Man, I am tired.
So, so tired.
It’s been a very long, and very trying week.
A few life updates: My future right now with Teach For America is somewhat in limbo. As I mentioned before, I did not pass one of my required Praxis tests to be certified as a Spanish teacher in the state of Maryland. Because I took the test in June, there was no other option to retake the test in time for the start of the school year, and no test site locations near Philadelphia. Now, because of these scores, I lost my placement at a middle school and at this point am just hoping I can still teach Spanish. The TFA office is trying to put me in a DC Charter school, where the Praxis scores won’t matter, at least at first. If they can’t find a placement for me in Spanish, they will try to put me in History or English, two subjects with “easy” Praxis tests I would take later. The problem is, now I am so invested in my Spanish curriculum that if I got a different placement, I feel like this whole marrow-draining summer would be for naught. All I can do is wait, and keep up my hard work here.
I’ve never known exhaustion like this week. My body is literally breaking down, and I’m not alone: all 700 of us are completely frazzled. The issues were compounded yesterday with shocking news: one of our summer school students was murdered. The corps members that were his teachers were quite shaken. At lunch, we’ll be working with a counselor to learn some concrete techniques to deal with incidents like these that we may encounter in the fall. The most bizarre thing to me is that the whole thing seems very low-key for the people here. Is it possible that in this setting you become numb to the death of a classmate?
There were a few nice points to the week. Thankfully, we signed a lease this week for a home in the Eastern Market area. It’s lovely, and we’re so excited to move. So that’s one less thing on our shoulders. As soon as I can I will post pictures of the interior…we have granite countertops!
And the other most important thing to report is the success of my classroom. Despite all the clutter in my life right now, this remains the one part of my day that is golden. Somehow, in a mere 2 weeks, I have developed a wonderful rapport with my students. They absolutely LOVE my corny teaching style and my professors here tell me that my energy and enthusiasm in the classroom is unmatched. It has been delightful watching my kids grow, and their grades blossom, as they invest in the idea of high scores and speaking Spanish daily. In fact, my classroom is so smooth that I feel like I am unprepared for the fall. In observing the behavior struggles of other classrooms, I can’t decide if we’re actually doing something right in my class or if we are just very lucky to have a great batch of kids. Yesterday, I taught hair and eye color using a ridiculous-looking paper doll on the board. “Yooooo, she’s a hot mess!” They cheered. But their assessment data at day’s end tells me that they not only enjoyed my cheesy doll, but they paid attention to the lesson.
At the end of the day, that’s why we’re all here and I use those small moments to get me through each struggle. Only 5 more days in the classroom left!
Peace and love.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Small breakthroughs
"How do you say ice cream?" A girl raised her hand and blurted out the question.
"That's one of my favorite words," I replied. "Helado. The H is silent," I said as I wrote it on the board. "It sounds like EL- LAD- DOH."
I saw the girl scribble something down onto her folder. "So, me gusta helado is I like ice cream," she said. I saw that she wrote the phrase she learned yesterday with the new word next to it. "I'm gonna try that on my ice cream man. I'm gonna say, 'me gusta helado."
"That's awesome!" I said. "Emma, you're so talented at Spanish. I know you get it. I want you to tell me what happens when you try it out, ok!"
"She ain't talented!" a boy in front of her chimed in. "I'm talented. She's copyin me!"
"No I ain't! I can do Spanish!" She taunted back. "I'm good!"
Yeah, it was a silly argument and a tiny interaction. But for me, it was a defining moment of the week. I had a girl extending her vocabulary, wanting to try Spanish out in her life, and telling the kid in front of her that she WAS good at Spanish!
So ended week 3 of institute. There are two weeks to go, and I can feel my body breaking down but my spirits are high. My kids are behaving, and they're LEARNING. The kids each have individual growth goals that TFA decides at the beginning of the summer. Using a computer program, we see how they did on their pre-test and decide what's a reasonable goal for them at the end of the summer. We focus on growth, more than actual grades. So for example, a student that scored a 20 on the pretest might have a goal of a 60 for the final, since that would mean a 200% growth. But screw the data: my kids are getting B's, and a good amount of them are getting (and definitely EARNING) A's. I thought tracking the data would be boring, but it is THRILLING to be able to watch the curves go up. And it's even more thrilling to watch the kid's faces when you can show them on a computer how they got an A, and how you know they can keep it up. So many of them are so used to giving up.
