Those Who CAN

Last Friday I turned in my teacher of the year portfolio.  While I wasn't looking forward to putting together the portfolio, it was pretty powerful.  I was able to take the time to reflect on my growth as a teacher. I had almost forgotten about my first year teaching on a cart (maybe I just tried to repress the awful memory) and the million and one first-year teacher mistakes I made. Bless Pat Lorenc for being my mentor teacher, because I'm pretty sure she helped me maintain my sanity. Thankfully, I had a classroom the next year, but it came with a partial contract (hello, debt) that was less than ideal.  I could continue to chronicle the years leading up to today, but that's not what this post is about.

This post is about everything that is impossible to teach in education courses.

1. A student who is angry and crying because it is the anniversary of her mother's death
2. How to handle the student who thinks it's grand to speak in a British/Australian/ accent at any point in the day...and then do cartwheels down the hall.
3. Providing consequences to students that actually matter (in case you wondered, ISS and OSS don't)
4. How to deal with a classroom of raging hormones
5. What to say when a new student arrives at your door who tells you he's been in jail for a year (nice to meet you??)
6. Remembering to take attendance
7. How to address 10 different questions at one time
8. What to say to a scared 14 year old who just found out she's pregnant
9. A student's death
10. How not to strangle a parent who is abusing his child
11. How to write recommendation letters :) I have this one down now!
12. How to work a copy machine (thankfully, I do not jam ours)
13. Finding a balance between your life as a teacher and your life outside of the classroom
14. How to say NO
15. Um, he brought a picture of WHAT? He showed it to WHO? OK. Um...let's go to the office

In case you're curious, all fifteen of those occurred over the past two weeks. 10 of those in one day. I could write a list longer than this, but I think you get the gist.  Teaching is about more than teaching...it's about making meaning of the experience we call life. And that is no easy task.

An Escape

I'm a book geek and proud of it.  I'm also a huge fan of YA literature, which is not always embraced by educators as being quality literature.  I'm convinced that these people simply have not picked up recent YA literature and base their opinions solely on Twilight (I like Twilight, it just doesn't need to be taught!).  I like to classify reading in my classroom into three categories: entertainment, life, and cultural literacy.

I do believe there are some books that students should be exposed to, yet, I do not agree that the books "we" have chosen as being culturally relevant are always on target.  Last time I checked, white males are not the only people in our society.  I do not mind teaching Shakespeare, Homer the blind poet, and all that good jazz.  However, we owe it to students to expose them to non-white male authors who provide a cultural literacy about the current world, too.

Too many students have a profound hatred for books, and I can understand why.  We over teach novels, we tell them what to think about the novels, and when they ask why they have to read it, we answer because we have to.  That's not good enough. 

We need to carefully examine the literature we teach and take some risks.  I recently read The Fault in Our Stars which made me ache with a desire to live, to love, to take risks, and to embrace the sorrow that is an inevitable piece of the human experience.  It is a book that deserves to be taught.  It should be taught. 

So, as a literacy specialist (yes, I have a master's in reading!), here are my suggestions for current YA reading that is about the human experience:

Sold
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Divergent
Bound
Never Fall Down
Split
Twisted
Boy 21
Between Shades of Gray
Jellicoe Road
Speak
The Piper's Son 
Shatter Me 
Copper Sun
Ophelia

A list for entertainment!

The Immortal Instruments (series)
Beautiful Creatures (series)
Under the Never Sky
Froi of the Exiles (could go above too!)
The Infernal Devices (series)
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Legend
Jane
Matched (series)
Delirium (series)

Now, I need to get back to reading Cinder :)

A Tad Emotional

I meant to write this post weeks ago, but my mind needed some time to just be.  Now, I'm three days away from beginning the second half of the school year, and it seems timely to begin writing again.

The course I'm currently taking is time consuming, but it is also extremely applicable, which is something I am always thankful for.  One of the topics we have been learning about is the role that emotion plays in the classroom. While inherently I think most teachers know that emotion is linked to our ability to learn, I'm not sure we always recognize the role it plays in our classroom.

