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Moving Up

dadler85 — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 03:01:51 +0000

Day 178: Today was the 6^th grade moving up ceremony – aka graduation. Well, that would come at 2 pm. Beforehand was four hours to fill with about 30 minutes of stuff. Students had to write index cards explaining what they would be bringing with them to the 7^th grade – think, “Such-and-such is bringing her leadership and ability to work hard to the 7^th grade” – and then write letters to themselves that they would be receiving when they graduated high school. Most students finished these tasks by 10 am. A few had to finish finals or other work, but the large majority had nothing to do. Also, the food for the pre-ceremony banquet was an hour and a half late. Also, we weren’t allowed to go outside. Thus, we all got to enjoy a 3.5-hour indoor recess. Emphasis on the absurdity of my use of the word “enjoy.” You’re not living until you get hit in the head by a student-created paper-and-tape ball because the boys are playing recycling-bin basketball inside. Anyhow, more importantly, my kids graduated today. I have few memories of this day from last year. As an end-of-my-rope first-year teacher, I was so ready for the end that it’s all a blur. However, I’ll remember today. My kids dressed up in dresses and suits, although some boys have not yet learned that polo shirts are not worn with cargo shorts. Parents and other family members packed the cafeteria, aiming camera and various recording devices at the stage. Hearing each child’s card read, explaining what they are bringing with them to the upper school, and seeing my students looking grown up and professional, I couldn’t help but be proud of their growth this year. Yes, at times, they were hormonal pains-in-my-butt. Yes, SG managed to look like an idiot crossing the bridge, despite my 12 warnings to make a good first impression on the upper school principal. But we also grew together, and seeing them today, I am confident they are ready for bigger things next year. At the conclusion of the ceremony, I was waylaid by about 15 parents asking me to take pictures with their children. If I’d been asked by all 100, I would have done it. Each time, I was able to tell students how proud of them I was, and tell their parents that I would miss teaching them. In return, the parents told me how much they appreciated my support for their children over the course of the year. When I finally made my way back to the classroom, it felt empty – both literally and metaphorically speaking. I’m glad we’ve still got two days. And given how tired I am right now, my mind is blown that I just wrote that previous sentence.

Driving Around the Delta

jessi — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:06:59 +0000

My husband came to visit me at institute this past weekend. It was so great to see him after being away from him for 3 weeks. My momma and our family friend also joined him during his visit. I finally got my car back after buying it a few months ago (it is a yellow ford escape, which I love)! Anywho...I wanted to post some photos from our trip. [gallery]

Breaking The News

dadler85 — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:56:31 +0000

Day 177: Today, I finally told my kids I was leaving. To prepare, I did two things. First, I made brownies. I figured if my kids were going to take it poorly, at least they’d have brownies. Second, I made a slide explaining the new city I would be teaching in – Lawrence, Massachusetts – and specifically explaining that it was a city and a school that could use a real teacher-leader. First and second period, the reaction was pretty much the same. A smattering of “What?!?” with one, maybe two “The teachers always leave this place.” Students by and large listened to me respectfully. I got some hugs and requests for my gmail address as they left. Fourth period, my homeroom had a pretty muted reaction. A couple of students, as is the norm, drifted into class in the middle and immediately began talking. My usual requests for eyes and no speaking limited the gravitas. Oh well. I’ve got those folks for another three days. They’re not done with me yet. More importantly, we nailed the catapult lesson. I will remember that during their last science class, we stayed on task and focused, despite flying marshmallows. I’ll also remember that for the first time since October, AM gave me props. I found her after class and told her how proud I was of her growth as a respectful leader, and made her promise to keep doing her best next year. It was eighth period that really killed me. I gave out the brownies, told the students my age – something I’d promised all year. The atmosphere was pretty joyous. And then I dropped my bomb. Immediately, GC shouts, “All of the teachers leave.” Someone else: “Are you going to a better school?” I use that as the segue into explaining that it’s not a better school, but a school that might need more help, and teachers who are willing to step up. When it comes time to read the Big Goal for the last time, I offer that everyone can say it. SE and a couple of other girls ask me to instead. I finish, and ask what it means to “put your money where your mouth is.” A student answers: “You have to back up what you say is important.” I explain that if I’m going to talk about leadership all day, I’d better be prepared to be a leader myself and take on a new challenge, somewhere I’m really needed. I tell this class that I’ve loved teaching them, and I’ve loved their enthusiasm, and I’ve loved seeing their hard work. I dismiss them, and I think I’m in the clear, when I see SBA is crying. And not the loud, look-at-me crying sixth grade girls can do sometimes. This is silent crying – legit crying. I find myself repeating to her, “I’m sorry … I’m sorry …” before I finally hug her and say, “I am so proud of your hard work this year, and I’m so excited to see what you do next year. Please remember that.” She nods and walks out, leaving my heart broken. An hour later, I find JV crying in the stairwell. I gave JV a consequence nearly every day this year. We’re not exactly besties. I ask what’s wrong, and HG, walking by, says, “She’s sad because you’re leaving.” I say I think that’s not true. JV says, “I’m sad because you’re leaving.” Well … damn. I’d talked myself into believing students wouldn’t care much, that they were leaving the campus, that they wouldn’t see me anyway. Turns out they did care. For some, it’s for the negative reasons; they’re used to seeing teachers leave, and this validates their perceptions. For others, though, it seems like they were really and truly sad to see me leave their lives. Maybe they’d been planning to come back and visit next year. Maybe they just wanted to have the chance, and now they couldn’t, even if they wanted to. Either way, my worst fears came to fruition – that I was disappointing my kids by leaving their lives and their community too soon. A few months ago, I ultimately decided the personal and professional reasons for leaving outweighed that risk. Now, I can only hope I’ll really stay in touch, remind myself that I’ll still be doing good work with students next year, and prepare for a heavy-hearted final three days.

Twas the night before Induction...

teachingmychildren — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:29:54 +0000

...and all through the house, a young teacher was making blog posts instead of packing. Might as well get this ramble out so I can be productive before sunrise. Am I excited about Induction? Honestly, not really. I've lived in D.C. for four years now. I was born in D.C., and half raised in the DMV area. I'm at home. The only thing I'm looking forward to is seeing how D.C.'s issues in education and poverty and other inequalities are presented to the people who aren't familiar with them at all, by people who have not lived through them or watched loved ones fall victim to it. That should be interesting. Listening to D.C. Region's newest residents and soon-to-be teachers try to define their role in all of this. I'm prepared to be thoroughly entertained. I have always been the student who challenged the teacher. I'm not the feeble sheep who accepts information as given. I like to ask questions. I like to introduce new ideas. I am an expert at playing Devil's Advocate. Especially in situations where the entire story is not being told, or being told incorrectly. I'm certain I'll be raising my hand often. I am excited for Institute though. Even though countless corps members and alumni have warned me that Institute...well....sucks. My sister is at Institute in Atlanta right now. She loves her students but.... let's just say she's definitely not at Disney World. I remember when I started college and the provost addressed our class. He told us to look at the person to our left and to our right, and that one of them would not be there on graduation day. I feel like TFA will be kind of like that. One of my favorite quotes about education is "Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children." - Malcolm X. Who is the enemy? Well, that's subjective. I know who/what I think it is. Ask me again in six weeks.

Institute Week 2

jessi — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:15:20 +0000

Last week was a whirlwind of sessions and preparations for our first days in class. I have never felt so overwhelmed in my life (and I have lived/moved to another country). It was really strange for me to go to sessions after being a teacher and learning about all of the TFA teacher stuff. I am trying to merge the two views so that I can become a more well-rounded educator. Anywho! I love my students. I have not taught officially, yet. However, today we did some goal setting work in small groups and I got to spend time with individual students. It was amazing. I cannot wait to get to know them better. This is going to be short because I am super-busy. Tonight we have open house, and tomorrow I teach literary analysis! Wish me luck!

