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.

and break begins.

Today marks the official beginning of Fall Break. I celebrated with a series of happy hours before heading to Berryline with my friend Mallory, and now Mallory and I are sitting on the couch watching Project Runway before I head off to pick up my brother at the airport! It's wonderful to be sitting here and vegging out, not worried about planning or reteaching the red GLEs on my tracker or a new individual behavior plan for Nya. I'm really looking forward to spending time with Chris and enjoying some time off this weekend.

I came across this quote today in the Facebook frenzy over the passing of Steve Jobs. It really spoke to me because I finally feel like I am in a job that I love--even with all of its frustrations and all of its challenges. My mind could be changed by next week, of course, but for now, I'm happy to be going into this four-day weekend on a high note.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

letters to myself

I know, I know, a double post. But on my way back inside from collecting the stack of tests I have to grade from my car, I found a letter in my mailbox. It was addressed to me, in my own handwriting. And when I opened it, I realized it was the letter I had written myself at the end of institute.

Jim, our CS this summer, had the brilliant idea of making us write letters to ourselves that he would send out in October to remind us of what we felt at the end of those crazy five weeks this summer. I'm impressed with my wisdom those three long months ago, and I thought I would share it:

Dear Kate,

Hopefully today was a good day. If it wasn't, I want you to think back to the day you gave your post-assessment at Institute, when you ran down to CS session to grade Sage's test to see what she had accomplished. I want you to remember the pride in each of your students and the responsibility you felt to make sure each of them succeeded. I want you to remember the lessons you swore you'd learned about how to invest your kids and make them care about each other.

Today, leaving institute, I'm terrified about the prospect of starting all over with little people. But I'm excited to get the opportunity to get to teach what my 8th graders don't know. I hope that my classroom is a place of focused learning, where my students understand that what they're learning and how they're behaving today directly impacts what they'll be doing 5, 10, 20 years down the line. I hope that my kids respect each other, work well together, and have formed a community where it's okay to be different and make mistakes. I hope that my kids--and their families--know how much I care about them and that I would do anything for them.

I hope for myself that I haven't lost sight of why I signed up for this--that every kid deserves the tools and the confidence to achieve their wildest dreams, and that I am ready and able to get them there. Remember--you love your job and you love these kids. Take ownership of your classroom and do it.

Love,
Kate

Is my classroom where I hoped it would be? Not yet, but it's heading there. But I haven't lost sight of why I signed up for this, and that makes me proud.

keeping it personal

Today was Benchmark Day once again at my lovely elementary school. Never mind that our last benchmark was three weeks ago, and I had exactly eight days of instruction between then and now. Never mind that only one in five of my kids had passed the benchmark last time around, and this test included all of those topics PLUS rounding, estimation, and money (which I was supposed to teach in eight days). Never mind all that. As my principal likes to say, those are excuses, and we have no time for that.

Scanning the answer sheets for the benchmark test was, in a word, heartbreaking. Though I haven't scanned all of the sheets yet, so far just five of my 64 students have passed. Since most of the remaining sheets are from my tier 3 kids--the lowest kids who get the test read aloud to them--it seems unlikely that that number is going to go up anytime soon. Seeing that pop up on my computer screen was just awful. I felt like I had been making progress with my kids over the last two weeks, but seeing that come up made it seem like I was moving them backwards.

While I'm going to get a chance to look fully at the data on Thursday, I already know a few things. First, about a third of the test was stuff that I either didn't have time to teach or was a long-response question that the bulk of my kids couldn't read. When you focus in on the two-thirds of the test that I did attempt to teach, things look better. That's encouraging, that I seem to be able to impart some knowledge when given the time, and I can only hope that as the year goes on and we go over these concepts again and again, they'll start to stick.

quote of the day

Spotted this in the hallway of the administration building (trailer) today on my way to the laminator, and it rang very true:

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes it's the quiet voice at the end of the day saying 'I will try again tomorrow.'"

