Learning in the Delta: A New Teacher's Adventures

My MTC Experience...

2008-04-16T23:40:00.001-07:00

Two years ago I was 22 and not yet a college graduate. When I arrived in Mississippi I had 3 suitcases and no idea what to expect. I knew I was assigned to teach somewhere called Greenwood. In my head, I pictured a quaint little town like the one I grew up in, in Alaska, with one or two local coffeehouses and maybe even a used bookstore. In a word, I was clueless.

The first summer was fantastic. I fell in love with Mississippi and Ole Miss, spending my days eating catfish and hush puppies at Taylor Grocery or perusing the beautiful selection at Square Books. Summer school was exhausting, but it was the type of exhaustion that you’re happy to put up with – you’re putting so much energy into something that you know is totally worth it. By August, I was excited and ready to begin. By September, I was ready to quit.

They constantly prepare you during the first summer for how difficult the first year could be – but it really doesn’t sink in until the first few weeks. I pulled at least one all-nighter every week for the first quarter. I was so tired and depressed that I made myself physically ill, which I loved because it meant that I had an excuse not to go to school. When I did have to go to school, I woke up at 6:15 in order to leave the house by 6:20. The school I taught in my first year was actually a thirty-minute drive from my house, and I spent the whole trip thinking of the other people on the road who were going somewhere that wasn’t school, and wishing I could be them. As miserable as I was each morning on that drive to work, I was also grateful for being able to experience it. For those of you who have never driven through the Mississippi Delta, its like no place that I know of on Earth; and on those early mornings, when the sun rose over the catfish ponds, it was the most beautiful and memorable image of the South that I have been lucky enough to capture.

As my first year rolled on, the experience got better. Each day was a challenge, but a little less so than the one before it. Looking back, my first year in MTC was the most difficult year of my life. There are a huge number of factors for that difficulty, but I think the largest factor, and the one that hurts a little bit to admit, was me: I wasn’t grown up.

Of course I was an adult when I joined MTC, and my maturity level was light years ahead of those of my students (and even some faculty members), but I was still this little college girl who didn’t know how to live on her own and take care of herself. I wanted to blame everyone and everything outside of me: the school, my students, the system, my roommate – everyone except me. Granted, this is a very difficult program and, as an outsider, the community can be extremely scary; but a person shouldn’t stay an outsider forever. My largest regret about these past two years is that I never integrated myself into my surroundings the way I have seen others in my class do. A new place can be stressful and difficult, but if, after two years, Mississippi is still a new place – there’s no one to blame but myself. I am an outsider here, not because others have left me out, but because I have kept myself out.

After that first year, I moved to Jackson and made an effort to allow myself to be open to the possibility of enjoying teaching in Mississippi, just like that first summer after college. I still have my moments of getting so worked up and stressed out that I close myself off to the community around me, but – overall – I think I have made a real change. I am no longer wishing I was someone else; I don’t pull all-nighters; I’ve made, for me, a large effort to become more involved in my school, my students, and my staff; and, I’ve even started waking up earlier than five minutes before I have to be out the door.

The assignment was to write about our MTC experience, and I feel like I didn’t write about anything. I have a million stories, good and bad; there are people I’ve met that I will never forget; I have learned things that will remain with me forever. There is too much to say about this place and this program, but there is no right way to say it. For the rest of my life I am willing to bet that some of my worst memories will be of teaching in Mississippi. Of course, these are my favorite memories as well.

Spring Break in the South

2008-04-09T22:01:00.001-07:00

My birthday happened to fall during this year’s Spring Break. Robert and I planned two trips – Monmouth Plantation in Natchez, and The Peabody Hotel in Memphis. We visited Monmouth first, and old plantation made famous by General Quitman. It was a beautiful mansion house, filled with history and old-timey relics. The grounds were lovely – gardens, ponds, statues, a croquet course, and a variety of walking trails.

The one complaint I had about Monmouth, which maybe I should re-label as a discomfort instead of a complaint, was the particular history that was so awkwardly being displayed. On the particular day that we chose to visit and eat at Monmouth, every other guest we ran into was white. During our five-course dinner – which was incredible – in the mansion, the bartender and two other servers were all black, and the same was true of each server and busboy at breakfast the next morning. Most likely, the servers’ race had more to do with the demographics of the area than anything else, and it may have just been a coincidence that every person we saw visiting the plantation was white. Although we both managed to forget about this awkwardness for the better part of the trip, it was still a very bizarre dynamic to experience.

After Natchez, we drove North to Memphis. Even though we both live in Jackson, driving into Memphis we agreed that driving into a real city was such a nice and missed experience. Jackson is certainly a city, but it doesn’t have loopty-loops on the interstate and the downtown isn’t bursting lights and excitement, AND, in Jackson there isn’t a movie being filmed when we walk into the lobby! That’s right, Soul Man, starring Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson just happened to be filming in The Peabody the night we arrived. We think we caught a glimpse of Bernie Mac on set, but – alas – Sammy J was nowhere to be seen.

For those people who have never been to The Peabody, GO. You don’t need to get a room there, but you do need to see it. It’s overwhelming. Referred to as “The South’s Grand Hotel,” and “Where the real Delta Begins”. It is a beautiful sight. Plus, there are ducks. Yup… Ducks. They march to the lobby fountain every day at 10:00 and they march back to their rooftop palace, via elevator, every evening at 5:00. Awesome, right?

Needless to say, I had a great Spring Break. It’s amazing how much my love for this place can swell when I have a week off from teaching.

Growing Up

2008-04-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

The day of the third term district exam, every math teacher was asked to administer the test to an Algebra I class that they didn’t normally teach – not a big deal, unless you happen to be assigned to the class where 3 major fights had broke out in the last month – which, thank my lucky stars, was assigned to yours truly. Luckily, I gave myself a large pep-talk on the way to work, “you WILL NOT raise your voice; you WILL address every student in the room as Sir or Ma’am; you WILL NOT hesitate to make use of the hall monitor and write-ups.” It worked. As stressful as the situation of dealing with this unknown class almost got, they all seemed to appreciate my politeness, and after the test, I allowed the i-pods to come out and the “respectful” dance party to begin.

It’s amazing that I often forget how far a calm voice and a respectful address will take me in terms of classroom management. There are so many days that I become fed up with students to such a great degree that I begin raising my voice, slamming my door, and calling them anything that comes to mind, “you disrespectful, ignorant, mean, blah, blah, blah…” After having such a nice time working with the seemingly dreadful Algebra I students during third term exams, I have made a much larger effort to give myself that same pep-talk every morning on the way to school, and to continue it in my head as often as I can during the school day. Not only does my new demeanor seem to affect my students, but it is helping me to realize that so many of the actions that were getting me riled up in the past are minor incidents, most of which turn out to be silly high-school experiences. When a student imitates me to the class, instead of getting angry or imitting him, I calmly say to myself , “You can either choose to smile and move on, or calmly call security and have the student removed.”

It’s a little sad that, as a teacher, it has taken me this long to grow up and not let the student’s bother me. However, walking around the school, I see 5 teachers every day who are acting childish and immature. I don’t want to reprimand these teachers, though. Most of them, including me, are doing a good job. Sometimes students are just assholes, and when you work with them every day you’re bound to let it get to you. We just have to keep breathing.

Normal

2008-04-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

In Jackson, the district creates and administers the final exam at the end of each term for all State-Tested classes. I teach two Algebra I classes – which I love – and, unfortunately, have to deal with the pressure of preparing my students for not only a state test, but a district test as well. Never knowing what the test looks like until the day I am administering it to my students is stressful, especially when one takes into consideration the amount we are required to teach each term (the JPS pacing guide is a joke), and that each teacher must constantly be reinforcing everything covered in previous terms, since what was tested in the first term, may reappear in the test for the fourth term.

My first two district tests – first term and semester – were “interesting.” It is always a bad sign when the term “normalized” is brought up in terms of grading. Normalized is the districts way of saying, “since everyone scored so poorly on our test, we are going to add 38 points to each student’s original score.” Teachers are not allowed to turn in any grades until the district has “normalized” each student. As report card time rolls around and the question floating around the faculty meeting is, “do you know if the scores have been normmed, yet?” it’s difficult not to crack a smile and giggle at the ridiculous of the question. It’s as if to say, “tests are not an adequate instrument of measuring learning, unless you erase all the incorrect answers and replace them with the correct ones.” Umm… wouldn’t I get fired for doing that in my own classroom? Hmm?

Lucky for me, though, the scores are normalized. Otherwise, the sight of all those 20s and 30s might be enough to make me quit. After normalizing, I at least have some students who passed the first term and semester exam.

PARENTS

2007-12-22T16:47:00.001-08:00

Working at a high school in Jackson for my second year in the program is one of the bet decisions I have made for myself while in the program. Last year I was placed in the Delta teaching 7th and 8th graders. I will always be grateful for that experience, but there is absolutely nothing that I miss about it. This year I am teaching high school math, mostly pre-algebra to ninth graders, but it is so much easier and so much more enjoyable than any experience I had last year. The administration is better, the student’s – although, still difficult – are vastly better behaved and more willing to learn, and the community is just more welcoming and easier to become integrated into. The one aspect of the job that continues to surprise and frustrate me, though, is the family.

This past semester I created a project for the final exam. The students had a month to write, type-up, and hand in an encyclopedia of mathematical terms. Of course the majority of my kids turned in nothing. When this happened, I began making some phone calls. One the parents I contacted is a reverend at one of the larger Baptist churches in the community. He is a very nice man and has always seemed very supportive of teachers and educational institutions. When he found out that his son had a project due that had not yet been turned in, he dropped what he was doing an immediately drove to school, pulled his son out of class, took the boy home, placed him in front of the computer, and the encyclopedia was in my hand by the end of the day. That same evening I got e-mail from the father apologizing for his son and asking me to take off points for not having the exam turned in on time so that his son would learn the consequences of not being responsible.

It is such a rare experience in th past two years to have parents be concerned with their son/daughter’s education to the point that they will come to school to take care of it. It is even more rare, though, to have the blame be put on the child instead of the teacher. Too often I have had to listen to parents complain about my high expectations. It’s still unbelievable to me that parents believe that their high school students should not be expected to take responsibility for their actions.

This past semester I had a mother come to the school during my tutorial hour after school because her daughter was assigned detention. The detention was given because the young lady was leading the line and was asked to stop and wait at a certain point in the hallway on the way to lunch. The young lady kept talking and walking, while the students who were listening stopped and waited. The mother was pissed at me for treating her daughter like she was in Kindergarten. When I told her mother that a kindergartener would know how to listen to directions, she was really pissed. She actually said to me, “ If it wasn’t for people like me having kids, you wouldn’t have a job.”

How do you respond to that?

Favorite Student Story

2007-12-22T16:46:00.000-08:00

It’s so hard to admit that I have favorite students – it just doesn’t seem fair. But, there are those students that I enjoy seeing more than others. This year I have a lot more favorites, and the ones that are actually rare are those that I don’t want to see (of course, they still exist).

There is a young man in one of my Pre-Algebra classes named D’Undra. When I first met him he was very quiet and soft spoken. Looking at him you can tell that he is not very up-to-date on the latest fashions or trends. He certainly tries to dress hip, but he never really succeeds. Looking at him, though, my heart just melts. He has one of those physical personas that makes you love him, but just feel sorry for him. I always want so badly to compliment everything he does as an effort to make him feel better and to make him feel more accepted – however, I usually catch myself – as the teacher, my compliments mean something different than a peer’s. Everything about D’Undra just adds to the adorable, but pitiful presence that his physical style exudes. He has terrible handwriting, is extremely klutzy, and misplaces everything. I love him so much, but at the beginning all I did was worry.

When I first met him I thought for sure that he would struggle throughout the math class, and would be lucky to pass with a 70. His grandmother called me early on in the school year to ask about calculators and tutoring. When we spoke on the phone she told me that D’Undra struggled with every subject but that she was spending the money to place him in an after school tutoring center, hoping that it would help bring up his grades. After 5 weeks of school it was time for all teachers to send out progress reports. Needless to say, I was shocked when D’Undra had the best grade in my class – and I don’t mean just his block, but out of all the pre-algebra students, his score was the highest. I almost started crying when I realized what a great job he was doing.

The day before progress reports were being handed out I couldn’t wait to deliver the news, so I called D’Undra’s grandmother and told her about D’Undra’s success. She was overwhelmed and was literally laughing so loud that it sounded like yelling. I asked her not to tell D’Undra because I wanted to see his expression at school when he found out. His smile was perfect! I have never felt better about being a teacher. Every bad day teaching was worth it after getting to see D’Undra’s face. He told me that day, “ I have never been able to learn math, but you teach it so easy.”

