Way Overdue Post

In a nutshell, I have fallen down on all lines of communication. I don't remember the last time that I talked on the phone with my parents, I haven't talked to my brother in over a month on my way to my reunion, and the only real conversation I've had with anyone I reconnected with over reunion was conducted while I simultaneously changed clothes, worked out, and went to the grocery store.

But perhaps its better that the last weeks have been a blur, because I think I would fall into a bad state if I dwelled on some of the details. My teaching has utterly fallen apart and any semblance of management has gone out the window. I actually had a student say "man, why does science have to come in the way of our computer time?" (note: she was supposed to be using the computer to do research for a science project). Numerous people in my life at school and at home have undergone serious tragedies -- including the co-worker who shares my name being part of this. When it feels like everyone else around me is going through difficult stuff, it just makes me feel guilty about my own problems.

Guilt. The word keeps coming up over and over again in my head. I feel guilty of failing my students -- even though my class made 1.3 years of reading growth and my class average is on benchmark in reading for the district, my students are still not passing reading tests. During orientation to TFA last summer and learning about the expectations of "Significant gains" according to TFA, I remember someone asking about the people who fell below limited gains and having the question being dismissed as unlikely. Well, take a look -- here's what it looks like.

I feel guilty about even having my job. A large number of teachers have been displaced across the district, including a wonderful teacher at my school that has had an immensely positive influence on my daily attitude and teaching style. I've inferred and also been pretty much told that being part of TFA is the only reason I didn't get let go. Then I feel guilty, because the question that's been crossing my mind for a while now is for my second year, why should I stay in TFA? Then I feel selfish because its framed in terms of what am I, and subsequently my students, getting from it? How different would my second year look if I stayed at my school but wasn't part of TFA?

Maybe I'm in a unique position, but I'm not surrounded by rah-rah TFA spirit. I feel like its held against me at my school. Several of the people I spend the most time with have already quit or spent most of the year debating it. There are days where I've cursed the mysterious TFA process that placed me here in Nashville instead of back at home where there are friends and family that I miss deeply. I think the nadir was probably when my name was said at the 2nd year's Alumni dinner -- my last name was said to distinguish from another CM who is memorable enough not to have to be referred to by her last name every time. And if that seems like I'm reading too much into it, my name wasn't even pronounced right.

My personal long-term plan has included TFA since 10th grade, ever since I decided I wanted to teach in a low-income school. I knew it would be hard -- I've had numerous friends go into teaching and spent time in some of their classrooms. I loved the idea of teaching elementary school and having a formative influence on my kids.  I get to teach American History, my all time favorite subject. I didn't have to ultimately choose between teaching or working at a museum because of the unique curriculum at my school.

But if happy is what happens when your dreams come true, then why do I feel so unhappy?

It's Quitting Time

No, not me. I'm still here. But the return from Fall Break has been rough for everyone. It was like a respite from work reminded people of how much they give up to work as a teacher and the realization has set in a discouraged feeling. No one has ever quit the Nashville corps, but if you talked with any first year corps member they will probably tell you that they've thought about it, some more seriously than others. Coming back to starting a new graduate class that actually is trying to get us to do a teaching practicum on top of our regular job didn't make that feeling any better. Now, it's only half an hour a week, but the logistics is perhaps what made people most frustrated. I've only quit a few things in my life and let me tell you, it has not been accomplished without serious guilt and second thoughts.

Now, in contrast, I came back from a great back catching up with friends from back in college. While I know that teaching made for a difficult first year out of school, I realized how many of the things I'm feeling and going through are not unique to my job. Many of my friends feel overworked, exhausted, and are not entirely pleased with their jobs. I'd often wondered if I'd been part of the St. Louis corps if I would have been happier because I have so many friends in the city, but I realized I probably would have hung out in the same places and just felt guilty for not seeing my friends as much as I wanted to. One of the girls that I interviewed with about a year ago who was placed in St. Louis has already quit the corps there which was hard to hear.

When I came back, my uncle was in town. Now, now he and I had had dinner during week 1 of my teaching and this was week 10, beginning of the second quarter. We talked about a lot of things, including how teaching was going, and he said that he could tell from how I was talking about things that I sounded more confident. And I realized, I do feel better about teaching. I'm still struggling in a lot of ways, but since the beginning of the year I've figured a lot of things out. Do I still wish some things would change that I have no control over? Yes. Of course. Do I realize that some of the people I thought would be helpful aren't the best channel for advice? Yes. For sure. Is my data showing the kind of results I was hoping it would? No, not exactly.

