12 posts tagged “mtc”
[ASSIGNED: SUCCESS STORY]
Why is it so much harder for me to write the success story blog than the failure story?
I can think of small and large things I was successful with in my first year teaching: I can teach the hell out of vocabulary in a way that makes it constructive; and I can break down an essay so that almost anyone can write one that will pass the state test. I am supremely organized. (To look at my home, you wouldn't think so, but my classroom and its documentation are impeccable.) I can write really good chapter study guides for novels and the quizzes that go with them are the perfect mix of comprehension and critical thinking. I did well with group work, and with letting my students teach. I can make grammar make sense.
But can I point to one student and say, "I made a difference in his/her life," and really mean it? "Make a difference." What does that mean anyway? How do we measure that? I didn't send a kid to Phillips Exeter. But did the letter I wrote for KJ get her into that Tougaloo program? Will that change her? Did the gift certificate I gave RW to make up for the day he missed the class reward hot wings party allow him to feel like I cared? Will he remember it? Who knows what each butterfly's wings will do?
Here's what I remember: The day I returned to the school to resign and tell my students personally I would not be back (I'd been out for 6 weeks on medical leave and would not finish the school year there.) I found RK and pulled him out of his Biology class because he'd skipped second period when I usually saw him. He was terrified, of course, thinking he was in trouble again. He and I had gotten off to a rocky start. He was resistant to the work I assigned and challenged my motives. But by [what would become] the end of the year he would knit his brow and listen to my lessons, and pour himself into the worksheets I gave. If he wasn't finished when they were being collected he'd protest that he didn't want to turn it in until he'd gotten it. He wanted to understand. And the look on his face when he did was pure joy.
In early October I was told my job was to get enough documentation to get him into alternative school. In January I had an incident in the class that resulted in five students being suspended. He was sitting in the group and got lumped in with the crowd. I could see he was hurt and felt betrayed. Did I sleep that night?
The next morning I spoke with the assistant principal, who managed discipline referrals. I appealed for RK, explained that he had been the victim of a "sweep" and that I wanted him back in my class. He never thanked me, but that's when things changed.
So when we were standing face to face outside his Biology class in May, I told him he was one of the reasons my decision to leave had been so difficult. I asked him to remember how good it felt to succeed, and to try to keep doing that. I told him I appreciated how hard he worked in my class, and that I knew he was doing it for me as well as for himself. He kicked his foot and looked down.
He was crying
[ASSIGNED: FAILURE STORY]
Are there individual students whom I feel I've failed? Ha-ell yeah! Isn't that what the "one child at a time" jingoism pretty much guarantees? GIve me 120-something students and then let help me feel good about "making a difference" for one. Do the math.
But I have to admit confess that my biggest sense of failure has come from not being able to make a difference stick it out at SDHS. I made a commitment. At this point in my life, commitments are not made lightly. And I said I wanted a small Delta town, knowing these are the toughest assignments. Did I not fully imagine what that meant? Well, yes, be we never do. I didn't fully imagine what being a parent would be like, either, but I stuck with it for whatever it would be. How can I even begin to compare another 3 years in Mississippi to my commitment of the past 25?
I've said before and i'll say again (but now I'm changing the tense): All the reasons I left are the very reasons I should have stayed.
That pretty much says it all.
White Whine: The lack of leadership made my efforts there futile. Teacher Corps is not sending a new group of teachers there this year and I'd be alone further isolated. I can ultimately help more students by being in a school with some degree of leadership and organization. The school I'm going to is still classified as critical needs. There are still hundreds thousands millions plenty of students whom I'm not teaching no matter where I end up.
But then I see NW's curious eyes tracking me. Or I hear DT's soft voice as he asks my approval of every sentence he writes. I see DC's little stack of books she stores on my supply shelf. I reread SB's metaphor poem about her dead mother and compare it to the weight of her armor she wears every day.
And I know Dr. Mullins is right: It's not really about me. But I made it about me when I decided to leave those students.
White Whine: There will be students I love at G-W. I'll probably succeed in educating some of them. But I will not succeed in educating 120-some others to whom I made an implicit and explicit commitment. I told them all that they were not the reason I was leaving. It smacked of the "divorce speech" whereby parents veil the fact that it's the other parent they can't stand. But the kids are still left parentless. Do we I continue to soothe our my conscience by saying they'll feel better because of that fact?