2007-11-06T17:03:00.000-08:00

The topics for this month’s blogs were all centering on information involving coursework and expectations that applicants to the MTC should have involving the coursework. This particular blog is intended to touch upon two topics: My best class in the program, and what this program – in my own opinion – can do to make itself better.

I have had many memorable and useful experiences during the classes at Ole Miss. Methods is a great way to get some new and creative teaching strategies; Listening to influential politicians and leaders has helped to inspire and excite my passion for education; and building my own school district gave me a deeper respect for those involved in promotion and support of public educational systems. My favorite class, though, was the law class I took over the summer of my second year. I believe that there are a few different reasons for this: time, instruction, and content. Time was a factor because it was a month long class, which only lasted 90 minutes, and which took place over the summer. I didn’t have to deal with my job or struggle to stay awake. Another factor for making this my favorite class, perhaps the largest one, was the instruction style. The professor treated everyone in the class as a college student, giving us work that we found interesting, never-EVER asking us to do some project involving scissors and colored pencils. All of the work in the law class was thought provoking, challenging, age-appropriate, college level work. The final factor that I believe made a difference in my enjoyment of the class was the content: we read the Constitution of the United States and I learned about its application and how the laws apply to me and my situation – what is cooler than that?

To continue, though, discussing the importance of instruction and content in one’s college class environment, I would like to switch gears a little bit and focus on what MTC can do to change itself for the better.

When I was applying to colleges and Universities in high school, I expressed interest in becoming a teacher and looking for a program that offered a degree in education. Most of the teachers and counselors who were aware of this interest tried to persuade me to pursue another field of study, explaining to me that a degree in teaching was not very useful. I was confused by this statement, assuming that if teaching was the career that I ultimately wanted, than nothing would be more useful to me than a degree in that particular area. Now, only half a year away from attaining my Masters in Curriculum and Instruction, I am beginning to understand what those people meant by this whole pursuit being useless. The schools of education, in my opinion are filled with the most non-intellectual, watered-down, nonsense! Most of the coursework that I find myself doing is insulting. I am a 23 year old person with a degree in philosophy and mathematics, and I have been asked to fill out worksheets, draw colored paper out of cups to figure out what group I’m in, write 10-day lesson plans that correctly mark all of the STAI points (do they really think that helps?). The things that I have been tested on, quizzed on, graded on – I could care less about most of these things. I enjoy the conversations, the debates, and some of the genuine readings about making our public education system a better place. However, if you continue to breed teachers using the instruction of the school of education, nothing will change. A smart 14 year old could pass most of these courses.

I believe that MTC is wise in only accepting people who have a degree in something other than education. A degree in something else means that you might have actually had an education that benefits you in other areas of your life. However, recognizing the benefit of a different degree, why are they then forcing this crappy coursework on us? If you know its not worthwhile, change it.

2007-11-06T17:02:00.000-08:00

Jim Collins is not an intellectual. Good To Great reads like a textbook: Venn diagrams, flow charts, elementary school analogies to buses and forest creatures. There were no profound sentences or core-shaking ideas. The only time I became passionate while reading his book was when I complained to a friend about the absurdity of the Stockdale Paradox (NOT A PARADOX!). It may not be necessary for Jim Collins to write well in order to make his point, but his book is so full of images and quotes and analogies and data; one begins to lose interest in the point.

Collins has discovered a way for good organizations to become great. Excellent. However, after the list he gave of good organizations, why should I be inspired to become great? Coca-Cola is only a good company. Personally, Coca Cola seems to e doing just fine. If you asked me to choose between my organization being a Coca-Cola or a Walgreen’s, I could be persuaded either way. The fact that one of those companies is only good, while the other is great according to Mr. Collins does not mean much to me.

While on the topic of organizations, how well does Good To Great translate to schools? Throughout the book, there are statements that Collins makes which seem to be applicable to all organizations: the five levels of leaders were applicable not only to CEOs, but to dead presidents as well. However, there were other statements he made which made me stop and question how he pictured anyone other than a businessman putting his word’s into action. For example, the first of the three circles, or, What you can be the best in the world at (Ugh): “The good to great companies understood that doing what you are good at will only make you good; focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness.”

Am I supposed to believe that JPS is better at something than any other district in the US and should therefore give up endeavors for anything else? Or, is it that Public Schooling as a whole is better than any other organization at education, and should therefore focus on that? Hopefully it is neither because both are useless and silly statements. The mere fact that this notion of focusing on what you can do best is part of process called The Hedgehog Concept, though, doesn’t discourage me from thinking that so many of this man’s statements are silly.

I hate to write this man and his research off as silly. I am sure that data in this book is beneficial and that certain CEOs have plaques hanging up of THE COUNCIL mechanism so as to remind everyone that questioning needs to happen in a clockwise motion. Unfortunately, I cannot take seriously a person who decides it is a wise move to convince people of the superiority of hedgehogs by writing, “What could be more simple than ? What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego, and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and ‘invisible hand’?”

2007-11-06T17:01:00.000-08:00

FRANKIE SAY RELAX

2007-10-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, when you need to relax, here are a few suggestions that you or may not have thought of:

• Watch BAD teacher movies and yell at the screen when they make teaching look easy. My personal picks: Dangerous Minds, To Sir With Love (actually good), Take The Lead, Lean on Me (also Good).
• Pick out a fancy recipe and go for it! Even if it turns out horrible – it is fun.
• Take a float trip down the Mississippi (there are places in the Delta to rent kayaks and canoes).
• Day Trip out-of-state! New Orleans/Memphis?
• Sign up for NETFLIX. It is AWESOME!!
• Go to Wal-Mart (blech!) or another store, and buy yourself a present.
• Take photographs – especially of the Delta (Its BEAUTIFUL…really).
• Go to a museum.
• Plan your Spring Break early.
• Carve a pumpkin.
• Go to the STATE FAIR (this week!).
• Buy a bottle of wine and be SUPER snobby about it.
• Read a book NOT related to school in any way.

Wow, my list looks like a poor version of one of those awful Dos/Don’ts lists you might find in a Cosmo magazine. YIKES! Truthfully, last year I would invest in large portions of food and episodes of Grey’s Anatomy/Big Love almost every day. It was horrible! My advice when you need to relax after school: be active. I know that sounds weird, but teaching is so draining, that unless you re-fuel and energize yourself, you will feel yucky and tired from 3:30p.m. until bedtime. It is helpful if you can find an activity that you enjoy which requires you to be more active than sitting up.

A New School

2007-10-03T21:04:00.001-07:00

I changed schools my second year. Last year I was placed in Leflore County, teaching three preps: 7th grade math, 8th grade math, and 7th grade science. I was in a school of less than 200 students, and I was the one and only math teacher. I had a mentor who taught a math class – but, for her, that meant giving them a book and writing the page numbers on the board. I was moved from a computer lab to a regular classroom to the special education director’s class. I also lived 45 minutes away from the school building itself. It was difficult to say the least.

I am extremely grateful to have been placed in the Delta and to have had the opportunity to live and teach there, but I am very happy to be out of it now. Of course I still miss it. There is no place on earth like the Mississippi Delta. The thing I miss the most is driving to school in the morning: there is nothing but fields and catfish farms for 30 minutes. In the winter the heat from the earth would mix with the cold air and cause this gorgeous fantastical mist everywhere. It was so beautiful. If I left early enough I got to see the sunrise, and the morning sun in the Delta is so big it’s scary.

As far as the two school experiences I have had thus far, hands down, I am in the better school. Everything, from the administration, to the buildings, to the faculty, to the resources, to the students themselves, to me – its all better. I credit some of the change to me, having more confidence and consistency after a year of teaching, but mostly, I just credit where I am – the community of Jackson is larger and people living there are more in touch with popular culture, wealth, etc. Because of the location of the school, my students have the opportunity to see and interact with wealth, liberal arts colleges, and diverse cultures (even if only a little bit). Also, the wealth that my students can interact with I also directly in the school building: I love leaving my classroom for the day, seeing the entire marching band on the field playing, the cheerleaders practicing, the girls soccer team running laps, and the football team on their field in uniforms. There is so much for the students to do, to care about, and they choose to stay at school and participate, sometimes until 7 or 8 at night. At my school in the Delta, not only students, but teachers, were asked to leave the school by 4.

The sense of community has been strong in both schools I have taught at in Mississippi. However, the community in the Delta is close in a (perhaps) dangerous way, caring not for education, but for relationships and reputations. Much of Jackson has the same emphasis on these two cares as well, but there is enough wealth and diversity to offer other cares, and other communities – those that will teach you something, and make you someone better. This year, I get to be a part of one of those communities.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

2007-09-03T19:23:00.000-07:00

Last year I went to one football game for my school. I showed up, watched about five minutes of the game, waved to some of my kids, and left. This year, I decided to make more of an effort in supporting my students’ extra-curricular activities. The first football game of the year was last Friday: Murrah vs. Calloway. My students were asking for two weeks, “Ms. D? Are you coming to the game?” How could I disappoint? I made it to the game during the last 10 minutes of the first half ( I am going to take this moment to make a quick point about how ridiculous it is that teachers have to pay to attend a game – RIDICULOUS!!!). Anyways, I showed up during the end of the first half and attempted to watch the game, but I couldn’t. The high school that I attended was too small to have any organized sports teams, and so all of my previous knowledge about high school football games is from Archie comics and movies like Varsity Blues, Remember the Titans, and Friday Night Lights. I actually thought that the game was about the game. I believed that students, parents, and teachers went to watch the game, cheer on the quarterback, yell at the ref, and give standing ovations whenever anyone scored a touchdown. Turns out that the majority of people going to the game care little, if anything at all about watching it. There were a few older couples and some people who looked as though they may have some ancient affiliation with the school (previous students?) actually enjoying the game. For the most part though, people were talking, yelling across the stands, texting their friends, walking around and waving to anyone they recognized – never an eye on the field.

Shortly after I arrived and found a seat, half-time rolled around. This was the most entertaining moment of my night. Calloway began the show with its band, flag dancers, and cheerleaders. They played the theme from Dreamgirls, marched around in unison, and the dancing girls bore a striking resemblance to the ladies I imagine I might find in a strip club. I am not trying to deny the obvious talent that these girls have – but, if you put poles on the field, I don’t think that their routine would have to change a great deal. After Calloway, Murrah took the field. Again – the theme from Dreamgirls, marching around in spirals, and little girls in short shorts, leather boots, on their knees, butt in the air, humping the field. Sadly, all I could really do was laugh.

Again, I would like to emphasize that my only knowledge of these Friday night events and half time shows are from Betty and Veronica. This being said, I have a question for all of you who might have a larger realm of actual experience: Were girls’ high school dance teams always this sexual? Is it the inevitable fate of a cheerleader to shake her ass and pop her hip? If someone could offer me a little more insight on this subject I would greatly appreciate it.

Needless to say, I left the game shortly after halftime. Murrah won. I plan on staying longer next time, but maybe skipping the halftime show.

COMPARING THE FIRST WEEKS

2007-09-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

I started off my second year teaching in Mississippi at a new school. Thank God. Last year I was teaching 3 preps, head, and only member of the math department, and the only person NOT from the delta in the faculty. It was difficult. This year I have two preps, a department filled with many teachers from different backgrounds, and am in a school with 4 other MTC alum, and teachers from different states AND countries. Incredibly more welcoming.

Even if you take away the community, the diversity, the fewer preps, and the one year of experience – there is still something to be said for having a better home-life. Last year I lived with a roommate in a three-bedroom house, and regardless of all the space, chose to keep everything I owned in a single room – bed, desk, bookshelf, clothes, everything. I left school at 3:30 every day, swung by Taco Bell to pick up my only meal for the day, ate in the car as I steered with my knees, went to movie gallery to get three new movies for the evening, immediately crawled under the covers when I got home, watched two movies, began work, watched another movie, then fell asleep at 1:00 am – that was my home-life.

This year I have made a conscious effort not to confine myself to one room when I get home from school. I try to cook every evening, and try even harder to steer clear of the television. The previous year of experience has helped me to learn what type of work to bring home, and what I can put off until the next day at school. Work is not something I dread anymore (well, yes it is, but still…) its something I can plan for, and make time for, and actually complete before midnight.

