Another Hurdle

A new school year is in full swing. This means a slew of new experiences for even me, an undergraduate high school tutor working (for no pay) in the Bay Area.

For starters, I've gone from shadowing in an Oakland Algebra I and Geometry classroom to doing odd-jobs at a charter 8th-12th high school in Berkeley. Coincidentally, one of those odd-jobs consists of shadowing in a 10th grade Algebra II class. I feel like I've been promoted alongside Mr. G.'s students from last year.

I'll have plenty of stories to share about this charter school later.

For now, I just wanted to say that I stand before you all, absolutely humbled.

I've formally tutored for a good 5 years now. In those years, never have I written a single lesson plan. None. Nada. Zilch.

That being said, I sat down to write my very first one five hours ago. Granted, I've had a week to do this and it's been on my mind for that long... so it's kind of like I've been working on it for a week. In my head.

Now, five hours after the sitting-down part of the lesson plan-writing process, I've come up with the following:

Objective: Learn how to identify graphs of corresponding equations with rational exponents.

...yup. That's it.

And let me tell you, I've been graciously provided resource after resource -- worksheets to fill in my "Objective" and "Materials Needed" and "Students' Prior Knowledge"; instructions on the 5E Lesson Plan; an entire Algebra II student textbook; website after website of complicated (and boring) suggestions -- but I can't come up with a single, comprehensive lecture or activity.

I've taught, I've bonded with, graded, and even disciplined students. But this -- this lesson planning -- is foreign territory. I have a compass, but no map. And certainly no GPS.

Best regards to the experimental class who will be the first to experience Lesson Plan à la April.

Free Write #1 Sample Student Work

[This is a sample of one of 6th grader's first freewrites evah! Mistakes, cuteness and all :) Follow along as a first year teacher analyzes this shizz and comes up with some sort of plan to address his problems, and help make him a better writer in the last 2 months left of escuela!]

Prompt: My perfect spring break would...

My perfect spring bring would...Be in Hawaii. I would invite a bunch of friends like Carla, Iirwin, Ismeal, Gladyss etc. the weather would be nice every day no rain. I would have beach party every nite. It would be all expense paid. Oh did I mention that I would rent hawaii for a week you can stay in any hotel you want there will be skateboading surf boading. I will have free food there will scuba diving sky diving and more. I am telling you. it will be fun. There would drag racing exotic cars.

Ms. S' thoughts

the +

He's creative. He has a decent sense of capitalization, sentence structure, and punctuation. There is voice in his writing (e.g. "I am telling you. it will be fun."). He is successful in his attempts to use more complex vocabulary such as "expense" and "exotic."

the -

His sentence structure is inconsistent. Some verbs and prepositions are missing (e.g. "There would drag racing exotic cars," and, "I would have beach party every night.") Some thoughts are incomplete. Problems with misspelling some simple words (nite and skateboading - though I think "nite" is just a slang issue) and capitalizing proper nouns (hawaii).

Things I will try to address these issues:

-do mini-lesson on prepositions! show the whole class School House Rock clips online!

-do mini-lessons on spelling patterns (like -igh, their/there/they're, etc.).

Time for Goal Completion: I'm going to implement these tactics by the week of April 20-25, 2009 when we return from Spring Break (which starts on Wed. for us :).

Any one have some more tips or notice anything else that I should address in his writing?

Pink Slips, just another reason why teaching is so tough.

Among many reasons why teaching is so tough, an undeniably huge one: staff turnover. It takes at least a year to become fully acquainted with a campus: routines, staff, dynamic, procedures, etc. An entire department is affected at the onset of a new teacher's arrival. We must reacquaint ourselves with the newcomer's work ethic and teaching methods. The same communication sets we have for one teacher are not transferable to the new one.

As a new teacher, the first year is taking baby steps. You cast a net and hope to create as many allies w/ colleagues, students and staff... a year later, you note how much of a difference it makes to actually KNOW the place. I'm still learning this place.

