A Lesson Learned

I was fully prepared to go to school tomorrow. In fact, I even did my hair so I wouldn't have to do it in the morning (saves so much time!). So when I saw that we were closed tomorrow, I was shocked. Maybe I still am. I must admit that the extra day is coming in handy with this illness I've been battling, the snow, the frigid temps, and my COMP that is due in two weeks. I am taking advantage of these days, and I'm also thinking back to the last time I was in this place.

I was so ready to get back to school after our extended winter break, that I "wanted it too much" (credit BPG for the phrase). I know you're probably thinking how can it be wrong to want it too much. I asked myself this question the night of our first day back at school, which went down as an epic disaster. Yet, after a series of reflective questioning, I realized he was right. I wanted the first day back to be so spectacular that I forgot that the best made plans don't often go as we expect them to.  Just because I had an amazing lesson plan (in my eyes), just because I was ready to be back in the groove, just because I had to cram a 4 week unit into 2, just because I...well you get the picture.  Everything was related to what I wanted, what I expected, what I dreamed, what I envisioned. None of it was based on what I knew deep down about kids: they're kids.

Kids are fickle, they're social, they're anti-social, they're moody, they're hormonal, they're apathetic, they're excited, they're lazy, they're active, they're a bunch of oxymora! I don't know how my kids will be when they come to me on Thursday. But I do know how I'll be, which is chill. I'm going to be cool, calm, collected, I'm going to go with the flow. We'll make the most of what we have on Thursday and Friday and then we'll start fresh Monday.

You see, I want it, but I don't want it too much :)

Sea of...

It's day four of being sick in Northern Indiana, and let's just say it's been a struggle. I can think of a million things I would actually enjoy doing right now: tubing, sledding, ice skating, building a snowman, but alas, I am too sick to do anything fun.  Yesterday, I was practically too sick to do anything that involved thinking. I didn't even go to church today, which if you know me, rarely happens. My ass is always in the pew on Sundays! However, for everyone's best interests, I decided that it would be best if I stayed at home.

So for the past few hours I've been working on my COMP, planning out centers for my classroom, reading articles, and contemplating life as a teacher.  I read an interesting article today on FB about how to make sure your best people leave (http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/Top_10_ways_to_ensure_your_best_people_will_quit_47779.aspx). Yes, you read that correctly. It was a great article, and it discussed the kind of climate that makes good employees frustrated.  While it wasn't geared towards educators (because, I mean, who really thinks of us as professionals-note my sarcasm), it hit the nail on the head. I've been in a funk for the past month or so.  School spirit and school morale is pretty dismal right now (insert a lack of fun), I'm feeling a little used and abused (insert unappreciated, #7), and I'm feeling completely constricted by what I can and cannot do by my technology limitations (can I please get my router back? #8).  In short, I'm fed up and frustrated.  I want to move forward, but I feel stuck, and I feel like my kids are stuck because I'm stuck.  Not a good combination.

See, I love teaching. Ask any of my former students, they'll tell you how much I love teaching.  I also happen to be pretty good at it. Except right now, I kind of feel like I'm not doing as good of a job as I could be. Actually, I know I'm not. I want to open up the world to my students, let them spread their wings, find value in what they're learning, but lately it feels like I've lost my way.  I've had glimmers of it in the poetry slam, the connections my students made with R & J and their idiotic impulsive decisions.  Glimpses, however, are not enough. I want a full-fledged movement like I had the first year I did a service learning unit on the Rwandan Genocide and my students created a dynamic black and white magazine about what they learned. Talk about authentic learning. I miss having time for students to create poems about the masks they wear and being able to make actual masks! It was quite a sight to see all those symbolic pieces hanging from the ceiling. Yes it was messy, but it was worth it.

I hate that for whatever reason, education has seemed to have forgotten that students are people. Yes, they are children, but they are people. Last week one of my students stood up and said "dang, who decided that we needed to sit all day at school?". What a great questions! Lord knows, I'm the one who takes walk breaks at all day in-services because I feel like I'm going to die if I sit in that chair any longer. But it's "sit in your seat", "be quiet", "stop moving", "put that food away", "give me your electronic device" all day long for most of these kids and we wonder why they hate school. And we want them to perform on a standardized test? Sorry people, but this is a different generation, and at a certain point, we have to realize that or we're going to keep running into a brick wall.  We need to start caring about the right things, instead of things we think we have the right to control.  Kids are kids and they're going to test the limits. Sometimes, they're going to make horrific choices that we don't understand, but it's our job to help them do better. It's our role as educators today. Like it or not. And many of us can't keep doing it alone.

We need to start having real conversations about mutual respect, authentic assessment, authentic experiences in the classroom, student accountability (firmly believe in this) struggles that come with implementing theory into practice, reaching today's students, figuring out which disciplinary issues matter, and which ones honestly only matter to us. It's time for reflective practice. I'm in it for the long haul, and I plan on teaching other 18-20 year-olds to commit their lives to this amazing profession (even with all this b.s. legislation).

I'm starting with myself, and I'm starting by getting rid of the negative energy around me. It's bringing me down, and I can't let it do that. I just gotta do me, and if that means surrounding myself with only a core group of people again, so be it.

On a different note, here's a great poem from the poetry slam we had in January. Sorry about the rocky video job, but we don't have a class for that...

Star Crossed Love and Crisis Intervention

It's officially the second day in 2014, and I'm four days away from beginning the second half of the school year.  I was hoping that at this point in break I would be brimming with new ideas about how to teach "Romeo and Juliet", writing, success time, and how to best manage the instructional calendar. Sadly, I'm anything but enthused.  Inside, I feel empty.  Creativity?  Pretty much nonexistent.  Positivity? More like frustration.  I've spent the past few years aligning the 9th grade curriculum and instructional calendar to the Common Core and the Indiana Standards, only to read in the paper that our glorious legislators are ready to tank both and start fresh.

I've read the concerns about the Common Core, and I like to think I'm well-versed in all things curriculum and instruction oriented, and honestly, I support the Common Core. I don't support state legislation about education that is created on the ideals of people who have never taught a day in their life.  People are afraid of what they don't know, what they think will happen based on a variety of fallacies floating around the internet, and their own opinions about how they want their child to be educated (which you are entitled to as a parent).

I appreciate that concern, I value those opinions, but at the end of the day, I want answers based on evidence, rather than emotions.  I want the students I teach to leave high school reading at an appropriate grade level.  I want them to be able to speak and listen in an educated away.  I want them to treat their fellow brothers and sisters with dignity and respect.  I want them to be free of racist stereotypes that will do far more damage than a standard that expects them to evaluate the reason behind a valid argument.  I want them to be free from teachers who simply don't want to be in the classroom anymore.  Some who have already written them off as menaces to society.  I want them to question, to explore, and think a little.  Not be told what to think.

I'm tired of teaching "Romeo and Juliet" for the 20th time.  I have great essential questions, a killer statement of enduring understanding, and my favorite "Verona Twilight", but aside from that, I don't want anything to do with teaching something that is so damn sad and idiotic.  Can you tell I'm just not feeling this?  Yet, I'm full of guilt.  Because I should care. Or should I? How can I get my students excited to delve into something that I want nothing to do with? It's cold and snow is everywhere, can't we teach something other than a tragedy based on the impulsive idiotic decisions of two ridiculous teenagers?

Sometimes I wish that people would just get out of my way. Including the asinine legislators at every level.  Let me do my job.  Let me figure out how to create some passion in the classroom instead of selling my soul to standardized tests.  I want my teaching to mean something, and right now, I'm not sure it does.