The first week of school was different this year, but what was even more surprising were the first weeks before school. JPS requires that all new teachers participate in a weeklong professional development. It was agonizing and horrible, with a few brief moments of pain – but, it was still one week that JPS dedicated to its new teachers. After that, there was a one week in-school professional development required of all teachers. I had an entire week to be in my classroom, in the school, get a projector from the library, learn the copier codes, etc. I got to know the school before I was expected to teach in it. It was so much more helpful than the one morning of meet and greet followed by the single afternoon of decorating my classroom that I had last year.
When the kids came I actually felt prepared to send them to the office, write a referral, give a detention, make copies of an assignment, etc.

The best part of my new school year? There’s a coffee machine in the library.

2007-07-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

DOCUMENT IDEAS

• Liscence: Keep Copies

• Contract: Keep Copies

• Attendance

• Tardies

• Behavioral Patterns: Sleepy, Sad, Upset, Depressed (The students’ – not yours). If you notice something weird about a student, make a note of it. That way, if it continues, you can call home and let them know when it started. I had a student who began to fall asleep every day in class. When I finally called home, I found out that he was on a basketball team that traveled to Jackson for games at nights, and that he was not getting any sleep on the bus-rides home. His mother took care of it.

• Write-ups/Office Referrals: : If you wait to call home for a recurring problem, you will want to be able to tell exactly how many instances a child was written up for.

• Detentions/Suspensions: If you wait to call home for a recurring problem, you will want to be able to tell exactly how many instances a child was written up for.

• Textbook Designation: I just passed out a math book to each student and told them to write their name in it. Come the end of the year, over 100 books were missing, and I had no one to blame for it. Keep track of this!

• Homework Assignment/Homework Due Date: I constantly forgot to collect homework, so have a good system for turning in, grading, etc.

• Work Turned in: on-time/late/never

• Students’ Personal Information: Full name, Birthday, Telephone number, Parents’/Guardians’ names, relationship to student, workplace, phone number, etc.

• School Paper-Work: Intervention forms, Discipline Reports, Grading Sheets, Attendance Sheets, etc. There is so much that a district has to keep track of, and if they lose anything, chances are that they will not apologize and will fault you for not having an extra – so, make copies.

• Gradeboook: I never knew when to expect it, but my principal asked for my updated gradebook at the weirdest times. Sometimes I had it, sometimes I didn’t. If you use GRADEKEEPER or some other online grading system, make printouts and have them available and as up-to-date as possible.

• Extra Credit: whether you announced it as extra credit or not, if a student earns it, keep a note of it.

• Personality: It’s fun to make silly awards for end-of the-quarter/end-of-the-year awards (example: The walk-it-out award, Best-Bling, Sleeping Beauty, etc.). If a student has a funny moment, or repetitive action that you want to highlight, make a note of it. Also, some students are very sensitive to certain aspects of their personality, so if there is something you notice that a student does not like to be commented on about, make a mental or written note of it.

• Sample Work: Have some for each student, for each benchmark. At the end of the year some students will not pass, and the district might need to meet and “discuss” whether these particular students should pass or not. They will ask some teachers for examples of student work. Other times, parents will ask a teacher for examples at conferences (or even durin

2007-07-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

Everyone will face some form of frustration with their administration, especially during their first year of teaching. Often, though, the administration is hardly the one to blame – but, they’re such an easy target. Of course, I’m not saying that they’re excused; from everything I’ve heard and experienced this year, school districts are professional “screw-ups.” Are there little tricks to help a person avoid or deal with the stress caused by his/her district and/or administration? I’m inclined to say, “to each his own.” People have different ways of reacting and dealing with difficulties. The biggest piece of advice I would have to offer to anyone is BE POLITE. Regardless of the situation, I have never heard of a person benefiting from being rude. Be forward, be direct, be honest, be serious – but, keep it professional. Across the board, politeness and professionalism seem to be a given. Of course, these terms mean different things to different people (hence, all the frustration between a teacher and a district). My personal policy was the simple “smile-and-nod” technique. If a principal, fellow teacher, or administrator was pissing me off, or doing something to induce stress, I would immediately smile, be overly nice, and get outta there. The more condescendingly sweet to a person a can be (provided that the person is stressing me out), the better I feel. It may seem horrible to some, but like I said earlier, “to each his own.” Here are a few other tricks that I and others have used to deal with the frustrations brought on from our “superiors”:

• Have someone to vent to: If someone is willing to listen, talk to them. Many times family and friends have difficulty relating to how shitty things can get during your first year of teaching – but, our particular program just so happens to place you, every-other weekend, with a group of people in your exact same shoes, very willing (usually) to listen and - more often than not – laugh.

• Write a letter: Doesn’t matter who its to, or whether you even end up sending it, sometimes its just plain nice to write it all down. I guess some people call this a “diary” or “journal”, but it can be cool to address something to your principal, and let them know EXACTLY what you are thinking about their new “grading policy.”

• Post a flyer to your school building…or not

• Call the media… or not

• Get away: Don’t think about school, Don’t think about your district – just go! Take a day trip to the Delta (or out of the Delta). Go to Memphis. Go to New Orleans for the weekend. Just get your mind off of school.

• Edit something on pbwiki or googlemaps…or not

• BLOG

• Join an angry girl band

• Get involved in something productive outside of school (church, volunteering, library book drives, etc.)

• Take a cooking class

• Go to a restaurant

• Go for a run

• Go for a drive

• DEAL WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Instructional Planning #2

2007-06-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

To repeat what I wrote in my blog last week, I only taught basics to my summer school class, and as the weeks have progressed, I am sitting on the sidelines more and more, giving the reigns to my First-Years.

During the time that I was teaching, however, there were some lessons that seemed to work better than others. There are a few different ways of measuring the success of a lesson: 1) How well the students do on the assessment, 2) much their skills have improved during the course of the lesson, etc. I am focusing on just 1 and 2 for this blog. If I were to use the students’ post-assessment as the standard for the most successful class, then I would be talking only about the lesson on Order of Operations. My students mastered this one, no problem. However, I am willing to bet that if they were given a pre-assessment, prior to the lesson, they would have mastered that as well. They came in knowing this stuff. Looking at the second standard of success, Classifying Triangles and Quadrilaterals was the lesson where I saw the most change throughout the period of one class. Of course, I only had one student for this lesson (which may have allowed for more one-on-one time), but she still came in unable to say anything definite about the classification of these shapes, and left having classified everything given to her. I think some key reasons for the success of this lesson were class size, small objective (nothing too dense or lofty), tangibles/manipulatives (she had her own envelope full of shapes that she was asked to match up), and constant questioning. Were I to do this lesson again, I might focus more on the manipulatives: have her make her own, find the missing angles of the triangles, show how two trapezoids can make a parallelogram, etc.

The lesson that the students and I had the least success with was Properties. I attempted to condense associative, commutative, and distributive all in one lesson. What I really should have done, and would do in the normal school year, is spend a period on associative and commutative, and another whole period on just distributive. The reason for this is the type of algebra that is contained in the distributive property is not immediately comprehensible. Regardless of the student’s level, I think it takes a whole period to really grasp and become comfortable with the distributive property. I would also put more manipulatives into this lesson if I had the chance. I used posters with the original lesson, but I think an activity which gets the students to actually distribute something out would help to tighten this idea of distributing numbers.

FAILURE STORY

2007-06-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Failure: I’ve experienced a lot of it. From being inconsistent with rules and procedures, to losing final exams, to sleeping through my alarm clock on the first day of school – I’ve definitely self-titled myself “Miserable Failure” many times throughout my first year of teaching. What’s funny (sort of), is that I expected, and kind of enjoy being a failure – it seems to be the appropriate strife of a public school teacher. If I didn’t feel that I was a failure most days, I think I would be doing something wrong. There are so many policies, politics, and people working against teachers, that, many times, it is impossible not to fail. However, there is a big difference in the failure that I can control, and the failure that is out of my hands. Most days, I don’t bother to try and separate the two. Looking back, though, its much easier for me to distinguish what was my fault, and what was the fault of other circumstances. Being able to recognize this distinction makes teaching and setting goals much easier. After days of sulking over some silly rule that the district administration set in place, or some crazy pacing-guide which changes every hour, or surprise assemblies that interrupt my highly-prepped-for pop-quiz, I realized that being frustrated and complaining was hindering more than helping the situation. Not that I don’t condone the occasional vent-session – but there’s a time and a place for this. I learned that within school walls, or even after school at home, sometimes, was not the appropriate venue.

The failure that I would like to highlight from my past year as a teacher, and a failure that I still am trying to deal with to this very day, is my ability to organize and prioritize. This may seem to be an inconsequential, silly, common failure – but, it actually affected me and my students greatly, and often, quite negatively. By failure to organize, I am referring to me losing papers, forgetting to mark absences, losing tools (staple machine, hole punch), letting papers to be graded pile up in stacks on my floor, never creating a “make-up work” policy, etc. I generally tend to consider myself a fairly neat and systematized individual; however, by the end of every 9 weeks, my entire house was a mess. One day it got so bad that my room mate had to point out the vacuum to me, and then point out the hundreds of little paper dots on our dining room floor from when I had accidentally dropped and busted-open my hole punch a month before. It was horrible.

The mess of my house and classroom just added to the mess in my head. I was so tired and stressed after school, and when I went home I had nothing to greet me except paper dots, assignments to be graded, and lesson plans to be made. This is when I also lost (if ever I had) my ability to prioritize. Coming home to what seemed to look like another sort of classroom, I often just zoned out – I would eat, set a time to start work, lose track of time, and eventually get up to begin work around 10:30-ish. Of course, by this time I was exhausted, and any intention to do work that I began with would be short-lived. Of course, my work ethic changed from day-to-day, but generally I never completed as much as I would set out to do. I don’t believe that I set any expectations that were too high; I just prioritized poorly and did not allow for enough time to meet the reasonable expectations that I had set. As a result a fell further and further behind in work, slept less and less trying to finish work, and became grumpier and grumpier at school the more tired I grew.

If the results of lack of the ability to organize and prioritize do not already strike the reader as serious, consider this: a grumpy, tight edged, confused teacher with poor hygiene from sleeping until the last possible minute. HORRIBLE.

I am still struggling to overcome this failure to prioritize my work. I have already begun to prioritize my time, creating a schedule, making a bed-time (yes, a bed time) and planning to stay after school with work, as opposed to taking it home with me at night – a luxury that my new school in Jackson is providing me with. When I was an undergrad, I tended to pull all-nighters and feel overloaded with work; but, in college, it was always work that I enjoyed. Learning how to make my work something more enjoyable for me is going to be the hardest part of learning to organize and prioritize. This is not to say that everything is boring, but so much of what I do is adult busy-work. Perhaps if I learn to find more importance in this work, or to simply remember the great importance of the other work that I do, my ability to schedule and complete tasks will greatly improve, and along with this, my teaching experience and - most importantly – the education of my students will improve as well.

Instructional Performance

2007-06-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

My first lesson plans were aimed at reviewing math class basics. By basics, I am referring to rules and procedures, and very introductory skills: order of operations, reducing fractions, solving word problems, etc. I did not assume that it was the first time my students were seeing any of this information - in fact, I assume that they have gone through many of this many times. My goal while writing many of these lesson plans, therefore, was both to present the information to them in a familiar way, as well as to make it something new and memorable. My reason for wanting to make it familiar was in order to move quickly through it, and into the more difficult grade level benchmarks. However, I also wanted to make the information new and (hopefully) more memorable, because I feel that so much of middle school math – most math probably – is built on top of these concepts, and that to hold a firm grasp on these things helps tremendously in learning higher conceptual math skills.

It was difficult to condense both familiarity and newness into a single lesson. I did this by beginning with a familiar concept, using familiar vocabulary, and showing the more familiar steps, concepts, etc. As we worked through these terms and steps, I tried to incorporate an activity that the students would not have used before to serve as a form of inductive learning, as well as to create a memorable experience that the students might take with them, even if only for a little while. An example of this can be seen in my parallel and transverse lines lesson plan: I began by going through basic vocabulary with my students and asking them to point out a vertex, define a parallel line, show me what it means to intersect, etc. After working through and giving examples of each of the vocabulary terms, the students and I went out into the hallway, armed with masking tape, a marker, and some pieces of construction paper having angle degrees on them. I instructed the students to use the tape to make a pair of parallel lines and a transversal line. They worked together, without any help, and did a beautiful job. They labeled the lines they made with the marker. Next, I posted up the pieces of construction paper at the 8 different angles made by the transverse and the parallels. Six of the angles had a given angle measure, two did not. I asked them to use their understanding of the definitions of complementary and supplementary that we had discussed in class to find the missing angles. It was awesome. I was shocked at how quickly they reasoned it out. Class ended after they filled in their missing angles and posted them up on the wall, but this activity is a great ending for a lesson on parallels, and a great intro into discovering the relationships that different angles have to each other. Without even asking, I had a young girl in my class tell me that she noticed a lot of the angles were equal to each other in similar ways. I can’t wait for her to realize that this self-made discovery is an essential geometrical benchmark that she figured out all on her own.

