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Why We Don't Stay (Even Though I Am)

Caroline — Thu, 16 May 2013 03:52:42 +0100

I'm getting fat. I've picked up a few awful habits in past months and lately have spent a lot of time dedicated to thinking of why I haven't taken care of myself. Why I'm not on fire. Why these are statements, now, and not raging exclamations, or questions, at least. I'm disappointed in myself. My spine might have turned to jelly, my teaching pedagogy might have changed to getting by, status quo, hiding. No one watches me teach. No one coaches me. No one holds me accountable. No one knows any different. I'm getting lazy. Lazy is a word I've adamantly ignored because I feel there is a very incredibly damagingly negative connotation, and it's usually misused. Maybe I forgive too easily, maybe I make too many excuses, but I think very, very few people are genuinely LAZY. They are stuck, they are emotionally messy, they are unbelieving that they can complete the task at hand. Rarely lazy. Mostly fearful. But I'm lazy. I know better, I expect more, I am capable of more, I am scared of I've turned myself into and perhaps more scared of why. I don't run. I do the minimum at school. I eat poorly. I drink constant caffeine and my body feels bloated and useless. I'm a mess, pretty much. This is part of what's stopped my updates. The laziness, and mores the embarrassment that comes as a result. Bigger than that: this is my Third year. I'm TFA-grown and by golly, I should know better. I should do better. I should be better than a first or second year teacher because regardless of anything else I've been here longer and I know what it means to work hard and I know what it means to have high expectations and I expect myself to have them. Until I lose motivation. Or accountability. Or anyone around me that has the time or energy to point out I've stopped working as hard. To call me lazy. Third year TFA means No Longer TFA means Good Luck and Have Fun Feeling Alienated because if you're not on staff and not a corps member, well, then you're a teacher. You should have figured it out by now. This makes me fear the fourth year. I simultaneously very much want to plan and don't want to plan at all. Facing failure, again, is scary. Keep me where I'm safe and dry and hidden! Keep praising me for Staying A Fourth Year because no one Really wants to stay here, do they. Well, yes, sometimes. I love my community for my community, not for TFA, not for proving a point, not for being a martyr or earning incredulous and totally uninformed compliments. I love being here and I know there are other teachers who love being here, too, but if people wonder why it's so hard to stay, why so many TFAers leave so quick: this is why. The support runs out. The well runs dry. Or as I've said 800 times in the past three months: you hit the ceiling. It seems the only people who can help develop alumni are entirely (and rightfully, in the sense of a job) dedicated to the current corps. The rest of us, they figure, MUST be doing SOMETHING right or we wouldn't have stayed that this or fourth year, right? We'll be fine. And yes, we will be fine. We always are. But what about our kids?

Input // Output

Caroline — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:28:01 +0100

Lately I've felt anything but consistent. Ecstatic? Sometimes. Crushed? Sometimes. Exhausted? A lot of times. It's the end of year three and despite a mostly clean bedroom, despite the kaleidoscope sunlight dancing on my bed, despite long hair and big plans and so many things that push me up today I feel low. I've written more than one post, a few half-complete, one eaten by the surprise computer attack, and none posted because life keeps coming up before computers. I miss writing. I miss chronicling. Today I came home and crawled into bed, stayed alert to the texts and phone calls I have about this year's talent show and continue feeling conflicted about everything. I can't cut out some concise picture of life right now, so again, sadly, I'll consolodate with bullets mostly for the sake of recording. Hopefully consistent posts will show up again sometime soon.

Two weeks ago we had a BB gun shooting at school. It was a pretty big deal, and created a stir in the community, and put us on local news twice in a week. It made teaching difficult from a psychological perspective-- a sad time.
Someone I care about was hospitalized for a week for fear that a suicide attempt. I find it interesting that while my best friends were literally attempting suicide while I was in high school and college I could thick skin myself out of being too distraught about it. This person, though, brought me to tears with just a note saying it's been contemplated. Funny what maturity brings.
I feel, maybe selfishly and maybe falsely, that I am giving a lot. In many circumstances. To the point where I feel I am continuing to do this and feeling slightly more bitter about it each time, but these things I'm "giving" have a quickly depreciating value and I can't fix the quality. I am trying to have a strong output, to stay refreshed and motivated and happy, but instead I am grinding metal against concrete, I am pushing with nothing but air I am falling shorter and shorter each time.
My biggest complaint of recent times is that I feel I have little help, and little confidence. I whine about it but today the sixth grade team had everything taken care of, and I found myself in a surprising (and worrisome) backseat at a meeting. I was so grateful because the talent show and my personal life have been taking everything out of me (but I'm embarrassed to say that because of the results of both). But I feel like a perpetual failure lately. The culture in my classroom is often horrific. My lessons have hardly existed the past few weeks. My summer hangs over my head, a dangling tantalizing treat, but just past that is a class of kids. Kids I'm ignoring because I'm so focused on something I want and can't yet have. It is excruciating.

