My hand shot up in the air, but my mouth was already running. As usual. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Are you suggesting we celebrate our district’s D rating?” Superintendent: “Yes, of course. Our district is 83% free and reduced lunch, and we didn’t decline in our DPS [district performance score] from last year. We…
read more »From Mr. G in South Arkansas, “What works for one class, one period, and even one student, doesn’t work for them all. You have to constantly change the rules. Imagine playing a soccer game where the rules changed based on every player and event.” Have you ever accidentally stumbled across someone else’s words that so accurately describe…
read more »In the same week, I’ve:
- Engaged in an altercation with my highest of higher ups. I’m only kind of confident we’re back on good terms. Stark reminder that though I’m considered “headstrong” and “driven” in my hometown, in Louisiana I read as “extremely disrespectful,” “abrasive,” and I wasn’t really listening by the third one. Note to self: work on approach?
- Taken a faceful of pebbles from one of the girls I tutor after school. And so it was, as it came to be: the last day my tutoring group ever saw the playground. (Also I resigned from tutoring)
read more »My classroom is the closest one to the library and our librarian is my lovely blonde haloed guardian angel. Juuuust at the point of no return, when I’m standing in the doorway after dismissal reconsidering my life choices and the overturned workstation buckets in the north corner, Fly Brarian swings in and gasps: “I woke…
read more »Three of my second year friends have quit, two of them this month. With as much sympathy and as little judgment as possible: um, no, I won’t be attending your Bon Voyage. If Gary Rubenstein is to be trusted (and many do), his research shows 1 in 8 corps members who attend Institute do not…
read more »Last year, when my classroom was falling apart and my students were out of my control and I was losing sleep and hair and sanity, a second-year corps member said the following to me: Your kids can do anything. You just have to teach them how. I am still overwhelmed by how loaded that word…
read more »Teaching is learning. Teaching is enriching. Teaching is challenging, it’s trying in unimaginable ways. Teaching is caring. Teaching is exhilarating, it’s exciting every day. Teaching is motivating, it’s inspiring. Teaching is frustrating, it’s frightening. Teaching is energizing. Teaching is draining. Teaching is collaborating. Teaching is growing. Teaching is dividing. Teaching is equalizing. Teaching is loving.…
read more »The last 84 days of my life are a blur. Once upon a time in early June, I arrived in my new home state, Louisiana, to embark on the most transformational journey of my young life. I spent the second week of June living at the beautiful Crowne Plaza hotel in Baton Rouge–a city I’ve…
read more »The first day of school is a foggy memory by now. I forget how absolutely all-consuming teaching is once that first day bell rings. I am thankful to have been much more prepared for my second year of teaching (you poor first-years …), but I’m still scrambling to catch up. This year’s crisis: notebooks. Last…
read more »School has been starting across South Louisiana over the past two weeks and we have been all a-flutter over here. I’m just now finding time to sit and reflect/or, more accurately, take a breath. Last year I drove away from school after teacher check-out with only one clear thought permeating the fog: “That was the…
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