stop the violence

Today, after a month of teaching in which I have been nearly immobilized by insecurities about my instructional ability, my classroom management, my seemingly-stagnant test scores, and my job security, I was finally having a good day. It was benchmark testing week, and the kids I was testing were quiet and diligent while taking their ELA and science tests. My only real class of the day was remarkably well-behaved considering they had just sat for nearly three hours of tests, and they successfully engaged in a cooperative learning activity to review for tomorrow's math test. And I spent the last hour and a half of the day doing reading testing, where student after student finally showed growth, with some of them showing more than a year's worth of growth in the last three months.

Then we had a parent conference in which we found out about the backstory about one of our most challenging students, and the tone of the whole day shifted.

I've spent a lot of this past weekend thinking about violence and crime in New Orleans, especially in the neighborhoods that my friends and I teach in. First there was the CNN story about "Murder City," which made concrete and tangible the facts that I really already knew about my city. Then there was the horrifying news that an eighth-grader at my roommate's school had been murdered on Friday night, shot in the back behind an abandoned house and not found until the next morning. And then today, hearing about the violent tendencies of one of my students (and all of the ways the education and medical systems have failed him and his family) and seeing how clear the path is for him from being an overage, angry third-grader to being on either side of the violent crime that got New Orleans the unfortunate title of 2011's Murder City.

when it's good, it's really good.

On the way home from work today, I called my mom--something I often do on the 20-minute drive home, usually to bitch about whatever thing went catastrophically wrong in the third grade that day. Mom knows this, and I think she has begun to mentally prepare herself for a 20-minute long therapy session whenever her phone rings around 7:00. But today, when she asked how my day was, I replied with, "Great!"

There was a pause, and then Mom said, "Well, that's not something you hear every day."

Today was, against all odds, an excellent day in the life of Ms. L. It could have been awful: we were starting time, which I have long been cautioned is one of the two hardest things to teach in elementary school (the other being money), I showed up with a headache, and progress report conferences were beginning after school, a daunting prospect when you just put failing grades on about 70% of your students' report cards. But, for some reason, positive thing after positive thing kept happening. Here's the laundry list:

1. I started a new tracking system for this unit, which involves tracking the percent of students who were basic and above on the day's exit ticket, and then moving them along a treasure map closer to three benchmark goals and rewards. I wasn't sure how it was going to work, but it has totally transformed the way my third block has been working. Frequent readers will remember that my third block is the absolute bane of my existence. But after they had a successful day on Tuesday, and we talked about why their exit tickets were so high--with them offering examples like "I helped my classmates understand"--they have been rocking out ever since. My lowest class has become my highest class, with 67% proficient even on today's challenging objective of telling time.

quote of the day

Brought to you from Logan Airport, where my flight home to NOLA is inexplicably delayed. Facebook stalking has led me to this gem of a quote:

"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." - Albert Einstein

I can't think of a quote that rings truer for my students. Many of my kids struggle with learning disabilities, or lack of confidence, or simply just the misfortune of being underserved by America's public education system. Too many of my students haven't been told that they are smart, or encouraged to follow their dreams and passions, or been given the extra help that they've cried out for to understand. Some of my kids are natural mathematicians. Some of them are...not. But to me, the most rewarding part of teaching is figuring out what makes each kid tick, how to reach each kid individually about a topic, and seeing their faces when they do finally realize how to round a number to the nearest hundred.

why it matters

Second semester is underway, and it sadly didn't get off to the smoothest of starts. After an eventful first day which included yet another vomit-on-the-floor incident, I got a call from my mother during my lunch break on Wednesday telling me that my grandfather had suddenly passed away at the age of 82. Needless to say, since then I've been reflecting a lot more on that than on my dear students.

My grandfather was a career teacher who was in the middle of his 52nd year of service at my middle school, a junior boarding school in Massachusetts. He taught history for the bulk of his career, and at school, he was a legend. By the time I arrived in sixth grade, he had already been "retired" for four years. But he was still at school every single day, running extracurricular activities, coaching intramural teams, and supervising study hall. In fact, just as he wanted, my grandfather died at the school he loved so much--in the faculty room, just after biking to work from his house.

I went out to dinner that night with some of my friends, and when I told them the story of how long Grandpa had been teaching, they were shocked. To a group of first-year teachers in a program that only requires a two-year commitment, staying in the same school for 52 years is inconceivable. In fact, many of my friends have already started thinking about their plans for post-TFA. While there is a lot that I do like about TFA, one of the things that I dislike is that it doesn't do a whole lot to inspire corps members to become career educators. In fact, when I tell people that I'm pretty confident that I will be throwing my pre-med coursework and MCAT scores out the window to stay in teaching, the response is usually one of surprise.

