165+ one-on-one interactions daily

Previous roommateships would have me awake and out the door by 7am, home by 6pm, grading and lesson planning until I'm burning the midnight oil while fellow roommate could easily sleep in til' 7:30 or 8, arrive home and relax with a beer, tv, video games and/or girlfriend. Damn you, roommate. Not fair.

Current roommate teaches at a middle school. It's convenient and it works. At this current moment, it is 9:58pm. I left campus around 6:30pm and still have a mini-mountain of quizzes to grade, but it feels ok since roomie is still at work too. I hear him disgruntled on his desk as I type.

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We like to argue about who has to work harder. So, this year, as one of the few teachers at my high school who's taken on three preps (typical is two), I feel I've got the inside track on that title - "dude, I got it way tougher than you do. Believe me."

The predictable response: "I been teaching FIVE separate subjects, homie! 7th grade." 

"Well, I grade 165 different assignments by 165 students on the daily. 165 quizzes during the weekends."

"30 • 5 subjects each is still 150. I'm down 15, I agree. But, still pretty much the same."

"Ok, ok, but I've got 165 personalities to manage. 165 parents and families to keep track of. 165 one-on-one conversations at the door to catch up on days and nights and lives and check-ins to see whether or not they're having a good day or not. 165 potential phone calls I could possibly make tonight to see if I can get a failing student back on track. 165 interactions daily is exhausting, my sweet sweet roomie."

".... Ok, you got me there."

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I guess I'm just venting. My parent log this school year has got me listed at interacting with 5 families on a nightly basis (through in-person conferences, phone calls, or e-mails). All extra interactions added to my day, but it still feels like I could do so, so much more. 

pencil policy - first two years vs second two years

My first two years - "Nothing should ever prevent a student from learning in my class. If they need a pencil, I will provide it. No questions asked. I won't hassle them or nothin'. You're in this class to learn, and learning you will do. Being pencil-less shouldn't prevent you from doing so"

My next two years - "Part of high school is learning the habits and skills to succeed in college and in life. If we take this stance, students MUST learn to have their materials on a day-to-day basis. Students must come to class prepared and if they realize I am not a pencil giver early, they'll meet my expectations and bring their pencils. Plus, I'm tired of giving out pencils."

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I'd love to give pencils that say "I forgot to bring a pencil to math class and all I got was this stupid pencil." The irony.

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I don't know where I stand anymore. What's your opinion? What's your policy for students who come to class without a pencil? And, if you ARE a pencil giver, do you have a specific procedure? (Are pencils in a cup where students can grab one? Do you charge a quarter? Do you take collateral? Etc Etc)

To give, or not to give (a pencil); that is the question.

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Also, do you let them use pens? Goodness, the bag of worms we can open with that one...

school spirit

During my first three years, I had a hard policy against dress-up days. How I dress is connected to how the students respect me. Therefore, I must always dress professionally and never silly.

Twin day? Nah. Nerd day? I can't give up my dignity with silly tape on silly glasses. Gender bender? Hell no. St. Patrick's day? Ok, maybe I'll put on my green button up.

Last year, I thought back at my own high school years, and remembered why I loved it. The community, the culture, the friendships. Many of the most valuable lessons and experiences were not things inside the classroom. They were beyond.

I was voted "Most Spirited" of my high school class. Why have I not adopted spirit for my new home?

And so now, I go all out. Twin up with as many teachers as possible. Nerd out complete with retainer to give my talk a genuine nerd feel. Gender bender? Put that make-up on me.

If teachers are willing to dress silly to show pride in their school, a student is more likely to feel comfortable doing so too. In the end, the kids see a new dimension of your personality. They see a teacher with the versatility to switch from all-business to... all-business with some play! In the end, what you get is one of the funnest workweeks of the school year.

Tomorrow, at the culmination of this spirited week, look for the man with the red kicks, red face and red hair. All red everything.

count me in for year five

Hello world,

Here's another apology note to the edublogosphere. I'm still around, and I'm still learning from you. I'm still thankful for you. This year, I teach a new prep (advanced algebra), and it seems the best way I know how to plan for a new class is to listen to the ideas of my community. You, my friends, are my community. Without you, I'd be half the teacher I am today.