Test scores do matter. Unfortunately.

eminnm — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:43:15 +0000

The education reform analyst and well-spoken blogger Gary Rubinstein just applauded a 2012 CM for saying that he cares more about kids’ appreciation of the material and attitude than their test scores. Great! There’s so much more to learning than test scores, and fostering a true love of learning is definitely one of my goals as well. But the 2012 CM took it too far. “It doesn’t matter what their test scores are,” he said. Waaaaaaaaaaaaait a minute. Hold up. I am the first person to hate on standardized tests. I try to tone it down online for the sake of respectability (and because I had to take an oral oath stating, among other things, that I would “never disparage the value of the test”…oh New Mexico…), but some of the tests my kiddos had to take last year were AWFUL. Especially the reading ones that are supposedly “Common-Core Aligned,” but are secretly an ELL’s worst nightmare (note: the math ones were actually really good—hard but fair, requiring thinking but grounded on the skills they were supposed to learn). My kids had not the faintest chance of passing these reading tests, and for them to have that chance next year will mean teaching a bunch of strategies and practices that I would otherwise not consider useful. This is the definition of teaching to the test, and I hate it. I’d rather read Shiloh than figure out which additional sentence best belongs in this paragraph, and I can guarantee you my kids would, too. But although those skills are things that a sophisticated reader could probably do without learning them specifically, for my not-so-sophisticated readers to have a shot at them we will need to explicitly teach them how to approach it. It sucks. However, my hating the test doesn’t matter. The test being unfair doesn’t matter. Don’t get me wrong: it SHOULD matter. People in policy and so on should be fixing this awfulness. But as a teacher, my job is to help my students succeed. Right now, to graduate from high school, they have to pass that stupid test. We can (and should) say all we want about how unfair this is, how many other things matter besides multiple choice bubbles, how critical thinking and enjoying learning are ultimately just as important. But if I teach entirely from that perspective, that test scores don’t matter, that won’t help Rylie when he fails the test. Given that this is the only system that we’ve got, what are we supposed to do within it? This last part may get me in trouble, but here goes. When you know for sure you are not going to fail, it’s a lot easier to stand on idealism. When I was in high school, I could say test scores don’t matter and loving learning is more important—I was going to pass the darn tests anyway! Teachers at Stuyvesant can say test scores don’t matter; nearly 100% of their students pass in every test the school reports. It’s a lot easier to say tests don’t matter from the shelter of a middle-class background, a college education, or at least a stable and successful school. Test scores SHOULDN’T matter as much as they have been set up to matter. I agree that there are so many other things we need to do in schools, and I try so hard to balance the joy of learning with the less savory parts for my kids. But when those tests are the difference between graduating and not, between a shot at college or not, between eventual stability for your family or month-to-month welfare? You better believe they matter. And as a TFA teacher, who is pretty much by definition teaching the kids who are in that second group, for me to have as an educational theory that test scores really don’t matter is, at best, naïve, and at worst, truly damaging for my students. Maybe that’s part of the reason we don’t hear it that often from TFA as an organization.

Does residency matter? Look at Detroit.

Mr. Morgan — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:14:36 +0000

Today the Wisconsin Legislature will begin debate of the state's budget. Yet, one of the most controversial components isn't an expenditure, it's the proposed elimination of local residency requirements. As written, the bill would ban local governments from requiring public employees from living within their borders. So, what does this have to do with education? Well, education leaders in favor of this approach say that it will open the city's borders to qualified teachers who live in the suburbs. They say that this would be a good thing for Milwaukee Public Schools because it would expand its pool of candidates. That can only bring benefits, right? In the short-term, yes. In the long-term, absolutely not. The City of Milwaukee is seeing strong development and growth in many of its neighborhoods. This is in part because young people are choosing to live in vibrant East Side neighborhoods and then choosing to settle down in more residential parts of the city. When I was knocking doors for the Obama campaign last fall in the Riverwest and Harambee neighborhoods, I met a number of young homeowners excited about the prospects of the city. In most cases, these individuals were employed by some entity of the city. So, where's the problem? Let me look to my colleagues. Of the four certified teachers at my school, three of us live in the City of Milwaukee. We're a private institution, so one teacher lives in the suburbs already. Aside from me, the other two city residents would love to have a district job. On the matter of residency, they've made it clear that if they could move to the suburbs and have a district job, then they would take both in a heartbeat. That's half of the teachers in my building. Think about all those police officers, fire fighters, EMS, teachers, and city workers who provide tax revenue to our city and our schools. If half, or even a quarter, decide to move out of Milwaukee over the next decade, it would halt much of the development and growth the city has seen in recent years. This isn't just theory. Look at Detroit. Yes, people left after the rebellion/riots in 1967. Yes, people left after bussing went into effect in the 1970s. Yes, people left after the election of the first Black mayor. But the elimination of the residency requirement is what eliminated Detroit's middle class and put the city into the fiscal death spiral it's facing today. If I were in the Wisconsin Legislature, I wouldn't take the risk of making Milwaukee the next poster child of America's urban ruins.

The Great Paper Debate

amdipuh — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:08:18 +0000

Well, I certainty started this blog with intentions of regular update that were fostered by my own habit of scouring the web for more information about the possibilities of this experience before I, well, experienced it. Oops. Failed that endeavor. I'm now officially a second year TFA corps member and I have found that something (or a lot of things) had to give...and regular updates were one of them. I'm choosing to believe this wasn't my only avenue of reflection and so, though it wasn't public, I have been taking the year in chunks and reflecting and revising my actions independent of this blog. Now that it's summer, I find I'm breathing deeper breaths and perhaps now is my chance to come back to my roots and write about the things i've been living. I cannot summarize my first year of teaching. It cannot be done. I should have stopped and jotted notes, I should have recorded the phone conversations to my coworkers and I should have saved the texts sent to other corps members. Should've, would've, could've...but I didn't. And that's where I need to pick up. With a slew of things I have identified as needing to be done differently--i'm going to cut myself a break on this one. I lived my first year fully and learned, struggled, failed, grew, succeeded, started over, cried, broke things, broke them, broke myself, and ultimately improved. (I hope.) So I won't delve into a list of lessons I learned because to be frank I can't even articulate my findings in any comprehensible way at this point. What I can identify is a a series of loose ends. And so sparks the idea of my next few postings...the daily debates of classroom antics.

Episode one:

Do we give them supplies when they don't bring them or do we let them suffer the consequences of their actions.

I want to break this down into a few key points that are fundamental to developing an opinion on either side of this. First, let me say what sparked this--a veteran teacher is currently teaching two doors down from me in summer school. She teaches math and I am taking a break from science to teach reading to rising 5th graders. She has a reputation for being strict and having obedience in her classroom. (I chose that word carefully.) I find she generally berates students into submission by volume, harsh words, embarrassment or some similar method we've probably all seen before. However, honest reflection means I must point out that though she is aggressive in nature, she might be the perfect fit for our school culture. Many students identify her as a favorite teacher. Her scores are continually improving. I enjoy her company. She just came into my room with a student we share who didn't have paper. He claimed to have left paper in my room which isn't entirely untrue--I supply paper and he came in earlier for a sheet but then left it behind when he was distracted by his peers. "Is that yours?" she asked him. He nodded toward the carpet. "You might need another..." she suggests as he looks to me. Without getting up from my desk, I extended another piece of notebook paper in his direction. "Did you forget the SCHOOL part of summer SCHOOL, sweetheart?" I prompt with a silly face aimed at the student. Everyone shares a quiet laugh. "I'm not supplying paper in the sixth grade anymore. We're handicapping them. When they get to you in 8th grade, they're entirely relient on teachers for their supplies." she's talking through the student who stands between us. "I agree." I say as they leave my room.

And fundamentally--I do agree. Most problems I struggle with seem to be learned behavior. Learned helplessness. Now I question the motive behind the behavior. Students frequently don't have paper or pencil. Could their family not afford it? Do they have a guardian available who they can ask to replenish their supplies when they run out? Have they given these items too freely to their peers therefore running out too quickly to call home and ask for more? Do they simply lack ownership for their materials and lose the items as soon as they acquire them? Do they just expect that a teacher will give them what they need? Is coming to school unprepared the first attempt at getting out of doing work?

