virulent.nu // yinzer diaspora

I have come to realize that I am not much of a blogger anymore. Sadly, I do not feel much like a writer anymore since all brain space is occupied by teaching, grad school, and climbing things.

If I start this up again, you will be the first to know.

I have been particularly lax at updating this because I have been particularly lax at EVERY ASPECT OF MY LIFE.

Coincidentally, summer vacation marks the absolute best time of my life ever no exaggeration for seriously. As corps members, none of us have had a break in well over a year. June began with training institute, mid-July marked district training, and by the first week of August we were thrust into a classroom.

Now I am enjoying the finer points in life: chipping away at a 12-month sleep debt, cooking dinner, yoga, climbing, playing outside with boyfriend, camping, reading, making it out to the bar every now and again, and lots of ass-sitting. Right now, it’s noon and while I have a list of things to do (steam clean the carpets on my old apartment, design assessments, laundry, pack for a Pittsburgh trip), I feel no overwhelming sense of urgency to complete them right away.

This past Monday and Wednesday I was invited to help new corps members lesson plan at Institute. This made me realize a few key things:

1. I know my shit when it comes to planning
If you don’t plan well, kids aren’t going to learn what you want them to learn. Bottom line. Learn how to do it well. I know what works and what doesn’t work for my students and I, and I don’t have to walk into next year freaking out because I have no idea how to teach a particular objective.

2. I know what educational gaps really look like.
A coworker said that nothing surprises him anymore about the gaps in our students’ education. The key to making students successful becomes tricky. You can circumvent these gaps or you can try to fill them. Personally, I had neither the time, energy, or know how for getting students who read 2-3 years below grade level to understand the expository text in their science book. I told them what they needed to know, and they could understand the skills and concepts anyway. No, you aren’t supposed to teach science from a book, however you are supposed to teach kids HOW to read a science book.

3. I enjoy teaching teachers.
And it makes me feel smart and knowledgeable!

Back to more ass-sitting. Happy summer!

If asked to dog-ear some exemplary pages in my lesson plan binder (which is purely electronic, barring computer crash disaster), I would consider this year’s science fair to be my greatest success as a teacher. I will begin with the result and work backwards — the hallmark cognitive process of any good teacher.

Every single student participated in a self-designed project, and nearly every student ended up with a poster that showed how they went through the entire scientific process. I had projects ranging from the sophisticated and intriguing winner “How does the voltage created by fruit change as it rots?” to a basic, well-executed “Which Hairspray Lasts the Longest?”

Parents, students, and teachers were everywhere. They ate lots of snacks, and beyond the very middle school act of hosting an impromptu ice fight while I was in a conference, there were no problems.

Part of the success, I believe, has to do with student investment in a project. Students took ownership of their display boards and utilized class time well. None of my students had so much as used a beaker at the beginning of the year, but now, each could explain the controls in their experiment and articulate the importance of them. Thanks to our great computer teacher, students made their own graphs in excel and typed up complete reports.

Tomorrow is the last day of school. I am feeling reflective, sure, but mostly aghast that the year is over. Where did the months go? What do I do with myself now? How can I possibly clean my classroom in 2 days?

What I will miss most are those moments when I can relax with my students. For whatever reason, 7th grade students are compelled to ask me deep philosophical questions during group work. “Why do girls act stupid?” “Do you think there’s ever been a person who HASN’T been asked to try drugs?” “What are farts made from?” In these moments, we are completely different people. They aren’t just students, and I am not just an instructor. Today I overheard the gifted and completely obnoxious Little Jonny (yes I actually have one of those) say to his partner “Just ask her. She’s knows a lot of stuff. Not just school stuff.”

An 8th grader from my particularly hellish first period told me once that “You know, some people say you’re mean or whatever, but I tell them if you actually sit down and talk with Ms. J, she’s super cool.” Striking this balance is precipitous and takes time.