I dunno. But now I know why I'll be sticking with gin.
Thanks for the many thoughtful comments. Obviously, I do not want to get into what someone has politely called a shin-kicking contest, but I do think I should make a few points.
Prologue: No one who commented on my post has ever been in my classroom for so much as a second. I do not run the "silent classroom." It is a classroom run on mutual respect. Students speak freely in discussion, and engage in candid banter. I do not require raised hands, though many choose to do so, and are acknowledged. Students manage their time and move from one task to another. More days than not they participate in the teaching as well as learning. They know exactly what's expected of them. If you had come into my room in March (the last time I taught due to my accident), you would have thought I had no rules. Again, students know exactly what's expected of them. There's only one road to that. It might have many entrance ramps, but it's the same road: Tell them what's expected of them. Insist they live up to it. Do not tolerate it if they don't. Expect them to succeed in living up to your expectations. Respect them for it.
And now, for the main event:
First, anyone who knows me or has spoken to me or read my opinions about why I am teaching in Mississippi knows that my motives are far from what has been suggested in some comments. Specifically, I refer to accusations of "colonialism." I assume what is meant is an oblique reference to some sort of systematized noblesse oblige in which privileged white offspring descend into the depths of savagery to sprinkle hope and salvation to the poor and oppressed. Paternalist, perhaps, but not colonialist.
My heritage, my experience, and my motives could not be further from that model. Of course, if one's only experience with me or my opinions was to have brushed me off at an MTC alumni event, it's hard to know this. Perhaps the prejudging of prejudice works in both directions. Having spent more years involved in various social justice projects than some of my commenters have been alive, I think I've gotten my head around why I'm in the Delta teaching. If you're interested in knowing, contact me directly. Better yet, drive into the Delta and join me with a cold one on my front porch for a conversation.
As for the inferences that my statements about adolescents reflect what "can only be racialized undertones," I ask you to take a moment to consider this. There's a saying that "he [who] is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail." What is your filter? Why, specifically, can this "only" be a racial issue? In my experience with raising a child, in dealing with adolescents from every geographic, racial, and economic strata, I find (and am in agreement with psychological and sociological research) that adolescents in the best of circumstances often have trouble with the self-regulation that make it difficult for them to appreciate the nuances of behavior necessary for self-regulation. That is, "You can talk, but not too loudly;" "You can be late to class if you have a good reason," and so forth. Additionally, children with developmental problems caused by a variety of things -- but most notably here in the Delta by poor prenatal nutrition, little or no verbal/cognitive stimulation in early life, drug or alcohol consumption by the mother -- are known to have problems with over-reaction to stimuli, poor self-regulation, and social management issues. This isn't a racial problem. It's an economic and class problem. In Mississippi these go hand-in-hand with race. But a wider and longer perspective might provide you with a different way to frame it. (The hammer quote is, interestingly, from Abraham Maslow, whose theories could inform this line of thought.)
Second, I do not need to caricaturize my students to make a point. Before the age of five, one of my students saw her mother shot in the back, and another saw her aunt shot in the chest by her uncle (about which she testified as the only witness). Another saw his mother set on fire (by the father, who late killed himself, of the student who sits next to him in second period). They've seen family members beaten, knifed, and run over by a car. A male student, recently more involved with town-rivalry gangs, regularly leaves blood stains on his chair from the crotch of his pants. At least seven that I know of are primary caretakers for grandparents or other relatives disabled by strokes, mothers who are crack addicts, or younger siblings. One student has eight children in his bedroom. He lives in a trailer with attic insulation blocking broken windows. Of the five current pregnancies, only one is by a boyfriend. The Delta certainly doesn't have a lock on family tragedy, but the isolation and stagnation of life where there are fewer than 3,000 people (people, not students) in a school district of 1,000 square miles does add a different dimension to how each of these incidents affects the student community as a whole.
One of my MTC colleagues mentioned that she'd never heard voices raised in anger in her family. Many MTC participants come from areas where there is little racial tension because there is little racial diversity. I think it's safe to say the several of us had not imagined the lives many of our students live every day. This was apparent in the shell-shocked conversations of the first few Oxford weekends.