Next I have to consider the consequences of how to handle this. Either I give that student the needed supplies or he/she sits in class without the means to complete the task at hand. I watch them ask people immediately near them for supplies. Sometimes they share. Usually there isn't anyone with a surplus of materials. Do I then have this student suffer the consequences of being unprepared by continuing to teach knowing this student is now incapable of taking notes, completing a worksheet, or turning in the exit ticket. Does that give the student permission to disengage from the lesson? Do they care enough about learning to understand that non-participation has consequences for their grade and for their overall knowledge gained or opportunities lost? Or I supply the pencil, paper, glue, etc and ask for collateral. But then I'm eating up class time and halting other students while I exchange paper for a shoe or an ID or whatever I've decided is sufficient. What if they refuse to make the trade? Is this opening up an avenue for students to just choose not to comply with my procedures? So, what then? Send them to the office so I've made absolutely sure that student will not learn from me today? Or let them show defiance and have them sit there unprepared? What does that demonstrate to the rest of the class? Did they achieve their goal of disengaging despite my decision to give them the choice? Alright, the final alternative--I wordlessly supply the paper. I've now told them accountability isn't crucial in my room but perhaps I've also shown them that there isn't an excuse for not completing the work. I've also now signed up to supply any student with any supplies needed for the duration of the year, have I not? And at what expense to me? At what expense to them? What am I teaching them in this decision?

"What you allow you encourage" echos in my head. I've never been told more truthful words as it comes to teaching. There it is: my first loose end. Care to weigh in?

What Parents Choose When They Pay: A Quick Reflection

Emmanuel Parello — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:32:11 +0000

For the past several years, two of the more common claims from the ed reform community are that class size is unimportant to student achievement and that test scores provide an effective way of evaluating teachers and schools. Interviewing for my new job at a French/English bilingual school, I was struck by how much the school deviated from those two central ideas.

When giving my sample lesson for the interview, I taught a class of 19 students. All classes at the school are capped at 20, and many have closer to 15 students. The school website and brochure both advertise this feature.

In addition, during my interview, the headmaster expressed his view that the public schools focused too heavily on test preparation, and that although they used testing to measure student progress, they were not beholden to them- a draw for parents.

Ed reformers have talked a lot in recent years about knowing what works, but it seems to me that when parents choose to opt out of public schools, they opt for precisely the thing that ed reformers say doesn't matter (small class sizes), and opt out of the testing that the reformers say is so critical for success.

One.

meghanelizabethdewey — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:10:41 +0000

This entry marks my first piece of writing on race & racial identity, as inspired by Alysia Harris and the Not Dalton's Kids Project. When I was in seventh grade, my energetic history teacher bravely chose to tackle a new topic in her classroom full of homogenous, upper-class students: diversity. She explained the concept of diversity to us -- that including multiple perspectives & backgrounds in any pursuit creates a richer, more dynamic community. We nodded our heads, digesting this idea of inclusiveness, and walked away feeling positive about it. Yeah, diversity, that sounds cool. On that day, I went home feeling empowered & idealistic & lofty -- I like diversity, so I must be anti-racist, right? I had a whole conversation about diversity. I knew everything. Two weeks ago, that perception -- my concept of comfort with race -- came crashing down. Until this year, racial identity and the concept of "white privilege" has existed as a theoretical concept in my life. I have read about race, discussed races, taken classes on race -- but all in the safety of relative homogeneity. From that day in my Episcopal middle school to my semester-long course on race relations, I have primarily engaged in racial discourse from an outsider's perspective. I have seen the effects of white privilege as tragic but removed from my life. Even when discussing horrifying statistics on discrimination in America, I haven't felt the effects of those truths. Yes, those statistics are terrible -- but here are these African-American and Latino/Latina students, sitting in the same classroom as I am, seemingly fine. They have surmounted the odds, and they are thriving. For the people of color in my life, everything's okay. This year, as the number of people of color in my life grew, I could no longer say that was true. Everything's not okay. In my classroom, we've talked about race. We've asked questions, challenged each other's opinions, and reached new conclusions. My students' remarks have ranged from insightful to doubtful, from inspiring to troubling. And while I have been eager to engage in these conversations, I've noticed a startling reality: during these discussions, my students are often teaching me. They're considerably more adept at navigating conversations on race than I am, and oftentimes, I have become the student. This year, I have become the energetic math teacher, bravely tackling the topic of diversity in my classroom of heterogeneous students of all backgrounds and circumstances, but rather than walking away feeling confident, I am walking into summer feeling more confused than ever. And so, I'm embarking on this effort -- to write about race each day for 30 days, and then some. To actively explore race -- to refuse to be a bystander, to let this topic become external to me. This is my start.

......

kaylaannkahn — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:56:48 +0000

Mental overload. Crunch time has never been so.... crunchy? My brain is fried and I still have a lot of lesson plans/ worksheets/ grading/ intervention mini lessons/ EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD to do. Now I understand why people drop out of TFA during institute. But i will stick it out because i am passionate and dedicated to change the lives of children. Alright well that's all I have time for. Back to planning..... and I thought orgo was hard.

Meh, They're Kids

dadler85 — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:35:03 +0000

Day 176: My last Monday at my school is over. It felt, unsurprisingly, like pretty much any other Monday. Kids riled up in the morning, having completely forgotten how to be focused during Morning Meeting. The joys of recess and lunch duty. The inability of my homeroom to get into class in an orderly fashion, followed by us eventually pulling it together and getting some work done. About six minutes into sixth period, I heard a student quickly shout, “Ow!” and grab his cheek. The girl behind him, the infamous AM, was giggling. I waited for the next possible break to investigate, and discovered that AM had in fact shot AB in the face with a rubber band. She hadn’t meant to shoot him in the face, per se, but she’d absolutely meant to shoot him. I took a step forward and nearly opened my mouth to send her out, ream her out … something. And then, I didn’t. In that moment, I decided that nothing I did would be at all productive. They were both fooling around, so it’s not like AB would feel slighted if I didn’t come to his rescue. And given that AM was already apologizing, I was fairly confident me getting high and mighty wouldn’t make her any more contrite than she already was. Rationalizing inaction? You betcha. Letting something slide with five days left to go that I wouldn’t have tolerated a month ago? Absolutely. Sitting here kicking myself for letting a student get hit in the face with a rubber band? No chance. These are kids, folks. They’ll be fine.

