Teach For America teacher blogs are on Teach For Us

So...like...I passed!

FlexinTexan — Tue, 28 May 2013 19:09:02 +0100

I know that I haven't posted in awhile but it was because I had my nose deep in someone's science book. For the past 3 weeks, I have been buried in all things Science. Science occupied every waking moment of my existence and to a degree, my sleeping existence. Honestly, if it wasn't science related, it had slowly started to leak from my brain. I took my test last Friday afternoon and I studied for it right up until I went into the testing center. The test was surprisingly strict and rigorous to gain entry to but I suppose that's to ensure that people are not cheating. I got into the room and took my seat and took a couple deep, steadying breathes before beginning the test. The TeXes Sci 8-12 exam has 130 questions on it and they range from the abstract to the detailed. My emotions looped from confident, sure, and brilliant to unsure and OMG why don't I remember this? All in all, I left the test feeling like I didn't full out fail it, but I didn't feel like I passed either. I made my peace with possibly having to take the exam over if that meant that I'd have a better understanding of the material but of course, I felt it would be freaking awesome to pass the first go around. The long weekend was spent allowing my mind to relax for a bit while checking (nonchalantly, of course) the ETS website to see if my scores were available. By Sunday night, I'd resigned myself to fact that my test scores probably wouldn't be available until Tuesday. That actually lifted a weight off my shoulders. That weight fell with extreme force this morning when I received the email from ETS saying that my TeXes exam scores were available. My palms instantly started to sweat and my heart was literally pounding in my chest. My fight or flight response kicked in severely even though there was no one to fight or nowhere to run. TO make matters worse, the freaking website was taking forever to load! In hindsight, this was probably due to the overload of people flocking to the website for their own test scores. I clicked the button to view my scores and was forced to further wait for Firefox to download the PDF. I opened the file and there it was in all caps: PASSED. Or rather, I read it in all caps! This of course, warranted another victory lap around my office but no boots today, only my Wal-Mart Vans :-) I can't put into words the amount of utter joy I felt seeing that I'd passed! Now, all I need is a classroom! Induction in less than 2 weeks!

Allow me to (re)introduce myself

FlexinTexan — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:19:21 +0100

Hello All, This is my first blog...like ever and as you can tell, I'm super excited about it. I plan to use this to laud, vent, and well utterly ramble as the page title states. Sadly, as training has not started yet, I have no real insight to share with you about TFA just yet but here are my thoughts thus far. I was accepted with the 1st/2nd deadline notification back in November. Wow, just writing that makes it seem like it was so long ago, yet it was really just 6 months. The application process was intense! I had to do each of the steps, the application, a phone interview, and then the final interview. The anxiety of having to wait for an email telling you whether or not you've advanced on to the next round is what got me through. It was nerve racking yes, but nothing can the describe that overjoyed feeling you get when that email comes through with the "Congratulations..." title line. The admission notification deadline for my DL was Nov 1 and every 30 mins that day I would refresh the status page on the TFA application. When it finally flipped to the Congratulations, I lost my ever loving mind! I was shaking I was so happy. I was in a state of utter disbelief, honestly. I had hoped I got in but a part of me was sure I wouldn't because there was just so many awesome people that applied with me especially those that I interviewed with. I was just honored to have made it to the final interview but to have got in?? Oh, you couldn't tell me nothing that day! I took a victory lap around my office my 4 inch heeled boots before running outside to call my momma...and...cry. Oh, I cried hard too as if someone had kicked my puppy and then ran off with it but they were happy tears of course. I could not wait to get started but wait was indeed what I did. There were action items to be completed within that first month but then there was a lull of having nothing to turn in, nothing to do. Our Onboarding staff is great. They may sometimes take a bit to get back to you when you email them but they get back to you with helpful information. The FB group for our Corp has allowed to me meet and greet and make a lot of new friends, some of which I'm becoming really close to. I actually can't wait to meet them all. I'm a people watcher by nature so I cannot wait to see how we all interact with so many different personalities. As I mentioned before, there was a lull in the action items, and then all of a sudden, it was nonstop "Action Required," Emails. This does not bother me because I will be the first to admit, I am a skilled procrastinator and I do my best work under pressure. With Institute a month and a half away, the pressure has set in. The pressure to study, to interview (first one is this Thursday), to pass my certification test, to prove that TFA made the right decision admitting me is on and high. I welcome the challenge!