Which brings me to hyperbole: A useful rhetorical and literary device, successfully employed for emphasis by revered third-years during my own summer training. Upon telling a summer student to try a new vocabulary word on his parents that night at dinner, one of this year's class was told in no uncertain terms, "They don't have parents, and they don't have dinner." We were advised not to let students use the bathroom during class because "they'll just gamble, do drugs, and have sex there." The line in my post that students interpret kindness and understanding as weakness is a direct quote from a TEAM teacher.
At the time many of us thought it seemed reductionist and harsh. Seemed. But the first few Oxford weekends proved that many had not taken the message seriously enough. Classrooms were disasters. Students were pitching quarters not in the restroom, but in the back of class while a teacher was in the room. Summer training, as easy-breezy as it seems now in retrospect, needed to be boot camp. An exaggerated experience that would get us to a point where classroom management was second nature and energy could be directed where our aspirations flew.
Many of my students have parents,or step parents they live with. Many of them might eat dinner with their parents. (Though if they do, they are in a minority even among the most affluent and well-educated.) And I'll even give the benefit of the doubt to most of the students who ask to go to the restroom. And those students, for the most part, are not the ones who cause the classroom management nightmares. I am grateful every day for the parents like the woman Karl met at the laundromat, and the ones who own local businesses, and come to parent night. (Twelve parents of my 128 students.) The issue is that the students who cause problems, while they might be a minority in the classroom, occupy the vast majority of our time in classroom management. Those students who don't require cut-and-dry black-and-white rules to follow will manage themselves. They, for the most part, are grateful that there is a system in place to provide structure to the class. They've told me this. Thanked me for it. And as the months rolled by it was easy for me to see who was who. But the learning curve was steep.
In the first eight to twelve weeks of school, unless a teacher establishes himself or herself as the authority in the classroom, there will be problems down the road. It might come naturally to some, so they don't realize they've done it. But for most first-year teachers it's a struggle. Read the blogs. Listen to the conversations.
Authority in and of itself is not evil. It can be misused, and often is, resulting in opression. But children feel safer and happier when they know someone is in charge. Someone is making sure their needs are looked after. For many of our students, no one does this for them. Far too many have been doing this job -- even taking care of their parents -- and are relieved to have someone in a classroom as an authority figure. I know this sounds patronizing. But the effective use of authority is (dare I say it?) nuanced. The nuance lies in establishing it well enough so that it never needs to be used. Like an insurance policy, or keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.
Epilogue: Lastly, I'd like to point to a question.
And I wonder, why aren't you teaching anymore, really? Of course there's no simple answer to this question, and there were opportunity costs and so on, but I do think you came to believe that classroom teaching was not a sustainable choice for you (it's not for me, either), and I wonder why. What was the problem teaching math to the 25 kids in the room? Why couldn't you explain to them the philosophical corruption of the system, the moral corruption of the stimulus-response model of education, the importance of a social morality based on mutual respect and empathy and reason and the toxic effect of one built on a fear of punishment, and make it all better and more sustainable? ...
...I know you remember how mutually oppressive, how corrosive, it is to be in this place and governed by its bells every day. I may be sympathetic to a claim that this system is so corrupt and corrupting that one cannot long maintain philosophical and moral purity when acting as one of its central cogs. But replacements are on the horizon, and they're supposed to last two years. What you're not acknowledging in your response is that Sabatier is -- with whatever imprecisions and inaccuracies -- waving toward a way to cope with that constant, stifling hostility without taking it personally or ending up a wretched, tortured heap. You and me, we just "walk out of Calculus."
I spent nearly 20 years on the policy side of education, and decided to leave theory and enter practice. Not as a two-year stopover, but as a life. I gave up a successful, comfortable midlife to do it. I find "opportunity costs" an interesting euphemism. It's very easy to know how to do something from afar. It's much more difficult to find a sustainable way to enact it. It requires a balance that often comes only with experience and maturity. The thousands of split-second decisions we, as teachers of a special-needs population, make every day is a tightrope walk not many are able to finish. Knowing how to establish an authority strong enough that it doesn't need to be brandished takes (wait for it) nuance.
[REQUIRED BLOG: ADVICE TO FIRST-YEARS OR, WHY ARE THEY UNHAPPY RABBITS?]
... it's gonna be a bumpy year.
You've read the other second-year blogs that tell you to make the most of the summer, enjoy your time now, make friends, build a network, and whatnot. So I won't go there.