Exhibit A: Last year I had a student, JB. Upon my arrival to the school, I attempted to call as many parents as possible - simple quick intros. One parent, JB's mother acted kinda funny on the phone: "Alright Mr. G, I'll see you tomorrow." "Huh?" Further into the conversation, I find out my JB's mother is the school secretary. Embarrassed and apologetic, I said my farewell. But the brief phone call paid countless dividends for the remainder of the year. Ms. B was a huge ally to me - always havin' my back whenever I needed assistance. Emergency sick day, I got you covered. Out of whiteboard markers, here you go. Stopping by the office, 'why hello? how are you!?' Ms. B made school feel like home.

Exhibit B: My principal, Ms. G, reached out to me during my first year. Nothing major. She interviewed me, so she knew what I was about from the start. She observed my class a few times. And we had conversations in the hallway; they were fleeting conversations, yes, but it was comforting to know the top administrator cared about my well-being. Ms. G made school feel like home.

Exhibit C: Last summer I taught at an Algebra Academy. 5 weeks teaching rising 9th graders algebra full-time. All day, Algebra. At the academy, opportunities for collaboration and professional development were abound - unsurpassed by any teaching opportunity I've had in my young career. One teacher, Ms. J, whom I worked with is at MY school during the school year. Ms. J's become the sole colleague in my math department who I enjoy working with. She understands my working style. I understand hers. We know how great collaboration can be. We're both extremely frustrated with the "collaboration" in our department. It's nice to know there's someone there who shares my sentiment. Ms. J makes school feel like home.

--

Ms. B passed away earlier this year. It was a difficult time for our school community. A few months later, the entire front office staff has been replaced.

Ms. G left the school at the end of the school year, and was replaced by a new principal. My few attempts to speak with him have been unsuccessful. He's mistaken me for another teacher more than once, forgetting my name. In addition, the rest of our AP's (aside from one) have been replaced.

Ms. J shared news w/ me today that she received a pink slip.

--

In the end, it's all about the kids. And you know consistency in the staff will only benefit them. To see the same teachers and same administrators at your graduation that were there during your freshmen year is something too many of us took for granted. As a beginning teacher, witnessing this high staff turnover occur before me so quickly is discomforting. Rather than giving me reasons to stay, it highlights reasons to leave.

It's come to the point where you can make only one of two choices:

-To leave out of frustration, contributing to the problem

or to

-Stay out of frustration, and take on roles to change the tide and help fix the problem.

I love this job. I do. But I also hate it. I hate how you get so emotionally attached to the pressing issues. (The MANY pressing issues). What should be a mere personal decision about my immediate future has become a moral one, one that could potentially haunt me for life.

Just one of those days...

Have you ever had weeks filled with days when you get home at 9PM every night because you stayed at school to grade, lesson plan, unit plan, differentiate, create assessments, meet parents, call parents, file, make copies, complete paperwork, organize, etc. etc. etc. every night for the past x amount of nights and when you get home, all you have time to do is eat, shower and sleep? You know...like you eat, breathe, live teaching, teaching, and more teaching?

Well...this is one of those weeks for me.

But tonight, I think I'm going to make it one of those "The World Will Not End if I Leave Those Piles of Papers Ungraded/Don't Respond to that Email/Haven't Cracked My Textbook for Grad School Yet/Haven't Edited that Flyer Due Tonight" kind of nights...

I need and/or deserve it.

Elaboration on Staying in Teaching

Today was the first time I seriously considered staying in teaching, because this boy emailed me this morning saying,

"How often do you feel inspired? Daily, hourly, weekly, monthly?"

And I sat for a moment and thought....

Then I emailed back:

"All the time."

It's so true! I feel inspired to be better and do better and try different things all the time. Even on the pot. Just kidding. (I always wanted to say that..."Even on the pot"). That means on the toilet, right? I heard someone say it once.

I feel inspired AS A TEACHER. I automatically related it to my career. Maybe because I was in my classroom when I received and responded to the email, or maybe because teaching is my life now and whenever I'm inspired, it's for teaching.

Which is not a bad thing.

Is teaching my destiny?

Today my principal said, "You think you're going to be a lawyer or a doctor, but you're going to be the most amazing principal ever! Except better because I'm going to get better and I'm going to tell you about all my mistakes and what to do to avoid them!"

And how did I respond?

Me: "I know...I know...I want to be you sometimes."