Today was a very happy Monday. The kids were well-behaved (didn't hurt that three of our biggest behavior problems were absent, of course, and that a fourth is finally medicated for his ADHD), I got through my lessons with ease, and I ended the day not feeling frustrated and exhausted. Did they get it--it, today, being rounding to the nearest ten (a second-grade objective) and subtraction with regrouping (a review from last week)? Not all of them--their exit tickets came in right around 60%. But some of them did, and it at least gives me hope that if class is as well-managed as it was today, I can get them there.

Of course, tomorrow could be an entirely different day. But hey, you've got to take the good days when you have them.

random acts of kindness

Lesson learned: ask, and ye shall receive.

A week or so ago, I posted a link on my Facebook page to a wish list for my classroom library. I have 13 kids in my literacy block, ranging in reading level from H (mid first grade) to M (late second grade), and only about 80 or 90 books at those levels total. That's not enough for my class, who would plow through the collection almost entirely in another week or two. So I compiled a list on Amazon of 30 or so books that I would love to have for my library.

I figured a few people would donate. Maybe I'd get 12 books out of it. Best case scenario, I'd get the wish list fulfilled.

Turns out, I should have had higher expectations.

I came home today to a pile of five Amazon boxes. I get to bring about 20 new books to my third graders tomorrow, and I know more are in the mail. Some of them were from the usual, expected suspects (hey, Dad and Grandma, and thank you!). Many were from old friends. Some were from people I barely knew. Each box I opened nearly brought me to tears, seeing that people from all over the country and from all parts of my life cared enough to send a book or two my way.

Today, I reposted the link with a thank-you message to those who had already given. I added some more books to the list, because it was already dwindling closer and closer to zero. A family friend reposted the link. Within an hour, I had a Facebook message from a complete stranger offering to ship me the books her own children had outgrown.

Whenever I have a rough day, I'm constantly buoyed up by family and friends who endlessly remind me how important this work is. Today was not the best day--I lost control of my classroom after my kids finished their social studies test early and I didn't have enough worksheets for them to do to kill 50 minutes of unplanned time. My TFA PD was observing when I had to step between two students threatening to punch each other and talk to them outside, implicitly assuming that she'd do something if more trouble were to brew in the classroom (luckily, it didn't). Only 20% of my students passed their math benchmark exam.

But coming home tonight to a stack of boxes filled with uncreased books brought me new hope. Thank you to those of you who have given. You can expect thank-you notes in the mail soon (I told my literacy block this yesterday, and they immediately demanded to make the cards now, because "phonics is boring." Lesson learned: do not advertise distant fun activities when you need to get through boring ones first.) Shameless plug: if you're inspired to donate, here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/14S1VYFM2V5LK/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_ws_c9Tzob1Q88CHZ. And even if you're not, know that you all have inspired me. Thank you.

river running

Pretty much the only "extracurricular" activity I do these days is running. Anybody who knew me in high school will likely believe this; anybody who knew me in college is probably rolling on the floor in laughter right now. In college, when my life was filled with the Crimson and classes and naps and extensive social plans, I never really had the time or energy to pick up and go for a run. But when I arrived in New Orleans, I remember sharing at Induction that one of my goals was to run a half-marathon this year. And I registered for that half marathon on Saturday.

Running--and the handy-dandy training plan I created on runnersworld.com--has been one of the few things keeping me sane over the last month and a half. It's the one solid 30, 45, or 60 minutes of the day where I am not feeling guilty about all the things I could be doing, or insecure about all the things I am doing but not succeeding at. It's the block of time that I can't be reached by phone or email or a child's tugging hand reminding me that once upon a time I promised them a trip to the prize box and by golly, Ms. L, you haven't given me my darn Mickey Mouse pencil. I come home feeling relaxed and like I've accomplished something--a feeling that I need on those really bad days where I often feel like I've just pushed my students backwards.

