Teach For America teacher blogs are on Teach For Us

In which it's a question of degrees

katb — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:58:30 +0100

Comparisons are deadly. A few months ago, I had a case of viral Crud that kept me feeble for weeks. I came to work every day with my low grade fever and kept all of the lights off in my classroom to delay the inevitable daily migraine. When TFA staff came in and made the entirely reasonable suggestion that it was more difficult for the children to read by the combination of lamp- and SMARTboard light, I decided that it would also be more difficult for them to read if I died, and kept the lights off. 2 days ago, I came down with a cute little head cold. As I sniffle and slump around school and home and the world, acting like this little bout with minor illness may prove fatal at any second, I can't possibly think back on Crud. It ruins the illusion that what I'm experiencing now is Impossible and Difficult. A year ago I held my sanity and my kids together with a tiny thread. Generally speaking, every class period was a disaster waiting to happen. My precious angels, in TFA-speak, were teetering from unruly and apathetic to dangerous and destructive on a minute-by-minute basis. This year, one kid acts a fool, or one class period is chatty, and I find it horrifying. If my thoughts wander back to last May, I discard it as if those much bigger problems happened to someone else, and my current struggles are Earth Shattering. It's all a question of degrees of magnitude. Today is the last day of state testing (an event which incidentally is vastly more annoying this year than it was last year, I'm not sure why). I will see all of my most precious angels fourteen more times before we're all released into the agony (it's boring) and bliss (it's stress-less) 0f summer vacation. It's hard not to make comparisons at this point, hard not to wonder what I'll be wondering next year at this time (and more to the point, where I'll be when I'm wondering it). But because comparisons are deadly (and really, with this cold, I'm already at death's door), I think I'll just focus on my route for pacing during testing and on sharpening yet more pencils.

In which there are thoughts on a Thursday

katb — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:42:11 +0100

I haven't brought work home from school during the week for a long time. Call it Senioritis, call it work place efficiency, call it whatever you want. Whatever it is, I dragged a lovely and inspiring pile of student work home with me tonight, and settled down to spend 3 hours alternatively snacking and slaughtering papers with my long dormant grading pen. Here were my thoughts:

You're in sixth grade. You really can't spell "first"? WHO IS YOUR ELA TEACHER? (darn... that would be me)
You're in sixth grade. You really can't spell "knot," when it's written in huge font on both sides of the paper? (REALLY?!?)
What is it about grading that makes teachers hate it and non-teachers crave it? My roommate rarely gets to grade for me, but she acts like it's Christmas every time I let her. Bless her heart.
Pictures of kittens on buzzfeed are a lot more interesting than this assignment.
The omnipresent dust bunny on my ceiling is a lot more interesting than this assignment.
Is it too soon to start a post-it countdown until the last day of school?
Do I have enough post-its for a post-it countdown?

In which my nose grows longer

katb — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:49:24 +0100

I think I am slowly losing cognitive function. This is being written on a clipboard on Day 2 (of 3) of district benchmark testing. If you don't know, that means we have to give long, painful, multiple choice tests three times a year that, theoretically, predict performance on the state test. I can think of few things have less to do with the state test, but I digress. For me, it means doing all of the things I hate about my job, and absolutely none of the fun things. I walk around with a clipboard looking mean, I call mamas like it's my raison d'etre, and I perpetually express my disbelief that anyone would dream of talking. I'm not actually teaching at all, but I'm exhausted by the end of the day from being such a colossal witch. Seriously, I only told one lame joke all day. Who am I? The one beacon of entertainment I get on TEST DAY is the power of the Teacher Lie. Calm down. They're not complete lies. Climb down off the soapbox friend, hear me out. Sometimes, it's important to extend the truth. Performance on benchmark tests (and frankly, performance on the state test) is about 25% content knowledge, 25% stamina, and 50% investment. If you think the test is important, you'll do well. Children will obviously bomb a test that (a) doesn't actually have the state of Missouri's stamp on it, (b) will never go in the gradebook, and (c) is otherwise long, hard, and pointless. However, if you are led to believe that this test has something to do with summer school assignments, or retention lists, well... Magical results can occur. And legitimately, these scores are saved and do come under consideration for student placement and advancement. They're just probably somewhat less important than I intentionally lead them to believe. Oops? I mean I also give them peppermints. Peppermints, you might not be aware, magically make you smarter. For. Real. Wink. 20 more days until the real deal. Hopefully we all survive that long.