Sex ED. Part Two

2007-06-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Part One of my Sex Ed blog was a story told at an assembly for my middle school students this past April. My mouth was wide open in utter awe, and by the end of the story I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “This is sexual education in Mississippi,” I thought to myself. “If I were in middle school and being fed this crap, I would think that all the talk about safe sex was bullshit, too.” If we are going to educate children and young adults about safe sex, it needs to be like any other education – truthful. How the hell is anyone going to believe that a young girl had sex, got fluid on her clothes, the fluid remained wet enough for at least 24 hours to transfer to someone’s hand, that it got from a person’s hand into his eye (singular), and then had the power to render both eyes(plural) permanently blind? WHAT?!! Saddened, but not surprised, I did a little bit of minor research into Sex Ed. In Mississippi. Here are a few things I found:

Mandate: Code §37-13-134 (2007) requires 45 minutes of instruction in health education for grades K-8.

State Assessment Requirement: None.

No Sex Ed. Was ever mentioned in the Mississippi Health Framework until Grade Eight, and even then, only in the following contexts:

Eighth grade students should gain an understanding of how health is influenced by the interaction of body systems. Students should become familiar with the interrelationship between mental, emotional, spiritual, social, and physical health during adolescence. Students should also become more competent in developing a fitness plan. Teachers should reinforce how family and peers influence personal health and how appropriate health care can prevent premature death and disability.

Invite a nurse to discuss sexually transmitted diseases, contraceptives, and simple ways(i.e., hand washing) to prevent communicable diseases.

Mandate: Mississippi does not require students to receive instruction in HIV, STD, or pregnancy prevention, although the grade 9-12 portion of the Comprehensive Health Framework (2006) addresses prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases if schools choose to offer sex education. Code §37-13-171 (1998) states, “abstinence education shall be the state standard for any sex-related education taught in the public schools” and ”any course containing sex education offered in the public schools shall include instruction in abstinence education. However, the local school board may authorize, by affirmative vote of a majority of the members, the teaching of sex education without instruction on abstinence. In such event, the curriculum offered in the schools relating to sex education must be approved by a majority of the school board members.”

While wandering around the internet, I found this website which I thought I might share as a potentially useful tool for any students, teens, or teachers interested in the topic of Sex Ed.

http://www.sexetc.org/state/?state_us_id=MS

SEX ED. Part One

2007-06-01T13:12:00.001-07:00

Jason is a real boy. I have actually met Jason. This story that I am about to tell you about Jason is a true story. I know that it is a true story, because Jason is a real person, I knew him, and I was there when this event actually happened to him.

Jason was a senior in a Mississippi high school. He was very popular, involved in all sorts of clubs, and dated one of the school’s cheerleaders. Jason loved his girlfriend very much, and as their relationship grew, both Jason and his girlfriend decided that they would practice safe sex by remaining abstinent. They dated, and hugged, and kissed, and held hands, - but, they made the wise decision NOT to have sex.

One weekend in the spring, the high school football team had an away game. Jason said goodbye to his girlfriend as she got on the bus that Friday and promised to be in the same spot to pick her up on Sunday. That weekend, while at the away game, Jason’s girlfriend decided to have unprotected sex with one of the football players. She broke the pact she made with Jason, and even worse, she didn’t use protection.

That Sunday, Jason was there to pick her up, just like he had promised. When he saw her get off the buss, he ran up to her and gave her a large hug – just like any normal and happy boyfriend would do. Now, if you remember, it was springtime, and – as we all know – springtime in Mississippi can get pretty warm some days. So, after running up and hugging her, Jason wiped some of the sweat off of his forehead. He drove his girlfriend home and gave her another hug, before heading home o his own house.

That night, Jason’s eye felt irritated. He asked his mother if she saw anything in it. She didn’t see what was irritating his eye, but was worried enough that she scheduled a doctor’s appointment for the next day. At the doctor’s office, tests were run and the doctor asked to speak to Jason alone. As his mother waited out in the reception area, the doctor asked Jason if he was sexually active. Jason told the doctor, “no,” and explained that both he and his girlfriend were abstinent. The doctor looked unconvinced and asked Jason again if he had engaged in any recent sexual activity. Again, this time with more vigor, Jason said, “no!” The doctor asked Jason to wait in the reception area so that he could speak to Jason’s mother privately.

Eventually, Jason confronted his girlfriend and she confessed that she had cheated on him during the away game, and that she had done so without using protection. It was later concluded that the cheerleading uniform the girlfriend was wearing on the Sunday she arrived home, was the same uniform that she was wearing during her sexual activity the day before. Body fluid was transferred to her uniform during sex, and when Jason went to hug her on Sunday, he got the fluid on his fingers – the same fingers that he then proceeded to wipe the sweat from his brow with. Needless to say, the body fluid got in Jason’s eye and caused the irritation. Jason is now permanently blind.

Teaching with Sega

2007-04-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

The idea is to change how education is viewed, and to reach as many kids as you can.

The above statement is a quote from High School teacher, Paul J. Ackerman, speaking about a new advance in introducing technology into the classroom environment. Not just any technology, though – video games. In her article, Rhea R. Borja explores the response that both students and teachers have to video games and computer applications becoming the modern method of learning. According to those in her article, the virtual lessons are well received by most in the high school community. Students seem to find the class work, which is made up of designing and programming your own video game on the computer, both challenging and entertaining. The teachers claim that the games serve as a “vehicle for honing students’ mathematical, problem-solving, and reading-comprehension skills.” Although Borja’s article opens with a student designing a game that involves shooting bullets at an enemy underwater, she addresses the logical concern for promoting violence by writing,

Educators are realizing that video games don’t have to be violent. Instead, a new breed of games, imbedded with core academics and analytical and problem-solving skills, teaches through a method some educators call “stealth learning.”

Although Borja never comes out and says explicitly what is meant by “stealth learning,” the meaning of the term is made all too clear by various quotes from Mr. Ackerman and others in his position: “These kids are learning algebra without knowing it,” and, “The kids have to do math;...they have to manipulate numbers.”

My concern, when I consider my own teaching and learning experience, is that an education is not something that should be obtained unknowingly. Mr. Ackerman and the “stealth learning,” seemed to be supporting a method of teaching that ‘tricks’ kids into learning by attracting their senses and forcing them to use math and science as a way to further their fun. This method is riding a very thin line between introducing children to the idea that math, science, and other subjects are worthwhile in-and-of-themselves and introducing children to the concept that all of these subjects are just skills that you have to master in order to succeed and create the best entertainment tools.

In my own classroom, I like to have sets or introductions that bring up a topic of interest to the students, and after bringing up this topic of interest, I try to show the students how math is directly and indirectly involved with it. This method of having a set or introduction to the beginning of the lesson may be somewhat “stealth”; but, never during my teaching am I trying to convey to the students math is a skill you have to develop in order to be a creative innovator and secure a safe-job in the future. I want to teach my children math. I want to teach them to see the beauty in math, and to love it for what it is. I don’t want to teach them the beauty in video-games and the necessity for math in order to complete an assignment.

With the introduction of video-games and more technology in the classroom, we need to stop and seriously consider what our educational goals are. Is our goal to produce better creators of software; do we want to advance in technology as far as we possibly can, at as young an age as we possibly can; do we hold out any hope for simple appreciation and awe of the subjects themselves; do we want all of these goals to be rolled into one? I am skeptical of the newer uses of technology in the classroom, but perhaps it is because I am unclear on what sort of minds we want to send from the classroom into the world.

Wish I'da known

2007-04-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

It’s almost the end of my first year teaching. Am I glad I came to Mississippi? Yes and No. I feel like I came here for good reasons, and I’ve learned a lot – not just about me, but – maybe more importantly – about other people as well. I had a lot of really difficult times this year and a lot of moments where I seriously contemplated just quitting and doing something new. I am glad that I stuck it out, and I am glad that I am staying next year – although, I am moving from the Delta to Jackson, which some may argue against. Do I wish I had done anything differently? The happy little trooper in me says “no, I am thankful for every hard lesson learned.” However, truth-be-told, the trooper can go to hell. Here’s what I would’ve liked to have known before I came here: Teaching, at least your first year teaching, is a lonely life. I acknowledge that I am not the most outgoing person, but I enjoy being around people. Being a work-a-holic, straight out of a college course environment, wanting to do my very best – all of my time was spent on planning for my students, unpacking, planning, grading, planning, and sleeping . . . did I mention planning?!! I pulled more all-nighters this year than my four years of college combined. It was ridiculous. I had no time to finish what I wanted to finish for my lesson planning, my weekends were dedicated to Oxford work, and anytime allowed for myself (which is NEVER during a weekday) was mainly dedicated to mindless T.V. or reading. I was lucky enough to have a significant other living in Mississippi to spend time with some weekends – but even so, I was exhausted and not the social animal I once was. In short, for the past 9 months – teaching, and nothing else, has been my life. And it usually wasn’t the fun, passionate, making a difference in the lives of others type of teaching; it was the I-will-tear-the-skin-off-of-my-face-and-eat-it-if-you-will-just-complete-one-task-without-interuption type of teaching (not to say that I am not making a difference, but it really requires me stepping outside of myself to see that difference).

Some people in the teacher corps would argue that anyone pulling an all-nighter, or dedicating their life to lesson planning is doing something wrong. Maybe they’re right. I’ve certainly calmed down on the planning since then, and I don’t think I’ve staid up all night since before Christmas break. My reasons for slowing my work-drive, though, are not the most reasonable. I’ve found that the time and effort I put into planning is wasted on school-assemblies, unorganized administration, inclusion teachers who are more of a classroom management problem than my students, and hundreds of other little annoyances and interruptions in what should be a routine and professional learning environment. I suppose that before applying to the Mississippi Teacher Corp it had occurred to me that things in the public schools here might be a little backwards and difficult. But now that I’m here… C’MON!!! Backwards isn’t even the right word: F*#KED UP is really the only term that comes to mind. Plus, I’m beginning to feel like it isn’t even the schools we’re placed in, but public schools that span the nation (not ALL, but some) seem to be in this crazy crisis, and I don’t even know where a district, a state, or even a nation begins to change this. I feel so helpless in my position, and had I known that I would feel this helpless, I am not sure I would have chosen it as my initial career path.

That being said, I love my students, I love the Delta, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part (even a helpless part) of something important.

Math Poems

2007-04-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

Math is good
Math is sweet
Math will knock you out of your seat
I love add, subtraction
Multiplication, and division.
So many math thing,
Its hard to make decision.
I love fraction, decimal, adding,
Subtraction, all the thing
Have good action.
- 7th Grader

Sittin in math
Talkin bout numbers
And all of a sudden
I start to wonder:
How could 2x2 always be 4?
How could 2x3 always be 6?
And even polygons are something
I don’t get.

How could a triangle
Always have three sides?
I guess that some things
Just like to hide.

This was supposed to
Be a poem, but I made it a song
About Multiplication and
3 sided polygons.
- 7th Grader

Math asks for a difference, it asks for a sum.
I love to talk about shapes, especially the polygon.
Integers could be bad, Integers could be good.
Math taught about stem-and-leaf plot
Something I easily understood.
Math class is good I must say.
I learned a lot and earned an “A”.
- 7th Grader

Math is lame.
Math is boring.
I will go to sleep and start snoring.
- 7th Grader

Math is great.
Math is fun.
If you mess with me,
I’ll hit you in the head with a Pentagon.
A polygon has Five sides –
Doesn’t that make you want to cry?
- 7th Grader

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

2007-04-01T19:12:00.000-07:00

Language is extremely fascinating. I really don’t know if the No Child Left Behind proposal is extremely vague or if I am just reading it that way. It was all very hopeful, but it read more as a list of goals without any method for achieving them. If I had to sum up No Child Left Behind in one sentence, it might be, Schools, and everyone in them will be expected to improve on their own, by their own standards, and then evaluated by a multiple choice national exam at the end of the year. I know I left out the funds that are handed out, and those are important – but, even the money given to the higher needs schools is difficult to understand. Who determines what makes a proficient school? What really happens to a school that is taken over by a state? Is the state ever unsuccessful? If so, do all students really have the opportunity to go to an “adequate” private school? Really?
While reading this proposal all sorts of questions, ones which demand specifics, were springing up in my head. It seems that the government wants to put more pressure on education, but is willing to leave it up to individual states to decide how and where this pressure will be placed. I don’t want to say that this type of freedom for the state is bad, but there seems to be a huge negative outcome: the state can lower its standards in order to remain proficient. I don’t know if this thought of mine is entirely true, and – if it is true – I am struggling to think of a positive solution.
So, is No Child Left Behind the way to go? Unfortunately my knowledge of the history of America’s education is still limited to what I’ve learned in the past couple of months. However, I feel that I know enough to say that No Child Left Behind is hopeful. It certainly needs some tweaking – in which way, I’m not sure – but I believe that it could be successful.