Four Reflections on Pre-Institute Work

ssmith — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:59:30 +0000

I just finished packing for Institute, and before that crazy adventure starts, I thought I would take a few moments to reflect on my pre-Institute work. A major caveat before I begin: Mostly, I only did the reading that was required of me. I rarely chose to investigate the optional resources, and I acknowledge that necessarily limits my analysis. That said, here are a couple of thoughts: 1. I wonder if the time spent on understanding the "achievement gap" would have been better spent on learning pedagogy. The survey about the pre-Institute work I took after I was all finished asked if I better understood the achievement gap and possible solutions for it. I think I probably do. And I think it was really important for me to read a variety of literature that talked about how poverty affects communities. But I still have very few real ideas about actual classroom strategies. Even the passages we read from Teaching as Leadership were focused more on community-building and building relationships with students and parents rather than pedagogical technique. I think that's all really important, but I'm thirsty for pedagogy. I've been ensured that I will get that at Institute so I'm really looking forward to it. 2. I worry that much of the discussion of "the achievement gap" revolved around deficit thinking. Many of the resources focused on things that communities with high levels of poverty do not have. Very rarely did a resource make it clear that communities have many identities, one of which is income level. In fact, the pre-work often focused on "cage-fighters" and "latch-breakers." individuals who are working to "better" communities. A lot of these individuals are doing great work, but there seemed to be a dearth of information about communities that are bettering themselves. A high proportion of the examples given were about TFA teachers (which was alright, considering that's what I'm doing. But wouldn't it be swell to see non-TFA teachers, too?!) or individuals who came from outside a community. In basically every instance, this made me feel uncomfortable. It made me feel like I was being trained to think of my future students and community as needing help. And, like, they do need help. But so does everyone everywhere. There were two notable exceptions of this pattern. First, this video from Cory Booker: watch?v=y7XgBxpMk3E Although Cory Booker is often accused of the same things I take issue with in the previous paragraph, the hero of this story is a woman who forces Booker to stop thinking he is a savior. I like that. Second, this video from Jeff Duncan-Andrade. watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2CwS60ykM8s I have mad respect for Jeff Duncan-Andrade. I saw him speak in New York once and found him extremely impressive. He lives in the same neighborhood as his students and routinely has his students over for dinner. The student-teacher relationship for him is extremely intimate, and I think his work serves as a really well-thought-out alternative to the "no excuses" model. 3. I really enjoyed the Detroit-specific pre-work. I found it much more pertinent than the rest of the pre-work. One of my main arguments with the rest of the work was that it often felt like I was being told that communities in low-income areas have enough similarities that learning about one will help you in another. I'm not sure I totally agree with that premise. So having work that was specific to Detroit was really awesome. I even spent a lot of time looking at optional texts in the Detroit-specific area. I've read or am reading several of the recommended books, including Made in Detroit by Paul Clemens, The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas Sugrue, Hidden History in Detroit by Amy Elliott Bragg, and Reimagining Detroit by John Gallagher. These last three are amazing, I highly recommend them. Sugrue's book is especially informative. 4. Made in Detroit may have been racist. Made in Detroit is a memoir by a white man named Paul Clemens who grew up in the region between Six Mile and Eight Mile in Detroit in the early 80s. Clemens, the son of working-class parents attempts to argue that Detroit in the early 80s had the opposite racial power structure as the rest of the nation. He claims that since the city had its first black mayor in Coleman Young and since the majority of the population in Detroit was black, white people were often victims of oppression. For instance, affirmative action programs in law enforcement instituted by Young resulted in holding white policemen back (since the majority of the population was black). But claims like these ignore important historical truths. Like, for instance, that although the black population grew steadily throughout the 1900s, black people remained chronically underrepresented in law enforcement. Likewise, when Clemens complains that his family and others had to retreat to further outskirts as neighborhoods were overrun by crime, he ignores one racial component while pointing to another. He's quick to point out that these crime-ridden neighborhoods were predominately black but never tells his readers that black people experienced a long history of real estate discrimination and disrespect from the city government who often seized predominantly black neighborhoods for city projects like freeways. He also doesn't seem to connect the dots to the fact that his family had the means to move out of the crime-ridden neighborhoods. Clemens, confusingly, often quotes James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Ralph Ellison. He takes contention with these writings, claiming an identity as a minority in a "black" city. But Clemens's interactions with black people are incredibly limited. He plays on a football team with mostly black children in middle school, and as far as pre-college interactions with black people, this is about it. He goes to a private college prep high school with mostly other white students. Then, when he finds out that his wife had been raped by a black man before they had met, he develops a scary hatred for random black men he meets. Perhaps, this is simply an attempt at honesty. But it lacks any recognition of self. In Clemens's world, he is the hero. Black men have only ever hurt him. He was born into a city that did not grant him the immediate privilege that white people had in the rest of the country, and he was bitter about it.

How our students fail to make the grade

Mr. Morgan — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:48:55 +0000

Time and time again I will say that my Grosse Pointe education is what makes me an eloquent individual. During my four years at Grosse Pointe South High School I had four rigorous English courses that emphasized the importance of grammar (thanks Veronica Ajavon and Brian McDonald), word choice (thanks Rose Ann Roarty), and analysis (thanks John Monaghan). Plus, my experience with our school newspaper, The Tower, helped me learn to craft persuasive points with limited column inches. Many of my peers across the country were not as lucky as me, and it showed when they struggled to complete writing assignments at Kalamazoo College. Today the Washington Post highlighted similar cases of students who weren't quite prepared for the college experience. One person who shared the story online implied that it's because our teachers, particularly in the District of Colombia, spend too much time "teaching to the test." While I agree with this individual that we should not base teacher evaluations fully on standardized test scores, I disagree with the point that we shouldn't have standardized tests or that teachers shouldn't teach students how to take those tests. I'll add that responsibility here falls on district administrators, principals, and teachers. First, district administrators and principals need to create an environment where standardized tests are not classified as "high stakes" indicators. Yes, they are a gauge of how students are performing at a given point in time, but schools should have their own indicators of success (in-class assessments and overall grades). These individuals also need to set the standard for their building, and motivate both teachers and students to meet their full potential. If that trust factor is not present, I know from my own experience that I am not going to make the grade. Second, while teachers should be teaching test-taking strategies, I believe these should be saved for the week or two before a test. Of course, teachers should be teaching to the standards present on a test, but I've always found it important to allow students time for choice and in-depth study. For example, in my kindergarten classroom last month, we wrapped up our year with a field trip to the Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary in West Bend, WI. There, students had the opportunity to see a variety of wild animals that they may have only seen in books. After the trip, we spent time thinking about the animals we heard about this year, and students selected an animal for further study. My assistant and I pulled out various books from across the building and we pulled out some laptops, too. Students had to search for information about their animal, record those facts down on paper, and then create a brief report about their animals. Everything we do is a delicate balance. Do students need to know how to take tests? Absolutely, and not simply because we want to see how they're doing in school. College and Universities want to know, too, and the ACT and SAT are going to be the only way they make it in to a top tier school. But, do students need to know how to research and write? Absolutely, and if anyone on the administrative end is saying otherwise they need to be reminded of our students' long-term interests. I was not the best student at Kalamazoo College -- nowhere near the top. But, my decent testing skills and above average writing skills have proven to be a tool that can push me ahead of the pack. Our students in both cities, suburbs, and rural communities across the nation are not receiving this broad skill set. We need to provide that gift to all students, so let's figure out how to strike the right balance in our schools.

A New Direction

Emmanuel Parello — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:09:53 +0000

On June 1st I was hired to a new job at a bilingual French/English private school as a third grade teacher. Although I was happy at the charter school where I was working and proud of the work that I did this past school year, the fact that I was only a long term sub for the school meant that I needed to find more permanent work. A few dozen applications later, I found a place that was nearly perfect for me: a school about fifteen minutes away from my house that taught classes mainly in French, my second language as a child. Getting teaching jobs has not been easy since 2009, so I feel extremely lucky. In a way, my departure from the public schools means a departure from the goal that I had upon entering TFA, which was to work towards providing excellent education for students in low income communities. The students at my new private school will undoubtedly receive quality educations regardless of whether I work there or not. After years of trying to fight against educational inequality, a part of me cannot help but feel that I've abandoned that fight early. This is the wrong way, however, to look at my new path. Inspiring students to love learning is enormously rewarding in any school, and there is no guarantee that this will happen in private schools. Part of the data driven approach of the reform movement has left me with the false notion that the primary goal of a teacher is to raise test scores. Even though I've spent a number of blog posts complaining about the reform movement, I've still internalized their assumption that my main role is to raise scores, and that unquantifiable measures of success are not valid. Although the leaders of my charter school stood against the overtesting of students, the fact that we worked at a public charter meant that we were accountable to those tests, and I was never able to shake the sense that the majority of my value as a teacher rested on the students' scores. Even as a long term sub, I became stressed over this every time I gave a benchmark assessment. For students already producing high test scores, such as the majority that I will work with at my new school, I fear that this has left me feeling that there isn't much work left to be done. This is as true for my new school as it is for the many advanced students with whom I have worked in the past, whether as a first-year TFA corps member or as a substitute and student teacher. Although raising scores is important, I agree with the sentiment expressed by 2012 CM John Choi and reposted today by Gary Rubinstein on his blog: "At the end of the year it doesn’t matter what their scores are—but if I can see passion in the subject I would have succeeded in the classroom.” When I first began entertaining the notion of becoming a teacher, I also objected to the value of education being defined by narrow metrics, but I soon grew to accept it as the nature of the profession. Even though I'll be working with students who already produce, on average, high test scores, I have a lot of work to do to make sure that they take away a lifelong love of learning from my lessons. It's a challenge that won't be easy, but it's one that I'm excited to take on.

Wisdom from a 2012 CM "it doesn’t matter what their scores are"

Gary Rubinstein — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:58:42 +0000

Throughout my teaching career, one thing has remained constant: what I'm trying to accomplish. Back in the early 1990s there was no focus on test scores, thankfully. My goal back then, as it is now, was for my students to like math more when they complete my class than they did when they began the class. This is something that is tough to quantify, and it is something that, if I accomplish it, will often, but not always, result in improved test scores since when students like math they will more likely want to spend time studying it outside of class. In 2008, TFA celebrity and StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee had this to say in an influential TIME magazine feature:

“The thing that kills me about education is that it’s so touchy-feely,” she tells me one afternoon in her office. Then she raises her chin and does what I come to recognize as her standard imitation of people she doesn’t respect.... “People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning,’” she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. “I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap.’ Don’t get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job.”

