Little joys

Today was slightly rough, because it was my first day back in the classroom after three days of professional development (last Thursday and Friday I was at the National Middle School Association Conference and yesterday I had to attend the IPS Title I Reading Professional Development Day). As predicted after three days of having a substitute, my kids were off of their chains. However, the two little joys that I am trying to focus on as I am preparing for my school day tomorrow are:

1. One of my lowest-level 8^th grade readers actually turned in a three-paragraph essay that he wrote during class (he usually never turns in anything). The writing prompt was: Who do you admire the most? He wrote about his girlfriend (who is also one of my students).  He opened his essay (which he entitled “My One and Only Love” with the following:

“The person I admire is Danielle because she is a wonderful person, thankful person, caring person, nice person. When I first met Danielle she was a nice wonderful kind person…”

While his essay continued on to contain some explicit details of their relationship that I really didn’t care to know about, at least he turned in something! That is definitely an accomplishment.

1. Secondly, one of my 7^th graders wrote the following in his writing prompt template (the underlined words in italics are his words exactly as he wrote them- spelling, capitalization and grammatical errors not edited- and the other words are in the template I provided him with):

The person I admire most is Ms. Hancock. There are several reasons I admire this person. First of all, this person help me to work on my Reading Essay and not get in trobel. Secondly, Ms. hancock teach me. Furthermore, she taught me to learn and how to do a Essay And Read.

I am thankful for these two glimmers of light and encouragement in my otherwise frustrating and dismal world of teaching.

One wish

If I had one wish, I would wish I could rewind this school year back to August and start all over. There are so many things I would redo including my long-term and unit plans, my management plans and how I reacted or didn’t react to certain situations. I have learned so much in the less than three months time frame I have been in the classroom. If I had the knowledge I know now and could begin again, things would be hundreds of times better for both my students and me.

Unfortunately, I can’t push a magic “rewind” button and start this adventure again. So I have to continue trudging through messes I have already made trying to tweak and make improvements when I can.

That being said, there are two sort of positive things going for me:

1. Generally, people like the way my classroom looks.  My Marian University Professor says that I excel at the very important aspect of “creating an environment and culture for Reading.”  I just call it being good at decorating. However, if others want to call it “creating an environment and culture that fosters reading” and that is in the textbooks for being good at something teaching related, then I’ll take it!
2. I posted a project on DonorsChoose.org which is a nonprofit that allows public school teachers from around the nation post classroom project requests. Then the public can donate to specific projects. Once a project reaches its funding goal, Donors Choose delivers the materials to the teacher’s school.  My Program Director, Andrea, thought it was awesome I have at least posted something as many first year corps members haven’t gotten around to doing that yet…

The project I posted is a proposal to get high-interest books for my students. My proposal explains:

“Many of my students do not own books nor have easy access to ones that interest them in order to truly become passionate about reading and want to participate in RIOT (Reading Is Our Thing)- which requires silent reading in and outside of school. Thus, I want to provide my students with “page-turning,” “can’t put down” books that interest them and contain stories, characters and plot lines that they can relate to. This will foster a short- and long-term desire for reading and help them to gain the reading skills needed to become successful readers.”

To read my entire proposal and/or to support it, please click here.

So there are some things going right…  Yet a lot of things that are still not going the way I’d like. However, I am trying to focus on the little accomplishments so I don’t get bogged down with all of the failures.

Dark month

Thank goodness October is finally over. October has been categorized by many Teach For America staff and corps members as a bad month in general for everyone. At the beginning of the month, my Program Director, Andrea, sent out the following email to her corps members:

…I remember very well what October of my first year of teaching felt like, so I wanted to share some thoughts with you.

October can be a dark month. Many of you are beyond the survival phase of the new teacher cycle and have run head first into disillusionment.  You are tired, you have run out of catchy lesson openers, your kids have figured out what annoys you the very most and you have likely discovered, first hand, some of the challenges of a large bureaucracy. All of this is making you wonder if you can do this, if you WANT to do this, and if it can even be done.

All of these feeling, questions, and doubts are normal and there are thousands before you that have felt the same way. There are a hundred ways to deal with these feelings, frustrations and stresses, and there are a few ways NOT to.  I have seen (and experienced) my share of poor coping mechanisms and would like to illuminate them to you here. If you are doing any of these, stop now!