2007-04-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

My school is in danger of becoming a level 1 and has taken what they deem to be the “appropriate action” of hiring a consultant to bring us up to a level 5. It is complete crap. The first time the consultant spoke to the teachers – sometime in September – she emphasized the importance of education and how essential a complete understanding was. Only, she clearly annunciated it as e-sensUal. At the time I just listened and silently chuckled to myself. I know its silly to judge someone based on a grammatical error… but still, it was pretty damn funny to listen to a woman who is giving a speech about the e-senuals of education.
As the year went on, she became less and less funny. She rarely came to the school – maybe once every couple of months – and when she did visit us, it was to sit in the cafeteria and conference with us during our planning periods. She has never seen me teach, and yet every time I conference with her, she has some idea of what I’m going through and how I can improve my strategy.
After we gave a practice MCT at the end of the third nine weeks, our brilliant consultant decided that our math scores were not impressive enough and she concluded that the only way to improve them was to begin writing our lesson plans for us – weekly lessons for EVERY SINGLE TEACHER. Of course, her idea of writing a weekly lesson plan was less than par. She gave everyone a list of benchmarks to teach on certain days. Every Monday I am supposed to teach the same six (that’s right, SIX) benchmarks. Then, the next day, I move on to another SIX benchmarks. It was a complete change in consistency for my kids, a bitch of a time planning how to fit so many benchmarks into one week – and, she took my textbooks away.
Today was my breaking point, though. She came in to the school and watched our assembly. – As a side note, I have two assemblies in a row this week: A fashion show and an award show. This means that the hours that can be devoted to the students’ learning are, instead, granted to them as time to dress up and walk-it-out. – After watching the show, she had her colleagues go around to observe and evaluate each teacher. The last period of the day I teach a seventh grade science class. My observer came in and watched my students and me discuss and solve measurement problems. My kids were AWESOME!!! They were yelling out answers, correcting each other, racing to be the first one with the solution. Someone even asked me to give them a high-five (a happy first for me). I was psyched at the end of the day and expected nothing but pleasant and constructive criticisms.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get any comments on my teaching or the lesson. All the lady was concerned about was the layout of my classroom (I teach in a computer lab and the desks must be arranged such that most of the students are facing the wall.). I have been working in this classroom for the entire school year, and while I understand what a shitty situation it is to teach in there, I have adapted quite nicely. Regardless, she spoke with the consultant and my principal and they have decided to move me from my room into some unknown area. Either I will end up a drifter, going from class to class each period, or I will have to switch classes with the ancient and sweet inclusion teacher who has practically made a home out of her tiny room. If she gets moved out, I will feel so guilty, and whatever shred of respect I had left for this consultant will certainly disappear.

Savage Inequalities

2007-03-03T19:42:00.000-08:00

I won’t pretend to be a good writer or a great teacher; and I won’t pretend to have apparent ideas and suggestions for solving the crisis that Jonathan Kozol seems to pointing to in public schooling in America. I will, however, attempt to pinpoint some of the causes for our seemingly unchangeable situation today, and potential methods or thoughts that might make it seem more alterable.

The reason that I describe the present situation in American public schools as unchangeable s really many reasons. Because there does not seem to be one sure thing to blame, there is not one thing that we can do to fix it. I don’t know that anyone is aware of any first cause that initiated the entire system to spiral downwards. If a person points his finger at a particular fault, he can easily move his finger slightly in a different direction and point at a fault that spawned our original, or is produced from it. There is an entire tree of blame that exists in our system of education and it is so large that people have trouble determining where the roots begin.

Kozol seems to suggest, throughout his book, that the largest culprit is money. Although he quotes and makes references to, time and time again, the many researchers who claim that money has no role to play in sealing success in a public school, it seems obvious that he makes reference to this as an absurdity that exists in our present situation and which adds to the ever increasing list of bullshit data and excuses that is handed to the concerned public. Although I am immediately inclined to agree with Kozol about money being the simplest and swiftest way to change the disturbing results of poor public schooling, it also strikes me as too easy.

I suppose that Kozol is also conceding that more money is not the perfect solution when he brings up the various factors that are tied to more money, two of which I will talk about here: breeding, and implementation. I will wait to discuss breeding because it is, to me, the lengthier and more puzzling dilemma. Implementation, however, may be just as puzzling, but takes less time to describe. I think Kozol summed it up well when he wrote,

Often [advocates for equity] will reassure the suburbs: “We don’t want to take away the good things that you have. We just want to lift the poorer schools a little higher.” Political accommodation, rather than conviction, dictates this approach because, of course, it begs the question: Since every district is competing for the same restricted pool of gifted teachers, the “minimum” assured to every district is immediately devalued by the district that can add $10,000 more to teacher salaries. Then, too, once the richest districts go above the minimum, school suppliers, textbook publishers, computer manufacturers adjust their price horizons – just as teachers raise their salary horizons – and the poorest districts are left where they were before the minimum existed.

If Americans require that a minimum amount of money is spent in each district, then not only will the minimum amount be a small chunk of change; but – if every school starts on the same level, there is still nothing that makes them remain on the same level. Before we can find a way to appropriately implement money equity amongst school districts – equity that remains and is visible – more money is just meaningless.

One of the reasons that money equity remains a far-off dream is that most agree it takes more than just dollars to educate a child. Proper implementation might also include how money can be spent to improve a child’s breeding. I don’t intend for this to sound as dark as it does. By breeding, I mean the lifestyle, mentality, education, and ethics a child is born into. Often a family’s income will also reflect how they value education (often – though, not always). It’s not enough to change the schools – we also have to change the families. As easy as it is for me to say that the home life has to change, I cannot say what has to change. Who am I – who is anyone – to tell people how to live, how to raise their children, what to value, etc.?

After reading Savage Inequalities, many pre-formed observations and suppositions about poverty and public schooling are confirmed; but, I am just as overwhelmed – if not more so – by the many branches of blockades and bullshit that keep anyone from finding a decent solution to all of the problems. Money is a well-voiced and smart solution in the book, but where to put the money, how to spend, on whom to spend it – who makes these choices? There is so much that needs to be different, and I don’t know where to begin.

Greek in the Delta

2007-02-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

Having gone to a college with a strong focus on the Greek language, I am often inclined to tear apart words and look for their root meanings. This inclination has proven to be a good one for teaching. My students are interested for various reasons: they love recognizing Greek letters that have to do with their favorite fraternities and sororities (I try to discourage this association, though). Some of them also find that remembering the root is easier than remembering the English derivative and this can help on tests and quizzes. One of my favorite new websites for implementing the language connection is http://www.etymonline.com. This site is easy to navigate and so great for finding the origin and root meaning of most key vocabulary terms in my classroom. I teach both math and science, and have used this site for tons of different lessons in each class. My most successful lessons with it have been those involving polygons, measurement (centimeter, millimeter, etc.), biotic and abiotic factors, homeostasis, ecosystem, and others. It has gotten to the point in my seventh grade science class that I can put up a word on the board, and my students will begin to shout out their ideas of how the word might be broken up into roots. A similar scenario happened the other day in class: we already learned that the word homeostasis can be split into two roots: Homeo – meaning "the same", and stasis – meaning "to stand still." When I asked them to find other words which include either of these roots, one student suggested Homosexual, meaning the same sexual preference. I was so psyched at my students' ability to recognize words and meanings, and they brought up homosexuality in a mature context (of course, not all of my students responded in a mature manner). When it came time to take our unit test on homeostasis and I asked for an appropriate definition of the term, over half my class referred to the "ancient Greek roots" that we had learned. AWESOME! On a smaller, but perhaps more entertaining note, I have a story to share: One day I asked my students to try and recognize the root word that was shared in the following common terms: Biology, Biography, Bio-sphere, and Biotic. Most of them picked out the B-I-O immediately. I then proceeded to explain to them the Greek origin of the word (life), and the proper pronunciation (Bee-ose). After I had them try saying it a couple of times, I began laughing. I explained to my class that the reason I thought the word was so funny was because of how familiar it sounded to bi-atch. They roared with laughter, and for the rest of the week I could hear people running down the hallway yelling ancient Greek as slander. Although some may disagree, I consider it a great success if I can get my students to stop calling each other ignorant and profanities, and start using ancient Greek as an outlet for teasing and humor. I’m looking forward to what words we’ll be dissecting next week.

SLIME

2007-02-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

I am a math teacher who teaches science. I was a bit shocked when my school told me three weeks into the school year that I was going to be teaching a seventh grade science class. Science?! What do I know about science? When I was little I liked to set my trolls on fire… chemistry? Well, seventh grade science is not a state tested subject, and I happen to have a roommate who teaches science, so… ok… I decided to teach science. It started out very ambitious: visions of experiments, nature walks, discussions, and lab reports danced in my head. Sadly, the experience has not quite lived up to what I had hoped. My school has no lab equipment, no nature, discussions can begin but have trouble being sustained, and the few small experiments I’ve brought in were more to dazzle and keep the students’ interest than to teach them. However, there have been some good days, and some GREAT days.

During an Oxford meeting last semester, the methods class for the science teachers made slime. I am in the math methods class, but – if you will remember – my roommate teaches science, so I was able to go home and play with the new toy, as well as have simple directions to make the gooey stuff (if anyone is interested, you can find pretty good directions if you go to http://bizarrelabs.com/slime.htm or just search “making slime”). I waited until the Monday before Christmas Break to surprise them with this activity. Luckily, my science class is the last period of the day, and my planning period is right before this, which allows me time to transition from math to science, and manipulate my classroom and materials in any way I need to. Unfortunately, though, my students use a computer course (I Can Learn Math Lab) during their math class, and my classroom is a type of computer lab, making slime very unwelcome. To avoid slime, water, and glue ending up all over the place, I had a lot of prep to do, and a lot of ground rules to lay out. For prep, I took the time to measure out most of the ingredients for them, in order to avoid spillage everywhere. I also labeled everyone’s equipment, from glue bottles, to Dixie cups, and down to the stir sticks – I was hoping to avoid any arguments in my class about who had what. When my students came in, I made it my mission – for the sake of time and the sake of my classroom – to be the biggest hard-ass EVER! I never cracked a smile until the very end; my words were loud and clear; if anyone was goofing around I walked over to their desk, slammed my hand down as hard as I could on the wood, and gave them a warning or sent them outside. I felt like a drill sergeant giving commands, no emotion, and punishing those who did not obey. It is certainly not a way that I would want to run classes normally, but it got the job done. By the end of class my kids all had a bag full of slime to take home, and my classroom was spick-and-span – minus the few odd sprinkles of borax on the floor.

The next day my students were begging me to do the project again, and I had other students walking in to my class all day long asking me to make slime with them. It was frustrating to ward off the stray students, but I was pleased knowing the reason that they were interrupting my class.

I spoke to my roommate about this project and we have discussed the logistics of doing this project all day with six different periods – LOCO! She and I agreed that iit would be an activity that a teacher could use as a classroom reward, giving it only to one class after they earn a certain amount of points or reach a set goal of some kind. As soon as you mention SLIME, most students will be hooked.

Formal Evaluations

2007-01-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

Last week I was in my classroom, sitting at my desk and helping a student, when my principal came in and sat down quietly. “Formal Evaluation,” I thought, “and somehow she always manages to come in during 5th period – right after lunch. Right after all these kids have had their fill of sugar and energy.” Of course, my concern for my principal’s presence quickly died and my focus returned to the young lady at my desk and the graphing paper she held in her hand.

The next day, my principal informed me that I was expected I her office during my planning period to discuss her observations of my class. At 1: 20, the bell rang, and I began the walk to the main office. When I arrived, her door was shut and I already knew she had stood me up (of course, this was not the first time). I looked at the secretary, smiled, and asked in my softest voice (soft because I don’t want anyone to suspect how ridiculous and frustrating I believe this whole administration to be), “Is she in?”