Today's run was a 5-miler, so I headed over to Audubon Park and ran the long loop, which takes me all the way down to the Mississippi River. It was about 6:50 by the time I got down there, and the sun was slipping down toward the horizon. It was a scene that reminded me of home, as my few runs during college took me up and down the banks of the Charles. And it reminded me that I do have control over some things in my life--like how far and how fast my legs and my lungs will carry me when I lace up my sneakers in the evenings. I can't control how far behind my students are, or how many of my calls home result in them getting physically beaten, or how my school is in a set of FEMA trailers past their expiration date that are broken into a couple of times a week. What I can control is what I prepare for them, how I build relationships with them, how hard I work to fix my own flaws so that I can be the kind of teacher they need. As I ran home today, clocking in under my goal time of an hour for the run, I thought back to how painful the first week of starting that training plan was, when I couldn't even make it around the short loop of Audubon Park without having to stop, wheeze, and try to breathe through a side stitch. I hope every day that a few months from now, I will be able to look back on these first few painful weeks and laugh at how out of shape I was.

roses and thorns

Back in my freshman year at Harvard, my roommate and I used to do Roses and Thorns in our bunk bed before we went to sleep every night. We'd share the best part of our day (the rose) and the thing we wish would have been different (thorn). In that spirit, here are today's roses, thorn, and quote of the day:

Roses: When I walked into the resource room, where the kids who come on the first bus route spend the first half hour of the morning doing iLEAP prep with the principal, at 7:55 this morning, I noticed Jamie, a girl in my second block math class, with her head buried in her hands, sobbing on the table. I pulled her outside to calm her down and see what was wrong. Jamie struggles with all aspects of school--she's reading at a kindergarten level, doesn't really know how to add at all, and often writes letters and numbers backwards. So it wasn't surprising, but was still heartbreaking, to hear her sob about how she wanted to go home because she couldn't do it, didn't know how to do her work. I told her how smart she was and how proud I was that she tried so hard every day, brought her to the bathroom to wash her face, and sent her on her way to homeroom.

When she arrived in math class at 11:30, I made sure to single her out as a team captain for her group during centers. Next thing I know, I'm looking up at Jamie's group--five students who really struggle with math, who are often behavior issues--while they're working independently at the other side of the classroom. I notice that Kyle, a boy who gets easily distracted and likes to distract others, sitting far apart from the rest of the group. "Kyle," I call across the room, "why are you sitting by yourself?" Jamie turns around to talk to me. "Ms. L.," she says, "Kyle was playing, so I moved him." I couldn't help but smile at how seriously she took her role as team captain--but my smile was even bigger when I saw her sit at my table, carefully draw out 24 counters on her piece of paper, and correctly solve a subtraction problem.

remember to breathe

Upon arriving back in New Orleans after a wonderful mini-vacation to Disneyland with my dad and sister, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed. I'd never gotten on a plane to go "home" before and not wound up in Boston. All of the reasons why I needed some time away from New Orleans (after a particularly panicked phone call after a bad day two weeks ago, Dad decided I needed some time in the Happiest Place on Earth and booked me a flight to join him and Erin for the weekend) were right in front of me, and I had no imminent trip to look forward to. I nearly burst into tears right there in the terminal.

But then I walked outside onto the parking deck, and the strangest thing happened. I could breathe.

For anybody who hasn't been to South Louisiana in the summer (or really, ever), the humidity here is oppressive and constant. After nearly two months of living here, I'd just started to get used to it. Then I arrived in Anaheim and remembered what it was like to have a sunny day without feeling like you were breathing underwater. So when I came back to New Orleans, I expected that heavy air to greet me, just as it has every morning for the last two months.

guess i'm not as mean as i thought...

So far, the biggest frustration of teaching third grade is management. While I have some really challenging kids who bring their own set of issues to the table, trying to keep a room of eight-year-olds on task for 90 minutes is a daunting task in and of itself. They're wiggly, easily distracted, and goodness, do they like to talk. This means that I spend a lot of my day yelling. I hate this, especially because it means I usually don't get through my lessons with two of my three classes (today, it took me two full 90-minute periods to get through the math lesson with my homeroom. Good thing I didn't have anything planned for the extra time...). Because management is bad, I haven't yet dared try centers, which would let me work more closely with the kids who have been struggling but would be disastrous if the other two groups couldn't work independently.