1. Staying up all night, keeping up institute pace and, generally burning yourself out. Clearly, your classroom and students’ performance will suffer if you aren’t all there. But, your own health and sanity will take a nose dive as well. This is a marathon, not a sprint. That means, keep a steady pace, start out slow, enjoy the crowd cheering for you, and eat packets of runner’s goo every few miles (goo being a metaphor for anything that makes you happy).

• Prioritize your time
• Figure out when you are efficient and work then
• Talk to your program director to streamline your practice
• Work in small chunks
• Set a deadline for leaving work or going to bed and stick to it

2. Losing your sense of humor. What you are doing is obviously important and urgent and huge. But, it’s also extremely funny. You have to keep a sense of humor and remember that although you were really frustrated when a student yelled out that you look just like carrot top (a really unattractive male comedian with excessively large hair), looking in the mirror it’s actually sort of true and really amusing. [This is a true story]. 

• Go out and have fun
• Designate a day where you don’t work or talk about school (preferably not a week day)
• Remember something you like and MAKE TIME to do it

3. Having a warped sense of perspective. You are right; this is hard, really really hard. Will it always be this hard? NO. Will you always want to vomit every Sunday night? NO. Will you always feel this inadequate, inept, frustrated, tired, and lost? NO. Seriously. You are struggling, as you knew you would. You will be that teacher that you envisioned, it just takes time.

• Talk to any 2008 corps member, they were there
• Talk to your college friends about their first year in a job, any first year is hard

There are a million reasons you could come up with to walk away.  Those are nothing when you consider the value and importance of what you are doing every day.  I’m sure it’s clear, now that you have met your students, that their educational past has not been incredibly strong.  This is what you are here to do, you are here to teach and change these students’ life possibilities.  Right now, it may not feel that way, but there is no doubt in my mind that every interaction you have with your students is one step closer to that ideal.  You ARE doing what you came here to do. 

October is temporary. Disillusionment is temporary. Remember why you came, reach out if you are struggling, and know you are surrounded by people that want you to and can help you succeed…

Andrea’s description of October as a “dark month” full of “disillusionment” couldn’t have been a more accurate description of my past month. Now that November 1^st has arrived, hopefully there will be a slight glimmer of light for me somewhere. Although, it is Sunday and I still want to throw up thinking about having to walk into school tomorrow.

One flicker of light that helps me to persevere is knowing that there are only 18 more school days until Thanksgiving Break and 32 school days until Winter Break (but who’s counting?).

For all TFA 2009 corps members, let Andrea’s email be a source of hope for you that apparently October’s doom and gloom is temporary and something more may come out of what we are doing. Probably not today, tomorrow or next week. But someday.

Hiatus

After a brief hiatus from my blog, I am back. The hiatus was never intentional, but one that came from a first year teacher’s shear lack of time and energy. Because of this, I never felt that I had the time to sit down and provide an accurate reflection of what I’ve been going through. I still don’t feel like anything I write will truly provide a crystal clear portrayal of my daily life. But writing something is better than nothing.

Tom’s story

Tom Dunn, my Institute co-partner this summer in Atlanta, made The New York Times! His intriguing story of death row lawyer turned inner city school teacher graced the newspaper’s Education section yesterday:

ATLANTA — “Pick your head up, buddy,” Tom Dunn said to Darius Nash, who had fallen asleep during the morning’s reading drills. “Sabrieon, sit down, buddy,” he called to a wandering boy. “Focus.”

Mr. Dunn’s classroom is less than three miles from his old law office, where he struggled to keep death row prisoners from the executioner’s needle. This summer, after serving hundreds of death row clients for 20 grinding, stressful years, he traded the courthouse for Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.

The turmoil of middle school turns many teachers away, said the school’s principal, Danielle S. Battle. Students’ bodies and minds are changing, and disparities in learning abilities are playing out.

“A lot of people will say, ‘I’ll do anything but middle school,’ ” she said.