“Oh no, she’s been a meeting all day at the district office.”

I smiled and didn’t say a word, just walked away and silently screamed at her in my head.

The next day I approached her office door before I clocked in and asked if there was a welcome time to reschedule. Again, she asked me to come in during my planning period. Again, I arrived at the office to find her door closed, and myself – stood up.

Does this person realize that she is taking away my planning period, the time where I have to switch classrooms and set up for a completely different prep? Are the teachers she works with any kind of concern? How is this person evaluated? Does someone come in and distract her while she’s working, pulling lesson plans and important papers off of her desk while she is trying to focus on twenty-five other people?

After I finally managed to meet with my principal, it struck me that the formal evaluation was the silliest little piece of paper, and the biggest waste of time. I believe that it actually hurts a school district to send their principals into the classroom to sit down and check off seventy little boxes, while looking to see if my hygiene is appropriate, my fire exits are posted, I am making an effort to incorporate other subject areas, etc. Who decided that this is what makes a good teacher, and why is it the principal’s job to evaluate these things?

I think the districts need to come up with a more efficient method of evaluating teachers. Stop wasting the principal’s time, when he/she could be attending to more important issues (hopefully); stop wasting my students’ time by coming in and standing around, rummaging on top of my desk and causing a distraction; but, most of all, please stop wasting my the teacher’s time. We have so little time as it is, and still you want to keep us waiting and the sit us down to tell us trivial details about the term “butt stays in your seat” being a “risky rule to hang on the wall.” Please.

I’m not saying that an evaluation is not necessary, only that there must be a better way to do it. Why not have someone – who has the time – to interview students and staff members. Perhaps a video camera could be placed in class to avoid interruptions (although, I suppose that would be infringing on a person’s rights…or something like that. Although, I really don’t think a video camera would change the way I teach or the way a student learns… but, that’s just me). Whatever the particular procedure for evaluating a teacher, I believe that there is one better than what many of us are asked to take part of.

2006-12-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

The past semester teaching was not what I wanted. It started out by pulling all-nighters almost every week with no real positive results; during the transition between the first and second 9 weeks, I caught the flu and a stomach virus – the combination of the two, thrown in with my general lack of enthusiasm to be in a room with 30 kids who (I thought) could not do anything that I put forward, were all enough to keep me out sick for a total of almost three weeks. To close up the semester, this past week I was evaluated and told to wear socks. I n short, it was a long, sickening, and painful 4 months.
I am not writing this to imply that I regret the experience. When I actually muster up the strength to pull myself up and out of the emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion that is my life, I can easily say how proud I am of myself, and how glad I am that I took this job. I don’t feel like I am saving these kids – in fact, sometimes I feel more like the disease than the cure – but, I do believe that I am helping. Being here, showing these kids that life outside the Delta exists, that people outside the Delta care…maybe something can change, and change for the better. I don’t want to teach the students that my life is the one to choose, or that their life is not worth choosing – truth be told, there’s something oddly beautiful about what these kids have. I just want to show them that there is more, a variety of choices and lives. If they can understand all of the possibility in the world, and still choose to live in Indianola and work at Pate’s Automobile Shop – wonderful. All I am hoping for is that I can help them broaden their view just a little bit.
Of course, I want to teach them math, too. I thought this would be a piece of cake next to my lofty goal of “expanding horizons”. What I’ve found, though, is that half the time I am trying to inspire them to learn math, I am incorporating the broader view of the world. Constantly I catch myself talking about what a person can have if he/she has an education. There are so many things that I want these kids to get excites to about, to think about, to argue with me about… but, I can’t figure it out. Now, if I catch myself starting some speech or story to inspire a thirst for knowledge, I have the tendency to cut myself off. It’s not that I’m giving up, but I am learning that I need to expand my own horizons – the things that inspire me are not the things that inspire these kids.
What sorts of things DO inspire these kids? Family, God, Laughter, Money, Music, Dancing…After I returned from my sick leave, a small group of students started coming into my class during their Activity Period (my Planning Period), and they opened me up to the things they wished for, the things I represented, and new ways of making what I represented coincide with the things they wished for. For example, a young girl comes into my room every day and asks for a hug, asks about what my friends are like, what we do together, the types of music we listen to, etc. She is fascinated by the relationships that I have with people my own age. After some weeks of coming into my room, she told me a story about going into Taco Bell and seeing a group of white girls from the Academy, and my student described to me how badly she wished she could go sit down with those girls and start laughing with them. She told me that white people are always having fun together, always laughing together, never talking or gossiping about someone behind that person’s back, etc. I figure that this young lady who comes into my class every day and asks about my relationships with my friends views me as one of those white girls who gets along with all of her white friends, laughs all the time, and is always happy. This is a very touchy subject for me to approach with my students, but one that I want to get closer to. As time goes by, my rapport and relationships deepen, allowing for more understanding of which I am, who they are, and how we relate to each other.
As this first semester ends, and I look forward to the beginning of the next, I am expanding my views to try and include seeing things, not only as I am inclined to view them – but, as my students view them as well.

Changes in Management

2006-11-09T21:13:00.000-08:00

What would I change about my Classroom Management Plan? Hmmm?? Can I say ‘everything’? No. I suppose, not. Well, the biggest change that I have made is my list of consequences. I really had no choice in this change. I wrote my list of consequences, sat down with my principal, read them aloud, explained them, and listened to her approve of them. When school started, however, I was informed that discipline followed a very particular formula: DEAL WITH IT. My school has no detention available, even though my principal listened and nodded while I told her that detention was my 3rd consequence. Instead, I was given ISS (in school suspension) as an option. I discussed this with my principal, and changed my third consequence to ISS. I explained to all of my students that after working at my desk, they would be sent out of my class – by moi – to ISS. Shortly after, all the students I sent out, walked right back in to class. Turns out I am not allowed to assign ISS – only the principal and assistant principal have this power, and it is not exercised very often. So, my consequences have now, inevitably, changed.

My favorite “new” consequence is the phone call home. Sometimes I tell the students, and sometimes, not so much. I have no consistency about telling the kids, or not telling them. It just depends. I actually find that the lack of consistency here is more frightening to the students. If one kid comes in talking about how I called home unexpectedly, the others are all wondering if I am planning to call their house, as well. Its pretty great. So, in changing my management, first thing to change – after the changes made by administration – would be the amount of contact with the home. The more contact the better. I have had, maybe, one or two unfriendly encounters; but, the more concern I give, and following up phone calls of discipline with phone calls of praise, I find that most parents are just happy to hear that someone is taking care of their kids.

Let’s see – what else? Putting less responsibility on the administration; more communication between teacher and home; and…..better preparation. Something that I never considered being a problem while making the plan was how well prepared I needed to be. I mean, I always considered prep a good and meaningful task, but I never connected it to discipline. I find myself, now, planning extra and alternative activities for the classes that I have the most difficulty with. I also found that busywork, I am a little disgusted to say, keeps them occupied and thinking about math. I never thought I would be someone to advocate busywork, but…

Well, those are the three major changes I have made thus far in my Classroom Management Plan. I’m sure there will be more to come, though.

Stickin' to my Guns

2006-10-12T13:05:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I was supposed to pick a class and stay consistent with my rules for two weeks. Well, I tried, but, honestly, I don't know if I succeeded. Its hard enough to be in a classroom with thirty kids, trying to teach, while still having an Ole Miss homework assignment lingering in the back of your head. I hope I'm not the only one to admit this, but - I don't think about my assignments while I'm teaching. That's not to say that I don't think about Teacher Corps. So much of the advice, suggestions, and encouragement has followed me into that classroom every day, and I am so grateful for it. But, when it comes down to a situation with a student, and he/she is putting their learning at risk, and other students learning at risk, my highest concern is handling the situation in the most effective way possible. Now, in the course of my last three months of teaching, I've discovered that consistency with my rules does not always prove to be the most effective way of de-escalating a situation. However, I do not want to make the claim that consistency is poor advice given by the teacher corps - if anything, consistency is GREAT advice that I wish I was able to follow. What I have learned from the experience of not finding it effective to stay consistent, is not that the advice needs to alter,but that my rues need to change. I am trying to implement better rules for my classroom so that they are somethig I am comfortable staying consistent with. What makes this task so difficult, is the number of unique details and circumstances that each new day and incident brings with it. Soemtimes, I'm not in the best mood - and, sad to say it, this will effect how I want my class to run that day. Sometimes, a whole class is being disruptive, and - instead of giving them all the consequence - I might choose to make an example out of one of them. Other days, thoough, I might just stick my head out in the hallway and invite the assisstant principal t come in and slowly start pulling them out one by one. It just depends. That seems to be my most consistent rule, actually - I will dtermine the proper disciplinary action for each individual action. It may not be fair, but, what I say goes. Wow! Sometimes "teacher-me" is such an *!%**!.

Learning Style Assessment

2006-10-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading through all of the Worksheets I passed out. I definately got some interesting results, but I'm not quite sure what is accurate, and what I should even think about the results that do seem accurate. The one reult of the questionairre, the result that struck me before the students even finished filling out the assessment, is that these children DO NOT know how to read or understand a question. Yes, yes, I've known for a while now that these students can't read, and that is awful in its own right - but, that's not what I'm referring to this time. If I were to ask these kids a question about themselves - for example, "do you have opinions that set you apart from the crowd?" - they stare at me, some with glazed eyes, others with twisted mouths, and eventually one of them says in a loud and childish voice, "huh?" Every other question/stement on that inventory, I had to explain to those kids - and even after explaining it, I'm not quite so sure that they understood everything. Of course, I'm willing to give them a certain amount of grace by acknowledging that the inventory was not built for Middle Schoolers, and that many of those words were, perhaps, above the 7th grade standard vocabulary. BUt, C'mon!! A 14 year old who cannot understand what someone is referring to when saying "set you apart from the crowd." That's Sickening!! And, of course, when I looked at the questionaiire, every student - the whole crowd of em - checked "yes" for that box. But, I suppose that is a typical response for any person - everyone is trying to be a unique.
Moving on, apart from these kids not really understanding the questions on the inventory, there were some other points of interest for me. First off, the questions seemed silly. I don't want to knock any of the doctors/scientists/scholars/whoever who have put years of study and effort into making these inventories - Lord knows I wouldn't know where to begin. But, alot of it just seems insulting to me. First of all, I don't like when people refer to me as a certain "type" of learner. What the hell does that even mean? I understand thag what makes sense to one person may have to be explained in a different way to another person, but, personally, I find that the more ways you can explain it, the better I'll be able to understand it, no matter what my "type." And, getting back to these questions - one section consisted of the following questions: A) Have you attended counseling sessions or personal growth seminars to learn more about yourself? B) Do you have opinions that set you apart from the crowd? C) Do you have important goals in your life that you think about on a regular basis? D) Do you consider yourself to be strong willed or independent minded? E) Do you keep a diary or journal to record the events in your inner life? So, if you answer "Yes" to most of these questions, you are considered "Self-Smart". Now, with the exception of A and E, lets face it, evrybody's gonna answer yes. And, being someone who has attended counselling, and who once kept a diary, in no way do I consider myself someone who is more "self-smart" than a person who has done neither. I guess what I'm trying to say is, the questions asked on this particular assessment, do not seem good enough to etll a person anything of reall value.
Well, now that I've basically admitted to not buying into the assessment, let me state my results and my plan of action from here on out. While each student filled out the inventory differently, there were some similarities that I found: 1) The majority of girls are PEOPLE SMART 2) Most of the students I gave this inventory to had the lowest score for LOGIC SMART 3) The majority of boys are BODY SMART 4) Most of the SPED students had a high score for PICTURE SMART. What will I do with these results? Well, I feel as though I am already trying to cater to all of these different "types of smart" in my lessons, although, I will probably try to use more pictures/graphs/charts, etc. Also, it may not be a benchmark - and, God forbid I should stray from the pacing guide - but, I want these kids to learn to ask questions, and to learn how to think about questions. Personally, if these Learning Style Assessments have any value, and my kids are scoring lowest on Logic - I'm not OK with that. Yes, every learning style is beautiful and meaningful in its own right, blah, blah, blah... but, if these kids could learn to think about things, learn how to answer a question - any question - then, screw the tests. Teach them how to think, and the tests are take care of.

Poverty Framework Response

2006-09-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

The focus in schools should be on learning.