In which there is a lack of certainty

katb — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 02:46:17 +0100

Being a teacher means not ever being Sure. At the beginning of the year, you're not Sure where your classroom will be, or with what and with whom it will be filled. If you're like me and you work in an unaccredited district, you're not even Sure you'll have a classroom. Kids ask you questions and you're not Sure how to answer. Is that too personal? Do I really remember that one bizarre exception to the rules for using quotation marks? Is that really something you should be asking? You're not Sure how you get exposed to various diseases, like whatever strain of viral Crud that has kept me confined to my bedroom on this one beautiful day of pre-spring St. Louis weather. You're not Sure why you have the capacity to swing from chipper to crabby in the space of fifteen minutes, but you think it's probably because of all the excess middle school hormones that seep through your unwilling pores. If you're me, you're never Sure if you're actually getting there with particularly precious angels, or if they just took adequate doses of Actual Human Being pills that morning. Or perhaps they remembered their injections of Suck Up To The Teacher, You Silly Goose medicine. The moral of the story is that even though I walk around with a certain amount of Second Year Teacher Swagg, I'm still not Sure of a lot of things. When I get asked if my kids acted like angels or armpits on particular days, I'm never quite Sure who is to praise or to blame for the answer. One thing I am Sure about? The 9 days of children that are standing between me and Spring Break - aka eradicating the Crud - aka sleeping past sunrise - aka Pure Unadulterated Joy.

In which there is February 14th

katb — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:25:16 +0100

A really long time ago there was this guy named St. Valentine. He lived in Rome and there was something about weddings. It's really interesting, you should learn about it some time. (Yes I just wrote that paragraph. Yes I spent today in a writing PD. Yes I should probably be ashamed of myself. Oops?) I have often measured time by February 14ths. Not because I'm an ooey gooey romantic or anything; I think it has more to do with being six weeks after New Years. It makes it something of a checkpoint or a benchmark - arguably the first of the year. Anyway, this year I have some observations to share.

Being a teacher on Valentine's Day is MUCH more fun when you're pulled out for Professional Development AND you have a good sub. I had the opportunity to find pre-teen romantic excess adorable rather than immensely irritating. It's EVEN more fun when it's a Thursday before a four day child-free weekend.
People say funny things on social media on Valentine's Day. Maybe the candy shuts down filters? I'm not sure.
Popping in on your classroom full of sugar laced/hormone fueled adolescents and having them immediately shut their mouths and say - MAN MS. B REALLY IS HERE TODAY - is incredibly satisfying.
Middle school Valentinian politics have gotten much more complicated than when I was a kid. Children today gifted each other with cupcakes, enormous stuffed animals, and fresh flowers. In my youth we maybe gave our friends a fun-sized bag of skittles, but then we called it a day.
Today my principal brought cupcakes for FEMALE STAFF MEMBERS ONLY. This seemed perhaps bizarrely homophobic? Or just ragingly sexist? I haven't really decided yet.
Ultimately, this is a hilarious holiday. Middle schoolers (and people who spend too much time around middle schoolers) are hilarious people. Secretly, I love my job.