Teach For America: Pluses and Deltas

danyaindallas — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:43:39 +0100

It's been a while since I've blogged on here. It's been a busy, crazy year, but I've finally managed to pull something coherent. In the past couple of months, I've had quite a lot of experiences that have shaped my opinions on not only my experience as a corps member, but on Teach For America as a whole. I've assembled a Top 10 list of things that I've liked about Teach For America , and 10 things that I would improve. Obviously a lot of the improvements I suggest require a lot more money than what is being spent now, but I'll go ahead and dream as if money was no object. This is by no means a set of exhaustive lists, and I have plenty more positive things to say and suggestions for changes/rethinking, but I'll just leave it at ten so that this post can eventually be posted. 10 Things I Like about TFA: 1. The recruitment, application, and interview process are all very well-run. Applying to jobs as a senior in college is fraught with anxiety, but it really helps when the prospective employer has their stuff together and is excellent about communicating deadlines, providing an easy way to keep track of the process online, and providing opportunities to talk to real people throughout the whole thing. 2. The staff is very technology-friendly, and makes things as easy as possible for corps members to submit online. At the beginning of the year, my mentor had us list our preferred method of communication for various types of matters (I prefer email for serious matters, texts for reminders, and hate phone calls), and has been great at sticking to that. At Institute, I was asked if I am more of a "soft copy" person or a "hard copy" person, and was then given free-reign to complete anything and everything on my laptop. I wish I could say that my district is as up to date, but I've literally spent the last week hand writing data into individualized folders to satisfy the observers, whereas TFA has a really cool system set up online through Kickboard in which all of my data can be tracked instantly and be accessed 24/7. If I'm going to have to do all of this data, at least they make it convenient. 3. My mentor, or MTLD is actually really cool, and treats me like an adult, and respects who I am and where I'm coming from. We've had difficult conversations, as most corps members end up having at some point, but I've never felt demeaned or threatened. Building a relationship over the year has been cool, and I feel like it's helped me a lot through this process. I'm not someone who is really needy when it comes to mentors, but when I do have questions or concerns, I feel safe bringing them up. 4. The readings for Pre-Work ahead of Institute were amazing. I hadn't expected them to be so great, but I loved it. I don't think most corps members end up doing all of the readings, but I got to read some very real articles and selections from The New Jim Crow. 5. Having been to their offices in Chicago and Dallas, I really like the aesthetic of their workplace. Dallas just got a new office, and everything from the collaborative spaces, to the cubicles, to the kitchens are designed to foster ideas and creativity. Kudos to the interior designers. 6. I've gotten to make friends from all over the country who are committed to teaching and justice, and it's really fun to get to know them and pick their brains over dinner on weekends. 7. This has been a year of incredible personal growth and reflection, and I am being challenged in ways I wasn't being challenged in college. Sometimes I feel like this will be the end of me, and that it will destroy all self-confidence and idealism that I had going in, and I will not say it hasn't been a rough year, but I think it's molding me into a more mature adult who will be able to work for justice through a clearer and better equipped framework. 8. I'm given a lot of room to do my thing, dream, get angry, and experiment, more so than I would have thought, in retrospect now that I see how my district functions. 9. They've been great at accommodating my Shabbat observance and making it easy to catch up. 10. While not perfect, their professional development sessions are infinitely more helpful, up to date, and well-done than the ones I have attended by any other organization. 10 Things I believe would improve TFA:

1. In order to maximize a positive impact on the schools it works in, Teach For America should hire someone to work full-time at each school where it places corps members, and provide daily support and mentoring to corps members, manage data and assist with paperwork so that corps members can be fully focused on instruction. This mentor would also focus on building a relationship with the school administration and other teachers, and would provide constant feedback through frequent constructive observations. The way we are observed now from our district is often very intimidating, and it would be great to have someone who I could count on to be on-site daily and help me improve without fear of being put on a growth plan or something else like that.

2. I would get rid of huge regional institutes and focus on training teachers in the regions they’ll be teaching in for the entire summer. I would focus the summer on developing, understanding, and implementing a curriculum and lesson plans for the whole year ahead of time, as well as professional development and mock classroom settings instead of real summer school classrooms. This could also be used to orient corps members to the region, expose them to community organizations that could be useful, and allow them the chance to look for apartments, get drivers’ licenses, and find the essentials long before the school year begins so that they’ll be able to transition to the school year as seamlessly as possible.