An Overwhelming Influx of Ideas

What sort of best practices work, which fit into my teaching, how can I adjust them to fit my teaching? Will they work for me? Some are contradictory. Teachers who do not practice what they preach.

Veterans around me sit in this auditorium and look just like me: they're bored, impatient, and would rather spend this time working in their classrooms. Our speakers up front continue on with their wordy powerpoint slides: "next slide please, blah blah blah, next slide please, blah blah blah..." Halfway conscious, I shut my laptop. Quarter conscious, I drift away.

But then something hits me, something engages me: "Foldables? A method to engage my kinesthetic learners? Hey, that's cool!" I take note. I consider ways to implement. This can work in my classroom. This can work for my kids. A new era of note-taking I must usher in.

A video on groupwork: group quizzes. What a novel idea! That can work too! Kids helping kids. My role as an effective questioner, never submitting to providing answers to theirs, but rather prod.. and prod some more.

Then a lady says "research has proven student achievement on tests raises considerably if students are hydrated." Another suggests that each teacher chooses a 'target group' of students to watch carefully and provide them special resources so THEIR cst scores can go up. But a seminar last Saturday suggests 'eff' the nclb!

As a young teacher, I'm overloaded w/ an influx of suggestions: philosophies of teaching, methods, proven data, etc. Some of it I like, some of it I don't. Some may even contradict each other. Bottom line: unlike the veteran's around me, I'm open to adapting new ideas to my craft. But I can't decide what's good and what's not!

And so goes the trial & error period of my young teaching career. Learning to teach while teaching so students can learn. Pieces slowly fall into place, but my philosophy, my methods, my views are all far from well-defined.

A Repost from the Beginning

It's been 19 months since I first stood in front of a classroom as a teacher. What follows is an old post from my own personal blog recounting thoughts & reflections of that very first session:

It still feels surreal to hear and see the name 'Mr. G-----' come from students and the white board. In fact, when I first introduced myself to the students on Monday, I wasn't sure if I should say my name was 'Ian' or 'Mr. G-----' so I just decided to go with 'Ian G-----'. Today, during my first real talk in front of the class... I told them they could just call me 'Mr. G' to keep it comfortable and also b/c my last name is pretty damn hard to say.

Anyway, I taught a 2 hour period of geometry today to 11th and 12th graders, many of whom failed the class in the past. I think I surprised myself a bit, surprised myself with the ability in my own self... to keep a classroom engaged for spurts at a time. Overall I think I generally did good, but there were definitely moments I could look back at and think... I could've done better there.

For example, I was going over a HW problem in the class. "Do you guys want me to go over a tougher one?" I asked. A collective "yeaaah!" came my way. I started doing out problem number 8 with really good confidence... a confidence quickly replaced by a "holy shit, I don't think I know how to do this." When my fellow fellow failed to bail me out on the board, I knew it was done. "Why the hell you givin' us problems if you can't even do em yourself!??" Damn. They're right. As a teacher, you gotta be as flawless as possible with this stuff.

From now on, I'm doing every HW I assign before handing it out.

Coming into today, I knew my main challenge would be learning the art of classroom management. And, yes, that's still a big one. I still have much much much to learn. I dream of the day I can teach an entire lesson without having to deal with student misbehavior and disruptions. But, I think the flow of the lesson went well overall.

One unforeseen challenge I see now is addressing the question: "how do you keep EVERY STUDENT engaged the ENTIRE TIME? And, how do you check (how do you know!?) if EVERY STUDENT is engaged the ENTIRE TIME?" I saw this a lot today, as I went over the 3 new triangle similarity conjectures. It felt like a lil more than half the class was really understanding: takin' notes, nodding their heads, participating. The rest of them seemed to just stare blankly at me and the board. And I'd do things like call on them, or ask the entire class to say/do something. They'd definitely do it, but that didn't tell me they were engaged and getting it. This is definitely a new challenge I've gotta work on.

Let's end w/ something happy. It felt really really good to see some of these kids get what I was saying. It felt really really good to walk around during independent learning time and see kids already on problem 5 (of 8) when, in the previous couple days of class, it felt like I was helping virtually every kid on the HW.

Day one done... now for the rest of my teaching life.

Less than 4 months til the completion of year two... growin' up.