I fantasize about how all I have now is time. This is only partially accurate because I signed on to teach a week of summer school. Half of the students do not speak English. This is why I teach for America!

There are seven calendar days remaining with students this year. In these seven days, I intend to finish up science fair, administer a final, and placate insanity by showing movies for the last 2 days.

After furiously reteaching a dozen or so standards across both grade levels, my students have achieved the Big Goal of 80% mastery. This supposedly demonstrates that they have made two years of growth with me, and while I argue that it doesn’t quantify that simply, I have felt successful in many ways.

Unfortunately, I do not feel that I have quite mastered the art of classroom management or dealing with that handful of disrespectful 13-year-old boys. The more people I talk to, the more I have come to learn that the Hispanic cultural bias towards gender has not worked in my favor. However, this does not mean that next year will feature the same kinds of problems. Establishing an orderly classroom happens in the first two weeks of school, and only now do I feel like I have the tools to create this.

My current summer plans revolve around ass-sitting and some light volunteer work for TFA newbies. I have to be able to realistically and positively reflect on my experience to total strangers. It’s a good thing I can talk a lot.

It’s raining in Phoenix, and this past weekend I woke up next to a lake. We drove East towards the Superstition mountains and visited a ghost town, ate breakfast at a biker bar, and I slept poorly inside of an inclined tent. This makes me homesick — not for the landscape because my idea of being outdoorsy before coming here was drinking on a concrete stoop. Instead, I miss doing anything different than the Monday-Friday grind. Not that my job is accurately defined as nose-to-the-grindstone drudgery.

Without having so much to plan, I don’t know what to do with myself at night. All of the light bulbs in my kitchen have burnt out (no replacements are in sight), and in a few weeks I am moving. Whew.

This week students are taking the AIMS exam which measures their ability to perform at grade level in reading and math. For the 8th grade, this includes science. I am confident that they know the science, but worry that the questions are designed to trick them.

One of my coworkers is leaving at the end of the year, presumably to teach at a middle class school in Ohio. He is also TFA, and today we came to the sobering conclusion that as teachers, you cannot “save” students.

A student shows up to school completely empty handed every day. No backpack, pencils, paper, anything. How are you supposed to demonstrate to this student (and their parents) that this suggests they will be completely unprepared for life? It seems small, something to disregard, but in reality if you cannot, as a 7th grader, show up with what you need, you will fall further and further behind on a spectrum of responsibility. No teacher can make you see the long term effects.

I know which students will make it to college. I know which students will likely end up pregnant and in jail. What things can I possibly do as their science teacher that will help them change their life course? I am one of five or six people they see at school in a day, and even if I am the best role model possible, preaching organization and integrity, they still go somewhere else at the end of the day. I barely know how bad that place can be.

Last week forty bullet shells littered the sidewalk a mile from school. An uncle and father to one of students was shot and killed. Today, I had to send a letter home today about a creepy dude following two students — parents beware! Though I have never felt unsafe at or around my school, who is there to make sure my students can make the right decisions?

I joined the corps to close the achievement gap. As a corollary, most of us believe we can make a lasting impact on our students. I admit the impossibility of this task. When student C tells me her electricity is being shut off, there are no tangible actions I can take. I can talk to her. When promotes in two months, then I am no longer there for her at all.

This was not intended to sound so morose. My students are amazing people. They have been working so hard and carefully on their tests this week, not quite knowing what is at stake. The reality is that our school did not make AYP last year according to NCLB standards, and if we do not make it this year, there is the risk of being taken over by the state. I have friends who teach at “performing” schools with administration that does not change completely every three years and where there is infrastructure in place to make their jobs easier.

In the next seven weeks, I wrap up my first year of teaching. I am pumped for the limitless growth of next year, tempered by learning what is or is not in my control. Can I do this job beyond the two year commitment? Provided I can get a bunch of boys to stop acting like jackasses in my class, it’s likely.

A study just came out which reveals that inquiry-based education is not necessarily beneficial for college-level sciences.