3. The 2-year commitment has gotten a lot of criticism, but I think that given the kind of economy that my classmates and I graduated in, and the shifting trends in the labor market, a 2-year absolute commitment is really all one can realistically ask of anyone, including teachers who pursued traditional certification. This is unfortunate, but I believe that this is going to be more common in all professions. Keeping that in mind, I think TFA should maintain the 2-year commitment, but also do something to incentivize corps members to stay in the classroom as long as possible after these two years (perhaps more Americorps grants, leadership roles). However, I would also launch a 5-year track that recruits people in existing education programs and equips them with the same level of mentoring and professional development that corps members receive. This would be a great investment in forming teachers into leaders who will actually stick around with it, while exposing the 2-year corps members to more people who plan to stick with it - it could end up convincing them to stay as well.

4. Additionally, Teach For America should develop another program that offers a formal training partnership with already-certified veteran teachers who also want to develop their skills and don't feel like they're getting those opportunities in their current schools. This could be accomplished through a formalized membership model, in which veteran teachers attend Institute during the summer and develop their craft by serving as mentors and teaching alongside corps members. They, as well as corps members who do stay longer than 2 years, would continue as formal members of Teach For America, perhaps as "associates," as long as they’d like, renewing their membership each year by attending professional development seminars and mentoring 2-year corps members. This will put Teach For America's words about valuing veteran teachers into action, and create an opportunity to make a concrete commitment to treating veteran teachers as partners in improving education and leading the way for positive change.

5. Teach For America should use the strong relationships that it builds with its partner districts and with leaders in each region to advocate for equal protections for its corps members. Once Teach For America has been in a region for more than 3 years, it should use its relationship with its partner districts and friends in local government to push for a thorough nondiscrimination policy that protects teachers in areas that do not have laws in the books that protect according to sexual orientation and gender identity. In regions that have not made such strides, special consideration and accommodation should be made for LGBTQ corps members in issues related to requesting region transfers mid-year or at the end of the year, providing additional mentoring, and specialized legal advice/training.

6. TFA should also allow corps members to have online access to all files, data, and evaluations that Teach For America keeps on them as individuals. Transparency on behalf of staff should be highly prioritized, and we should know where we really stand in the eyes of the organization that we have committed to, and what is being said about us in all professional communications. This would make the conversations we have with mentors and staff more fair and open.

7. I would phase out the placement of teachers in charter schools - especially new, unproven charter schools - and renew a commitment to strengthening and advocating for neighborhood schools. Unfortunately, while Teach For America partners with both neighborhood schools and charter schools, I often feel like we're made to see charter schools with an aura of mystique that is very seldom accorded to high-performing traditional public schools. If charter schools work so well, they ought to have no problem attracting high-quality teachers. Teach For America is often seen as a big player in the privatization of public schools, and people mistakenly paint all corps members with the same brush when they blame us for the shuttering of public schools. However, this is not the case for me and many of my friends, and it does not have to be the case for any future corps members. As a teacher in a traditional public school, I am actually on the front lines, working hard and fighting for the survival of my school, and to ensure that it does not get turned over to a charter company. If our goal is to ensure that "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education," we should be placing corps members in schools that are actually required to work with all children, regardless of whether they are bilingual, special needs, or other designations that charter schools under-serve.

8. Teach For America should acknowledge that education reform is an issue with a deeply political component, and that despite present bipartisan support for much of the "reform" agenda, there are many significant groups who present valid objections who care every bit as much about student success. As such, it should strive for diversity in organizations that they partner with and present to corps members. All of the opportunities that I've received or heard about through Teach For America tend to be in the "reform" camp, such as LEE, which was heavily promoted during Institute, or through charter schools. I haven't really been connected with groups that match my philosophy and politics as much as other corps members whose views are more in line with the corporate reform agenda. Either that, or they should stop trying to involve corps members in policy while they should really be focusing on becoming effective teachers. After their initial two year commitment is up, corps members will have a better grasp and will be able to have a more critical approach when it comes to joining organizations such as LEE, etc. instead of just signing up at a table at Institute because that's what everyone else is doing (I somehow ended up signing up on accident).