But this is precisely where Mr. Dunn chose to be, having seen too many people at the end of lives gone wrong, and wanting to keep these students from ending up like his former clients. He quotes Frederick Douglass: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

To read more of this New York Times article entitled “Once Convicts’ Last Hope, Now a Students’ Advocate”, click here.

If I was a quitter…

After 2 ½ weeks as a teacher, I have decided that this is the hardest and most exhausting, humbling, time-consuming, stressful and high-stakes  job I will probably ever hold. After completing my two years with Teach For America, everything I will ever do again should be relatively easy in comparison. In fact, if I was a quitter, I’d quit this teaching thing. Sometimes, in the moment, all of the trials and stress just don’t seem worth it. For example, this week I wanted to throw in the towel after:

• Fight #2 broke out in my room.
• On Friday, only 8 out of 80 students turned in their silent reading home logs (which is their ONLY assignment in my class).
• My classroom management still sucks with the majority of my 8^th Grade classes and some of my 7th Grade classes.
• Having to deal with emotional, disrespectful monsters (a.k.a. middle school girls) on a daily basis.
• A student wrote West Side B**** on my chalkboard while I was teaching (I wanted to tell him that I actually live on the north side… But I didn’t).
• When I asked one of my students to stop talking, she replied “It’s a free country.” (Not in my classroom it isn’t.)
• I received my first pay stub from IPS on Friday. However, my actual paycheck never ended up in my bank account. IPS told me that it was my bank’s fault. My bank told me it was IPS’ fault. Somehow I believe my bank over IPS… IPS sent me an email in response with three words: “Payroll is investigating.” I hope their “investigation” is quick considering I haven’t received a paycheck all summer!
• My kids still can’t read (okay, I realize this was a very unrealistic goal).

My TFA Program Director told me, “Katelyn, this is why we ask applicants during interviews if they have ever quit anything before because we know you will want to quit this.”

Yes, I agree. I want to quit. However, I’m not a quitter and there is too much at stake for my students if I quit. Therefore, I will continue to teach for the next two years no matter what- through plenty and in want; in joy and in sorrow; in sickness and in health; through bad days and good days. Somehow, I will make it.

A letter to a student

Dear Ralf,

Today, I was trying to teach identifying problems and solutions in our 7th Grade Reading class via the Somebody-Wanted-But-So summarization strategy. I had gone over the problem and solution from Cinderella’s point of view in the classic fairytale Cinderella. We had read the story and discussed how to apply this strategy as a class (or so I thought).

It was now your turn to try to determine the problem and solution from the point of view of Cinderella’s Prince. As the other students were silently filling in their graphic organizers, you stared blankly at the worksheet. I walked over to try and prompt you. Try to get you to say the answer, to say what I was thinking.

“Ralf, what did the Prince want? Why did the Prince want to have a ball?” I prompted.

 You looked up and solemnly answered, “To play catch?”

During my whole lesson today, you thought Cinderella was about a baseball game. You never knew we were talking about a “ball” as in a dance.  After realizing this, I hurriedly tried to explain this to you. You looked at me blankly with a face that blatantly read “I don’t get this.” I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to say or teach it differently so you would get it.

I am sorry that I failed as your teacher today. I am sorry that I couldn’t explain how to comprehend a text in a way that made sense to you. I am still learning how to teach you… How to reach you. Please hang in there until I do.

Sincerely,

Ms. Hancock

Some encouragement

Jennifer, my summer school student who read to me nightly over the phone while in Atlanta, called me this past Thursday while I was at the John Marshall staff retreat. When I returned her call today, she knew right away that it was me:

Me: “May I speak to Jennifer?”

Jennifer: “Hey, Miss Hancock!”

Me: “Hi, Jennifer! It’s so good to hear from you.”

Jennifer: “Guess what? I found out that I passed the reading portion of the CRCT last week!”

Me: “Excellent! I am so proud of you. I knew all of your hard work this summer would pay off.”

Jennifer: “Yea, I scored 12 points over the passing score.”

Me: “That is wonderful!”

Unfortunately, I found out that Jennifer didn’t pass the Math portion of the exam and has a hearing scheduled on Monday with the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) Appeals Committee to determine if she can still move onto high school this fall. She said that she will call me next week to let me know the outcome of her hearing.