Over the years TFA has become all about 'data' and TFA alumni became education 'reform' leaders who also stressed the importance of 'outcomes' like test scores and test score 'gains.' So I was pleased to see in a recent Pass The Chalk post where 'reform' hero, TFA board member, and Grammy award winning singer John Legend interviewed a 2012 TFA corps member, John Choi, who has just completed his first year. Here is a quote from Mr. Choi:

"My vision has come a long way from just focusing on data. My number one goal is to inspire students to want to learn the material. Everything else just follows from that. At the end of the year it doesn’t matter what their scores are—but if I can see passion in the subject I would have succeeded in the classroom.”

Good for Mr. Choi. I hope we hear more like this from TFA.

Lesson planning up the Wha-zoo

kaylaannkahn — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:43:11 +0000

Wow my brain is tired. After a long day of planning I have completed 3 mini-lesson plans on class culture, a final draft for my math objective 1, a rough draft of math objective 3, numerous class decorations/posters, our final outline of our groups class culture plan, and.... idk what else!? I'm done for the day... What's worst is that I didn't even get to exercise today so I have literally been sitting here staring at this darn computer for 12+ hours. Oh well, maybe tomorrow will be different... Or maybe not considering it is the first day of real class ANDDD I have 2 more full lesson plans due. Alright, welp I have to wake up for my school bus in 6hours, time for bed. And I thought orgo was hard....

One Last Shout-Fest

dadler85 — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 20:04:39 +0000

Day 175: As I’ve explained before, I have my students do a call and response chant before every quiz and test. I yell “work hard” and they respond “get smart.” I wonder if they actually remember this is supposed to remind them about the value of persistence and growth mindset, or if they just like yelling really loudly. In the event that it was more about yelling loudly, I decided to make our last time a bit more special. Before we started the final, I told each class something unique about them – something that I was proud of them for. I told 6A I appreciated how on task they had stayed all year, and how impressed I was with how much work we’d completed as a result. I told 6B I appreciated how much energy, enthusiasm and positivity they had brought to class this year. I told 6D I appreciated how hard we’d worked to stay focused, even when things threatened to slip toward the end. And I told 6C – my darling homeroom – that I was proud of them for all of their hard work, and how much we’d persisted through struggles together. And then I opened my door. I told my kids I didn’t know when the next time was that they’d be able to scream out loud in school, so we had better make the last one count. I stretched in over-the-top fashion, preparing my vocal cords, and said, loudly: “Work Hard.” Students responded, loudly: “Get Smart!” I shouted: “Work Hard!” Students shout: “Get Smart!” I screamed, with a pause between each word: “WORK. HARD!” Students scream back: “GET. SMART!” As expected pretty much no class brought it back super fast from that last one. MB, the king of the loud shout, went on for a good five seconds. I couldn’t care less. I called the office, made sure the receptionist heard us – she did, every time – gave my kids the OK sign, and told them to nail the final. Which, by and large, they did. I’ll miss these guys. One week to go …

"Justice is what love looks like in public": The End of Induction

houstonheart — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:57:34 +0000

This quote, courtesy of Cornel West, was shared in one of our final sessions of Induction. The session - entitled A Vision for Teaching As Leadership - was one of the more tangible, specific sessions we're had throughout the past few days. I loved it. But more on that later. The end of Induction has gone much, much more smoothly for me than was the beginning of Induction. I'm meeting more people, starting to branch out, and am feeling more comfortable here in the TFA environment. Yesterday, a few of my friends and I did the Insanity workout in one of the dorm rooms. It was the first time I've felt like a real person since I've been here; it underscored the importance of maintaining my non-TFA self throughout the rest of Institute. I finished the workout and headed back to my own dorm feeling refreshed, energized, and truly happy. It's something I want to feel again. So I'm going to make it happen. The theme of yesterday was D&I (Diversity & Inclusion). I'd heard mixed things about TFA diversity sessions. People I've talked to always feel strongly about them, yet have vastly differing views on the effectiveness and ease of these sessions. I've had my fair share of awkward, superficial diversity sessions in the past so I walked in not quite sure what to expect. At this point, I will note that this is only my experience and does not in any way reflect the experiences of any other corps members, or the messages elucidated by TFA. It's just what I saw and heard and felt. TFA's outlook on diversity is best represented by its diversity core value (which you can look up on the TFA website). It grounds its outlook in the research of Dr. Beverly Tatum (author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?) and basically discusses the basics of my sociology classes at Rice - institutionalized racism, white privilege, power structures, racism vs. prejudice, etc. One of the more controversial aspects of Tatum's research - or at least the one of the more controversial aspects in the TFA diversity session - was the idea that all white people are racist, since they inherently benefit from a white-dominated power structure. It is therefore impossible for people of color to be racist. On the other hand, both whites and people of color can be prejudiced. This idea caused quite a stir in the room and was incredibly uncomfortable for many of the people present. I'm honestly still grappling with it myself. I am often quite aware of the various ways white privilege affects my opportunities in life - buying a car, getting car insurance, visiting/renting an apartment, etc. Yet, many of the individuals in the room had not fully realized the impact of their involvement with the white power structure, and had not contemplated the full weight of Tatum's research. The session ("D&I til I die," a nod to 3,6 Mafia) was structured such that we were split into small groups, given norms/definitions, given discussion questions, and allowed to discuss in groups for ten minutes. The total session was three hours long. The ten-minute time frame, in true TFA style, was helpful in structuring the discussion and keeping things focused. However, many people I talked to afterwards said that most of the contention and disagreement in their discussions stemmed from the ten-minute limit, as it prevented participants from fully developing and articulating their ideas, thus leading to misunderstandings. My group, however, had a fantastic discussion. We were all honest, open, and mutually respectful. I didn't feel an uneasy or contentious dynamic at all. Though other groups seemed to have varying experiences, I thought our group made a lot of progress in both understanding TFA's diversity core value, understanding what it means to teach diverse students even if you come from a background that means you can't necessarily identify with your students' backgrounds, and learning how to mesh aspects of your identity when teaching. The D&I session was pretty intense and after a workout and dinner, we headed to drink some wine, eat frito pie (a Texas fixture), and enjoy each others' company. It was a good way to debrief from the discussion and make some stronger ties heading into Institute. Today has mainly been a discussion of diversity - this time in the way TFA handles recruitment/selection/support of corps members - and a variety of interactive presentations about Teaching As Leadership. TAL is the way TFA approaches teaching and transformational leadership. There are a lot of commentaries about it online so I will leave you to look those up if you so desire. Basically, we rotated through three sessions in which high-impact TFA teachers shared the ways they developed their classroom visions and executed these visions. I appreciated the sense of individuality and personality the teachers conveyed. I feel like there are many stereotypes about TFA teachers out there: that TFA teachers are robots, they only teach to the test, they have absolutely no life outside of TFA, etc. Every one of these stereotypes was proven incorrect by this session. We talked a lot about the importance of being genuine, establishing a from-the-heart vision, bringing elements of your personality into your work. It certainly gave me a lot to think about and I really enjoyed out. We spent the next four (!) hours reflecting in our TTL groups on our identities, race/class/privilege, and the week in general. We shared our Stories of Self and then our group did a really meaningful activity where we wrote messages to each other. I feel very lucky to have such a warm, supportive TTL group and I know that we will still be supportive once Institute starts, even when we end up in different CMA groups. We finished up the evening with a cheer battle/pep rally in the quad, and though many people went out afterwards, I decided to stay in and just take some time for myself. I'm definitely an introvert and as I'd been social/around people all of Induction, I resisted the temptation to go be with people more because I knew I needed time alone. I went for a run around campus and then laid on my back in the grass and just looked at the stars, thinking about Induction and all we'd said and done and heard. I'd forgotten how re-energizing time alone can be. As I walked back to campus I felt eager to tackle the challenges ahead and grateful to be in the company of so many inspired individuals. So, that's it! I register for Institute today and then will spend most of the afternoon running errands, finally getting my room set up, and seeing some non-TFA friends. Starting tomorrow we'll spend the week learning (attempting to learn?) how to teach, by which I mean we will listen to a ton of information and grab as much as possible of it. The week thereafter is when we actually head to summer school. Things about myself I learned this week: 1. I need to keep doing the things that make me function - exercise, time alone, an early bedtime. 2. I can be very social and extroverted if necessary. 3. I'm getting better at taking risks and meeting new people. 4. Though adjusting to life after college is hard, it is a process and it is definitely doable. 5. Balancing my TFA life and my non-TFA life is something I need to start working on now. Decisions become habits. As I head into Institute, I hope to keep all this in mind as I try new things and greet exciting challenges.