Teaching, as a career, may not be the most prestigious. I may not make as much money as I would if I became a pediatrician (but let's be real, I would save a lot of money in medical school loans). But my semester with my students has taught me that it is important, it is challenging, and it is rewarding--the three most important things to me in a career. And this week has shown me what a lasting impact a teacher can have, and what a strong community a school can be. So many of my grandfather's former students either attended the service today or have left messages talking about what an impact his class had on their lives. Classmates that I hadn't heard from in years sent messages or showed up today to pay their respects. My grandfather may not have had the most prestigious career, or made a lot of money. But over 50 years of teaching, he reached thousands of students and inspired in them a love of ancient history, or an ability to think critically, or the confidence to participate in class discussions.

To be sure, my grandfather was no ordinary teacher and no ordinary man. I will miss him dearly. But his life and his legacy inspires me to look at teaching not just as a way to fill the years between college and graduate school, but a valid and important career. I can only hope that 50 years from now, I have just one student who can say that I affected them in the same way that my grandfather affected so many of his students.

quote of the day

"We give the kids with the greatest challenges the crummiest education, and then we say poverty is destiny." - Joel Klein

There is a lot I want to say, but it is time for bed, since I am planning on running centers tomorrow and that takes all of my mental energy, plus about three times more. I am happy, exhausted, excited about the changes happening at my school, intimidated about all I have to do.

But my homeroom won the Thanksgiving food drive competition, so the ultra-competitive side of me (direct quote from me at some point in November, to my homeroom during breakfast: "Guys, keep bugging your parents about bringing in cans. You're in Harvard, and we don't lose.") is very pleased with our juice-and-cookies reward that is coming on Friday afternoon. Sometimes, it's the little things in life that make you smile.

being the strong one

It was another trying week in third grade, as most weeks are these days. Not only am I exhausted from five going on six straight weeks without a break, but everyone around me--staff and students--is exhausted too. It's been compounded lately by concerns about budget. People are being laid off left and right, we ran out of copy paper today and evidently won't be getting any more until December, and it's evident that the pressure is being put on the principals to do something about it. There has been a lot of frustration and anger at students and teachers alike.

It's tough to be in such a pressure-cooker situation, where you feel like you're constantly being judged on your test scores, your behavior management, your relationships with students, and your professionalism and enthusiasm. It's also tough to improve on all these things when the support staff you thought you were able to rely on shrinks every month as more and more layoffs are necessitated. In many ways, we feel like our school is a target within our network. As the newly-opened turnaround, we seem to be getting the short end of many sticks--CMO attention, layoffs, support--even though our scores on benchmark tests are almost identical to the scores of the second-year turnarounds. As we talked about in our weekly staff meeting today, that turned into a bitchfest, this isn't really about performance anymore. It's about money. And that is a little bit nervewracking--that if they're not going to look at what we're achieving with our kids and the limited resources we have, what are they going to look at when they decide who to keep and who to let go?

But, as always, I am reminded every day why I am there--for the little people.

give them your best, not what's left.

Well, it's been forever. I'm 2/3ds of the way through one of my longest uninterrupted streaks of teaching of the year, and it's taken a toll. Don't get me wrong, a lot of things are going really well. My principal and TFA PD have given me good feedback, somewhat alleviating my fears that I'm doing more harm than good in my classroom. After their rough performance on their first ANET benchmark, they bumped up to 35% basic and above (from 9%) on a network-wide quiz retesting the material. And yesterday, after a really rough week, my kids somehow managed to put up their best weekly quiz scores of the year: 42% basic and above, with 21% at mastery and above, even though the quiz was mostly on word problems.

These are all things that I'm really proud of. The culture in two of my three classes, the enthusiasm my kids have for after-school tutoring, the progress I've made with one of my kids with an emotional disturbance, both academically and behaviorally, with some well-placed positive calls home. As my principal and PD keep reminding me, my perception of how things are going in my classroom is usually skewed negatively from what they're seeing. I know that this is true: I'm hard on myself by nature, and I don't like to settle for anything less than perfect. I tend to focus on the three kids who are off-task rather than the 18 who are, or the five kids who don't get a problem than the 15 who are making progress. To keep myself sane, I'm trying my best to stay focused on the positives: the 3 kids this week who scored basic for the first time this year, or the girl who got an 80% on her quiz after struggling through word problems for two hours the day before in tutoring. But when there is still so much going wrong, it's sometimes hard to keep sight on the good stuff.