9. Teach For America should partner with mental health professionals in each region to provide free confidential counseling to Corps Members during evening hours by appointment, with some walk-in hours. New teachers face a lot of challenging situations, and often do not have money for regular therapy, or access to one that keeps hours at times that they can make. I feel like this would also reduce the burden on MTLDs, who often field late-night "I am going to lose my marbles HELP ME" calls from their corps members.

10. Convince Apple to donate used iPads to entering corps members again :P

Beauty in the struggle.

Jenny — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:35:54 +0100

To be honest, I've been struggling. This struggle is constant. i was reminded of this struggle as I tried to sleep last night. You see, today was the first day back from a holiday. Did I sleep? Hell, no! I maybe slept 2 hours. I was anxious. I would sleep for 10 minutes and wake up in a panicked sweat. Sometimes, barely able to breathe. This job is stressful. My hair is grey. My face looks like a pimple laden 13 year old's. We are close to state testing. Nothing I seem to do right matters. DROWNING. However, there is beauty in the chaos. Was today hard? Absolutly. I taught bored, sleep deprived, hungry middle school kids who may say t they hate school, but for many of them school is the only place of solace. They walked in today, many coming by my room to say "hello." Almost as if to just check on my consistency, many of them having made poor choices right before break. We started today fresh. They fight being loved. Somedays I fight loving them. But at the end of the day, though I had almost no sleep because of crazy amounts of anxiety, children who needed me greeted me. My hello means something. My hug or warm look can change their lives. So as I sit here and reflect on the heavy laden heart I carry around, the pimple laden face I struggle to mask with makeup, and the greys who no longer can be colored over... I feel beautiful. I feel beautiful because this struggle is what makes me beautiful. This struggle is what will change lives and as I firmly believe, lives are still able to change even though it may look or seem impossible. Somedays I doubt this, but all it takes is one warm embrace or one conversation and I'm hooked yet again to this work and movement. As I am learning, to truly live is to lose your life. This life is lost and in return I don't see a pile of ashes that once was but beautiful seedlings ready to grow and bloom and change the world.

Thomas Merton's Letter to a Young Activist

Jenny — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 04:09:57 +0100

I discovered this tonight and it shattered me into a million pieces: " Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually as you struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything. You are fed up with words, and I don’t blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell you the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right. …The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them, but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important. The next step in the process is for you to see that your even thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come, not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it. The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth; and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. Because I see nothing whatever in sight but much disappointment, frustration, and confusion. The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand . . ." It is shattering because I have lived this process in this work. The constant hope in results. The constant feeling of failure as I look at my data trackers, the constant feel of failure as I hear the child struggle as he reads to me. The feel of failure when someone looks at me through criticial lenses yet another time. It's the description of my constant need to throw up my fists, instead of extending my arms. Though this work must me measurable. We need to make sure we are leaving the communties we serve better than when we got there, we must ensure that this results focused determination is not for us. It can't be about us. It's surely not about me. Though tempting, It's not about proving myself to my kids, their communities, my world that I am capable. Being a young activisit is simply about taking yourself out of the picture. I am finding that in doing this, that my kids and I are more successful. I get along better with them, their communties, and my school communitiy. So the guards we put up to protect ourselves in this work must fall down, so that we may actually reap a harvest. Just some thoughts.