While there have been many small victories in my first two weeks of teaching--one of which came today, when our biggest behavior challenge, an emotionally disturbed, bipolar seven-year-old who's off his meds, wrote down on a behavior form that the adults he wanted to spend more time with were the two social workers and Ms. L.--there have been far more frustrations. I usually start the day confident in what I have prepared, and come home thinking of all the things I have to fix before tomorrow. Whenever I think I've gotten ahead, I quickly realize that there were 17 things I didn't think all the way through that threaten to derail class at any time. I feel awful for the half of every class that is sitting there quietly waiting to learn, and I feel awful that the other half of the class isn't invested enough for whatever reason to want to behave.

kids say the darndest things, part 1

Yesterday morning, before homeroom:

Student: Ms. L., my throat hurts.
Ms. L.: I'm sorry to hear that, mine hurts too.
Student: Well, that's because you spend all day yelling.

Sad but true.

the briefest of updates...

I am alive. After six days of teaching, I love my kiddos, even the ones who drive me crazy (and believe me, there are plenty of them). I am also exhausted, which explains the lack of blog updates. When I left school at 6:05 today--a new non-Friday record--I thought I would have plenty of time to update the blog this evening. Then I went for a run, had to deal with a parent on the phone, ate dinner, took 20 minutes to watch TV, had to finish prepping for tomorrow, and here we are at 10 pm, with the dishes still to do, laundry still to fold, an email newly arrived in my inbox saying I have to find two hours worth of activities for my para to run tomorrow while I do literacy testing, and my alarm ready to go at 5:45 am.

The long update is coming. Teaching is hard, believe me. Trying to get through to an eight-year-old who just doesn't want to listen to you--particularly when that eight-year-old has other things going on, like ADHD or, in the most severe case in one of my classes, an emotional disturbance and bipolar disorder--is exhausting. There have been moments when I have come close to tears (specifically, when said behavior challenge began singing "I'm Too Sexy" at the top of his lungs while in line for the bathroom, causing the principal to come out in the hall and escort him away from class). But there are also great moments--the number of hands that go up in the morning when I ask for helpers, even for the job of milk-bucket toter, which I find entirely unenviable (you walk around the classroom with a bucket and a strainer and everyone pours their cereal in). The face of a kid who has struggled all class period long when he finally knows an answer, raises his hand, and gets it right. The kid who patiently pulls out pencil after pencil to give his neighbor to try to get him back on task, even though his neighbor keeps throwing them on the floor in an act of defiance.

Today was a good day. Today, most of my kids got it. Today, there was only half an hour when I wanted to scream out of frustration. Tomorrow is Tuesday. I'm hoping that Tuesday is a good day too.

it starts getting real

At a meeting towards the end of the afternoon today (which I was, naturally, late to because we had been admiring each others' bulletin boards in the hallway), I was handed a piece of paper by Jess, my dean. Jess hands me a lot of pieces of paper, so this is generally unremarkable, except when I looked down at the paper, it had 25 names on it. My homeroom roster.

School starts for me, for real, on Monday. It has already started for many of my friends both here and in Atlanta. It's already started for the 4th through 8th graders at my school. Do I feel prepared? Not remotely. We don't even really have a schedule for the first day yet (a project for tomorrow's third grade team meeting, I hope). Will I be ready by Monday? God, I hope so. Am I excited? Absolutely.

This week, I've finally started to get to interact with kids. All week long, we've been doing literacy testing for everyone from kindergarten through sixth grade, and I've tested kids in every grade but fifth. This includes five of my own students, who I tested this morning. And so far, I must say I love elementary school even more than I thought I would. Kids are really, really cute, and the ones I've tested--about 12 of them in all--have been pleasures to work with.

missing the mark

One of my reading collabs from this summer forwarded me a text today from Sage, one of our students at institute. I've talked about Sage before as one of the students who really inspired me with her drive and enthusiasm this summer. The text ended "I am so happy right now that I had pass the test." Felicia's follow-up text when she sent it along to me was "Best text I have ever received."

Over the last week, we've started to get news from our faculty advisors this summer about how our students fared on the CRCT. The exciting news came to Felicia today from her faculty advisor: every single one of our students passed the reading portion of the CRCT. This was pleasantly surprising to us--there were certain students, like Malik, who we thought wouldn't make it through. The news on the math side, however, is not so good. Of the five students we know about, just three have passed.