The above statement is made on page 108 in Ruby Payne’s, A Framework for Understanding Poverty. While I absolutely agree with this statement and believe that it is vital for ANY teacher to agree with this statement – after reading Dr. Payne’s book and teaching for 6 weeks in the delta, I have to say, after reading such a statement, “Ok, sure…but, learning what?”
In the Framework for Understanding Poverty, Dr. Payne’s claims that there are a certain number of things we should be focused on giving to students, as teachers. These things include, though are not limited to, discipline, formal register, an intro to “Hidden Rules” of other classes, Instruction in Cognitive Strategies, a healthy relationship, a good role model, etc. In theory, yes – I agree and am striving to offer all of these. But, as a first year teacher in the Delta… HELP ME!
Where do I begin? They say it all starts with classroom management. Yes and No. True, it was the absolute first and necessary element for me to establish with my classroom. However, as the year goes on, classroom management is something that seems to get better as I begin to establish a better relationship with these kids. Ms. Paynes mentions relationships towards the end, as well as saying early on that for most people living with poverty, your possessions are other people – a claim that seemed to be very clearly demonstrated by the student surveys we all gave the first week. If this is true, then it comes as no surprise that I should have an easier time dealing with classroom management as my time in the classroom and with the children develops. I’m still confused as to what my relationship with the child should be, though. Of course, I want to be a good role model – someone who graduated from college, is concerned with education, respects others, and does not deal with problems using violence or anger (although with some of these kids, violence and anger….hmm….). Being a positive role model doesn’t seem to be enough after reading this book, though. They need a friend, a parent – someone to take on the adult role and let them be kids. It was awful to read about children and identify certain children in my own classroom, who have to grow up too quickly. Is that my job, though? Am I supposed to act as role model, guardian, older sister, friend, etc? Where does a teacher cross the line? I want to help out. I want to give every kid what they’re missing. I want to teach them. I want them to have opportunities. I want to give them hugs. I want to make sure they’re not eating all the crap I see them eat in the cafeteria and hallways. So many things that I want for these kids – and how much is it appropriate for me to follow through on?
I guess, in a small way, I can follow through on all of these things by simply being that positive model of good behavior, morals, and respect. I am also in EXTREMELY strong agreement with Ms. Payne on one other point that she made on page 108: Instruction in the cognitive strategies should be a part of the curriculum.
In fact, I’ll add to this by saying that cognitive strategies should be a part of EVERYTHING!!! My biggest goal (which may not be realized for a long, long time) is to help these students learn to think– not for the classroom, certainly not for the ridiculous state test, but, they absolutely MUST learn to think for themselves. If nothing else, this is what I want for every single child.

Can a male and female teacher talk?

2006-08-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's the deal... during my first week of school, second day of school with the kids, I had a male teacher enter my room during my planning period to discuss one of the inclusion students that he was working with in my class. Because we were two teachers, talking about another student, we both deemed it appropriate to close the door. Please, keep in mind that my door, to my knowledge, at that time, could not lock from the inside; also, all of the doors have windows for people in the hallway to see into the classrooms. Anyway, the teacher sat down at a students desk in front of me, and I continued sitting at my desk. About 5 minutes later, there is a knock at the door, and my principal and some big-shot from the main office drop in to check out my classroom set-up. I kindly let them in, talk about my teaching strategies, and they move on. Approxiamtely 2 minutes later, the Asst. Principal comes to my door and asks to talk to the male teacher I am having a discussion with. Thus, I go back to sitting alone in my class, grading papers. Low and Behold, my Principal comes knocking around my door, once again - this time, alone, and serious. "What were the two of you doing in here?," she asks me. "Talking," I respond. "What were you talking about?" I was a bit startled, but I calmly explained to her that we were discussing a student that the two of us were working with that day. "Well," she says to me, "When a person walks by in that hallway and sees a young couple locked up together in the classroom, things do not look good. There are rumors starting , now, about your relationship." Stunned, but not wanting to put myself in a worser situation, I ask what the appropriate protocol is for two teachers who want to have a confidential discussion about the well-being of their mutual student. She responds, "Talk in the hallway, and make it brief."
Two weeks later, and this situation is still being brought up to me. Teachers in other schools, the Asst. Super-intendent, and others have brought this rumorto my attention. Now, the male teacher, who was working in my classroom for two periods a day with inclusion students, has been given a totally new schedule - never to have a class with me.
Is this weird to anyone else? I told the story to some other corps members, and at first they were shocked, but when I mentioned that the male teacher also happened to be black (I'm white), they suddenly became less surprised.
Who was unprofessional in this situation? Myself and the other teacher? My principal? The administration? Everyone? No one? I'm still just kinda baffled.

2006-07-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

Just thought some people might find this amusing:
I went to a computer training the other day, per request of my school district. I was in a room with 10 other teachers, and I was the only first year. Throughout the training, teachers were raising their hands and asking questions like, "what do I do if a student has a question, but I'm busy with another student?"; "How do I handle a student who refuses to work?"; "What are good filler activities?" Needless to say, our training is AWESOME, because I felt like I was able to answer all of these teachers' questions, without even blinking. So, thanks to everyone who helped out this summer. I think its safe to say that we are more prepared than many of the teachers returning to the classroom.

Just a brief note: I do not want to disrespect or belittle any teachers. Of course there is a TON that the teachers in my training have got to back them up in the classroom that I have no clue about. I just wanted to emphasize ho great our initial training is.

House Hunting

2006-07-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

I just got a house in Indianola. I'm so excited! I can't believe how difficult it was to find a place to live. I don't know if this is the same experience for every teacher moving to the Delta, but DANG! There was NOTHING!!! I'm teaching in Greenwood with 3 other teachers, and we went down there, at least 3 times, solely for the purpose of finding a place to live. We contacted realtors, renters, called numbers on signs, talked to Post Offices, Policemen, the Banks, EVERYTHING! We did it all. And, nothing! The places we saw were horrendous! And, the half-way decent place were $600 for two-rooms. Icky.
Why are there no houses? No one wants to rent in the Delta. Greenwood is one of the largest towns in the delta - larger than Oxford - and nobody wants to rent. Everybody is selling and movin' out. There must be some sort of great scheme that someone could take advantage of by buying up these houses and renting them out. However, I guess you'd have to assume that enough people are gonna be moving in and looking for rentals. Well, maybe if we keep shipping teachers out there. Wink-Wink.
Fortunately, there is an MTC alum living in Indianola who is running a somewhat similar scheme. He has bought a good deal of beautiful, old, Mississippi homes, and is renting them out at very reasonable prices. He has a fabulous eye for real-estate, and the house that I ended up renting from him, although it is a fixer-upper, he has so many great ideas for improving it. It's gonna be extrawesome!
Well, I hope that everybody else in the program has not had as frustrating a search for housing as I have. Don't get me wrong, it could always be worse. Anyhoo, good luck to the rest of you.

Team Teaching

2006-07-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

My Team Teaching Group was AWESOME! Actually, it was EXTRAWESOME!!!! I was with the fabulous Mr. Zarandona - never ate a lunch, sadly, but he made up for it with his beautifully managed mane; Mr. Scriber, quite possibly the most unknowingly underhanded member of the group - he was laughin, writin obscene numbers, all that stuff.... loved it!; Mr. Doyle, fallin asleep in every lesson, but making up for it with emphatic reading, and bubble letters on the board.... BUBBLE LETTERS!!! YES!!!!; Mr. Weimer, Weems, love of my life - math excites him, Math excites me, Weems makes math exciting!!!; Mr. Pollard....Oh, Mr. Pollard... The man who taught me exactly what a woman means when she tells you, "no". I have ever laughed so hard in my life....well, maybe once, but still....It was funny.
Having these gentlemen in my group was one of the best parts of the training. I know that the trsaining was supposed to be about the lesson, exclusively, and we were supposed to act like the ideal students... but, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say... "maybe we didn't follow the rules exactly." Doesn't matter though. In fact, I'm pretty sure my ideal students would be the ones who can do the work, and understand it well enough to make a joke out of it. For example, see if you can guess which of the above gentlemen wrote this as his answer to a question on the quiz, which asked, "what is a polygon?" : Ms. Davenport is not a Polygon, cuz she's got curves.

When do I get to Yell?

2006-07-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Hmmm... team teaching, huh? Yeah, it was great. Watching myself.... not so much. Its weird how critical we tend to be of ourselves in this programs. I guess that has its pros and its cons. Oh well. Anyhoo, bac to this video-taped lesson.
In this last lesson I video taped I was mostly concerned with my posture and how it affected my confidence and demeanor. In the most recent lesson, my posture was not as much of an issue, I'm happy to say. Although, it did get commented on from time to time in my eval. What was an issue on my tape?: Monotone. I feel so boring. I'm reluctant to ever raise my voice to a child in my class, although sometimes I do make myself louder to try and overcome the noise of the classroom (I'm more comfortable with being loud than with raising my hand, or clapping for their attention?). But, raising my voice above theirs is different than yelling at them, I think. I haven't ever yelled, I haven't gone crazy. Is it weird that this bothers me? While I was watching the tape I was just waiting for the moment that I would break out into hysterics and lively the whole show up a bit.... but, no. I was the same tone, the same pitch, the same excitement THE WHOLE TIME!!! BLECH!!!! I love when Annne yells in class, I love when people go a little nutzo in real life. You definately start paying attention after someone flips. But, sadly, I haven't perfected the ar of introducing this into the classroom.
Watching the tape, I had a hard time paying attention. It might be a little different for a kid who doesn't know me and who hasn't taken part in the lesson, yet. Nevertheless, if I don't like watching the lesson, I'm pretty ure that most of the kids don't like watching the lesson. And, maybe they don't HAVE to like it but, I WANT them to like it.
Like I said, though, I haven't even tried introducing the crazy side into class, yet. So, I might have to hold off a little. Maybe second semester I'll go a little insane in the membrane. But, I'm affraid that - for the sake of management - I'm gonna have to play it cool, calm, and collected...until one of them falls asleep in class. WATCH OUT!!!!

Reflections on Summer School

2006-07-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

Overall impressions of Summer School? Very different. The settings, the students, and the teachers. Its a whole new world compared to what I grew up with.
To start, the classroom seems small and uncomfortable when you first arrive. The many desks, the tiny space, the one window with blinds you cannot really open, and lack of bookshelves, and storage space - it all seemed unbearable for someone planning to be there any long period of time. However, after only being there for a month, it occurred to me that I was an outsider being invited to live, short-term, in someone else's space. Of course the room was uncomfortable for me, because it was, in no real way, mine. I would be very curious to see what it looks like during the actual school year. In the course of four weeks I already had so many ideas for where I could hang student work, what posters I would want to bring in and where they would go, how I would save space with desk arrangements, what my reading area would look like, etc. Some of these tasks I was able to accomplish and it was AWESOME! Just a little bit of color and student work on the wall makes a huge difference, I think. In short, my discouraged additude coming into summer school - as far as the physical settings - was very diminished by te time I left. The short time that I spent in someone else's class gave me so much inspiration for the long time that I will be spending in my own.
The students, when I arrived at summer school, were also very daunting in some respects. All black, all failing math, and all from a southern culture. These were things, again, that I did not grow up with. Again, though, my fears and hesitations were quickly cast aside. Kids are kids - bottom line. Granted, some of these kids have lived through and experienced much more than I can relate to, and I completely respect them for that fact. But, they are kids, and they are students at school. The same way that many of the kids at my school didn't want to sit through class and listen to the teacher preach, is exactly what I thought I saw in most of these people. So, it was a struggle for me to connect with and find a common ground with alot of them - not because they're black and i'm white, not because they grew up in the South and I'm from a place where it snows 7 months of the year - mostly, because I was the teacher, and they were the students. I am the adult, and they are the children. Of course, I am not going to deny that race and upbringing are factors in how these kids view me. Most definitely they're factors. They're factors in how alot of people view me. But, the hardest hurdle, I felt, for me to jump, was letting them know that despite the fact I'm their teacher, and despite the fact I'm an adult, I care, and I'm gonna try my hardest to help them. What make this task even harder is that I spent my summers through college and high school working at kids camps, and at the camps, the kids and I were always freinds. It was OK to hug and tease and tickle and swear and start food fights, but here - as a teacher - I am expected to draw aline between myself and the students. I believe that it is a very appropriate line, but one that has never been established between me and another kid. So, not only was the adult in front of class someone that the students had to get used to, but someone I needed to get used to as well.
Last, but certainly not least, the teachers: beautiful, inspiring, and brilliant! Walking down the hallways while school was in session and peeking into the clssrooms, the teachers were always standing, talking, waving their arms, smiling, eating kids' lunches, what have you! They were all just so enthused all of the time! Even my schools were never like that! Maybe the enthusiasm will dwindle as the real school year goes on, but this summer, it was so wonderful and exciting to see so many young people who care about kids, and care about education, choosing to teach.
AWESOME!!!