Biking and building and... teaching?

memphismind — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 04:28:00 +0000

Last summer, I rode a bike from Charleston, SC to Santa Cruz, CA for affordable housing through a program called Bike and Build. It was one of the hardest and most amazing experiences of my life, and I am finding that my summer spent with Teach for America is quite similar to it in a lot of ways (except B&B allowed time for naps and had way better food). Last summer, one of our four precious days off was in Little Rock, AK. This weekend this year's SC2SC route was in Little Rock, and myself as well as three other alumni from my route (Britt, Stew, and Gina) decided to visit them! I headed out to Little Rock last night after training was over, and I was very excited to escape the TFA bubble for a day and return to the B&B bubble that I miss so much! I was also excited because I have a few friends on this year's route-- Mike, who I recently met in Orlando, FL; Brian, my mentee, who is also from MI and happens to be in teh same fraternity as my dad; and Cassie, Britt's girlfriend. While the relaxation and all was fun, what I want to talk about is a little deeper than that. Today, I got the opportunity to see Central High and its visitor center. Central High is where the Little Rock 9 happened (the first majorly publicized attempt at desegregation in a public school). In TFA, we have talked about the Little Rock 9 a lot because it is so pertinent to our work. Minority and impoverished populations are not getting the same opportunities to education that others are, and the perseverance that these students had in obtaining what was rightfully theirs is admirable. I felt both disgusted and empowered standing in the visitor center-- knowing that they were so accomplished in their actions, but also knowing that the achievement gap is still a very real problem. The museum had some inspirational quotes that really resonated with me: "If not us, then who? If not now, then when?" (John Lewis-- former Freedom Rider) "We've come too far from where we started to get tired now." Another one that stuck out to me was a billboard that says "Who will build Arkansas if its own people do not?" I feel like this is a message I need to send to my students in Memphis-- they must take ownership of their city. As we left the visitor center, we walked over to the park and school grounds. In the park, there was a group of people taking photos with chains and ropes around them. We asked a man there what this was all about, and he said they were rehearsing for a big event that is coming up sponsored by the visitor center. We learned that there were people right there standing next to us who were the sons and daughters of the Little Rock 9 and other pertinent leaders in Civil Rights. It was amazing to see that legacy right in front of me considering our goal at MBA is to live up to the legacy. Listening to him speak, a current B&B rider said, "it's always interesting to meet people who have more to say than we do." This stood out to me because on B&B we were constantly telling people about our journey and people were so impressed, yet traveling the country by bike also meant that we got to hear the stories of such a range of people. I am so grateful to have met that man today and to have had a re-glimpse at my B&B experience. The two programs-- and issues (education/affordable housing)-- are more correlated than they may appear, and I know I am becoming/have become a much better person having experienced both of them. I loved today, and I am feeling rejuvenated and ready to work hard tomorrow to prepare myself for the week ahead. I will post pictures from the museum soon!

this is what I do all day

latiamissamanda — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 01:43:32 +0000

So, from the last post you know that I’m taking classes here in Tulsa. But what is this summer really all about? We go to lots and lots of “sessions” where we learn everything that we can in a short time about education and leadership in the classroom. It is insanity, but we earn 9 hours of college credit in literally five weeks. I described some of the classes that we have had so far in the last blog post. I find them super interesting, besides the number that they try to cram into one day. But, the most important and most exciting part is, of course, teaching. I’ve been placed in a preschool program here in Tulsa. Rather than working with Tulsa Public Schools (TPS), forty of us have been placed at a Community Action Project (CAP) site, specifically CAP Disney. Almost the entirety of the corps members (CMs) placed at CAP Disney are part of the Oklahoma core, except for me and two from the Twin Cities. This is because Oklahoma is one of the only big regions that places corps members in preschools. I honestly feel very lucky to have been placed in preschool, because most of my kindergarteners in the fall will not have attended preschool. This experience is familiarizing me with what kids who have access to preschool would have learned. It also opens my eyes to the reality that I will have to teach my kids two grades in one year in order for them to be as ready for first grade as their peers who did attend kindergarten. And let’s not forget that I’m doing this in Spanish. But that is another story. CMs at Disney are divided up into three groups, each of which is led by a Corps Member Advisor (CMA). The CMAs are former TFA teachers that have all very successfully run preschool classrooms of their own. My CMA is Maria and she is beyond awesome. Watching her model her techniques is just magical. Within our CMA groups, we are divided into groups of four called collabs (collaborations). All four teachers in the collab work together in the same classroom. So, we have to collaboratively write our vision and goals, classroom management, investment plan, and classroom procedures together (and it is really hard to get four teachers to agree!). In the morning, all four teachers will be in the classroom from 8-8:30 to greet the parents and the kids. Then, two will teach from 8:30-10:30 and two will teach from 10:30-12:30. Within our two hour block, duties are divided up. Each week we will change duties, so by the end we will have taught everything. This week, I am teaching math in the morning block. The morning block consists of breakfast, recess, morning meeting, and math and literacy small groups. The afternoon block consists of large group literacy, centers and guided reading, lunch, and math meeting. In preschool, the lesson times are actually pretty short, but we have to look for ways to assess all throughout the day. Much of our teaching will also revolve around procedures like transitioning from breakfast to carpet time and sitting correctly on the carpet. I like that CAP uses family style lunches, so we will be working on manners and asking purposeful questions throughout meal times. Next week I’ll run morning meeting and teach small group lit. The following week I’ll have guided reading and the last week I’ll teach large group lit and math meeting. The other two morning hours as well as the afternoon hours are all filled with sessions. Nights are used for individual meetings with the CMAs, lesson planning, making materials, and doing group work. Thankfully, weekends are ours to work as we need to with no scheduled activities.

Institute Week 1: The Ups

latiamissamanda — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:28:07 +0000

