week with very little learning to show for it. I got through very few of the activities I actually had planned. And while it's good that I over-plan so there always are activities to do, I actually want to do some of those activities.

Maybe the kids were extra squirrelly last week. I'm trying to re-vamp my teaching this weekend, but I don't know that I've made enough changes to really have an impact on anything. We'll see, vamos a ver. I just really hope I'm able to connect better this week.