Three of the five outcomes of our math students were not surprises. Sage and Anton we were close to positive would pass, and they pulled it out. On the other hand, that Malik failed the math portion of the test was unfortunately not a surprise to us. We were happy that Damon, an incredibly bright kid who tends to rush through tests without checking his work, slowed down and passed the test, which we knew he was capable of. And the one that hurts the most is Jasmine, who improved but not enough to pass--she barely missed the cutoff.

through the eyes of katrina

Three weeks into the great New Orleans adventure and I can feel myself starting to settle in. I can get from point A to point B with relative ease (even when point B is something other than my house, school, Walmart, or Target) and the heat, while still oppressive, is no longer an unpleasant surprise every time I step out of an air-conditioned space. But as I've settled in, I've started to realize just how much this city is still defined by Katrina.

In my previous visits to New Orleans, I saw Katrina everywhere I looked--in the houses and neighborhoods I was doing reconstruction work in and in the stories of the people I met. I thought I had at least some understanding of how much the storm affected this city, but after three weeks of living here, I realize I had no idea. Even when it's unspoken, Katrina is a very real part of every day in New Orleans. It's there when I look outside my classroom window and see one of the canals that sent water gushing into New Orleans East, leaving a wake of destruction in a tight-knit neighborhood. It's there in the passing conversations, like the one about bad cell phone service that led my coworker to remark "Yeah, I learned that in the Superdome"--and the realization that if she was in the Superdome, her two kids, who would have been a toddler and an infant, were there with her. It's there in the simple existence of my school, which was opened after too few elementary schools in the East reopened after the storm. It's there every time the cafeteria ceiling leaks, every time I walk into my kitchen (which was renovated after the storm), every time I see a 13-year-old fourth grader and wonder how many years of school they missed in the wake of Katrina. I think that's one of the things that's most daunting to me--not being able to completely understand Katrina and knowing that its aftereffects will be a part of my daily life.

hola, nola!

So I'm a week and a half into PD without much to report. I have all sorts of new toys (newest gadget--a Dell laptop with permanent wireless. This would be a huge win, except for three hours with this computer have reminded me why I swore I would never buy a PC again. Sigh.), my coworkers have finally learned my name (I found out they had all been calling me Ms. Harvard for the last week), and I've experienced the wide range of culinary options in New Orleans East (Subway, Wendy's, salad from Winn-Dixie, and my personal favorite--Pho Bang, a Vietnamese restaurant. Not so much for the food as for the name). But a week and a half in, I couldn't be happier with my school. Even as a first-year, I feel very supported, and I feel like I fit in with the culture of our charter network.

I haven't been able to spend that much time in my classroom this week, which may be a good thing, as our building is completely overrun with all sorts of critters. I killed two cockroaches in my room yesterday, and we've caught no fewer than seven mice (luckily, the mice have been living mostly in the second-grade end of the hallway without wandering down to the third-grade end). What I have quickly learned is the biggest downside to having a building staffed by all women is that everybody is terrified of critters. I am the calmest in these situations, and as my college roommate can tell you, I do not deal well with rodents.

home sweet nola

Well, it's been a crazy week. I'm now back in New Orleans for good, sitting in my house on my new bed and basking in the glory of air conditioning I will soon have to pay the electric bill for. So far, the real world is pretty unglamorous (dinner tonight involved me sitting in bed with a box of pizza watching Sports Night). But institute is over and I'm three days into my new job!

Leaving Atlanta was harder than I thought it would be. I'm really going to miss my kids, and I've already started missing my CMA group. I got spoiled working with such great, funny people who all shared my mindset and my sense of humor, but I'm so grateful for the experience and for the invaluable lessons I took away from it.