Emotions are everywhere. I teach 9th grade, so these emotions are also tied to hormones. Lord, help us all.  One of my requests is that when you are in my classroom, you are THERE. Not in la-la land, not in your math book because you forgot to do your homework, and not on twitter, or Facebook, or tumblr, or...you get the picture.  However, I'm also realizing how much emotions can play in determining whether a student is truly present in my classroom.

Simply put, if a student is angry, sad, or irritated, it is difficult for him or her to put on a happy face and be excited about being in a classroom.  Their mind and heart are in totally different places than their body.  Yet, we often expect our students to act like an adult and flip the switch (let's be honest, sometimes we do not do it well either!). One of my students reminded me that it is not that simple.  This student was upset about something that to me was kind of silly.  However, she was genuinely upset, and it was clear she had become disengaged with what we were doing. I took her outside and we talked for a bit, and she said "you can't expect me to be happy just because you tell me to". Ahh, touche. I realized she was right.  She needed time to decompress, to calm herself down, and come back when she was ready.  So I gave it to her.

How often do we fail to give our kids time to just be?  How often do we give our kids the time they need to handle their emotions, whatever they might be? I know some people, including some teachers, will say that students need to just deal with it.  Yet, if we do not allow our students that time, then they won't be emotionally ready to learn in our class.  We will lose a precious day, and maybe even more if we fail to recognize their emotional needs.

I wish we had a better way (how about A WAY) to give our kids the time to deal with emotions when they begin to hinder their ability to learn.  However, I think being cognizant of it is a good start, and I'm going to strive to provide more opportunities for students to handle their emotions. No strings attached.

Who Sings?

"The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom." 

 Today, I had the opportunity to view the classroom in a completely different way. I was the observer in my classroom, as my student teacher took her first stab at teaching a lesson from start to finish.  We are currently working on a poetry unit, and she chose to teach two poems by Walt Whitman.  I'm not a huge Whitman fan (I know, shame on me!) but anyone who has the guts to try to teach it to 9th graders deserves some props. 

As I listened to some of my students' responses in regards to America, identity, and who sings, I could not help but laugh, cringe, sigh, and smile. All at the same time.  I thought about Angelou's poem "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and how so many of my students are caged.

They are caged by:

their anger...at the world, their life, and everything that doesn't make sense

their ignorance...the civil war happened in the 1900's? There was a WW III? Only presidents can be assassinated?

their fear..."they want to send me back!" death, different races, big words, the end of the world.

their stereotypes...and the stereotypes others have of them

their innocence

their hardships and burdens

their apathy

their hatred for school and a system they think is working against them

their struggle to figure out who they are as 14 and 15 year olds

Just making that list makes my head hurt, because it makes me realize what we're up against.  Educators have a difficult job, perhaps more difficult than ever before.  Yet, there are those of us who are willing to listen to our students' stories, their songs, their anger, their ridiculousness (which will be followed by a consequence, because choices DO have consequences), their hopes, their fears, and uncertainty about life and their place in it.

I don't always have the answer, hell, maybe I never do; but I keep showing up every day. I don't give up, even when I want to. Even when I question if what I'm doing is worth it. Even when sometimes I feel like I care more than some of them do. I do it because I know deep down they want to be free and maybe, just maybe, the Lord will give me the tools they need to break free.

 

 

 

Triumph

I'm tired. I also know there are hundreds of teachers who are equally as tired. I'm ready for break and a chance to catch my breath. This is finals week so it's a chance to regroup, discover what my students learned (or didn't), and try to think about how I can be a better teacher come Monday.

On Monday my 1st hour began working on their full sized body biography (thank you Donorschoose.org for making that a reality!) assignment. I learned about this project my senior year in college and have done variations of it almost every year.  This is the first time I have done the assignment with the novel Sold. I wish that I would have videotaped them working on these, because they are simply amazing.  I love walking around in the hall listening to them discuss which adjectives, symbols, colors, quotes, and major events should be displayed on the portrait.

They are thinking, analyzing and working together to bring the character to life.  I cannot wait to see the finished product because not only do I have some pretty amazing kids 1st hour, I also have some amazing artists (wait until I post a picture of Lakshmi!). 

If you're a teacher and interested in using this assignment let me know and I'll email the directions.  This could easily be applied to social studies and other classes that study people/characters.