xoxo

In which I'd rather be coloring

katb — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:47:11 +0100

A friend of mine said recently that she missed my blog, but that she assumed that all was well in my universe if I wasn't writing much. This is mostly true. The good news, to all of you first years in the dreaded pre-Valentine's amp up, is that on this side of year two, things really are easier. The day to day functions of being a teacher have become second nature. You've learned to delegate irritating tasks to children who find them fascinating (alphabetizing as reward, who knew?) . You've, theoretically, created some external human life that distracts from you from the normal humdrum nature of the workaday existence known as adulthood. Yes, you'll have to survive the hormone-laced chocolate fueled insanity that is Valentine's (yes I still maintain that it is the worst of teacher holidays..., http://katb.teachforus.org/2012/10/21/in-which-there-are-nine-weeks/), but life, in general, is simpler than it used to be. Sadly, or perhaps happily, this slow acquisition of basic competency in your job also comes along with the return of Senioritis, a plague you thought you left behind in college. Even knowing that I'm staying in the classroom, even acknowledging that this is now a Career and not a Thing That I Did After Graduation, I still find myself haunted by the senior slack. I don't necessarily WANT to do nothing, and yet, motivation is an increasingly rare bird in my work hours. OH THERE IT IS- Nope, flew out the window again. Here's an illustration of my loopiness. Like a mostly normal human, I sleep in on the weekends. By sleep in, I mean I get up at 7 (rather than 5) and do things. This morning, I've been sitting at my desk grading tests, crunching data, doing all of that not all fun stuff. At some point, I learned over to drop a completed pile on the floor (I should revise that - saying a completed pile implies that there were multiple completed piles. This, clearly, was the first. I told you I'm unmotivated...) As I straightened up, I caught a glimpse of an old coloring book on my book shelf. This was given to me by a dear friend during our senior year of college, and was the source of some happy hours of communal coloring while I should have been writing thesis drafts. I stared at it, and spent a good minute, sixty solid seconds, pondering if it was worth getting in the car, driving to school, and finding my crayons in order to spend the rest of the day creating Works of Art. Then I decided that would be pretty dumb, and that instead I should procrastinate by writing this post. This is a curious time of year, far enough from the Dreaded State Test that hysteria has not yet blanketed us completely, but close enough that it creeps into everything we do/say/plan/expect from kids. And furthermore, Christmas is a sad little blinking twinkly light in the past, while Spring Break is many many many Hawaiian shirts away. Worse yet, it's a St. Louis February where the temperature fluctuates from 9 to 68 in the space of three days. The kids feel blah, I feel blah, we're all just blah. Blah blah blah. Eventually I know the days on the calendar will start to fly again, and that work will feel productive again, and that I'll read this in May and think GOLLY GEE WILLIKERS WHERE DID TIME GO? For now though, I think I'll pull the hood up on my sweatshirt, embrace the Senioritis, and relax.

In which I can write a friendly letter

katb — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:50:11 +0100

Ms. B Room 374 School January 4, 2013

Dear children of Room 374,

I am writing this note, in friendly letter format, because after two weeks without my priceless insight, you're probably in the mood for some light reading.

Here are some of the things that I have done since December 21st:

Read some books, many of them on my independent reading level.
Flown in an airplane to the magical land of New Jersey.
Looked at a lot of SUPER COOL Greek myths for our next unit.
Eaten cookies.
Missed some of you, like occasionally. Not that I have feelings and stuff, it was just, you know, once in awhile.
Watched a lot of TV (shhhhh... Our little secret).

I'm hoping you had nice Christmases too. In my imagination you did a lot more of #1 than you did of #6. That's true, right? In just a couple of days we'll be back to ~~fun~~ ~~occasional amusement~~ ~~learning~~ ~~babysitting~~ school. I've even already made a BRAND NEW SEATING CHART. Just for you. You're welcome. Merry Christmas. Can't wait until you come back, friends. We have 90 more days together in 374, and then the 121 of us will be off to new classrooms when August comes around again. So what do you say, ready to get some stuff done?

Love, and all that other sentimental stuff,

Ms. B

P.S. Extra credit if you can tell me the part of friendly letter format that I had to leave out because the computer wouldn't let me do it.

In which there is winter break-itis

katb — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:00:42 +0100

I have this fantasy that I will unit plan out the rest of the year in the next two hours, leaving time to bond with my family, reconnect with high school friends, fly back to STL, clean my apartment, determine my fate for next year, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc... That's a lot of etceteras*. You probably get the picture. [*NB - spell check wanted this to be "cafeterias." People are making more and more worrisome spelling errors, evidently.] It is both invigorating and annoying to plan during a break. It's invigorating because you suddenly have ample time to browse Pinterest for adorable and rigorous projects, hours upon hours to devote to finding the right resources and figuring out the right times to use them. It's annoying, because eventually you realize that you're perhaps a bit too optimistic about the post-Christmas Crazy children that will walk into your classroom. This juxtaposition of motivations exists, by the way, even when you follow your mother's mandate of not working before December 27th. I also oddly miss my children this year, which neither adds to, nor subtracts from, my internal motivation. Nevertheless, I will continue to oscillate between frantic typing, idle knitting, active television viewing, and obsessive nail painting. And as I read that sentence, I have to admit: life can be pretty great as a teacher.