Most of this, today, is coming from a lack of sleep. It's unfortunate that the days I actually post are the days I am feeling the weakest. This year has been wonderful, and I'm excited for next year, but right now I just want to sleep.

Fired Up

Laleh M. — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:34:30 +0100

This weekend I was able to help administer tests to incoming scholars in order to determine if they would benefit from extra help during our summer school session. It made me see more than ever that educational inequity is plainly evident and is all around us. The literature says that students in high-need areas come into Kindergarten already behind their peers in more affluent neighborhoods. Then, if the proper support isn't set in place, they fall even more behind their wealthier counterparts as they graduate from grade to grade. High-need students coming into Kindergarten can be behind for countless reasons: their family may not have been able to afford a top-notch daycare or pre-school program, their parents may work longer hours and are thus not exposed to the same amount of words and interaction, and they may not own the same amount of books and educational material in their homes. This literature all became alive as I administered the tests this weekend, and it was especially evident for the incoming kindergarten students. The first question of the the test was to write out their name on the line provided. Far less than half of the incoming students could perform this task. During the test, I began to think about the 4 year old girl that I babysit. She still has a summer and a full year until she begins kindergarten. And this girl, well, she can spell her name perfectly and legibly. This paints a perfect picture of the uphill battle high-need students face. This 4 year old is being raised in one of the most affluent neighborhoods of my city, she attends an excellent pre-school for 3 days a week, she has countless books at her disposal and at least 2 to 3 books are read to her every night, and lastly, her parents mainly work from their home and are able to have conversations with her throughout the day. These experiences allow this 4 year old the ability to enter kindergarten at or above grade level. She contrasts sharply with the incoming students to my school who are already behind before they even step foot into the door of their kindergarten classroom. Comparing these two realities fuels my drive to teach more than ever. I am so ready for the school year to begin so that I can get to work for these deserving students. They may enter my classroom behind, but they will leave ahead.

Some Unintended Conclusions from Value Added Data

Emmanuel Parello — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:04:56 +0100

There has been a lot of debate for the past several years over whether or not to use "value added" data as a metric for evaluating teachers. Washington D.C. is already making 50% of a teacher's evaluation dependent on their value added rating. I thought I'd weigh in on the debate, as I happen to have a publicly available value added ranking of myself up on the internet. According to the prestigious Los Angeles Times newspaper, I am a "least effective teacher" in math and a "less effective" English teacher :

In August 2010, the Los Angeles Times published the value added rankings of teachers within the district who had taught 2nd through 5th grade. I remained unaware until a year ago that I was on there, assuming that they would not have published the scores of a one year teacher who no longer worked in LA Unified. Now, thanks to the LA Times, I have a permanent souvenir of that year; the fourth thing that comes up if you Google search my name.

Now far be it for me to defend my first and only year as a corps member; it wasn't pretty. I do think the value added score shows that I had a particular problem teaching math that year, and although I don't enjoy having that fact blared across the internet, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that I was far less effective than the average LAUSD math teacher. In an effort to teach conceptual rather than algorithmic thinking, I did not practice frequently enough the kinds of problems that would appear on the test, and test performance suffered. In English, I followed the Open Court program very precisely and had an easier time integrating what I learned in professional development, so despite classroom management being consistently chaotic, I managed to be closer to the average for Los Angeles Unified teachers.