Here is my most important advice: Take to heart the advice you get about classroom management and organization.
As my school security guard says whenever I'm at my wits' end: You in the Delta now, darlin' In other words: All bets are off.
During summer school you'll be told to manage your classroom in a way that seems dehumanizing and demeaning. Do it. It won't seem necessary in your summer school class. Ignore that. Your students in your classrooms come from families that are chaotic and tragic beyond your wildest imagination. They see more violence and fear before they come to school some days than you've probably ever seen in your life. What they don't have is structure. They are in free fall in terms of self-regulation. They do not understand nuanced behavior. Many are nearly unable to self-regulate or exhibit impulse control. I know it seems demeaning, but these students need the structure that gives them an anchor.
You'll be tempted to think, "I'll be the one who's different. I'll show them respect and they'll respect me for it. They'll want to please me because I'm the first person who's ever smiled at them and shown I care." You will be fresh meat. It won't happen. Believe us.
I'm going to make an analogy that will probably get me in trouble, but not establishing strict classroom management in a critical needs classroom is a little like having a dog and not training it: Neither of you will be happy, but you'll be the one who gets bitten. You have to immediately establish yourself as the alpha figure. This can be difficult when some of your students are bigger than you, more worldly than you, and maybe only two or three years younger than you. The only way to do it ... THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT in their world is through power. It's what they understand. It's the only coin of the realm here.
Your students interpret politeness and kindness as weakness.
If you hesitate a split second they smell it and will wedge that little crack of insecurity open until you have no control. And believe me: That's a scary place to be. Fifty or 90 minutes of trying to control 25 or 30 teenagers is an eternity even in the best of situations (which this isn't), and it will leave you rattled and not ready for the next 30 who are walking in as the bell rings before you can fight back the tears.
Believe me, in the long run, your students are happier when they are in a controlled, calm environment where the expectations are simple and clear. They'll complain about that, but it's what they want whether they know it or not. You can always loosen up once you've gained their respect, but you can never -- and I mean NEVER -- regain the ground you lose by letting them control you and your class. They are masters at wresting control from you. You are a rookie. You'll hear some of us say "Don't smile until Christmas." It's not so far from the truth. Maybe Thanksgiving.
Once you've earned their respect -- and I've had students tell me they put new teachers through a trial by fire -- you'll be able to quiet the room with a simple glance or stance. But you must earn their respect first, and for the most part, they respect only someone who is in power. What you hope in your heart of hearts is that they will realize that your kindness and fairness is more powerful than the irrationality they encounter elsewhere. But maybe not. You need to be at peace with that.
OK. Next up: Organization.
Touch each piece of paper as few times as possible. Have an absolutely iron-clad, fail safe system of where paper travels. Turned in, waiting to be graded, graded, handed back. What do you do with work you're handing back if the student isn't there? (Remember you have about a 25 - 30 percent daily absence rate.) What about late work? When was that due? Late because he was absent or just didn't do it? Now it's not with the others. Where does it go? Your students are, again, masters of the con.
Streamline all of your systems so that each one involves the fewest steps possible. Eliminate all redundant procedures. Record things once in one place. Establish self-sustaining systems that don't need your constant tracking. There will be a session during summer school about organization. It will be in the afternoon and you will be tired and would rather be swimming or drinking. PAY ATTENTION! You are about to be hit with an avalanche of paper and humanity demanding your soul.
Keep meticulous daily attendance records, and a daily activity log for each period. Your school might or might not require it. I have never turned in an attendance sheet other than for homeroom. It's a joke. I was tempted to let it go.
But when Lajeryl is failing and his formidable grandmother wants to know why, nothing impresses like your showing up in the office with a big-ass binder full of weekly attendance records, a printout of all the assignments he missed, and copies of the tests he cheated on.
When DeKindrick insists he never got that handout or didn't know about that test, nothing shuts him up like your silently opening the binder, calmly flipping to the page for the day you did that work (And you know that day because you've kept a meticulous daily log of what happens in class) and showing him that he was there. Maybe you made a note that he was sleeping or talking. Even better.
When classes are randomly cancelled or held in a four-hour lockdown, it's impossible to keep each of your six periods aligned in what they're doing. Use a notebook to record the daily lesson or activity for your students to see when they've been absent. I suggest also keeping a "teacher calendar" for yourself that has 6 blocks for each day so you can jot quick notes about each period.