Blogging, at last

Jenny — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 04:03:54 +0100

I've sat down probrably a dozen times since institute to blog on this site. Before joining this movement, I loved and lived social media. Life as a first year intervened, and I couldn't quite put into words what this experience has meant to me. I've learned so much. I've had a ton of lows, and a ton of highs. Somedays, I feel like I'm on a roller coaster. I've changed emotionally, physically (you should see all this gray) and spiritually. My views on education, immigration, and poverty keep getting refined and molded on a daily basis. This brings me to a list of what I've learned and what I believe to be true in this moment: 1) I really love my students. Sometimes I yell at them. Sometimes, I even scream. Sometimes, I judge them. I really love them though. I love them so much it hurts. I love them in a way that I didn't even know was possible. The amazing thing is that they love me too. They may not always respect me, or behave, but they love me. They are quick to forgive and quick to show me grace, even when I forget that I'm supposed to be the adult in the room and royally screw up. 2) I am not a super hero. I came in thinking that I was going to the best teacher ever. I came in thinking I could seriously do this teaching thing better than anyone ever and that's why TFA chose me. I was wrong. I fell on my butt so many times these last couple months. Hell, I fell on my butt a couple times today. But, through each lesson and each failure I can make a difference. Maybe I am a super hero if super heros can have a million sidekicks. Educating children takes so many people, not just one person. I wish I realized that when I started. 3) Being Self Aware ~~sucks~~ is the best thing ever. Teach for America is all about the self awareness. I thought I was a self aware person. I am not. I actually had no idea how my actions affect others and how I can come across. I normaly have great intentions but can come across as a total bitch. Learning to be self aware has changed not only how teach, but how I have personal relationships. Teach for America taught me that and my kids push it to the limits daily. 4) The Acheivment Gap has too many Layers. I sometimes call my MTLD or friends crying after something I perceive bad happens at school or in my classroom. Several times the conversation has ended with my making the conclusion that it's the acheivment gap. Poverty, poor behavior, illiteracy, lack of accountability, hunger, broken school systems are all layers in the achievement gap. Just when I think that I have discovered/ experienced all the layers one comes out and bites me in the ass. So many layers. But as my dad says, its about shoveling one scoop of shit at a time till all the shit is gone. I love my dad. My shovel right now is educating my babies while loving their families and community. I'll let other people dig in other piles till this acheivment gap shit is finaly closed. I can't fix this whole problem in a day.

For Clarissa.

Christian — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 02:08:23 +0100

[caption id="attachment_169" align="aligncenter" width="614" caption="Some of my students copy their favorite library books word by word so they can keep a copy."][/caption] I had just left my school and climbed into my car when tonight's presidential debate started. Minutes into the debate, I heard President Obama tell the American people that we need to invest in education. Immediately, I started crying. I still am. I go to school every day to thirty-eight students who eagerly jump out of their seats to tell me what's going on in their lives. Thirty-eight bright and warm faces who all exclaim, at every chance they get, how much they love math and their math teacher. Thirty-eight voices who all PLEAD to stay after school with me in math club when I only have forty-five minutes one day a week to spend with 6-10 (but I've already snuck in 13.). Thirty-eight children who INSIST and PLEAD for MORE homework in a district that refuses to count it because hey, they won't do it anyway. Thirty-eight students whose love for our classroom and our work overwhelms me because god, how can such little hearts fit so much love? I just need someone, anyone, to invest in my students more than I do every single day. And not for me but for them. A girl, like Clarissa,* for example, has turned around in six weeks because I have invested in her. While she worked tirelessly at the beginning of the year to avoid work, she now spends her time in class attentively listening, hand in the air, and her mind focused on her work instead of a conversation with her neighbor. This is the same girl, mind you, whose mom wrote on her parent-teacher contact form, "Honestly, Clarissa does not like school. It does not matter how much I bribe her, she wants nothing to do with it." And now, this same girl hugs me every day before she leaves my classroom. She tells me every single chance she gets how much she loves math. ("Miss, I'm not happy about the three day weekend. I just want to be with my math teacher on Friday.") Her grades have DRASTICALLY improved. Seeing this change in her has been inspring, motivating, and thrilling because of what this behavior can spell for HER future. But what will happen to her when she leaves my classroom? There are fourteen years between now and Clarissa's college graduation. This country MUST invest in her NOW. We can't wait until tomorrow. We can't wait until the next president has been elected. The moment is now. Every child in this nation deserves the opportunity to attain an excellent education *Names have been changed.

A to B in the Big D: How Commuting on Dallas Public Transportation is Totally Possible