I would counter these findings with the following things in my classroom:
1. College science classes are all about route memorization and application. If you aren’t trained to memorize piles of content, you will be behind for sure.
2. While guided science instruction is more appropriate at the high school level, but not at the middle school level — if students are not given an opportunity to explore in my classroom, they’re super bored. I’m bored. Students are still trying to get a handle on how to make their brains operate in critical thinking situations.
3. The actual conclusion of the article is that differentiation is key to success, something that we already know.

A word on differentiation: gah

This is not to say I am against the practice of differentiation. I think it is extremely important. Rather, it’s a lot of work and if your management is not perfect, it can often lead to disaster. I also don’t know what to do with the group of students I have who cannot read, construct a sentence let alone write to any sort of prompt, or perform simple mathematics. In an ideal world, I should be able to craft scaffolded assessments for these students. In an ideal world I would also get more than five hours of sleep every night.

This is the month where teaching confidence plateaus. I have been making huge progress in a few specific areas: achieving a semblance of work-life balance, demonstrating to the 7th grade that I am insane enough to spend 2 80-minute blocks having them practice entering the classroom, and making exemplary lesson plans.

I have taken some blows, however.

The student I wrote about before withdrew following spring break. Without a doubt, she was my worst behavior problem this year. The class is nearly tranquil without her. To an outsider, it may be tempting to celebrate this, but I just keep thinking “oh, shit.” Who knows where this girl ended up. Living in an abandoned house again? Selling drugs? She is fourteen and to my knowledge, has no positive role models. The young, hip teachers didn’t stick to her that way.

Which is what we are supposed to do in some murky way — act as role models. I was not entirely sure what this meant until today. I am particularly close with one student in 8th grade, C. She texts me periodically to lament the loss of the Cardinals during the superbowl, to tell me she is nervous about an exam, or to tell me that her electricity is being shut off for the next 2 weeks because no one paid the bill. I pull her out of specials today because she scrawls “can we talk later?” on a mini-whiteboard (the students use these often in my class to write out answers). She talks, and I listen. I feel maternal and helpless.

Softball coaching starts this week. There are only two months left of school, 6 weeks left of graduate school, and eight school days until the 8th grade science AIMS test.

Spring break starts in two weeks. The following significant things are at play in the interim:

1. 8th grade science AIMS is in 25 days.
2. I am really crappy at grading.
3. I was featured in a TFA newsletter, boasting a ridiculous photo of me posing all GANGSTA with my students during a balloon tower challenge.
4. I took another day off last week because I had a high fever and couldn’t speak. Sadly, this caused me to miss the day that I would be doing a sex-ed Q&A with the 7th grade girls. The sub, whose competency was deeply questioned by administration, actually called the district office on my first period class because they were being “too insane.”
5. Grad school sucks.

The following story warrants more than a number, for sure.

Last week my students were learning how to trace the heredity of blood types using Punnett Squares. To begin, I played a video on why anyone should give a crap about blood typing. There are a few images of blood pooling in teeny tiny petri dishes, and students are answering questions wonderfully like they always do during videos.

I hear a thud and turn around.

One of my students completely passed out and fell out of her chair.

Oh crap. I think, briefly, that someone has DIED.

This is my foray incident in Emergency Crisis Management Teacher Mode. I scramble a little, check to see if she is conscious (nope), send about 5 students running out of the room to fetch help, call 911 on my cell phone, usher the rest of the class in the next room, fail at finding a parent contact phone number, and pace a lot.

The nurse rushes in with a wheelchair, administration comes in, FIVE SUPER HOT MEDIC FIREMEN show up.

At this point, my student is conscious and doing fine, if not a bit shaken up. Vitals pointed to her being perfectly fine, just having fainted at the sight of blood. She ended up going home for the day.

Not to diminish my student’s misfortune or student achievement, but it was completely freaking awesome to hang out with hot paramedics. I showed off the SmartBoard, and they moved things around my room for me. My assistant principle also said really nice things about me. My student had electrodes attached to her arms.