The sheer amount of information, the millions of details will overwhelm you. Leave nothing to chance.
Lastly:
You're coming to Mississippi. Somewhere in your essay I'll bet the words, "make a difference" appear. You'll make a difference. But remember the MTC motto, the ever-present "One child at a time." When I got here I thought that meant lots of groovy one-on-one time with kids who needed my help. And there will be. What it refers to, though, is that you might only help one child. You'll get to know maybe 120 or more. They all need your help. But they also reject your efforts, and that hurts. You need to be OK with not fulfilling every aspect of your intention.
You have to know that on your worst day -- and your worst day will suck beyond your worst nightmare -- you are still probably the best thing that will happen for many of your students that day. You have to know it -- really KNOW it -- because they probably won't tell you. Until Christmas. Or maybe Thanksgiving.
Ah men.
UPDATE: This post obviously caused a bit of back and forth here and on other blogs. My response to responses is here. I hope that those who suggest meaningful discussion of the issues as part of the answer will prompt those discussions in the months to come.
It sort of started as a spur of the moment little thing. And now I'm pretty much addicted ... don't know how I'd get through a week without it.
Nope, I'm not talking about huffing Sharpies. I'm talking about letting my students teach.
I teach six class periods a day. I tend to do the guided practice grammar worksheets as overheads on the whiteboard. One day, when I was just plumb sick of hearing my own voice during seventh period I announced half-way through that I was tired of it and held up my dry-erase marker, asking for a volunteer.
Well, Katie bar the door! I thought I had invited disaster to do this without any advance planning. But here comes Karebya, who does a spot-on imitation of my teaching style, right down to handing out tickets (her own!) to other students. She makes her way down the worksheet, circling the participles and drawing those great dynamic arrows to the nouns they're modifying, all while calling on other students, even calling them by last name, just as I would.
Meanwhile, I sit on top of a desk at the side of the room -- not standing, but still taller than seated students -- asking leading questions to make sure the right information was delivered, still sort of assuming the role of a student. "Miss Jones, why isn't corndog being modified by slipping through my fingers?"
Bingo. She asked another student to answer that!
It was such a success! Eventually, I got to the point where I was able to do it with all of my classes. It was crucial to choose just the right day, with the right vibe going, to introduce the process, and it still seems to work better as an impromptu moment. I still play it by ear each time as there's just no predicting which day any given class will be able to handle it. Sometimes I ask for volunteers, and sometime I ask a specific student to take over for me.
One of the good outcomes has been that when I do a mini-review as a bellringer later I can say, "Now, remember, when Mr. Kelly did such a great job teaching you this?" and everyone feels good.
It's also served to defuse a few chronic classroom management issues. When a student is teaching and others are talking, or giving her a hard time about a mistake on the board, I can make a joke about it by saying something like, "It's a tough crowd, isn't it Miss Jackson?" When I first started letting them teach, I would interrupt and ask for tissues, or complain about the room temperature. Once was enough: They got the point, and it seems to have helped take a bit of the edge off their resistance to some of my classroom rules they don't understand.
I've done a few lessons in which student-teaching was incorporated into the plan. The last part of our poetry unit, for example, was to have small groups of students each teach a poem to the rest of the class. I supplied the groups with a printed poem, and they completed an explication worksheet that prepared them to annotate their poem at the board using an overhead. Of course, I had modeled that process several times by annotating poems all along, so they knew what I expected.
Whenever my students teach I remind them to check to make sure their students understand -- not just stand there and lecture. I have to listen carefully and manage my input so each class still gets the same lesson. And it's a classroom management minefield. But haven't I always loved working on just that edge, flirting with disaster?
But mostly I really enjoy the moment when I say, "I'm as tired of hearing my voice as you are. Who wants to teach?"
I think I might have solved, partially, one of the issues with handouts, absences, missed work, and so forth.
A bit of background: I really had no idea, based on the summer school experience, how much the chronic absences (my weekly average absentee rate is 25 - 30 percent) and my students' utter inability to organize themselves and keep track of work would disrupt my ability to teach. I know this sort of thing is a perennial issue for every teacher, but like everything else, teaching in the Delta magnifies these sorts of problems. Most of my students' lives are chaotic; most have little or no organizational skill set; many seem unable to make the connection between effort and achievement, let alone attendance and achievement; and quite a few just simply don't care -- until report card day.