Head Up, and Shoulders Back!

2006-06-29T16:53:00.000-07:00

Just woke up after watching the video of me teaching. Ha-ha! Maybe it was the lack of sleep after weeeks of going to bed at 3:00 a.m. and waking up at 5:30 a.m; maybe its the fact that I haven't had any healthy meals or consistent exercise since I got here; or maybe...maybe... I really am that boring of a teacher. The last possibility is, of course, the one that I am most hesitant to lean towards, but its the one that I feel I should examine the closest.
The thing that was most apparent to me while watching the video, and probably the most surprising, was my posture. It never entered my mind that my posture would have an impact on the kind of teacher that the students view me as. Of course, posture, in general, is important; but, I never considered myself as having poor posture. However, during the video, I did not come across as a confident, professional, educator. Instead, I looked like a twenty-two year old girl, with slouched shoulders, who crosses her arms when she's nervous, and shuffles atound the classroom, as if she is searching for something that she can never find. It was hilarious to me, but mortifying as well. I don't mind looking like that while attending college, or hanging out with friends; but, in a classroom - MY classroom - it seems to be the most blatant sign of weakness and immaturity. So, just like my teacher face, I have to work on my teacher stance.
The other thing that really stood out to me was how often I had my back turned to one part of the class. Either I was writing on the board, or just facing one side of the class and talking - but, I definitely want to work on quitting. I think it also involves the setup of the classroom. Even if I do the nifty "Joe-Sweeney-writing-with-his-back-turned-to-the-board-thing", I think that my body gets in the way of some students seeing, and when I move, then I'm in the way of other students. Vicious Cycle, really.
Well, lots to work on and make better. Glad that I at least have somewhere to start, though. There always seems to be room for improvement, but if I can at least get the "look" of a teacher down, I figure I'm gonna be ropin' in 6 figures by the end of January.

Creative Writing

2006-06-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

I know that it is debated within MTC whether or not it is appropriate to assign writing as a form of punishment. I hope to blog about this question, and I find it a very important issue to address, - but, in this post, it is an issue I wish to avoid.

The following is a sample, from one of my summer school students, of a one page paper assigned as a consequence for disrupting class:

Rules are important at school cause if you didn't have rules the school would be a bird pin. It would be just like birds flying through school making a mess. Rules are not meant to be broken. You should not break rules especially during school cause you will be punished. That is why some of the kids act like they do during school, cause they don't have enough rules. Respect the rules.

This is incredible to me. The student who handed this paper in to me is a constant discipline problem. A very sweet and very smart young man, but - I think - gets bored and frustrated in the classroom. He was not doing well on his work or tests, but has become more of an active participant, and seems to be having an easier time grasping alot of the material. Reading this short paper, though, I was totally blown away by how eloquent his bird pen example was. He has beautiful handwriting, and the analogy was so clever to me. I also recognize that there may be more grammatically correct ways of writing what he did, but I am so torn as to whether or not I should stress these grammar issues upon students.
Of course, I believe that everyone should have a basic knowledge of proper grammar, and it is obvious that many of these kids don't. However, the writing they do turn in to me, although full of grammar and spelling mistakes, is BEAUTIFUL. And, I think that so much of that beauty is due to those mistakes. The same way that Faulkner or O'Connor would write a dialogue between two or more people from the south, is how these students are writing to me - It's an internal dialogue of sorts. I do not mean to compare my students to characters in famous stories; I merely wish to say that the dialect they write in is fascinating, and - in its own way - brilliant.
Of course, Faulkner and O'Connor knew proper english as well as their own southern style. That is probably the most important factor for me to keep in mind while thinking about this issue. While I do think that their writing and imagery is amazing, it may be better for me to stress the difference between creative writing and professional/"proper" wrting. I do not want them to lose any part of their imagination and dialect, but I do want them to recognize that there is proper english and that there is a proper time to employ it.

On a final note, I also assigned a page of writing to a student who would not stay in his seat while we were discussing factors. The final line of his paper was, I will not be the least common factor of this class anymore.

Paper Folds

2006-06-24T21:01:00.000-07:00

Thus far, at summer school, I have incorporated "paper-folding" activities into two different lessons. I LOVE IT!!! Maybe it's the silly, crafty, "i-wanna-play-with-crayons" side of me, but I think the creative, hands-on, activities are great. It gives every student a chance to use his/her head, to use his/her imagination, and there are no "wrong" answers when you are being creative. Of course, each activity does involve problem solving, and needing to know equations. So, in that respect, some students do have a more difficult time than others. But, still - even the students who have trouble get a chance to enjoy math a little more. Some things I might change or be cautious of? I certainly don't want to treat the students like babies, so the more challenging and creative the activity, the better. Also, if I choose to use these activities during the school year, they will not be every day, and I will save them for the lessons that seem to take less time. The reason for this is, that while the students do benefit from being creative, I think the activities would be more beneficial once the students have a somewhat firm grasp on the knowledge content involved in the activity. If they're unclear on how to solve for a percent, me asking them to make a booklet about solving for a percent is somewhat pointless.

Cold-Calling

2006-06-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

This week I attempted to use the Cold-Calling method of questioning in my class. I am very torn up about the results of the particular method. I started by writing down my students' names on index cards, and pin-pointed the places in my lesson plans that I would use the cards to act as a method of "randomly" calling upon a student to answer a question. When I got to those points in my lesson, though, I would start to ask the class to shout out an answer, but would then remember that I was holding the cards in my right hand, and would have to slur my sentence, back-track, and explain my new method of questioning. The students did not seem to have any reaction to me using the index cards, and even when I would say, "Mr. Doe, could you please explain to the class what the first step in problem five is, " kids would raise their hand and shout out the answer. Again, though, I would specify, "Mr. Doe," and all those who had just shouted out would understand that I would not acknowledge anyone but Mr. Doe, and they would refrain from speaking. However, I find myself doing the same thing even when I'm not using the index cards. If I ask a question in class, I always expect at least half of them to shout out the answer. Sometimes I'll let the shout out suffice, other times I'll listen to the shout out, but then specify a single person to repeat their answer. The cards seemed to have the exact same effect. I suppose one purpose of the cards is to give an atmosphere of randomness, and make the students feel as though I am not playing favorites and that there's always a chance I'll call on them. This makes sense, but I hope to give that impression regardless of having the index cards in my hands or not. In fact, I found that even while I was looking at the cards, I might draw a person's name from the deck, decide that I have already heard "enough" from that person, and play it off as though I had drawn someone else's name.
In general, I like the intent behind the method of Cold-Calling, but I feel more comfortable calling on people randomly, and not having to look at a deck of cards. Maybe if I practiced the method a few more times I would become more comfortable, but the first time I tried it I found it to be more distracting to me, and I was more focused on the cards than the students. Like I said, though - Very good intentions I the method itself.

Response to Focus Paper

2006-06-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a Second Year Teacher's review of some of the history involving the Pledge of Allegiance in the United States' School System. There were some interesting cases and facts brought up in the paper, e.g., something that I found curious was the original composition and the fact that it had no mention of God or any Religion, and that the United States were nowhere referred to by name. Another thing that surprised me was learning one of the first cases brought to court involving this issue had to do with the parents of students taking offense at their children being required to pledge allegiance to something other than God. It seems to me that lately the controversy being raised around the Pledge of Allegiance in schools confronts the somewhat exact opposite problem, i.e., parents are frustrated with their children being asked to acknowledge a God or Religion that they do not believe in. It was amusing to think about the origins of the conflict being so seemingly opposed to the position we are presented with today.What I found particularly interesting in the paper, though, was the notion of a clear and present danger resulting from a student's refusal to recite the Pledge. I suppose the notion makes sense when considering a sort of militaristic point of view - if you don't have all of your soldiers following given orders and believing in the same cause, your army is at a disadvantage. However, I do not think that the children in schools should be compared in such a way to the soldiers in an army. I agree that we are raising and educating our children to not only to be morally decent and intellectually sound human beings, but to also be "good" citizens of the United States (I would love to say that I think the two types of education go hand-in-hand, though sometimes I am doubtful). I wonder then, if part of a child's education is learning how to function in the country they are growing up in, what is our duty - not only as teachers, but as parents, lawgivers, etc. - to "train" the child to "believe" in his/her country?Perhaps I am way too liberal about this, or - perhaps - I'm not liberal enough; but, it seems to me that if we are honest with a child, if we tell a child the truth - insofar as we are able - about the country they are living in and the history - good and bad - of that country, and we also teach the child to think for him/herself, we will be doing absolutely everything in our power to ensure that the child will both love the country they grow up in, and that the country they are growing up in is a place worth loving. I may need to explain myself a bit more.If a country takes pride in the education of its individuals, I believe that it is fulfilling one of the top priorities and duties assigned to it. Through education, I believe that people make wiser, more thouhtful choices which result in better actions. Thus, when we teach our children well, we are not only teaching them about where they come from, but we are giving them a better option for where they can go - and if a healthy and thorough education is something that we can continue providing, then this "better" place will no longer be a hope for the future, but will become a benefit of today.It might be the case, though, that once this "better" place is reached, there will be so much love and dedication to it by the citizens, that pledges, and anthems, and alll sorts of similar "praises" will become a part of the culture that is passed down to many generations throughout many public and private institutions. However, there is a large difference between reciting a pledge because it is something you believe in and are compelled to do out of love and compassion for your country, and reciting a pledge because it is recquired by an authoritative figure and refusal will result in an expulsion or punishment. One is an action done out of love, and one is an action done out of fear.Of course, are children old enough to know what they love? This may seem like a terribly unfair question, but I thought it was an interesting point that the focus paper raised saying, " The first stipulation raised by the supreme court was that the children were old enough to maturely and intelligently hold their own religious beliefs and...despite theirstatus as minors, they were deemed to have reached an age when they were no longer under the intellectual influence or compulsion of their parents." Very interesting, but is it true? Are children old enough to think for themselves about religion and moral issues? If a child cannot grasp the theory of relativity, can he/she grasp something as complex as death? I certainly am not saying that Relativity and Death are equivalent, or that they even involve the same type of mental capabilities; however, why are we sometimes inclined to say that we know our beliefs long before many other types of knowledge? In mean, they're BELIEFS - those things that we cannot know for sure - yet, we're sure of them right away?I may have strayed from the original topic, and I apologize for that. As an attempt to summarize the messy response above, let me close with a question: Is the public education of our children reponsible for making them moral human beings, and if so, how should the system go about doing so?

Beginnings

2006-05-31T21:30:00.000-07:00

I've Arrived! If you asked me two months ago where I was going to be spending my time after graduation, I might have answered Japan, Paris, Washington D.C., maybe Houston. Mississippi was nowhere in my mind. I had heard people on my campus in Annapolis rave about MTC, saying that there was no better, more challenging program that an aspiring teacher could hope to be a part of in the U.S. While all of this sounded great, I thought, I don't want to teach in the U.S. - at least, not right away. I want adventure, I want to see things and meet people that I've never encountered in my life. Unfortunately, my health took an unfortunate fall during the first semester of my senior year, and when I suffered a minor relapse in the spring, my doctors told me that all my plans to travel abroad needed to b put aside. Devastation and panic Ensue! Desperate for an enjoyable and rewarding teaching job, I run to my Career Services office and ask them if there is any possibility to still apply for the program in Mississippi that had always been so highly reccommended. Iwas told that the deadline was in less than a week and that my chances were very slim. With hope in my heart, however, I applied; and in less than 24 hours an offer was made. I couldn't believe it! Filled with excitement and Nausea, I packed my bags and headed for the South.
When I began driving along I-55, the Delta on one side, and green, lush hills on the other, I knew - that adventure I was seeking... the new experiences and people I wanted to encounter... - I'd found it.
Its only my second day in the program, and I haven't even been properly introduced to the Delta yet. Everything I've seen, though, is something new and exciting. This place is already unlike anywhere I've ever been. The food - the yummy, delicious food - unlike anything I've ever tasted. And the History! The history of the South, the history of education the history of integration... Its here and I'm about to become a part of it! This place is alive! The prgram I'm involved in is alive! The people I consider myself lucky enough to work with... I've never seen so much excitement and dedication towards the education of children as the small group of people in my class have shown me in the past two days. And, while I understand that this is just the beginning, and that the road ahead is difficult and painful - these are exactly the type of people that I am convinced can face that challenge, deal with that pain, and still succeed with a good heart and passion to teach and help others.
I can't wait!!