One of the hardest parts of leaving my kids was that I left not knowing if I would ever find out if our hard work this summer paid off. The kids all have my email address, but it's on them to let me know if they passed the CRCT, how they're doing in high school, etc. It's a little crazy to have invested five weeks of my life thinking solely about them and their well-being, and then to shift in the span of about 60 hours to focusing solely on the well-being of 80 third-graders I won't meet for another three weeks. Although the last day of school brought plenty of drama (threats of a school-v.-school fight brought the Atlanta police to dismissal), I am really going to miss teaching 8th grade.

the home stretch

This week has been a wacky one--my kids are taking their CRCTs, I'm barely in the classroom, and institute has definitely shifted from worrying about the well-being of my nine students to focusing on how the heck I'm going to take what I've learned in the last five weeks and apply it to my third-grade classroom. But it's also been wacky because of all the other crazy stuff going on around me. I think that how my fellow CMs and I have handled all this is a testament to how much we've grown over institute: I'm now able to take things in stride that would have completely derailed me in my first week of teaching. For example:

1. If you're up on your education news (though I don't blame you if you're not--I just learned about this in the last week), you have probably heard something about the CRCT scandal that has been rocking Atlanta Public Schools over the past two years. Cliff notes version: a report was just released yesterday detailing the extent of the cheating that occurred on the CRCT in 2009 (more than 75% of schools in APS were involved to some degree). One of the schools implicated, though not nearly as severely as others, was the middle school I've been teaching at.

(not) all i do is teach teach teach...

As the fireworks in Atlanta have faded into rumbles of thunder, I'm in bed early in preparation for my last week of institute. This is going to be a weird week because I'm not really teaching anything anymore. Jon and I are running a review class tomorrow, and then my kids start taking their CRCTs on Wednesday (reading Wednesday, math Thursday). There are no more new objectives to teach, no more exit tickets to grade. 7 out of our 9 kids have taken their post-test, and the last two will be completed tomorrow. But more on that later. What I want to talk about right now is the glory that is the three-day weekend.

Institute is a hardcore experience that is incredibly positive in many ways. I've gotten close quickly with a lot of people here, and I'm so thankful that I've been able to build so many friendships in just four or five weeks. It's really hard to believe that just six weeks ago I was living in Adams House preparing for baccalaureate, class day, and graduation. It seems a world away. But what we often lose sight of during institute is that there is, in fact, life outside teaching. And now that my prep is winding down, this three-day weekend was even more enjoyable.

looking for starfish

There's a story that I was reminded of today, and it goes like this:

One day, a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, "What are you doing?" The youth replied, "Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up, and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them back, they'll die." "Son," the man said, "don't you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can't make a difference!" After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said,"I made a difference for that one."

When Thea came back from school today, she told the story and said that it made her think of me. This has been, by far, the hardest week of institute for me, and I've really been trying to focus on that one starfish that I'm making a difference for right now.

This week, I was given the incredibly unenviable task of teaching my eighth-graders, who struggle with everything from the concept of slope to what -3 + 4 is, about systems of equations.

summer 2011

One of the most annoying things about institute is that while I went straight from school to TFA with literally one day off in between, most of my friends and classmates have had the entire month of June off. Thus, most of my Facebook news feed is full of photo albums from exotic locations or quotes from drunken nights out together in New York. Today, my friend Betsy decided to begin poking fun at this by starting our very own "summer 2011" Facebook album. Pictures thus far include Thea posing with a coffee pot, Serena using her shoe as a phone in a moment of delusion, Emma's beautiful step-by-step guide to writing algebraic expressions, and Sam pretending to use a math CRCT prep book to write a lesson (he teaches reading). This is coming soon to a Facebook near you.

Anyway, I'm about to dive into my last real week of institute teaching. I'm starting a mini-unit on systems of equations tomorrow, which is terrifying to me, because I've asked my mom to look over my plans and she says that they'd be good if I had two weeks to teach them in. I don't have two weeks, and I can't simplify them any further. This is worrisome to me.