They say that teachers hit a low in October, but then it begins to go back up. While I know that many of my friends here are struggling (despite being in one of the best ranked regions holla), I'm starting to feel like maybe that turnaround is starting. Did I put in an insane amount of work this week? Yes. I've taken to underestimating how much work I do for our Americorps hours out of habit as if no one would believe me that I put in 16, 17 hour days on a regular basis. But even though I'm exhausted, there's this new kind of energy that's pushing me through some of the work that I'm doing. Who knows how long it's sustainable, but I'm going to ride it however far it takes me.

So about the title to the entry? I'm quitting thinking about quitting. I'm quitting thinking about all the other things I could have been doing. I'm quitting thinking about all the things I wish were different that I have no control over. And finally, it's something I don't feel guilty about quitting.

Happy (Belated) Birthday Amurica!

It's been a while since I've actually had a weekend to do exactly what I wanted to do, and I'm afraid that while the original intention was to actual make some phone and skype calls, I wanted to sleep. Or rather, needed to. I spent Friday evening enjoying some time with one of my Nashville roommates here away from school and responsibilities. However, it now appears that wherever there are small children around, I will revert to teacher mode. Being at the aquarium and looking around in wonder made me remember what I love about education, and museum education in particular. The kids were fascinated by everything around them and excited to engage with the presentations. That, is the best part of teaching, not the fighting and the lying and the constant breaking of pencils (it's not an accident. They do it on purpose. To torment me so that the sound of the electric sharpener never leaves my brain).

I spent much of Saturday sleeping, as somewhere in the jostling of my purse at the museum, I accidently activated my alarm clock on my phone. The one that is set to go off at 5:30 in the morning. I was so confused when it went off, especially since my phone was in the living room and I was deep asleep -- although I missed my roommate this weekend while she was back in Nashville, I'm so glad it did not wake her up as well at that hour! Needless, I fought any urge to get up and be productive and, let me tell you, --- it was glorious. I did finally get up to head out to a barbecue that some of the 2009 corps members threw in celebration of the 4th. I've barely had a chance to see some of the other Nashville corps since we started teaching since we're at several different schools and teaching different grades/subjects, so it was yet another reminder this weekend that I was a real person sometimes not just "Ms. A"

Ms. A, What's wrong with your eyes?

Looking back over this week, all I can think about was how rough it was. But in all honestly, that was mostly just Friday. Friday was a complete mess of a day, from start to finish, both from a teacher point of view and probably student point of view. But let's start with the beginning of the week.

I started off the week feeling good -- I thought I had gotten ahead by doing more work over the weekend. Turns out I was right on track. At least that's not behind? I started off the week with two of the simplest objectives, related to place values.

Monday: Objective 2. Student mastery on diagnostic? 31 percent. Student mastery after my class? 80 percent.

Now, for all you non TFA people, 80 percent mastery is like the benchmark of success. In essence, after I graded my assessments, I shrieked and lept out of my chair in the workroom. Now, a few children were absent but a mix of those who would have gotten it and others that probably would just not have even attempted it.

Tuesday could have had similar results. However, whereas some students were missing on Monday, ALL 13 of them showed up on Tuesday. Including the girl who was asked not to come back unless she brought grandma (who also attended my class), the ELL student who thought was moving, and the child who came on the first day and hadn't been back since. Meaning, he'd missed 6 days of school. My Faculty Adviser had told us to take two of those students off the roster -- I was short a few copies of my classwork and had to meekly approach the office to use the copier (a big no-no in most cases since TFA provides free printing for us at Georgia Tech).

Wednesday revealed a huge miscommunication between me and a coteacher. This was also the day that someone from Nashville staff observed me, and that I was videotaped. I have yet to see the videotape. While I don't necessarily want to see what my face looked like as I realized that these children were so unprepared for the material in my lesson, I am anxious to see what my face looked like when a child, who usually does not participate, was excited to read the word problem off the board. What was "J spent $1.19 on a set of pencils" somehow came out as "J spent $1.19 on a set of panties"

My class on Thursday went fairly well (Happy Birthday to me!) and my class mastery went up another 12 points.