I also gave my final exam today.  I stole the assignment from my friend Kelli who used it with her students earlier in the year.  One of the main themes that I tried to tie in all my units this year was the idea that even though life was difficult, it was still worth living. Our motto this year is to champion our futures. My favorite line from Sold is "simply to endure is to triumph". Sometimes I wonder whether my kids are really getting it or if I just hope they do.  Today, I can smile because I know they do!

Their task what to write an advice letter to "Despondent Adolescent" who is struggling with the loss of her father to cancer, failing grades, and a mother she never sees. She wants to give up and doesn't know what to live for anymore.  My students had to respond to her letter explaining why she should keep going...by using examples from the "Odyssey", The House on Mango Street, and Sold. They also had to incorporate 15 of the vocabulary words. They nailed it. They were awesome.  Even the ones who have a lot of work to do in terms of writing, understood the enduring understanding of the literature.  They owned it.  They might not remember all of the characters' names, but they can relate the stories to a real life situation and can analyze the events of the works in a meaningful way.  They owned Bloom's Taxonomy today, and I want to make copies of each of these letters and send them to all the so-called legislators who "think" they know something about education and what it means to measure learning.

I'm pretty sure they would be schooled.

Saints and Sinners

There are those out there who believe they are either saints or sinners and then there are those who realize we're all sinners trying to be saints.

My third hour is by far one of my biggest struggles in my 9 years of teaching. If I have a sub, I can count on having a letter devoted entirely to my third hour class. Last week they made my student observer cry (thankfully, it wasn't until after school), and they thrive off of pissing each other off.

The first 20 minutes before lunch was a disaster. A few kids came back after being suspended and they instantly reverted back to the same behavior that got them suspended in the first place. I was none too thrilled given that I had a tension headache that had been building since Sunday and had already turned off all the lights because of the pain. When the bell rang for lunch I curled up in my teacher chair and contemplated how I would make it through the rest of the day.

The bell rang and the kids returned and literally in that moment my tension headache turned into a migraine. My vision was spotty, my stomach was lurching, and tears poured from my eyes from the pain. My kids took one look at me, looked at each other and said "sit down and shut up (OK, we're working on that), something is wrong with Miss G".

They read the pages they were supposed to read in Sold, asked me if I needed anything, and said not to worry because they would be good. And they were. They were kind and compassionate and did the right thing, even if it would have been easier for them to take advantage of the situation.

They were saints today, and for that, I am extremely thankful.

The Measure of a Test

This past week we conducted test talks.  We adopted test talks when we became an 8-Step Process school.  The idea is that stakeholders come to the high school and spend about 5-10 minutes with each student to talk about their ISTEP scores or previous ECA scores.  The goal is to help students understand what they need to work on, what they are strong in, and to give the students a pep talk. I have to admit that when I first heard about test talks, I was a bit skeptical.  Yet, seeing it in action is pretty special.  Many of my students were eager to share their results with me, and it was clear that this was the first time that many had even looked at their scores before. 

It was interesting for me because while I do not think standardized tests deserve as much worth as they are given, they do provide a meaningful snapshot of a student's strengths and weaknesses.  Some of my students had scored Pass+ in English, yet they were failing my class because they don't find school entertaining or necessary.  Then there were the students who were sitting at 490-503 ( A LOT) who work their butts off in my class, but missed the passing score of 508.  Those are the kids I have to pay close attention to.  I want them to be able to pass the test because they deserve to pass it.  They are not failures, and I hate that high stakes testing has tried to label them as such.  One of my students missed passing by 3 points. He also has a learning disability...in writing. He is an avid reader and has an A in my class. I'm pretty certain that anyone who sat down with this kid would be amazed at how smart he is. He's the kind of student who is deserving of the waver that Dr. Bennett is so eager to dismantle.  I wonder how he would feel if he had to sit face to face with these students and have that conversation. Actually, I might pay to see that conversation.

In other testing news, grades were released this week. You know, the grades that are assigned to schools. We are a D. If the state would have used data from the 2012 school year-like they were supposed to-we would have been a C.  We also made incredible gains in math and English, yet none of that matters unless we get to 70% passing. It's shameful what high stakes testing, accountability, and asinine measures have done to education.  It's also painfully clear how punitive the grading policy is for high poverty schools.

So much for equity.