I'm also nervous because this is the last week we have with our kids before they take the CRCT (well, we have Tuesday to review as well, but basically just this week). While a lot of my kids are making growth, and we're really proud of all of them, most of them are not at this point on pace to pass the test--and some of the kids who have a good shot at passing math aren't close to passing reading. This makes me worried sick, constantly. We're trying to pull out all the stops this week--we're opening with a big pep talk tomorrow, starting to dish out extra credit for completing homework, and Jon and I have decided to forgo our planning periods this week to sit in on each other's class and help our students out. I hope that this week is enough to get our kids ready. I'm not sure if it is, and that scares me.

quick update

It's Thursday night, which means that I am 100% exhausted. A full week of teaching and lesson planning will do that to you. I still have to finish up my plan for tomorrow's lesson (writing/identifying equations that represent real-life situations) and write a plan for next Wednesday's lesson (solving word problems that describe systems of linear equations), but I got exciting news today, so I thought I'd share a quick update.

EXCITING NEWS: I finally have my actual teaching assignment! While I've been hired for two months by a charter network in New Orleans, and I've known which school I'm going to be at for about three weeks, I didn't know exactly what I'm teaching until today. I'm going to be teaching third grade math! This is terrifying, since I'm finally getting a sense of what teaching middle school is all about, but I'm so excited to finally be able to prepare for an actual position. It's also a lead teaching job, which is great. I'm the only first-year TFAer on my team, but there are about 15 other first-years at my school.

OTHER EXCITING NEWS: This week has been, on the whole, really great. My kids are invested, and they are behaving so well in class. Our success story for the week has been Malik--our lowest performer last week, we got him invested in himself after he got 68% on his weekly assessment last week. Now he's passed every single exit ticket I've given him this week, and he is so eager to participate. It's been awesome to see him get excited about math, especially when reading is such a struggle for him. My CMA was observing my lesson on Tuesday, and he videotaped it. Malik came over to ask him for help with a question, and my CMA got him on camera talking about math. It was so great to see him talk about how he liked what Jon and I were doing in class--making him work hard--and that he knew exactly what we expected of him. There have been moments like this all week: not having to give a single behavioral consequence all class on Tuesday, getting everyone to pass their exit ticket for the first time, having the kids beg us for more math questions during a review game today, and having one student ask me if we could go over her assessment during lunch today to make sure that she would understand and do better the next time.

This week has had hard stuff too--our midterm assessment scores were nowhere near where we wanted them to be or where we think they can be. But I'm so excited for tomorrow, for the next two weeks with my kids in Atlanta, and to finally get into my very own classroom in New Orleans East and start getting ready for my third graders!

five days in

It is Saturday morning, and I have just woken up from my first night of remotely close to a good night's sleep in a week (nine whole hours!). My first week of teaching is in the books, and I have survived without major incident. A few brief lessons I've learned this week (and just to note, all the names of my students have been changed to protect them):

1. Teaching--anywhere, but especially in a low-income school--is hard. Really hard. When I'm up in front of my classroom, there are a million things I have to think about: what I'm teaching, if I'm writing it big enough on the board for everyone to see it, if I'm explaining things in a way that make sense to 8th graders, if everyone's paying attention/if the class clowns are distracting their classmates behind my back, how many times I've given each kid a warning, whether I'm putting points on the board, etc. I'm struggling to break concepts down in a way that my students can understand, and I'm struggling most of all with the wide range of comprehension in my classroom. I have students who range from a second-grade reading level to a ninth-grade reading level in my classroom, so when teaching a lesson, it's really hard to explain it on a level that Benton might understand while still keeping Jarvis engaged in the material. I can't blame Jarvis for acting out when he gets it right away and I have to spend time repeating material over and over again for his classmates who are struggling.

and so it begins...

For those of you who haven't seen or heard from me for weeks, greetings! I have not disappeared off the face of the earth, just headed south of the Mason-Dixon line. I'm two weeks into my great Teach For America adventure, and in the few minutes I have before I head off to bed, I figured I'd give you all the quick update.

1) Getting to the South was an adventure in and of itself. I drove down here with my friend Toby, taking three days to see the country and pass a lot of Waffle Houses. We spent a night in DC with my cousin Kristin and her husband and (adorable!) new baby, then spent a night in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which I would recommend to no one. There is just nothing going on there. We got to New Orleans on Memorial Day and explored the city. Generally excellent way to start the summer/the real world, and I am proud to say that we managed the entire 1500-mile drive with no car malfunctions, tickets, or accidents of any sort!