Rollercoaster

Remember what I said about the first two weeks being Golden? In many ways this week was anything but. It was more like a rollercoaster...

On Monday, two people came to observe my classroom unannounced. Whereas the first two weeks had been going well, Monday was close to a disaster. Students weren't paying attention, and I had to constantly move students around the classroom and threaten to send them to an undesirable classroom in the school (A teacher I'll call Ms. K, who I'll talk about later). To make it worse, one teacher sat in the back discussing everything I was doing wrong in a voice loud enough for me to hear and incidentally, loud enough for my students. So not only was I having basic management issues, but now the students felt the right to question my competancy. When they left a student shouted out, "You're getting fired!" And it was all I could do to remain calm and not burst into tears.

Not only did I have the observation, but I had to meet with both of them later that day. In the meeting one asked if I knew anything about teaching reading and said some other harsh things about parents potentially needing to call the superindendent of schools. It was hard to hear, but ended much better as we came up with an action plan to improve instruction. So Monday was pretty awful.

But Monday night I worked my butt off planning, and came in excited on Tuesday. I brought in artifacts from China to help students to connect to a story on Chinatown, I had a fun math activity, and I was determined to have a better week. My lessons went well, and I felt great. But then I had a student write a threatening note about wanting to be a murderer...which nearly ended in a fight.

Wednesday, while I was tutoring a student after school, the student found a small, yellow plastic bag on the ledge of another student's desk. It was about one inch by one inch and had no other purpose than to hold drugs. After she found that, I looked in the students desk and discovered another bag, this one holding white residue and a few small rock-looking things. I brought it down to our dean of discipline who said it was probably residue from crack. He called the parent, and 15 minutes later the child was at school with the grandparent. The students denied everything and said it was planted on him. A conference with the parent was schedule for the next day.

Thursday, in the morning the dean of discipline was having conferences with both the "small plastic bag" student and the "murder note" student. Meanwhile I was being observed by my university supervisor (from my grad school). The morning wasn't perfect, but we had a decent vocabulary lesson. I met with my supervisor later and she said I had improved a lot from the beginning of the year and was making improvements. Yay!!

But later in the day, both the students who had met with the dean were sent back to my classroom. They decided that the "crack" was actually chalk (like writing on the board chalk) and he was given a two day suspension for lying and for having a look alike drug substance. But the suspension didn't start until the next day. The murder note student, who had tried to stab another student with a pair of scissors was sent back and said to only need personal counseling.

As you might expect, the afternoon turned somewhat disasterous. I was interupted while introducing a reading lesson when someone came to the door, which gave the murder note student and another student the chance to get into a brawl and made it difficult to have good lessons from there on out. Thursday ended up to be not the hottest day.

That's what I mean by rollercoaster--lots of ups and downs and up agains and down agains. In the course of the week, I was told I was both a horrible teacher and a wonderful teacher, I had a student threaten to murder another, another who brought what was either blackboard chalk or crack to school, and a number of smaller incidental issues thrown in along the way. There some great lessons and some bombs....and hopefully in there, a few teachable moments where they learned.

In upcoming posts: more about my school, for reals, and a little about "Ms. K."

Freestyling

Its been a while since the last post...I'm constantly thinking of post ideas, but then never feeling like I have time to write. So incidentally, when I have a paper due tomorrow and a bunch of lessons to plan, I find the time. Go figure.

Its been two weeks since we started school back up again. The first two weeks were GOLDEN. They were so quiet when they came back. Veteran teachers had said something about a difference after break, but I guess I didn't believe it--calming down after break? But it was true, my students entered and sat down in their seats and started doing their work without too much prodding. It was great--until today. Something clicked over the weekend and it was back to testing limits.

Some highlights from the last two weeks:
An Assembly--The first week back we had an assembly to kick off a tutoring program getting students reading for the ISATs (Big HUGE standardized test in March). They brought in a DJ from WGCI, one of Chicago's main R and B stations, a state congresswoman and some other influential people to speak. They played educational games, gave great talks about working hard in school, and then, had a freestyling contest. I remember assemblies being full of homemade constumes, celebrating a day from the "holiday of the month" club, or hearing my principal babble on. There was definately no freestyling going on. But here, they didn't even tell the kids why they were calling them up, they picked some students at random, gave them a topic, and they ran with it. Or at least most of them. A few of them reacted the way I would, take the microphone and put it as far from your mouth as possible and hope that if you were a persistent mumber, they'd leave you alone. But most were excited, and honestly, pretty good. It blew me away.

Paperclips- great documentary about how a small town learns about the Holocaust. Great movie and inspiring, especially if you're in education. A must see.

Okay folks, that's all for now....

I love my mom

For so many reasons...all of you who have met my mom would probably agree that she is a wonderful woman. But today, the reason I'm writing about her is a wonderful gift she gave me yesterday: organization.

Since I moved into my apartment in August, my room has been one chaotic, disorganized nightmare. I basically would just sleep there and spend as little time as possible in there. In the beginning I'd make it my goal every weekend to spend time cleaning it. But each time I would pretty much look at the mess, rearrange it, and then do my laundry. As you might expect, it just got worse and worse. Soon the goal got pushed off for various breaks and long weekends. Finally, when my roommate was out of town, I took to sleeping on the couch so I could avoid it and it became a WINTER BREAK goal.

Winter break came and started dwindling away. Everyday I'd look at the room but got so freaked out I couldn't start. So eventually, I called in the reserves: my mom. My mom is a great person to call on for help in this situation because she has overcome several organizational hurdles as one might find while raising six children. And, in the course of that she's read a number of organizational books and could share some best practices with me.

So, after an afternoon of "put it in a file folder" and "let's clean off that desk, you need some inspiration" my room is now pretty much under control. Its not quite a done deal, but its not the monster I was dealing with before. I'm now ready for the next items on the to do list: plan, plan, plan and grade, grade, grade.

Thanks mom for helping me out!

The Plunge

Okay, so I've been saying FOREVER, "I really should have/start/actually write in a blog" and today, sitting here with a pile of papers to grade and a to-do list miles long, I've decided that the time has come. I am now officially a "blogger."

The original idea for the blog was a "diary of a first year teacher" of sorts. Yes, I know, its a Completely and Entirely original idea for a blog (or a book or even a documentary). No one in the world has ever done anything like THAT. I think the cheesiness of that idea kept me from writing.

But now I'm realizing that A. It's really practical...people are always asking how its going. And B. it doesn't have to only be about teaching. I'm going through a re-evaluation of my life right now where I'm realizing that I care a lot about teaching, education, and my students, but I don't want that to define me.

So the blog--its called Teachable Moments because this summer when I was in teacher boot camp we talked alot about "teachable moments"--opportunites that randomly arise to give students/people an object lesson of sorts. I assumed that I'd be having a lot of these for myself and wanted to share them. That's been true. What I didn't realize is that these moments pop up about six times a minute...but that's another story for another posting. I'm going to post things that I encounter in teaching and just in life in general. There will be a lot of stories, some thoughts, maybe even questions. Feel free to read at your leisure, and pass the link along to friends, but I have to be honest, I LOVE COMMENTS. If something makes you smile or sparks your interest, please let me know. I love the dialogue.

That's enough for today. In upcoming entries: where I teach, what I teach, and other factoids about life.