Friday. As much as the students are ready for the weekend, trust me, teachers are ready for it too. We had so many behavioral breakdown issues that it was hard to turn around without seeing another child doing something that they expressly were told not to do. I entered my class in the wrong mindset, having just had an emotional conversation with my CMA about how to make progress with my kids. My class this week has been at the very end of the day, and the class was losing it

--"Ms. A, Ms. A, I don't know how to DO this" (followed by a perfect score on the assessment"

--"Oh My GAWD" (when told she needed to write her multiplication answers in both forms, ie AxB is the same as BxA)

--"I have 30 tickets now." (No, we exchange tickets for prizes in the morning. You will have to wait) "I have 30 tickets now"

The kids get a prize on Fridays: If they can get enough class points, they can listen to a Michael Jackson song. For some reason, all the children are obsessed with Michael (aside from one, who loves Janet more). This week's goal was 115. By the end of class, they had 114. I told them that if they could follow our line up procedure, I would go ahead and give them that last point. Not only could they not do that, they talked during an intercom announcement (an automatic point if they are silent for it). I had to be the one to tell them that they were getting no Michael this week.

As one of the other teachers helped to get them out the door, I turned my back to my kids and tried to hold in tears. I couldn't give one concise reason for it then, and even after a day of distinctly non-teaching related activities (World of Coke and World Cup), I can't exactly place my finger on why it all happened the way it did.

For now, I'm focusing on the positives. I rated pretty well on TFA's overly complicated rubric for teaching and have a clearer idea of in what areas I need to improve. I managed to use cubes to teach my lesson on Thursday. I am using a basketball on Monday to teach. I heard from my school in Nashville, and I'll be teaching 4th grade -- my first choice!

First Day of School: Failure?

Today was the first day that I got the chance to teach. I had my teacher voice, my teacher outfit, my lesson plan, and an activity to make math concepts more visual to students. My objective? Students will be able to do subtraction with regrouping (not across a zero). On the diagnostic, only one child mastered this objective out of 12. The one ELL kid who reads at a preschool level.

The start of the class was fine. The kids were tired after 100 minutes of reading, so we took a "brain break" (For those that will understand -- tomorrow, we will bacon sizzle) to get ready to switch to math. I started off with an example that I walked through, checking at each step for volunteers. I had several of the same volunteers over and over. Several people were NOT in a good mood after reading. I knew one student had been taken out of the classroom and brought back in time for math with me.

My class time was split oddly so that I had 20 minutes before lunch and 20 minutes after, which included the transition time in the hallway. While I initially though this would be a huge problem, it ended up being a bit of a god-send.

The Block Debacle

Since my lesson plan involved teaching with base-10 blocks, I thought I would introduce them before lunch and continue afterward. My class had been pretty good with directions (aside from some shouting out) until we got to the blocks. Each table had a set in their table bucket and while some kids had noticed them earlier, most of them did not until I said the disastrous phrase.

"Ok class. Today, we're going to use blocks to --"

I barely got past that line before kids had opened up the neat ziploc packages and dumped them all over the table. I tried to stop them, to get out my directions, but the fact that these were blocks AND they stacked together was like giving kids Legos. One table managed to somewhat follow directions, but you'd have thought that the other kids were at home in their rooms with the blocks making big castles and fortresses. Unfortunately, this meant that the kids who were trying to listen at those tables couldn't pay attention. This went on for longer than I care to admit to in a quantitative assessment.

And here's where the teacher voice came in. In summary, I said --

"Class, it is clear that we are not ready to work with blocks today. When we get back from lunch, there will be no blocks on the table for anyone."

I went on to include stuff about taking other peoples learning time, but I think they just shut off after I said no more blocks. A few people were rowdy on the way to lunch, and on the way back was worse. I soon discovered that one student had not been given her meds that morning for what I'm guessing is ADHD. We'd gotten a new student that morning that no one had seen before and sat him in what has to be the worst spot for him in the entire room.

For the second half of the class, I had the one good table try to model what we were doing. That worked somewhat better, but from now on I think I'm going to pass at the blocks.

The most frustrating part was that my assessment was too long and complicated for most of these kids. The ELL student got it all right, but then again she was the only one in the class who had gotten it on the diagnostic. I did notice some patterns in they're work, and it's such basic subtraction things that it almost made me cry. How on Earth was I supposed to teach regrouping if you can't even subtract 5-3?

But I keep telling myself that tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow's topic is similar, so we can do some review.

But NO BLOCKS.