But how valuable is that data, really? On a closer look at the site for this teacher rating project, I found that it is possible to draw some conclusions that really throw the value of the value added rating system into question. Although I get annoyed by the LA Times' publication of this data, since it's up on the internet and has been for some time, I think it's interesting to see some of the things that can be gleaned from it. I looked up my former program director from my first year. Although her value added math score was better than mine, in the average range, I found that her English rating was in the same statistical range as my own:

I can draw two possible conclusions from this: either TFA is hiring unqualified people to lead its corps members, or the value added score doesn't say much that's valuable about the effectiveness of a teacher. Personally, I lean towards the second conclusion. I'm pretty certain that my program director, with two years of teaching to my one, learned to be a more effective English teacher than I did. According to the value added model though, she was slightly less effective than me, and I have a hard time envisioning that anyone could get hired to a TFA staff position if that were the case. Nevertheless, since TFA is closely aligned with the movement to use value added data for evaluating teachers, they should be aware that they have hired at least one program director who, by that metric, is worse at teaching English than a corps member who quit after his first year.

On further viewing of the teacher ratings project, I came across a link to the LA Times list of the least effective schools based on value added ratings. Here's one of the ones I found:

This school has a 938 API, almost the maximum possible, and it is ranked as a "least effective school" by the Times. Again, this leads to a conclusion that I don't think the Times intended. If a school can have a 938 API and still be ineffective at contributing to student learning, it would seem to suggest that school and teacher quality have practically zero effect on how students perform in school. I don't actually believe that to be the case, but the fact that the value added date produces that conclusion in turn leads to the conclusion that ranking teachers' and schools' effectiveness based on student test data is pointless.

Thank you for this project, LA Times. I think the conclusions that it leads to should be enough from disqualifying value added from ever being used as a metric to formally evaluate teachers.

4:00 am...the perfect time for a run?

Laleh M. — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:09:47 +0100

I'm addicted to running. I can't imagine life without it. However, it is extremely time consuming. Each day I go out for a run that can be anywhere from 1 hour to 2.5 hours. Often, I think about how I could be using that more than 10 hours per week to complete other items on my agenda. Nevertheless, I love running. So I lace up and go. When did my addiction start you ask? Well, it all started with my big brothers who realized I had some potential and encouraged me to run around the neighborhood with them. Once I started officially competing in track my 7th grade year, I was hooked. I ran throughout high school and was eventually recruited to run for the University of Texas. When I graduated from UT this past December, I didn't know what my future running would look like. That is, until I ran my first marathon. After racing for a grueling 26.2 miles at the Houston Marathon in January (and it paying off with some prize money!), it cemented my desire to keep running competitively. Since graduation, however, running has been much harder than it was in the past. I no longer have my team beside me, I don't have a coach yelling at me when I slow down, and I have less time with my 40+ hour work week. While it's much harder now to get out and run, I can't imagine what it will be like in August once I start teaching. A veteran educator and avid runner told me, "Oh don't worry, it's definitely do-able. I get up at 4:00 am every morning to start my run; you'll be able to do it." 4:00 am?! That's right, he said 4:00 am. He said it's best to do it before school, so you have all evening for planning and grading. Getting up at that early every morning seems simply unfathomable. While I am hopefully not going to be joining the 4:00 am crowd, I am anxious to see how running will fit into my schedule next year as a first year teacher. I think it will add a constant to my life that I'll desperately need during my crazy two year adventure with TFA. Here's to hoping there's a good block in my day for a run, just NOT at 4:00 am. [caption id="attachment_96" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The final stretch of my first marathon...SO TIRED!"][/caption]

"School Mom" Mode

bschwam — Thu, 09 May 2013 00:44:50 +0100

This year's April showers not only brought the budding of May flowers, but also many other awesome joys!

First let's admire the natural beauty of Spring... Pause and "smell" the... flowers:

And now onto the highlights of an Awesome April: From successfully proctoring the PSSA to a group of 22 nervous 3rd graders, as well as leading them in Yoga before each of the 6 sections, to celebrating being blessed with another year of life and adventures (24!), and best of all, welcoming a new friend into our lives, Samson (More on him below!), April came and went before I could turn around. With no days off in sight, I thought April was going to drag on and leave me exhausted and ready for a second spring break. While I would definitely not oppose a second spring break, or even just a long weekend, April ended just as quickly as it began. Throughout the week of PSSAs (Pennsylvania State Standardized Assessment) all of our 3rd-6th grade Mann students were focused and motivated, making it much easier to get through about 18 painful hours of standardized testing. With all of that behind us though, May has brought some antsy boys back into my room. They are louder, too comfortable, and pushing the edges of the rules a bit too far. This month marks our 8th month together; roughly 180 days together in Room 306, with the same group of 10 boys, for five and a half hours a day. Needless to say, we have become an odd sort of family, or maybe it's more like a gang, and like all families, we have our dysfunctions. This month, those family quirks seem to be more prevalent than ever. Not only are the boys fighting with each other like brothers, but they are fighting with me like I am their mom. I am well aware that "Mom" is one of my roles in the classroom, and I have no problem filling those shoes while the boys are in my hands, but we have reached new levels of "School Mom" mode. Let's just say the "Mom-isms" are coming out of my mouth faster than I can think where I got them from. This only seems fitting though, with Mother's Day this weekend. (And my own Mom and Dad coming up to visit!) I may not get gifts on Mother's Day, but coincidentally, Teacher Appreciation Week is currently in full swing, and Mann Administrators (as well as Chipotle!) are making sure we all feel extra appreciated this week. With Phillies tickets, breakfasts, free burrito bols, and gifts, I'd say they are doing a great job, and I am getting my fair share of the "School Mom," aka Teacher, love. As I am feeling more like a mom at school these days, the new addition to our lives has me feeling more like a mom at home too. Let me introduce, Samson Schwamburger-Storms: We adopted our little man on April 22, from the PSPCA. He is a 3 year old Terrier/Shepherd/Grey Hound/Pit Bull/Something Awesome mutt, weighing in at 29 pounds, and he is the source of much laughter and great company. We are still learning about him, as he is learning the ins and outs of his new home and life, but I'd say Samson will become a great friend and companion for many years to come.

While this week I encourage you to show some love, and give a thanks to the teachers who inspired, supported, pushed, and cared for you, this weekend, make sure you show extra love to the first Teacher you ever had, and the only Teacher you will have forever, MOM.

A Thank You, To My Mom:

Everything Mom

How did you find the energy, Mom To do all the things you did, To be teacher, nurse and counselor To me, when I was a kid.How did you do it all, Mom, Be a chauffeur, cook and friend, Yet find time to be a playmate, I just can’t comprehend.I see now it was love, Mom That made you come whenever I'd call, Your inexhaustible love, Mom And I thank you for it all.

Love you, Momma!

24 more days...

Wed, 08 May 2013 01:38:26 +0100

Yes, I'm counting the days until the end of the year. Yes, I am all countdown/tested/retesting'd out. The kids are checked out as well. We need to get through the next week and we're home free. We'll get to finish our dinosaur unit and start on our physics unit. The kids are looking forward to it, and I'll just be glad to get back to some creative teaching instead of all this test prep. On another note, one of my students might have gotten a girl pregnant. As of yesterday, it was just a rumor, but he came in today and stated something along the lines of "I'm going to be a father." I didn't pay much attention to him as we were in the throes of test prep, but he mentioned it in passing several times. I am going to ask him what's going on tomorrow. Did I mention he's not even 13 yet? Yeah....

What should they call me?

Laleh M. — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:24:49 +0100

So, of course as part of Teach for America my number one focus is fighting educational inequity, though I can't help but wonder...what will my students call me? My last name is long, and I mean LONG. It is 15 letters: Mojtabaeezamani (pronounced Moe-ch-ta-by-ee-za-ma-knee). It's hard for most adults to master, so can I really expect a group of 2nd graders to be able to pronounce it? Since I received a 2nd grade teaching position, in the back of my mind has been how in the world am I going to introduce myself? I can just imagine standing in front of 24 seven to eight-year-olds saying "Hello, I'm Miss. Mojtabaeezamani; I'm excited you are here to learn," and being replied to with a blank stare of confusion. What's more is that I didn't even learn how to spell my own last name until 3rd grade. Am I to expect my students to spell a 15 letter word when that is extremely beyond a 2nd grade level? Growing up, my teachers let me simply write "Laleh M." on all my work, with the exception of my third grade teacher who insisted everyone spell out their name in its entirety. While I grapple with something so simple as what will my students call me-though I should really be focused on more important things such as passing the TExES and completing my Institute pre-work-I can't help but go through the possibilities. I think back to when I was in school and the names kids produced as variations of my name. There was "Moe-she-ish-ee-mani," "Won't-you-buy-me-some-money" (from a particularly creative friend of mine), "Mitsubishi," "Montezumi," and the list goes on of many more equally wrong variations. Though my last name is difficult, I can't change it. I have thought about shortening it to simply Miss. Zamani. Or perhaps just using the first letter, "Miss. M," but I am not sure if "Miss. M" is too informal in the scholarly atmosphere that my school cultivates. Well, I guess all I can do is wait for that day when I walk down the aisle! One of the things I look forward to most in thinking about marriage is a name change! I'm hoping for something simple, like Smith. Or Lee. One syllable is preferred, but two syllables would be acceptable.