Note: For APS 8^th grade students, they must pass both the Reading and Math portions of the CRCT exams in order to graduate from 8^th to 9^th grade. However, for students who do not pass, there is an appeals process that provides students an opportunity to be reviewed by administrators. Veteran teachers at my school in Atlanta told me that normally these students are allowed to graduate to high school as long as they showed effort in summer school.

Jennifer’s news of passing the CRCT Reading exam is extremely encouraging. At times this summer, I wondered if as their Reading teacher I was helping my kids at all. And now, as I prepare for my classroom in Indianapolis, I get overwhelmed thinking about everything I have to do before the first day of school and if I even have the ability and knowledge to teach anything. Knowing that with my help Jennifer was able to pass this high stakes CRCT Reading exam is heartening and helps me stay positively focused on the daunting tasks ahead of me this school year.

Reconstruction

I spent Monday through Thursday of this week at John Marshall Community High School (JMCHS). I not only met many of my new colleagues, but also found out that I will be teaching 7^th and 8^th grade Title I Reading, started preparing my classroom and learned more about where the school has been and what the “reconstruction” vision is for this new year. Monday and Tuesday were content training days and Wednesday and Thursday acted as the school’s staff retreat which focused on going through the JMCHS teacher handbook.

The IPS Associate Superintendent, Dr. Johnson, visited JMCHS on Monday. She announced that there were three schools that the State wanted to take over in June and that JMCHS was at the top the list. However, they are giving JMCHS one more chance to turnaround and have charged Michael Sullivan, the new JMCHS Principal, to tackle this daunting task.

So far Mr. Sullvian has highly impressed me with his leadership qualities, ideas for change and determination and potential to make these ideas a reality. He is a former lawyer turned educator and noted that he is a Christian and hopes that this will be evident through his words and actions on a daily basis. Wednesday morning he gave a retreat-kickoff speech to the JMCHS staff to provide his vision for the school’s future and what we as a staff can do to help it turn around.

He said, “Our kids here have to compete. I am here for the kids. Employers are not going to say ‘I know John Marshall had a few hard years…’ No, our kids will have to compete with private and charter school educated kids for jobs.”

Mr. Sullvian also noted that one way or another we as JMCHS staff are going to support these kids. We can either support them from the front end via teaching or the backend via our taxes. Along these lines, he said that our teaching must have a connection with the real world. Kids can’t just know algebraic expressions but not know how to conduct themselves when pulled over by the police.

Next week I have IPS new teacher training Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. However, on Monday and Friday, I am sure that I will be in my classroom slaving away trying to get ready for the first day of school on Wednesday, August 12^th.

Good luck

A 2009 study funded by America’s Promise Alliance ranked Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) 50^th out of our nation’s 50 largest cities’ school districts in terms of graduation rate. Although the common perception is not to categorize Indianapolis with Detroit, Cleveland or Baltimore public schools, the reality is that IPS students are less likely to graduate from high school than students living in these other big cities.

Today, one of the Indianapolis TFA Program Directors confirmed something that I already knew: John Marshall Community High School where I will be teaching is what some people consider the worst IPS school in the district. Every time I mention that I will be teaching there people respond with a sigh and a weary “good luck.” An Indianapolis Star reporter wrote that recent issues have “sent this school into a tailspin of chaos and unruliness.” The academic results of the school show similar struggles. For the 2008-2009 school year, the average percent of students who passed both the Reading and Math portions of the ISTEP in the State of Indiana was 74%. However, at Marshall the average percent pass was a mere 33%.

While I am a bit intimidated by everything I have heard about Marshall, a school where 73% of the student body qualifies for Free Lunch, I am also extremely excited. I didn’t apply to Teach For America to teach at a school with no problems. I applied to make a difference at a school and in the lives of students who actually need me. There are many good things happening to breathe new life into Marshall this year including practically an entire new school administration and staff and new community programs.

I can’t wait to dive in, get my hands dirty, learn a lot and work 24/7 to help bring about the changes so desperately needed at Marshall. Many states determine the number of future prison beds needed by factoring the number of children who cannot read on grade level in 4^th grade when tested. This is why it is imperative that I teach like lives depend on it… Because they actually do.