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During a teacher happy hour the other week, a face I seldom see at teacher gatherings showed herself. We conversed. She's in her late 20's, originally of the TFA variety. And still here. So, I asked, are you a "life-er?" "A what?" "A life-er, you know, are you in this gig for the long haul... maybe for life?"

She looked at me, smiled, and said "good question, but I did say coming in that I'd commit 10 years to this high school, I'm in 7 deep now, and there's no way I'd be leaving when I'm this close."

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And then I consider - what if all new teachers who've arrived on this campus stuck around for as long as she did. What if programs like TFA that wear "close the achievement gap" on their sleeve put down a more stringent regulation on their contracts and asked for TEN, rather than TWO.

What if the teachers our freshmen see today are guaranteed to high five them as they walk across the graduation stage?

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I'm not raggin' on my teacher friend's who've taken a departure from this game; you know I love you. And, you know we'll always connect at a different level because of our time in the classroom.

But, for myself, I'm now on this new edge where I'm wondering how my contributions to my students, my high school, my colleagues, my community grow with each year of experience.

And now, I look over that other edge...

Count Me in For Year Ten?

6th Grade Wows and Wonders in East Oakland

I love teaching science to middle school because middle school kids still love science. There is still very little science-phobia in middle school, especially with 6th graders. They feed their natural curiosity by asking never-ending, out-of-the box questions and by touching, feeling, smelling, and even tasting everything. During lab demonstrations, I have students record a "Wow, Wonder, and Aha!". A "wow" is an observation of a phenomena, a "wonder" is a question about the phenomena, and an "aha!" is a "this reminds me of..." statement (in other words, a possible connection between the phenomena we witness and something we've experienced before as an attempt to understand the phenomena).

The kids are delightfully enthralled by why one yellow liquid (water and dye) and another yellow liquid (oil) react differently with a blue liquid (water and dye). They marvel at the surface tension properties of water (they were amazed at the fact that more than 30 drops of water is able to sit atop a leveled dime).

Curiosity is science, no?

I'm still feeling the waters in terms of how to teach science to 6th graders. I decided to start the course off by opening with a unit called "What is Science?" I wanted to introduce the topic of observations and wonder statements as the basis of science.

Their homework assignment during the first week was to look around their home and their neighborhood and record "data" about things that they see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. They were to then write a "wonder statement" to go with each observation. I admit, I had no idea what I was getting myself into -- I did not know that their questions would be so far-reaching.

Here are some of their data and queries:

-"I smelled my dogs poop. Why does her poop smell like that?"

-"I felt the Ipad? Why is it so hard?"

-"I hear my mom yell. What causes her to yell."

-"I tasted tacos from my mom's kitchen. What were the ingredients in the tacos?"

-"I smell garbage in my neighbor's lawn. Why does it smell like this?"

-"I feel sleepy in the morning. This makes me wonder why im sleepy."

-"I here happieness. How did I get here."

-"When did my enviorment become bad."

-"I smell smoke. How can I smell smoke but not see fire?"

-"I taste rice pudding with toasted bread. Why is rice white? Why is the bread brown? What ingridients does it have in it?"

-"I smell oil. Why do I smell oil."

-"I hear dogs barking and sometimes sounds like guns. I wonder what make those gun noises."

-"I hear the train when they go by. How is the train so loud when it goes by."

-"I can see the colesium outside. Why are the lights so bright."

-"I feel danger. When did my neighborhood become bad."

Compliments and Middle School Teachers

I had an evaluation meeting with my supervisor and colleague about my performance as a student teacher. One of the things said about me during the meeting was, "she has such a middle school personality."

Hopefully they meant "middle school teacher" personality and not "middle school" personality.