It has been such a week- a long week, an interesting week, an exhausting week, and a difficult week. It is easy to focus on the negatives, I realized last night as I was talking to Corey that there have been some really wonderful aspects to this week. First of all, I am surrounded by some extremely like-minded people and by more diversity than I have seen in my entire life. Both are so enriching and fantastic. I have heard endless stories of people’s lives and have so many more questions. I want to hear their perspectives on life and education when coming from such different backgrounds than mine. There are so many races, religions, classes, and sexual orientations represented. On the other hand, I have never had people understand me so well, or feel like I know the exact feeling that someone else is talking about as happens so often here. Those of similar backgrounds to me have had similar troubles in how to speak out against injustice that does not affect us and understand overcoming feelings of white guilt. In the end, we are all working for the same thing, which is ending educational inequity by fighting for social justice. I’ll talk about the unfortunate layout of the classes later, but the content of the sessions that we have been in has been fantastic. They have covered so many topics: visions and goals, investment ideas, behavior management plans including the behavior management cycle and conscious discipline, race and class, lesson planning, literacy, and personal identity. All of the sessions include activities for us to try our hand at what is being taught, as well as assignments to work with our group to personalize the plan for our classrooms, feedback, and rewriting the plans. Despite getting up at 5 am and starting sessions at 7 am, I have yet to fall asleep in a class because I am so continually intrigued. (And if you know me and how much of high school and college I slept though, this is a miracle). This type of stuff is without a doubt what I was meant to study. The sessions on behavior management have been perhaps the most interesting for me. There are so many theories out there, but I can see the utility of both of the methods that have been present to us. We are in a unique situation because the early childhood center that we are working with, called CAP, uses and program called conscious discipline, where TFA focuses on the behavior management cycle and a system with clear consequences. We will learn more about conscious discipline in the coming weeks, but the basic idea is that discipline should be an opportunity to teach the child about how to self-regulate behavior. It is grounded in quite a bit of research about how young brains work. Every class room has either a safe space or a focus chair for children to go when they get upset, but they cannot be sent to these places like a time out. Children are given a choice as to whether to stop the behavior and join the group or go calm down in the safe space (although we haven’t gotten to the point where they explain what to do if the child refuses both options). They want to teach children to make conscious decisions about the actions that they are taking so that discipline becomes a time of growth rather than fear of consequences. I like the idea, but definitely want to learn more. The behavior management cycle taught by TFA can actually work with conscious discipline without too much trouble. The basic idea behind that is that children want to behave and will if you use the right tools. It focuses on a three step cycle: clearly state exactly what children are supposed to do, down to every specific, and how they are supposed to do it; use behavior narration to point out the behavior that you want to see; and correct that which you don’t want using specific instruction of what you do want. So, for preschoolers, we would say in a kid friendly way for them to sit down, cross their legs, backs up straight, hands in the bowl, mouths quiet, and eyes on the teacher. Then when we see children who are doing what we ask, we say in a neutral way “Karina is sitting up straight. Jack has his hands in the bowl.” The idea is to narrate behavior, not attach any kind of positive phrasing to it. I have a hard time with this when it comes to not thanking kids for behaving well. It is an expectation, not something you like or hope for them to do. If you set the expectation, they will rise to it without reaching for praise. It is definitely going to be interesting to put this into practice, especially because while our kids look sweet, there is no structure at all for many of their routines. Speaking of the kids, we got to meet them last week! Of course, that part was wonderful. They took to us so quickly too. There are 17 kids in the class but only about 10 show up any day during the summer. There are very few behavior problems but a lot of English Language Learners. The kids are sweet, but we have to teach them routines and procedures to have a really exceptional classroom. I’m not sure how it will go switching from a relaxed teacher to ones that expect more discipline in behavior. I honestly have a hard time imagining as much structure in a preschool classroom as they are telling us that we can have, but each one of our leaders for the training has taught in a preschool classroom that successfully implemented those routines and it allows for so much more growth and activities that are only possible with tightly controlled behavior. These kids are on a great path already just from having access to preschool, but in general they still have a long road ahead of them to keep up with their more affluent peers. We have to get as much done as possible! My group has put a ton of time into our investment plan. Because these kids are in school year round, it is especially important that we come up with a way to invest them in making these next four weeks productive. Luckily, my whole group really buys into this idea. When looking over our values, we found that one of the most prominent ones was curiosity. We decided to theme our room with detectives to really drive home that idea. On the first day, we will start introducing students to our theme by telling them that the classroom is now the mystery lab and instead of students they are dedicated detectives. We are also focusing on the idea that detectives have to work together to solve mysteries, so there is a lot of love between one another. We even wrote a song that we will sing every morning! “We are dedicated. We are detectives. We love one another. We are curious.” It has actions to. Yup, we are that awesome. Throughout the day, we will be weaving detective language into our lessons to continue to motivate students towards the ideal. We have been making decorations for the classroom like magnifying glasses and question marks to hang up. Because CAP doesn’t allow individual recognition, and because we want to promote group sharing, we have decided to use a reward strategy of collecting magnifying glasses. When we see a group of students working well together or doing some sort of extended learning opportunity that shows curiosity, we will award the class a magnifying glass. At the end of every day we will count our magnifying glasses. Especially in the beginning we plan on handing them out liberally. When the class reaches 50 magnifying glasses, we will have a Disguise Day, and if we meet our goal of 100 we will have a Mystery Party before we leave. I am sooooooo excited about all of this, if you can’t tell. Themes are awesome. I’m also really proud of the visions and goals document that we wrote. It includes visions of what we want to see in our students both academically and socially, specific objectives based on Common Core, and what kids of behaviors we will see and language we will hear used around the classroom if students are living out our vision. I think it is really important to have thought it out so thoroughly before starting. You have to know where you are going if you want to get anywhere at all. I think I will actually share parts of the visions and goals document (it ended up being 10 pages long) in another blog post, and I doubt anyone will read that, but I was seriously so proud of what we came up with. I also find the literacy sessions to be extremely interesting. I guess that is my mother coming out in me. Learning how little ones recognize letters and sound out words and develop reading comprehension is just all so fascinating, and of course of the upmost importance. I even got to converse with our literacy specialist a little bit out how this would translate to Spanish in my classroom. She reassured me that even teaching these skills in Spanish to native English speakers, if they learn the techniques well in Spanish, they will have no trouble switching over to English later one. It was so interesting to go through each letter of the alphabet to see if we could say the sound correctly without falling into the pitfall of adding an “uh” at the end. We all sounded so silly. I really need to go through the alphabet in Spanish as well and discover how the sounds are when they stand alone. I hope that the school I’m at will have some guidance for me in this realm. Finally, they are really guiding us to make some strong lesson plans. We start with the assessment in mind and make sure to have a what, why, and how section as well as it playing out with I do, we do, you do. I had some experience with that at Breakthrough but hearing it again is really helpful. I know that when I was teaching Spanish at Mater Dei, I had good activities but didn’t start with the assessment in mind or with a strong objective for what we would achieve that day. I love seeing that I am already becoming a better teacher and I can’t imagine how much I will grow this summer. TL;DR: I love learning about education and becoming a teacher. I am so incredibly excited by the content and completely geeking out on it!

Miss Lora's Story

latiamissamanda — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:32:07 +0000

Miss Lora’s Story Prior to coming to institute, we were given quite a bit of pre-work to complete. Some people did it and some people didn’t. I eventually finished all of it, if a couple of weeks late. Some of it was interesting, some of it was boring, and some of it was outdated. The part that I found most worth reading was interestingly considered “optional.” It was a very good action to have read it. Miss Lora’s story was quite a long read. It was based off of the life of a TFA corps member’s first four years of teaching. The format is interesting, starting at the beginning of the school year to the end but with all four years at once. So we read an entry from the beginning of the school year about a students from each one of her four years, then moved on to the next chronological date and four stories, then the next and four stories. While the stories gave insight into Miss Lora’s classroom in general, they were told through the lens of one particular student each year. The names in the story used for the students were Anthony, Douglas, Tanya, and Roberto. I loved the story because it was completely and utterly honest. The four students chosen for the entries were some of her most difficult of the years. She admitted her failures and struggles to accept them along with the successes. Her story scared me and excited me. One of the only things that I’m having a really hard time accepting is the emphasis on test scores. Unfortunately, it’s reality. The story was set up to reflect that reality. Each entry was labeled by the number of days left until the students had to take the standardized test at the end of the fourth grade year. In this particular state, it was the requirement for passing onto fifth grade. If students did not pass the test, they would be retained. It makes sense then that this had to be her ultimate goal, and the main theme that she invested her students in. (As an aside, apparently Oklahoma just enacted a similar law for third graders.) It makes me sad that the ultimate pinnacle of education isn’t curiosity, creativity, or love of learning, or even progress made. It is also such a high stakes day for kids, especially when they know that their future and ability to progress with their friends on to the next grade depends on it. There is always so much that can go wrong on test day, from forgetting to fully fill in the circles to stressing out over tests to feeling really sick. I am not aware of Missouri having similar laws, but obviously performing well on standardized tests is the ultimate goal of too many education policies. I guess it is something that all teachers have to struggle with and live with. Miss Lora seems to have been an extremely dedicated teacher. She held after school tutoring sessions every day as well as weekly Saturday school. She taught summer school. She made individual growth goals and tracked them with every student as part of the process. She made home visits and tried to invest parents in their children’s success. She lobbied for her students and created school wide events like sleepovers and a spelling bee. The amount of energy used I can only imagine. The struggles that she describes in her story revolve around only one student in her class of sometimes more than 30. How does one invest that much time and energy into every single student without burning out? Where do the strength, focus, and balance come from? And what happens when a student still fails? Such is the case with Douglas’s story. After Douglas had failed third grade several times, she became his summer school teacher and “miraculously” got him to pass the third grade test. He was placed in her fourth grade classroom. Douglas displayed several behavioral problems besides being years behind academically. Miss Lora knew that Douglas needed counseling and special education services, but could not in good conscious recommend he be placed there because in her school the resources in place did nothing more than babysit those kids. So she did the best she could. She invested him in his own success using the positive reaction from passing the third grade test. She did everything she could to learn his triggers and teach him how to deal with situations. He was still suspended for violence several times, but much less than in other years. He made great leaps and bounds academically, especially in the three weeks leading up to the test. And in the end, he still failed the class. I don’t know how I could deal with that. I am a perfectionist and will want to meet my goal that one hundred percent of my kids meet one hundred percent of their goals. I see myself as that teacher that will give it her all. But what happens when “all” isn’t good enough? I’m afraid of really letting that get to me. On the other hand, she had so many successes. One child had been told repeatedly by his third grade teacher and his mother that he was the dumb twin, the one who couldn’t learn anything no matter how sweet he was. Miss Lora had a lot of work to do because he was very far behind, and she had to work just as hard on building confidence as teaching him. She invested the entire class in bringing Anthony up to speed. She did much the same as Roberto, who worked very hard but had almost no ability to write in English. He asked for extra work and repeatedly stayed after school. At the end of the year, he went from writing one barely legible sentence for an essay to writing several paragraphs with few spelling errors. These were the students that she kept teaching for. I know I will have some of those students. I know I may also have some that don’t make it. I know that I may have to walk into a classroom where the administration only cares about test scores. I know that I have to invest my students in the idea that we will all achieve success. It sounds so overwhelming and almost impossible (and made it very easy to see how TFA corps members burn out quickly), especially in my case of doing it all in Spanish with kids who don’t speak the language. Yet somehow Miss Lora’s story left me inspired.