It was very emotionally confusing. Do I allow my ego to swell? Do I contemplate that I made a student (inadvertently) fall out of her chair in the middle of class? Am I incredibly insensitive for even having this conversation inside of my head? Is that guy single? Am I single? No. What should I actually be doing at this moment instead of making small talk with hot paramedics?

6. I still can’t sleep even if I only get 5 hours a night anyway.
7. I did the Thriller dance for my 5th period. It was completely awesome.

Feeling run down, I took a nap. When I woke up, I made the formerly impossible decision to call off tomorrow. Never without deranged selflessness, though, I drove back to school to assemble several work packets and an extensive agenda that better kill 80 minutes worth of class time.

I have not taken a day off at all this year, mostly because it was drilled into my brain at TFA institute that I must. not. quit. ever. Friends of mine who had bronchitis were required to teach the next day. On the surface, this is insane, but there is no other way to get into the mindset necessary for this job. Of course, you must then wonder if the job itself is insane.

Yes, yes it is. My coworker (who I am not longer dating but still remain friends with) put it best this afternoon by noting that 50% of what we do in a day has very little to do with the actual act of planning and instruction. You have to organize detention, behavior plans, parent phone calls, endless meetings, endless professional development sessions, paperwork, figuring out how to fit 32 kids in a 30-seat classroom, losing an hour of instructional time for the school’s SECOND picture day this year, and spending your prep trying to shove calories/caffeine into your body.

But then, you get to open a lesson saying “Today, we’re gonna talk about sex… cells!” and watch as the 8th graders become abnormally invested in the process of meiosis. Let’s color yarn and pretend like its chromosomes! Let’s talk about SPERM. REPEATEDLY.

“What are ovaries?”

Is it normal for a 14-year-old girl to have no idea where her eggs come from? Most of the time, I have no idea what “normal” white middle-class 14-year-old is supposed to know or be able to do. So, I’m left with lots of questions.

“Ms. J, do you have to, yanno, do it a special way to get twins?”

The honeymoon phase for my first period is definitely over. The chronic misbehavers offer little to no regard for my consequences system, and it is often impossible to get them to quiet down for more than 30 seconds. Starting tomorrow, I will now have 31 students in this class, and I only have lab table room for 30. My other class remains at 16 students, but the differentiation with math and reading classes means that they cannot move any students. Labs and center stations are now nearly impossible.

I stopped teaching today to engage these same students (rather, they engaged me in a very back-talky fashion) about appropriate language. They insist that they are allowed to curse in other classes, and I actually had to run through a list of what you can and cannot say. First infraction = after school detention. Second infraction = referral to the office.

There is not set system for after school detention at our school. This is one of the huge drawbacks to working in a K-8 school where there are only 4 teachers for the 7-8th grade. If you want something to follow through, you have to do it yourself, not because of any fault of the other teachers, but because they are older and have families. I spend most of my time with the computer.

Overall, I am 90% calmer, still. The notion of internalizing a failure in the classroom as a failure of one’s self is a terrible way to think. No one ever told me not to make that connection, and with the “student impact model” that TFA purports, it’s difficult NOT to make that emotional connection. It’s not that I don’t care now, it’s that I don’t care enough to lose sleep over some middle school kid doing something crappy. They do crappy things without reason.

I held one student for after school detention today. She has a tendency to show-boat in class, get others off-task, and fail to complete work. When in a mood, the disrespect, battling, and back-talk are completely devoid of reasoning. They say that one misbehaving girl is worth about three boys, and it’s true.

Still, I have a strong affinity for this girl. I like her. She is a frank, open conversationalist and, even at the age of 13, has an understanding of the world that I cannot comprehend. And I think I can relate to a lot.

She moved to Chicago last year, and her mom kicked her out for reasons relating to a step-father or boyfriend thing. She tells me that for six months, she didn’t go to school. “I lived with a friend,” she says, “another kid who was my age and not in school.” Regarding money, she says “oh, we could get it.”