With 125 students, when we were about 12 weeks into the school year, I had written over 400 A's -- my symbol for absent, for whatever reason that there is no body in the seat -- in my attendance log.
So ...
I have a weekly vocabulary set of eight words, as most of you know, and a few handouts, study guides, and whatnot each week. These have become more important as we are working on a novel now, and they are completing comprehension and understanding study guides for sets of three or four chapters at a time.
I'm well-organized with tracking paperwork -- a skill brought from my many years managing printing and production of multiple publications. However, also managing 125 little teenage lives as they relate to the mountain of paperwork that an English class generates is another deal altogether. Each has a story about why and how work was missed. She knows she needs to take "that test" or "get that work" but has no idea which test or which work she's talking about. "You remember that was that day I got checked out? That work we did then."
The system that has been working pretty well involves keeping 2 desktop hanging files for each of my 6 periods. Each file box has 6 accordion hanging files, labeled for each period. "Handouts," or the Orange Bin, is where any handouts given out on any day will go, with the missing student's name, and the date on them so no one else can take them and turn them in. "Returned Work," or the Blue Bin, is where any graded homework or classwork is put for students who are not present when the work is returned.
So, in theory, when that Chapter 3-5 study guide is due, and a student says, "But I never got that handout!" I can look at my attendance log, see that she was there that day, and tell her she was given the handout. Sorry. I don't have another one. I don't copy two of everything so you can lose one. "But you remember, I had to leave early to get checked out!" Well, if you weren't here when I handed it out, it's in the Orange Bin with your name on it. Sorry.
Then there is the issue with vocabulary. The weekly words and sample context sentences, which I teach "live" on the board as class notes, are in my daily spiral log -- but that's my Bible, and I don't dare ever let a student take it away from my desk. They can sit in the seat beside my desk to copy any class notes, or a Do Now, but cannot walk away with it. Trouble is, so many are absent so much of the time that they spend way too much time negotiating this copying. So recently I decided to make a few copies of the vocab page and keep them in a file they could get to. Of course, the pages disappear. So I started typing them up on Sunday night so I could put more in the file and print more as needed. You guessed it: I'm constantly printing the list.
Add to this equation the handful of students who are at home suspended for 5 or 10 days at any given time, the student who was in a car accident and will be out for a two months, and so on forever.
EUREKA! Why didn't I think of it before?
8/08 UPDATE: Links to PDFs on the site are no longer active as I do not teach at this school anymore. I left March 28 for medical reasons, and am now teaching at a different school. I have kept the site live as an example of the basic set up. It was very successful (as most things are) for the students who chose to use it.
Lost your handout? No problem. Go print one yourself. Didn't get the vocab words Monday? No problem. They're on the blog. Many students do not have Internet access at home. Many barely have homes. But most have a friend who does, or they can use the school library (when it's open 2 periods a day). I can also send the blog link to the ISS room and the Alternative School building so I don't have to ferry work across campus every day.
I considered doing a daily post with the notes, etc. for each day, but don't want to add to my already bloated workload of carefully documenting each class period and what gets accomplished each day as they each fall behind or move more quickly than others. One step at a time. Maybe I'll add some "helpful links" or something. I'll continue to use the Blue and Orange Bins because they're working for the most part.
I just set it all up tonight, and I'm pretty optimistic about how it will work. I'm keeping it simple, which is key -- not having to create any additional content or do any additional steps, but rather just putting something I'm doing anyway in a convenient and accessible place.
Just another addition to my management toolbox. Heaven knows I need it.
[REQUIRED BLOG: EDSE 600 FIRST SEMESTER REFLECTION]
Change was what I wanted (thus the name) and I got it. Pretty much the only aspect of my life I recognize lately is the smell of my shampoo (which I now buy online because no place in the Delta sells it). I wanted a challenge, and I certainly got that, too. But how do my expectations match up to the reality?
I'm not sure at this point I even know what "the reality" is. Using the single article assumes there is, indeed, only one reality. And of course there isn't. When I read over the anticipatory entries, I realize that I had no idea how all-encompassing the experience would be.
It's like drowning every day.