One Last Marathon Thursday

dadler85 — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:21:47 +0000

Day 174: When we last left our brave hero, he was up too late on Wednesday writing a Science final. We find him now, Thursday morning, desperately trying to finish said final, and then print it before first period. Never a dull moment. As usual, Thursday was a long day. Given the last-minute nature of the final-writing experience, I found about 10 typos, which I had to then fix while the first classes took the test. Third period, I reduced AC to tears because – gasp – I actually called her out on her empowered, but-I-need-it-now-ness. She tried to leave to go to the bathroom without permission, and when I told her to wait until after the directions, called out at me in the middle of said directions, “Can I go now?” I’d said no interrupting nor speaking once finals were on desks, so I had her stand in the hall for a conversation. She refused to admit she should have waited and raised her hand, with lots of sniffles and crossed arms, so the conversation lasted well into recess. On the plus side, I’ve discovered yet again I’m OK being the bad guy. Sixth and seventh periods were about surviving two final games of Trashketball, which I’m about 80 percent sure I never want to deal with again. And eighth period was the unfettered joy of managing students watching the school play. When I told JP he could sit with his friends if he committed to not talking, he responded, “We’re going to have fun.” Five seconds later, he was sitting alone, behind me. Again, OK being the bad guy. My day ends around 10 pm, perched over a laptop, eyes clearly not up to the task of staying awake. For once, I call it a night early. Only a day later do I realize that will be my last-ever Thursday marathon. I won’t miss them.

Induction Reflections: Myself and Kansas City

latiamissamanda — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 18:10:26 +0000

From last week, when I was in Kansas City at induction. I cannot believe that I thought I was “tired” then! I should have taken more time to write out introspective posts like this, because I have no mental capacity left for this kind of reflection :P Although I’ve been feeling the need and the urge to write, actually sitting down and doing it is much more difficult. I feel as though all of my mental energy has been exhausted by the end of these days of listening, contemplating, sharing, and learning. When I get back to my hotel room, I just want to shut down and block it out. When I do that, though, I feel as though I am not fully soaking in the information or taking advantage of the opportunities being given to me. With so much material to absorb, reflection time at my own pace, quietly away from the group is essential to getting the most out of this experience. I am very impressed by the presentation and structure of our days, because our time has not been wasted. I guess that is to be expected from a group of former teachers to always keep us full of productivity, but when I was going through the training at Breakthrough we were often left unengaged and waiting and I feared the same here. Car rides are used for debriefing, we watch documentaries on the bus, and conversations often carry on into dinner. Nights are usually free though, which is a drinking escapade for a lot of people and some nice quiet time for me. Most of this week has focused on personalizing the journey that we are on. This has been covered in two ways: getting to know ourselves and getting to know our new city. To be honest, I would consider myself one of the more introspective and vulnerable members of our group. For a session, we focused on values that we held versus values that we carried out, and what let us to value those qualities. We also had to write and share stories of ourselves that gave insight as to why we want to be teachers. When I first started writing it a few weeks ago, I was lost. It sounded like a silly exercise. I see now that it wasn’t, or at least it didn’t have to be. I found that some of my peers grazed the service with their stories, showing us the determination that it took to get through a challenge or the flexibility to try new things. Others, like me, dug into a much more raw and emotional side of ourselves. What made the exercise really useful, however, was the gentle pushing we gave the author to dig a little deeper. Others pointed out parts in my story that I hadn’t seen. For example, I wrote something along the lines of “my drive to be a teacher didn’t come from my nice, white, middle class background and the good schools I attended.” As someone else pointed out, coming from a good background does not mean that you don’t want to be a teacher! It should have been obvious to me how wrongly I phrased that, but it wasn’t. I guess I was trying to frame the fact that I wanted to work in high needs areas but not because it was what I experienced on a daily basis. There has also been a lot of encouragement, as I’ve (and others have) found a lack of positivity and pride regarding our ability to do what we have been selected to do. I really found the roots of my drive to be connected to my emotional capacity and control issues. I get incredibly overwhelmed with empathy and passion when I am made aware of a problem in the world. It can move to a really scary place where I just can’t let go of the issue, almost to a point of obsession. When I’m teaching, it allows me to focus on one particular thing that I can do to make the world a better place. I can’t solve everything, but I have a little bit of control over a couple of kids’ educations. When I was initially writing my story, I found that I was very upset with my analysis. Am I only teaching because it makes me feel more in control? Am I doing this only to satisfy a need within me so I don’t lose my mind? Those kinds of questions made me feel as if my drive to be a teacher was innately selfish. The teachers who heard my story saw it differently and really encouraged me not to think about it that way. I can’t say that I really know how I see it right now, but at least it is a more balanced view. It is interesting to reflect on how I interact with the group. I have found myself near silent during some discussions and extremely vocal during others. For example, as part of getting to really know Kansas City, we visited the museum for Brown versus Board of Education, went on a bus tour, and watched a locally produced movie called “We Are Superman” (a local response to the popular documentary “Waiting for Superman”). I was completely overwhelmed by the documentary which focused on the racial and economic divide between the east and west sides of Troost street. I am aware of the bad reputation of east of Troost, as we experienced it first hand when going to look at a potential rental house on that side of town. When we arrived, the only window without bars on it had been smashed in and the air conditioner had been ripped out the night before. Spending the day learning about the policies of the past that have helped to create the divide put it into historical context, and then the movie focused on different groups that have been trying to change something, one issue at a time. Despite the efforts, some of them grassroots and led by those in the community themselves, many of the programs have failed their initial objective or lost funding. One, started and run by a nun, was particularly inspiring for the number of children they take in off of the streets and from underserved communities and the comprehensive care provided in the years before school begins. Every time she talked, I was struck with awe. I wanted to meet her and work alongside of her. Another man held “man classes” to help teach and inspire young, poor men to grow up and be the role models their families deserve. Generally, I was awestruck at the movie and saddened by the failures. However, when asked to discuss, I really had no idea what to say because I just couldn’t process everything I had been shown. On the other hand, there were some really insightful critiques of the movie made by some core members that had noticed underlying assumptions or unfair generalizations. For example, one member angrily pointed out that the leader of the man classes seemed to suggest that the problems would go away if every household had a father, and idea that upset some of the single parents or children of single parents in the room. Of course, every issue is extremely multi-faceted and one must focus on a single issue to prioritize. Another member was offended by some of the laughter during the movie, where many of us reacted to something that wasn’t necessarily funny, or shouldn’t have been. Hearing all of the insights from other corps members was interesting, but also left me wondering why I was taking it all at face value and not questioning it like they had been. I’m definitely learning.