And as for me? Life is still in chaos- there's a lot of loose ends. I didn't pass my Praxis test, meaning I have to figure out a time to study and retake that to be certified as a teacher. I still don't have my housing solidified. I do, however, know my placement school in Prince George's county, and I will be a middle school teacher! As such, I'll be the only Spanish teacher there, and I'll be part of the "creative arts" team. So my department is me, the art teacher, the computer teacher, and the music teacher. I think it's going to be fun, but I definitely need some courses on middle school psychology!
Well, that's all for now...
and hopefully next week will bring good stories.
Peace and Love.
T
"That's one of my favorite words," I replied. "Helado. The H is silent," I said as I wrote it on the board. "It sounds like EL- LAD- DOH."
I saw the girl scribble something down onto her folder. "So, me gusta helado is I like ice cream," she said. I saw that she wrote the phrase she learned yesterday with the new word next to it. "I'm gonna try that on my ice cream man. I'm gonna say, 'me gusta helado."
"That's awesome!" I said. "Emma, you're so talented at Spanish. I know you get it. I want you to tell me what happens when you try it out, ok!"
"She ain't talented!" a boy in front of her chimed in. "I'm talented. She's copyin me!"
"No I ain't! I can do Spanish!" She taunted back. "I'm good!"
Yeah, it was a silly argument and a tiny interaction. But for me, it was a defining moment of the week. I had a girl extending her vocabulary, wanting to try Spanish out in her life, and telling the kid in front of her that she WAS good at Spanish!
So ended week 3 of institute. There are two weeks to go, and I can feel my body breaking down but my spirits are high. My kids are behaving, and they're LEARNING. The kids each have individual growth goals that TFA decides at the beginning of the summer. Using a computer program, we see how they did on their pre-test and decide what's a reasonable goal for them at the end of the summer. We focus on growth, more than actual grades. So for example, a student that scored a 20 on the pretest might have a goal of a 60 for the final, since that would mean a 200% growth. But screw the data: my kids are getting B's, and a good amount of them are getting (and definitely EARNING) A's. I thought tracking the data would be boring, but it is THRILLING to be able to watch the curves go up. And it's even more thrilling to watch the kid's faces when you can show them on a computer how they got an A, and how you know they can keep it up. So many of them are so used to giving up.
And as for me? Life is still in chaos- there's a lot of loose ends. I didn't pass my Praxis test, meaning I have to figure out a time to study and retake that to be certified as a teacher. I still don't have my housing solidified. I do, however, know my placement school in Prince George's county, and I will be a middle school teacher! As such, I'll be the only Spanish teacher there, and I'll be part of the "creative arts" team. So my department is me, the art teacher, the computer teacher, and the music teacher. I think it's going to be fun, but I definitely need some courses on middle school psychology!
Well, that's all for now...
and hopefully next week will bring good stories.
Peace and Love.
T
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Relentless Pursuit
The first week of teaching: how does anyone begin to describe this experience? It has been a long, harrowing week. On average, I get about 4 hours of sleep a night. This is catching up to all of us, I notice my spoken sentences garbling and my attention span shortening. I have only been at this for four days, and already I can see why the experience is like a drug habit: sometimes there are incredible lows. The hours are long, the rewards are far and few between, and everyone is so anxious. But occasionally, the last student you would expect shows up for extra help. Or the girl struggling at home gets a 100 on your quiz. Or you can see the excitement on a student’s face when they’re praised for “getting” your lesson. It’s on those few moments that I have the energy to write today.
Summer school has technically been in session since last Wednesday, but even yesterday kids were coming into our class with new rosters, needing to be caught up on the material. Our students are a varied bunch: some are completely solid on the basic Spanish concepts that we’re teaching, and are only in summer school because of attendance issues. Some of them are here because they didn’t pass the class. Some are freshman, some are seniors, and all need a foreign language credit to graduate. For this reason, a sense of desperate urgency prevails in the classroom.
Standing in front of a sea of faces on my first day was unlike any other performance of my life. Yeah, I’ve been on stage before, many many times. But I’ve never done a solo improv performance that lasts for more than an hour! Even though we spend hours upon hours lesson planning, all the details are lost when you’re in front of the room. And for me, they literally did get lost!
I started my first day with an “investment activity” that asked the students to look under their desks. Some of them found quotes taped there about why American students should learn Spanish. I had them read the quotes one by one, and the asked them: Who do you think said this quote? The answer was president Obama, and I showed the kids a video on my laptop of the speech I referenced. Somehow, in my adrenaline and shuffle of the activity, I lost my precious clipboard and lesson plan. Gone! Into the abyss of the classroom, my lesson plan was lost, and I was only in the first 5 minutes of my class on my first day.