Every day I am completely immersed in the reality of the Delta, the reality of teaching, the reality of what my life (oh, it was so nice just a little while ago) has become. I thought the year without an actual job would be a challenge. It was, and I suppose that by meeting it, and by learning to live with a lot of uncertainty I was preparing myself for the challenge of teaching in the Delta. Surely getting up at 4 a.m. to unload a truck gave me the physical stamina I've needed to get up and teach every day. I had never before appreciated how physically demanding teaching would be.
Professionally, I'm still struggling with whether it was wise to make a move like this, but I do think I'm succeeding as a teacher. What has amazed me most is how quickly I feel like I've been doing it a long time. I remember those days in summer school (remember those lesson plans with every second stage-directed and planned?) thinking I'd never be comfortable and confident in front of a class. How would I remember where I had set things down? How would I know everyone's name? And now, I'm completely at ease. It seems so natural to be there. And I know, it's a cliche, but really love those moments when my students "get it" -- even if it's only a few. In a way, that makes it all the better.
Students have told me, directly and indirectly, that I'm different from other teachers; that I make them work but in a good way that helps them learn. OK, some hate me, but if none did I wouldn't be doing my job.
And once again, I'm drowning in it. Every day. Weeks go by when virtually every conversation I have is about teaching. With one welcome exception, every person I interact with on a regular basis here is a teacher or somehow affiliated with a school. I know, or I hope, that at some point my life will begin to have some balance again. Workin' on that. But it's hard. I'm immersed. I have to force myself to leave school and teaching behind occasionally for a few hours.
Can I extend this metaphor? Can I tell you how the cycle of planning, teaching, adjusting, planning, grading, adjusting is like the waves that simply never let up?
Can I tell you I don't actually know how to swim?
[EDSE 600 REQUIRED BLOG]
Am I following the basic plan I outlined during summer training? Yes. Have I been able to avoid giving essay writing as a consequence? Yes. Do I give math as a consequence? You bet. Write those times tables. To 5, to 10, to 12. Do it again. Problem is, it becomes something else for me to keep track of.
Like many others I am stumped for the meaningful intermediate consequence between the warning and the write-up that doesn't end up taking away instructional time. My school doesn't do detention so I don't have that option. I can't enforce an after-school detention of my own (even though I'm there Tuesdays and Thursdays until 5 and there are late buses) because so many of them work or have childcare responsibilities.
My basic plan of rewards is working well. At first they were too cool for the tickets, but now they work hard to get one for using a vocab word during a discussion, or for asking a challenging question, or for working at the bell, or whatnot. A few have made decorative envelopes to keep them in. They love seeing me reach into my little apron as I head down the aisle in their direction.
Competition between classes has worked, too. I don't have much empty wall space that I can reach without a chair, so the class-on-class competition had to be displayed vertically, and in a place where they couldn't get to it during class changes. So the back of the classroom door is the "Race to Space" where there are six Velcro strips (yes, those of you who know me know how much I detest the sound of Velcro, but that should tell you how much I care about this) with cut-out spaceships numbered for the class periods. They move up or down each day depending on the behavior of the whole class. Peer pressure works.
The progress of the other classes is a huge topic of conversation. And I hear them shushh each other by saying "Hush, y'all. We're gonna move down!" Sometime all I have to do to quiet the hum of chatter is walk silently to the door, slooooowly peel the spaceship off (This is where the vile sound of Velcro comes in handy) and move it down a bit.
The first class to the top of the door gets a full class period break. In the meantime, the first class to the level of the doorknob got to teach me to Crank dat Soulja Boy. I will admit I vetted the competition a bit because there are some classes in which I knew it would be unwise to show vulnerability. First period won. My class of 12 unusually mature sophomores.
I am learning that the front row is not always the best place for the clowns who talk too much. They sit sideways and can catch everyone else's eye. When I put them in the back, no one looks at them. They lose their audience. And it's easy enough for me to stand in the back to be near them.
I am learning that sometimes stopping in the middle of the hall and simply watching them will quiet them in the lunch line.
And I've still got the kitten.
My biggest problem? Not engaging. Not getting sucked into their deal. This is a problem for me in general. I tend to be a responder so it's very difficult not to have a retort when they mouth off. I can get sarcastic. (Who me?) And that's wrong. I've lost it and shamed a student. I lose sleep over that. I've confessed it like a 12-stepper,
