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.

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

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.

Winding down

I feel like the Atlanta Institute is beginning to wind down. However, I am afraid to say it in case my words come back to haunt me… But here are my reasonings:

• We have Friday off because of the July 4^th holiday; so this is a four-day week.
• Instead of having sessions in the morning this week, we have differentiated time to observe our fellow corps members teaching. This will be a nice break from the usual curriculum-grind and will give us an opportunity to pick up teaching tips from our peers.
• Next week, we will not be teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday because our students will be taking the CRCT exam. Thus, we will not have to prepare lesson plans for those days (hallelujah!) as we will be proctoring the exam during our normal classroom teaching hours.

Also, the Indianapolis TFA Regional staff arrived yesterday and will be staying until Tuesday. Their email announcing their visit read:

Hey Indy Corps!  We hope all is going well in Atlanta.  Assuredly, you are working relentlessly to build your skills in the classroom and laying the groundwork for becoming the solid teachers who will undoubtedly impact the lives of many students over the next two years. Please know that your regional staff is incredibly proud of the hard work you have already done and eagerly anticipates your return to Indiana. Before that, however, the Indianapolis Program Team and the Transition Team Leaders are heading to Atlanta to get a glimpse of Institute and see you in action. We will be there from June 27th- 30th.

Last night, we had an Indy Corps Social and today we had personal meetings with our Indy program directors to discuss our Institute experience and look ahead to our transition back to Indianapolis. Tomorrow and Tuesday the Indy staff will be stopping into observe us in action in our classrooms, and tomorrow we have an Indy staff-facilitated meeting to talk about our continued development upon our return to Indianapolis in two weeks.

Having the Indy staff here in Atlanta has forced me to begin to look ahead and my long-term job of teaching in Indianapolis. All of which I am very psyched about.

Relentless pursuit

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as resting on the Sabbath at Institute. All TFA corps members and staff are hard at work on Sundays preparing for the upcoming week. Corps Members are finishing up their upcoming week’s lesson plans while staff have office hours and meetings all day.

Lance, the Sutton School Director, told us the first week that nothing will ever be due on Saturdays at Institute because that’s a “sacred day.” Staff have to work Sunday through Friday and thus do not want to receive anything from corps members on Saturdays that could distract them from their one day of doing nothing TFA-related.

In everything they do, TFA staff members are working alongside corps members doing the same or more in some cases. For example, the staff are up bright and early on weekdays to organize the day’s lunch-making, breakfast and bus transportation to the schools. They are then doing their various jobs all day and some jobs don’t end until 12:00 AM that night (for example, the computer labs and copy centers are manned by TFA staff until midnight). My Corps Member Advisor, Liz, and the other TFA school staff team are at Sutton (and the other schools) the same hours we are. On Sundays and during weekday evenings, they have office hours and observation debriefing meetings with corps members. Also, they have tight turnaround deadlines for getting our rough draft lesson plans back to us. I know that Liz was up until 2:00 AM on Friday reviewing lesson plans!

It is nice that the TFA staff don’t expect corps members to do anything that they don’t do as well. They practice what they preach: the relentless pursuit.

Data is life

Prof. Coplin always says “Excel is life.” But, I think Teach For America’s motto should be “Data is life” since it thrives on data. Each Corps Member is expected to obsessively track his or her students’ academic results and growth at Institute and back in our region. The Institute staff gave us this massive student assessment tracker to help track our students’ growth. It is the most intense and complicated Excel spreadsheet I have ever seen! Luckily, it is set up so that it does most of the calculations for me and all I have to do is insert numbers.

TFA is so serious about data that our Corps Member Advisor (CMA) will not meet with us unless we have it. My CMA, Liz, said, “There’s no point in meeting without data. I won’t know how to help you.”

How do we get data to put in our trackers? Here at Institute we have to give our students daily assessments that are perfectly aligned with the day’s objective. When preparing our lesson plan, we are suppose to first create our assessment by looking at the day’s objective and then create our actual lesson plan (presentation of new material, guided practice, etc.). TFA calls this process “backwards-planning” when as a teacher you think first about your end goal (your students passing your assessment) and then you teach your lesson so that it gets you and your students to your end goal.

I personally feel that assessments are very revealing and basically determine the success and effectiveness of a teacher. Thus, I want my students to do well on them! I get so excited when my students receive 80% or above (TFA’s determination of success) on their quizzes, because that means I was a good teacher that day as my lesson was aligned to my objective. TFA doesn’t encourage us to teach anything that isn’t in the state assigned objectives until our students have mastered the state’s objectives first. For example, yesterday I had the following objective:

Students will be able to define and identify the elements of plot in a fictional text (subplots, climax, rising and falling actions).

I thought it only made sense to also include the plot elements of introduction and conclusion into my lesson. However, my Corps Member Advisor told me to take out everything that wasn’t in the state’s objective. So I only ended up teaching rising actions, climax and falling actions.

The National TFA Office receives all corps members’ tracker spreadsheets. They then combine all of the trackers together to see how effective TFA corps members were that year. They even get our Institute trackers because they want to see which Institutes were most successful and how other Institutes can be improved.

Although I am not a huge “numbers person” (i.e. I don’t like Math), I am a very competitive person. So I like having to keep track of all of this data because numbers don’t lie. They show how well students did or didn’t do and which corps members are the best.

It is almost bragging rights among corps members to see who had the most growth in their classroom. The most literacy gains I have heard about from a corps member in one school year was 4.3 years. That’s a lot. Hopefully, I will have significant literacy gains to talk about as well next summer!

Crazy over-achievers

Throughout my life, people have often called me an “over-achiever.” However, at Institute I am just average since every corps member here is also a hyper over-achiever. In fact, compared to some people, I actually feel like an under-achiever. There are some crazy corps members here who I have no idea how they are doing Institute on top of other demands in their lives. The following are a few examples of what I’m talking about:

Example #1: A new St. Louis corps member who is also teaching at Sutton Middle School this summer got married yesterday. She flew home on Friday, had her wedding on Saturday and flew back to Institute today. I can’t imagine trying to make it through my first week of Institute, plan a wedding and then get married all in one week!

Example #2: Walt and Heidi are a young married couple and fellow 2009 Indianapolis Corps Members. They are also expecting their first baby in October. Heidi is currently five months pregnant and going through all of the same stresses of Institute as everyone else: the early mornings, long hours, overwhelming assignments, etc. She is also planning on teaching in her new Indianapolis classroom in the fall up to her due date and then only taking six weeks off of work so that she can get back to her students and classroom. That is dedication!

Example #3: I recently found out that Tom, my attorney co-lab partner, founded an organization 20 years ago that is the only nonprofit in Atlanta that solely represents inmates on death row. After being accepted into TFA, he turned the directorship over to another attorney but is obviously still heavily involved. This evening he is at his office reading through briefings for a client he said could very well be executed during the next month. Tom believes he is innocent, though, and the U.S. Supreme Court is currently reviewing the case. So on top of all of the Institute work he has to do, Tom is also in the process of trying to save someone’s life! When asked if he ever gets emotionally attached to his clients he answered, “That’s why after 20 years of this work you join Teach For America.” Oh yes, he also has six daughters, six chickens and a dog at home.

So any time I feel like complaining about how horrible Institute is, I just need to remember that at least I didn’t get married this weekend, am not pregnant or simultaneously working another job trying to save someone’s life.

P.S. Tom is a Syracuse University College of Law alum!