She describes the experience of being a “rebel” Mexican-American female clearly, stating that pride is just about the only thing that can keep you going in the neighborhood. After asking me if I have ever been in a fight (no, white girls from back East don’t do much of that in middle class neighborhoods), she states “You gotta fight. If you don’t have pride, you don’t have nothing.”

I continue with the blanket inspirational statement that of course, life can change. You don’t always have to live just to survive. “Yea, I get you. Living like somebody’s always trying to go up against you or you are going up against them.” She says she will make money someday, no kids anytime soon. She just wants to support herself.

We talked about boys. She cleaned my whiteboards and completed a late assignment.

I have decided to put this student (along with two others) on a behavior plan. The system I have in place only works so well with certain students. A chunked, systematic set of goals is necessary for success. Or at least to try. I can’t deal with the crazy, and with one student, there is serious crazy.

Middle school students often pick a teacher to hate. Sometimes they have reasons, sometimes they do not. It is simply difficult being the easiest and most frequent target of insane behavior. I am a first year teacher. Some of them can tell.

I tell myself, of course, that I will never have to go through my first year of teaching ever again.

My 8th grade students placed highest in the entire school district on the mid-year science benchmarks.

Upon hearing this, I immediately burst into tears in front of the entire staff as they applauded me. It was completely surreal.

This is why I get to school every day at 6am, stay until 4pm, go home, and work for four hours before passing out. This is why I teach for America.

I cannot wait to tell my students tomorrow.

This year, I have done the following: (Chronological accuracy is questionable)

+ Went to Chicago

+ Worked a high-paying, low stress job for a few months.

+ Bonded with 24 kiddos, aged 6-8, who told me things like “Ms. J, you need to get yourself some heels and dress sexy!”

+ Got a new car

+ Attempted to eat two vegan meals a day.

+ Learned that my old car died weeks after its replacement

+ Failed at eating two vegan meals a day

+ Sold or gave away nearly everything I owned

+ Endured one of those Earth-shattering break ups

+ Moved 2,100 miles away

+ Survived 6 weeks of military-style bootcamp from daily hours of 5am to midnight, furthering the academic achievement of 13 eight-year-olds at summer school

+ Moved into an empty apartment

+ Accrued debt

+ Became a teacher, officially

+ Started graduate school

+ Went to Portland

+ Went to San Francisco

+ Went back to Pittsburgh twice

+ Thought about quitting

+ Thought about teaching for the rest of my life

+ Finished my first semester of graduate school with a 4.0

What I will remember most about this year is fodder for self-righteousness.

“What’d you do in your 20’s? Oh. Well I left the socially-cushy, everybody-loves-me sphere of the most perfect city ever with this great boyfriend and family and I-know-where-the-cool-stuff-is-always attitude and moved to a concrete craptacular metro area to be messed with my 13-year-olds.”

Actually, this week was my best week ever in the history of teaching. No only do I feel in control, stable, and sane, but they’re ALL LEARNING. My new management system works. I have become myself again as a person, which has carried over into being a teacher. The disrespect has decreased rapidly. I have opportunities to give tons of positive praise. My days are no longer a battle of teacher v. unruly students, and I now understand why this is rewarding.

So far in 2009:

+ I have read half of the Twilight series.

+ I have spoken extensively with no less than five students about the Twilight series, including how my haircut resembles that of the character Alice Cullen.

+ I have accepted the fact that I don’t need to read smart people books right now.

+ For a poster contest today, one pair of students drew the nucleus of an atom to represent a balanced force (they came up with that on their own!!!!!!!) They gave the nucleus arms, hands, an elephant, and legs with fish-stockings and high heels. This is what happens when you bait students with prizes drawings which are “most creative,” “most hilarious,” and “look like awesome.” To represent an unbalanced force, another pair drew a tug of war between vampires and abnormally large ants.