danyaindallas — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:23:18 +0100

As some of you might know, I've been without a car for a while now, and last week I started taking public transportation to work. Having lived in Chicago for four years,completely acclimated to public transportation there, I was very excited to try out this city's DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) system, and so far I have been very impressed! I live in North Dallas, which is technically within proper city limits, but really functions kind of like a northern suburb of Chicago would, in some aspects. It's not the most fun, or hip neighborhood, but it is way more well-connected to the city than I imagined. I teach in the neighborhood of Pleasant Grove, which is on the other side of the City, far south, bordering the city of Mesquite. It is one of the roughest neighborhoods in Dallas, if not the roughest, and is also pretty isolated from the rest of the city proper. One would imagine that these two neighborhoods couldn't be any more different, and that it would be logistically impossible to commute to work between these two places. Certainly, whenever you mention public transportation to a native Dallasite, they will tell you that it is completely impossible and takes forever, but I've found that the commute time is comparable to that spent in Chicago's CTA, and is perhaps even more seamless and well-run. To get to school, I take a bus to the Forest Lane station, at around 5:50AM. From the Forest Lane station, I take the Red Line Downtown, and once Downtown I get on the Green Line to the Lawnview station. I take another bus, and today I got to school at around 7:10, for a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes commute. I live around 13 miles from my school, but realistically it is more like 15 miles. Now, for comparison, let's compare this commute to one that I would usually take in Chicago. Let's say I lived in Hyde Park, and wanted to commute to Lakeview. That's more or less around 13 miles - same as the distance from my apartment to my school now. By Google Maps' estimation, it would take me around 1 hour and 8 minutes to commute, so really, the difference between Dallas' DART and Chicago's CTA is 12 minutes, and I spend way, way less time waiting for my bus or train on the DART, or walking to said stations than I did in Chicago (my bus stop is right across the street from my building, whereas the 55 in Chicago was 2 big city blocks - which is still not bad - just sayin'). On some days, I'm tempted to stay carless, and just adopt this commute as a daily routine. I can get a lot done on this commute, like catching up on reading, journalling, grading, all of which I've done on my commutes so far. I don't think it will work as well when I'm getting out half an hour before sunset on Shabbat on Fridays in the winter months, but on all other days I can count on waking up at 5:15AM, being out the door by 5:45AM, and being home by 6PM. Things that are more difficult without a car include making it to TFA meetings downtown at 5PM when I get out at 4:30PM, getting groceries, and social outings, but they are still doable. I will be getting a car eventually, I think, in two weeks, but for now I am taking advantage of this opportunity. It feels good to ride public transportation and to be around other people on my commute, and to have a little more thinking time before each day. If I am lucky, my bus arrives earlier than scheduled, and I get to take a short block's walk to school just as the sun is rising over the big Texas sky. Nothing short of beautiful. So really, there isn't a huge reason to not take public transportation in Dallas, at least at the rate that I did in Chicago to things that weren't as urgent as work. Things like movie theaters and shopping take just as long or less (with the exception of Doc Films and good bookstores). I think it's just a difference in culture that keeps most Dallasites out of the trains and on the freeways. I'll post pictures on my Facebook account later today! It's taking a while for them to load onto my phone.

1 Month

danyaindallas — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 09:44:27 +0100

As of today, I've been teaching at Blanton for one month. One month? That's it? It feels like I've been there for several. It feels like each week feels like a month.

In this past month, I have:

Gotten to know the names of the majority of my 60+ students. A few names still trip me up, because quite a lot of my students have the same or similar name as someone else in their grade or in their class (In one class I have two kids with the same first _and_ last name, someone with a first name similar to theirs - off by one letter, and two others who basically also have the same name when pronounced), and some kids just look similar to someone else in their class. Either way, I'm glad that I'm getting better.
Improved the "look" of my classroom. When I arrived, the place was a dump, and it is still very messy and disorganized, being _my_ classroom and all, but I must say that I have been improving. I now have a word wall up - which I think is a bad way to learn words, at least the way the bilingual office wants me to do it (who groups words by letter?!? shouldn't we be grouping them thematically?). I've set up stations, and have been adding bilingual labels to things like "the door" and "the stapler," because some of my kids either know the word in one language, or don't know it in either.
Kind of gotten a grip on lesson planning. I still don't think I should be lesson planning at all, as a first-year teacher who is never going to be churning out lesson plans as good as those by veteran teachers, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it.
Gotten to know my students, but not as much as I should. They, in turn, don't really know much about me, other than about the holidays that I have had to take days off for, and that I am either from Chicago or California on any given day. I should try harder at building a better relationship.
Gotten used to classroom discipline, but have been failing to lead them calmly and gently. I think this is one of the biggest things I need to work on. In the past few weeks, I've lost my temper with increasing intensity and frequency, and I want to do something about it before I do any further damage to the learning environment. After flying off on one of the students in my first class - I realized that I couldn't afford to go through the rest of the day like that, and instead handled the next two classes by instituting a "silent class" by turning off the lights at the beginning, having them put their heads down, and explaining that we were going to have a class in which no one could talk except for me. While it is definitely not a good model for everyday instruction, it was a good way to get them focused on a day that was task-heavy and on which I wasn't feeling well.
Many more things, but I guess I'll cut it off here.