I had a crucial decision to make. Stop the class and search, or march on. What if some kid had it? What if I couldn’t find it? I decided I would march on. Mustering up every once of “drama kid” in me, I began class. One by one, I hit the objectives. I went through all the activities I planned. My head began to relax: I remembered everything. Feeling good, I got ready to wrap up the lesson.
Then I looked at the clock.
8:35 !!!! 8:35 !!! I had only taught for 35 minutes! There were 25 minutes of class left, my lesson was lost, and I ran out of everything I planned. What was I going to do?
At this point I literally blacked out. I’m not even sure what all I did for 25 minutes. I know I was making stuff up, talking about expectations and telling them about my experiences. With 10 minutes left to go in class, I gave the helm over to my co-teacher to tell a story from his study abroad experience. When that horrid, slow hour had finally passed, I was a nervous wreck.
To my shock and delight, our mentor teacher was glowing. “It was wonderful!” She said. “So natural, you were teaching from the heart. And you didn’t even need your clipboard.”
Oh, if you only knew.
So many stories to come- peace and love.
Summer school has technically been in session since last Wednesday, but even yesterday kids were coming into our class with new rosters, needing to be caught up on the material. Our students are a varied bunch: some are completely solid on the basic Spanish concepts that we’re teaching, and are only in summer school because of attendance issues. Some of them are here because they didn’t pass the class. Some are freshman, some are seniors, and all need a foreign language credit to graduate. For this reason, a sense of desperate urgency prevails in the classroom.
Standing in front of a sea of faces on my first day was unlike any other performance of my life. Yeah, I’ve been on stage before, many many times. But I’ve never done a solo improv performance that lasts for more than an hour! Even though we spend hours upon hours lesson planning, all the details are lost when you’re in front of the room. And for me, they literally did get lost!
I started my first day with an “investment activity” that asked the students to look under their desks. Some of them found quotes taped there about why American students should learn Spanish. I had them read the quotes one by one, and the asked them: Who do you think said this quote? The answer was president Obama, and I showed the kids a video on my laptop of the speech I referenced. Somehow, in my adrenaline and shuffle of the activity, I lost my precious clipboard and lesson plan. Gone! Into the abyss of the classroom, my lesson plan was lost, and I was only in the first 5 minutes of my class on my first day.
I had a crucial decision to make. Stop the class and search, or march on. What if some kid had it? What if I couldn’t find it? I decided I would march on. Mustering up every once of “drama kid” in me, I began class. One by one, I hit the objectives. I went through all the activities I planned. My head began to relax: I remembered everything. Feeling good, I got ready to wrap up the lesson.
Then I looked at the clock.
8:35 !!!! 8:35 !!! I had only taught for 35 minutes! There were 25 minutes of class left, my lesson was lost, and I ran out of everything I planned. What was I going to do?
At this point I literally blacked out. I’m not even sure what all I did for 25 minutes. I know I was making stuff up, talking about expectations and telling them about my experiences. With 10 minutes left to go in class, I gave the helm over to my co-teacher to tell a story from his study abroad experience. When that horrid, slow hour had finally passed, I was a nervous wreck.
To my shock and delight, our mentor teacher was glowing. “It was wonderful!” She said. “So natural, you were teaching from the heart. And you didn’t even need your clipboard.”
Oh, if you only knew.
So many stories to come- peace and love.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Boot Camp
I have been here for four days and it feels like I have been here a month. By day two, girls were crying. By day three, everyone was exhausted beyond their wildest dreams. I drank 5 doses of caffeine yesterday to stay alert. Yes, this is Teach For America institute. And it is only the very, very beginning.
I am lucky in some ways. In fact, I have it very easy. When my elementary education friends are working on 6 or even 9 lesson plans, I am only working on 3. And when they have to explain abstract concepts like "picking a book thoughtfully," I work on vocabulary lists. Some of them are practicing this summer on 2nd graders when in reality they will be teaching 6th graders. I am teaching exactly what I will be teaching in the fall: Spanish 1. So, in many ways I am very lucky. But I hardly call getting four or five hours of sleep a night a gift!