Year Two.

KCMO Chief — Mon, 06 May 2013 03:23:16 +0100

This entire year flew by that I never even updated this blog. Well, after reading my old posts I cannot even believe I came back to Kansas City to teach at the same school in the same grade. I. Loved. almost. Every. Day. This. Year. In three weeks school will be over and I will return home. Would you believe it if I told you my kids make me cry, but not because of their behavior, but because I will miss them? There is so much more to be said about my thoughts and opinions on Teach For America and urban education, which I will share for new corps members, but for tonight, I reflect on my experience. These past two years were like a roller coaster that I've never been on before. I'm talking scarier than the scariest roller coaster at Cedar Point. So many highs, and even more lows. However, these past two years I gained great, beautiful friends, found independence, learned the truth about persevering and impacted my community that I have grown to love. I am blessed to have had the opportunity to challenge myself while challenging my students.

Class Size in Japan, Korea, and America

Emmanuel Parello — Sun, 05 May 2013 01:10:47 +0100

I freely admit that I don't understand how to run a multi billion dollar software company. I'm still intrigued, therefore, that Bill Gates continues to believe that he is qualified to make education policy. In today's New York Times, Sara Mosle discusses a plan from Gates, along with Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan, that would "increase class sizes for the best teachers," in order to increase the chance that students could study under an excellent teacher. This idea from Gates has been around at least since 2011, when he wrote an op-ed arguing for this in the Washington Post. In the world of many reformers, class size has never been conclusively shown to increase student achievement, whereas "excellent teachers" have been. Therefore, why not disregard the statistically inconclusive factor (class size), and focus on getting students in front of a high performing teacher. Mosle agrees that large numbers of educators are not jumping at the plan, so I don't fear that this plan is something that we'll have much reason to worry about. Still, the level of thinking that it reflects from some of our most important people in education policy is irritating. It is obvious to anyone who has ever taught before that it is easier to reach individual students the smaller the class is. The reason, I think, that class size cannot be proven to have an effect on student achievement is because all of the hundreds other variables that come in to play in any classroom that may be hard to statistically measure. Let me give one example with which I am familiar: Japan has much larger class sizes than the United States, and also scores better on international exams. This could lead one to the simple conclusion that the Japanese experience proves that class sizes do not matter. In fact, to bolster their arguments, ed reformers often mention Japan and South Korea as examples of countries that have huge class sizes but boast impressive test scores. Indeed, every class that I taught in Japan had around 40 students, but what the reformers who ridicule the notion that class size matters do not mention is that a vast majority of Japanese students past the age of elementary school attend private attend private prep schools called juku several times a week in the evenings after school. As the Economist reported in 2011, Japanese test scores tend to rise in direct proportion to the amount of money spent on private classes. In South Korea as well, about 74% of students attend private hagwon schools to supplement their education. Every Japanese teacher that I knew complained that the class sizes were too large and made it difficult to respond to students' individual needs. Teachers were typically strapped with workloads that kept them at work until around 8 PM, and all agreed that they could be more attentive to students if the class sizes could be reduced. The fact is that Japanese education is currently sustained by a massive network of private supplemental schools, the same as its neighbor South Korea. Neither of these countries provides good evidence that class size doesn't matter. If anything, the number of students attending remedial instruction show that the public education systems are not equipped to meet the needs of all their students. When statistical analysis fails, sometimes it's best to trust intuition. A teacher with fewer students can give more individual attention to each one, and that gives them a better chance of success. Just because this can't be definitively proven with data doesn't mean it isn't true.