Beneath all of this, though, I am a bottle of stress. The underlying factors, I have realized, are that I am used to much more control over my life, and being given much more discretion and trust. As a public school teacher (and now, I realize, as a public school teacher in a school at risk of getting shut down) I receive very little of any of these, and I can feel every bit of my soul and intellect fighting against these new conditions, but in the end I just finish the day demoralized and flustered, and then one adds all of the car trouble I've had that makes it 10x more difficult. I'm wearing out the patience of family and friends, and I guess I can't blame them. Gotta find some way to get through this, and to keep improving my teaching regardless. It's not my students' fault.

First-year mistakes.

Christian — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 00:04:20 +0100

[caption id="attachment_154" align="aligncenter" width="512" caption="We were spending 80-100 minutes a week between my two classes waiting in line silently during our classroom break. It was driving me crazy. So I thought of a simple solution for the interim: bring a book. They. Love. It. And I love them."][/caption]

I walk out of my school everyday with even more on my plate than the day before. More deadlines, more assignments, more things-to-do that must appease my school, district, alternative certification program, and Teach For America. The more I get, the more I am frustrated. As much as everyone detest teachers giving out busy work, I feel like I receive a lot of it.

It's not even that the work is difficult. It's not that I feel above it. (Okay, maybe I do if I'm honest with myself.) It's just that there's so much of it to do and I feel like it repeats itself over and over again. The redundancy makes me wish there was an exit ticket that would excuse me from attending another session on how to read data or how to write a daily objective. If I have demonstrated mastery of the skill once (or heck, repeatedly), mark me as having mastered the objective and move me on. Check on me every now and then. Likewise, if I have not mastered the skill, challenge me. Support me. Help me become better.

This is how I have been feeling lately for the last two weeks and why I have refrained from writing. I have held such emotional and mixed feelings at the aforementioned pieces to my life that I have feared writing something that I would later come to regret. But today, my perspective and attitude has changed.

Why? Well, as embarrassing as it is to admit... I started to notice that my resentful attitude started to affect my teaching and the people around me. I was in such a resentful and pissed off mood at the things outside of our classroom that were keeping me from my kids, that that negative energy came seeping in.

I noticed it most obviously today as I was scolding one of my lowest performing students for not having his behavior tracker signed for the fourth time and demanding that he explain to me why he was not meeting expectations. Everyone else was so why wasn't he? After a lot of talking at him, he finally spoke and told me that he could not have it signed because his mother was in the hospital. Awestruck, I could only think to ask about his father who -- no surprise -- has been with mom by her bedside. He wanted to get it signed, he told me in his soft Spanish voice, but he could not. Dad came home really late and mom was still at the hospital.

He was in near tears as he explained this to me and I just wanted to cry and slap myself for being so stupid. Granted, there is no way I could have known his story but I just imagined him at home, alone, not wanting to fail me, so desperately wanting to have it signed but knowing that was not a possibility given his circumstances. And me, speaking to him in a foreign English like I knew him while simultaneously demanding him to not fail me again when it truly was outside of his control. I was stupid. Pretty foolishly downright stupid.

So what did I do at the moment? I can hardly recall. All I remember doing is giving him a hug, apologizing, and asking for his forgiveness, and retelling how I care about him but cannot help him unless he talks to me. And yet, I did not feel any better. I still felt so frustrated with myself because that's precisely the kind of thing I did not want to be guilty of. How could I assume that because we come from the same place and share the same skin color, I knew his story? After mulling over it for six hours and debating a lot back and forth, I called his house and asked to speak to him.

I apologized to him, again, and relayed how it was not in my place to have scolded him the way I did. I then proceeded to speak with mom who expressed to me such love, care, and concern for her child that I heard the voice of my own parents. They, like her, sent their child to school for eight hours a day, approximately 180 days of the school year in naive and vain hope that their child will come home better than the day before. How could I have hurt that trust? Created a crack in our safe place? From the look on your face to your tone of voice, children remember everything. Regardless of whatever age.

For Michael*, I hope he came home today positively -- not negatively -- impacted from our conversation. I hope I healed wounds. I hope he harnesses a positive memory and builds one as the year progresses. But at least I think I am getting through to him. As we neared the end of our conversation, his mother shared with me how Michael* says, "he can't give up because both I and his teacher will not let him."

I can't give up on you Michael. I'm sorry for having done so today.

* Name has been changed