Let me explain my schedule. Each morning, we are out the door of our Temple University dorm at about 5:40 am to the dining hall to eat breakfast and fill our coffee canteens. Then out the door we go, grabbing a bagged lunch on the way to big yellow school buses that take us to our "school sites." I have been placed at South Philadelphia High School about 20 minutes away- and well, lets just say that I am there for a reason. The school is four stories high and was built in that classic 1950's soviet bloc concrete style. The windows have iron bars over them, as do every glass surface in the building. The bathrooms have no stall doors, and large spray painted warnings tell you DO NOT DRINK WATER. Imagine- a school with no potable water running through its pipes! There have been attempts to spruce up the place- a few beautiful murals here and there- but over all it is falling apart.
Once at the school, we sign in and next week will start ACTUALLY teaching summer school. I will teach one hour a day- and three of my peers will trade off with me, each taking a turn and completing an hour as well. The students attending have already failed various subjects: perhaps for academic reasons, perhaps for attendance reasons. In any event it will be our job to cram a year's worth of knowledge into just 4 short weeks. We got our diagnostic tests back today: most of the students I will be teaching scored an average of 20 on the test. They most likely got this score by randomly guessing on the multiple choice format. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Besides this one hour, the rest of the day till 4:30 is spent fervently trying to learn how to "BE" a teacher. So many things go into it, so many formulas! Classroom management, Class culture, student investment, rules and consequences. Each must be thought out BEFORE actually meeting the students. Never mind the lesson plans themselves! Each minute must be scripted. At this point, we have no other choice.
After we return to Temple, the day is hardly over. If you're lucky you can get in a run and eat dinner. Then, there are night time sessions to attend about diversity and team building, and always, always more work. Something about it all seems a bit amiss- I want to believe that my "rewards and consequences" formulas I've been slaving over this week are going to work, but I have a looming fear that come Monday morning the kids just aren't going to buy it.
There's a loud fight in the hall. The bathroom reeks of pot. No one can get a drink, and I'm supposed to cover a year of Spanish in 20 days.
But this is why we're here right? I have to believe that there wouldn't be so many brilliant, motivated grads and veterans here with me if SOMETHING didn't give.
Until next week. Peace and love.
I am lucky in some ways. In fact, I have it very easy. When my elementary education friends are working on 6 or even 9 lesson plans, I am only working on 3. And when they have to explain abstract concepts like "picking a book thoughtfully," I work on vocabulary lists. Some of them are practicing this summer on 2nd graders when in reality they will be teaching 6th graders. I am teaching exactly what I will be teaching in the fall: Spanish 1. So, in many ways I am very lucky. But I hardly call getting four or five hours of sleep a night a gift!
Let me explain my schedule. Each morning, we are out the door of our Temple University dorm at about 5:40 am to the dining hall to eat breakfast and fill our coffee canteens. Then out the door we go, grabbing a bagged lunch on the way to big yellow school buses that take us to our "school sites." I have been placed at South Philadelphia High School about 20 minutes away- and well, lets just say that I am there for a reason. The school is four stories high and was built in that classic 1950's soviet bloc concrete style. The windows have iron bars over them, as do every glass surface in the building. The bathrooms have no stall doors, and large spray painted warnings tell you DO NOT DRINK WATER. Imagine- a school with no potable water running through its pipes! There have been attempts to spruce up the place- a few beautiful murals here and there- but over all it is falling apart.
Once at the school, we sign in and next week will start ACTUALLY teaching summer school. I will teach one hour a day- and three of my peers will trade off with me, each taking a turn and completing an hour as well. The students attending have already failed various subjects: perhaps for academic reasons, perhaps for attendance reasons. In any event it will be our job to cram a year's worth of knowledge into just 4 short weeks. We got our diagnostic tests back today: most of the students I will be teaching scored an average of 20 on the test. They most likely got this score by randomly guessing on the multiple choice format. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Besides this one hour, the rest of the day till 4:30 is spent fervently trying to learn how to "BE" a teacher. So many things go into it, so many formulas! Classroom management, Class culture, student investment, rules and consequences. Each must be thought out BEFORE actually meeting the students. Never mind the lesson plans themselves! Each minute must be scripted. At this point, we have no other choice.
After we return to Temple, the day is hardly over. If you're lucky you can get in a run and eat dinner. Then, there are night time sessions to attend about diversity and team building, and always, always more work. Something about it all seems a bit amiss- I want to believe that my "rewards and consequences" formulas I've been slaving over this week are going to work, but I have a looming fear that come Monday morning the kids just aren't going to buy it.
There's a loud fight in the hall. The bathroom reeks of pot. No one can get a drink, and I'm supposed to cover a year of Spanish in 20 days.
But this is why we're here right? I have to believe that there wouldn't be so many brilliant, motivated grads and veterans here with me if SOMETHING didn't give.
Until next week. Peace and love.
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