In which there is the tale of three plan periods

katb — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:58:06 +0100

As a member of the sixth grade team, I have the indubitable privilege of last hour plan periods. Here are three from this week. One. At the beginning of my plan period, I have the honor of spending the first 10 minutes chasing seventh graders from the hallway into their classrooms. The only sixth grade class on that hallway is art, currently populated by one of my team's advisories. As I was walking past, our art teacher was preparing to escort the little darlings around the corner, to the sixth grade hallway computer lab. One of my Most Precious ones was being his typically precious self. In fact, he managed to be precious to three adults within three minutes. So I pulled him out of line, said, "Mr. W., please loan me A," and escorted him to my classroom. I dialed all 6 or 7 numbers that I had for this kid, left a message for a grandparent, and just sat back and looked at him. I delivered an (actually brief) sermon, summarizing his recent exploits in rudeness. I informed him that there had been an unfortunate change in behavior (A formerly had his act together). Then I waited. A paced. I waited some more. I told him, "A, tell me something intelligent, and you can go to art." A decided he didn't have anything intelligent to say. "That's cool," I said, "I'll wait." This detente finally ended 35 minutes later when I walked him to art and picked up the paper work to refer him up the ladder of people qualified to deal with children who don't want to be dealt with. Not a win. Two. This was the week of Christmas Crazy. We actually might have had twenty fights between Monday and Friday. So naturally, my own precious ones were embroiled in this nonsense. One in particular happened during a plan period whilst I was walking from the teacher's lounge to my classroom, carrying a "Peace on Earth" holiday card from a colleague. Suddenly, a great ruckus erupted, and a clump of children came barreling down the stairs, one combatant restrained by another of his confreres. I took over and grabbed Ultimate Fighter E, whose big crocodile tears started running down his face and my arm. A coworker later told me that the irony of me holding a peace on earth card while breaking up fight number 10 of the day was somewhat tragically ironic. I spent that plan sitting with E in the office while he wrote his statement. Not really talking, but just sitting there. Occasionally going on tissue runs. Talking quietly about how we were going to fix this in the future, but also about Christmas and birthdays and all of that. Win. Three. Friday during my plan period, I sat down at my computer and read my emails from TFA and my school district about Connecticut. Then I read Google News, and just kind of stared disbelievingly at my computer until the bell rang. There's really nothing intelligent to say about that.

In which I am thankful for post-its

katb — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 17:09:49 +0100

When I was little, a famous family Thanksgiving at my aunt's house in Illinois changed the way we talked about gratitude in November. When we, like dutiful Americans, went around the table to say what we were thankful for, we were banned from the profound or the cliche. So my mom was thankful for post-its, my dad was thankful for ballpoint pens, and I was probably thankful for the no-more-tangles spray that staved off the worst mother-daughter hair combing battles. I've thought a lot about what I'm thankful for today. I'm thankful for a functional photocopier, for the longevity of my pencil sharpener, for SMARTboards. I'm thankful for for my roommate who happily and voluntarily grades pretests, for my parents who make me laugh and feel like a Jersey girl again for 25 minutes every Sunday. I'm thankful for my brother who always offers a shoulder and a free technical consultation, for my friends who reply rapidly to text messages, for my mentor who kicks my teacher butt and then drives me to the airport. I'm thankful for airplanes, and cars, and credit cards. I'm thankful for 9 more PTO days. I'm thankful for post-its. I'm occasionally even thankful for 120 sixth graders, but that is a statement too profound to be uttered in the B household on the Day of Turkey. The list this year is long, surprisingly, from the small to the tall. It is long, and not tinged with misery and depression. So more than anything, I state with a degree of a profundity, I am thankful for that. Happy Thanksgiving, one and all. May your dinners be delicious, may your grading piles be unmarked, may your data be untracked, and may your lessons be unplanned. And may you rest assured, there are only four more weeks until Christmas!