At any rate, that comment had me floating on Cloud 9 all day. My colleague did not say it in a particularly praising (or otherwise) manner, but I will take it as a compliment. I interpret it to mean that my ever-evolving teaching personality contains a bit of patience, strictness, wackiness, and a love for middle school students' quirkiness. Perhaps this is my interpretation of the statement because I know that I want to teach middle school students and this is is the personality type that I'm aiming for in order to teach middle school. I haven't yet had enough long streaks of teaching on my own for me to have enough of a meta-understanding of how I interact with my students or how they perceive me...

Also, this may or may not be what my colleague meant when he made that observation, but I'm willing to live with the ambiguity.

The Cogs and the Difference-Makers

Casual Conversations about Teaching. 

Him: "Wow, you want to teach in New York and D.C? Those are some tough areas. You know that those districts and cities are so big that you probably aren't actually going to make a difference, right? I mean... you know that, right?"

Me: "Umm... yeah, but... it's not about that..."

That was the best that I could come up with in the moment. I quickly tried to mask my flustered lack of response by spitting out my work-in-progress philosophy of teaching to my non-teacher friend:

"It's just that... I love teaching. I don't know how else to say this without it sounding weird, but I love teaching these kids. If I had to go back and teach at (*******) again [a "picture perfect", White suburban, upperclass high school where their biggest problems were kids cheating to get high grades and substance abuse due to pressures at home to get good grades... albeit, all big problems that need to be addressed, just not my cup o' joe], I'd quit teaching and find something else to do because it was not fulfilling for me.  

These kids... they make it so I can show up to work nervous, anxious, and recovering from a bad night or a bad week of teaching and completely turn my week around. Behavior and antics aside... I love my students."

So Why Teach?

How many adults can say that they love the people that they work for? I don't mean the people who sign your paycheck or the people who hold your employee contract in their hands -- I mean the 25 - 120 people you see from the time you "punch in" to the time you "punch out" every weekday. I mean the people for whom you refrain from hitting your snooze button one more time each morning. I'm talking about the people who give you hell and yet count on you to be there every day. I'm talking about...

OK, OK... This is starting to sound like another stereotypical sound bite. Self-righteous proclamations by young, privileged, green teachers in urban schools are a dime a dozen nowadays, so I'll stop there.

What I wish I had told him is I don't teach to change the world, a city, a school district, or even an individual. Who am I to single-handedly climb onto soapboxes and rally the crowds with romantic notions of "change" until they start thinking like me? No, no. I cringe at the thought. This is not why I teach, nor is it why I like to teach in urban communities.

I teach because I love having dozens upon dozens of interactions in one day, sometimes even in the span of one hour. I teach because I like feeling my problem-solving brain cells buzz with each new snag or new form of an old snag. I teach because I like the "ah-hah!" reactions of students after making a new science discovery. I teach because I love watching students interact with each other and lift each other up when their friends need a boost.

The Difference-Makers.

Yes, I am merely another cog in a runaway machine, but so are politicians, administrators, standardized test-writers, good teachers, bad teachers, hardworking parents, academically-prepared students, students with learning disabilities, students of Color, White students, janitors, counselors, drop-in tutors, and college admissions officers. They all are never going to stop doing what they do despite mass confusion about best strategies towards meeting ill-defined and oftentimes conflicting end-goals so why should I? Are they making a difference? If they are not, then why do they do what they do? If they are, then what makes them so different from me that I shouldn't try to, as well?

And if I don't "make a difference" (whatever that even means anymore), screw it. I'll teach anyway. I don't have the mental capacity to foresee what my kids', the nation's, or my future holds. Hell, that's another reason to teach -- because we don't know what the future holds, because the future is not set in stone, and because we can contribute towards shaping it.

But no matter. At my immortal-minded, naïve, inexperienced age, I'm not thinking long term. I can only focus on doing my best each day, enjoying doing my best, and giving my students enough encouragement to stay in school and continue their education for themselves just a little bit longer. When my days no longer are fulfilling, I'll quit. 'Til then, I'll teach.

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Besides being inspired by that conversation to write this post, I was also inspired by the passion in the form of professionalism by a local teacher and fellow alumnus of Mills College. Please read about and/or watch the video about her research through teaching when (if) you find a free moment in your chaotic end-of-the-year teaching lives.

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