elise's blog

Final MTC Reflection

To borrow a theme from T.S. Eliot, this Mississippi life has been measured out in Gchat conversations and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My day-to-day existence here has been so overwhelming at times that it seems silly to come up with one blog post to tie it all together. In that sense, I’m ambivalent about the idea of a final summative reflection—and not just because with one day before my kids take the state test I feel both that I have better things to do and that I deserve a break. If the purpose of this blog post is to give some final closure, I’m not going to be very good at it. This blog probably won’t meet the requirements of a good summary according to the state Department of Education, either (which my kids would tell you include being an accurate restatement of the main ideas of the original text in order).

 

I remember almost nothing from the first days of school. Certainly very little after the first two hours of holding in the gym; I do have a vague memory of meeting my first block that day, but after that, my first real memory of school is from about October of that fall. Otherwise, most of my memories come from small moments of hilarity or stress in the classroom, not necessarily the day-to-day feelings I had about myself as a teacher. Recently, in a data meeting, my principal asked me how these kids, and this year, compare to last year, and I honestly told her that I had no idea—I didn’t remember anything before last spring.

 

What I do remember was very up and down. Looking over emails and chats and recollecting phone conversations I had with my friends from outside MTC, I recall how unprepared I was to deal with the emotions that come with teaching in a critical-needs school. Maybe that is one area MTC could do a better job with preparing us for; maybe not.

 

This year, I remember more. And what I do remember, I’m mostly satisfied with. I have become more me in my classroom. When I was a freshman counselor as a senior, my college dean told me that he didn’t expect us to be different versions of ourselves; he wanted us to be the biggest possible versions of ourselves. I struggled with that my first year. It took at least a semester for me to figure out what I liked and didn’t like in my own classroom, and really, I’m still figuring it out.

 

In my second year, my teaching also got a lot better. I’m not going to go into it—it’s mostly up on my portfolio anyway—but I tightened up a lot of procedures and got more consistent in how I talk about each objective, which made repetition and practice more effective. As much as they have been scaring me these last two days before the state test, I think my students are going to do well. I’m hoping they will do really well; I know they can. They did learn something this year.

 

And this is what I learned about myself over the course of my two years here (as cheesy as that is to say):

 

- Several of my students this year described me as patient. That was a first.

- I really don’t care about being cool. And that really is cool.

- I will probably always seek out jobs that drive me crazy. The hardest part about this job is that I still take it hard when something doesn’t go right, and I see my kids hurt as a result. On the other hand, it’s very energizing to be so invested in something. That part is addicting.

- I really am a morning person. I fade in the afternoon. I still don’t have a way to combat this other than caffeine.

- I love, love, love reading. I never realized how important a part of my life it was until I got to know kids for whom it isn’t at all. I had originally wanted to teach social studies; that would still be cool, but there’s nothing better than getting a kid to enjoy reading.

- There are some students for whom I would do pretty much anything within my power to help. It might not be all of them, but it has surprised me to know that I will cry over a 16-year-old boy—not if he curses me out in class, but if he is one of those kids that I had really invested time in only to see him get expelled for jumping into a brawl by the buses the afternoon of the state writing test. If there is any time I’ve ever felt like one of those inspiring movie teachers, it’s been the times that I have gone over to S’s house to tutor him in the five weeks since his expulsion. I might not be proud of everything I’ve done here, but I’m proud of that.

 

With the end of my two years in the program, I realize I’m okay with finishing MTC. At the beginning of my first year, a third-year I very much respected told me I would get to a point where I would be no longer interested in MTC. Coming off a summer of fun and friendship, I was skeptical; I see now what she meant, as while I’m certainly interested in seeing MTC-ers, and I still believe wholeheartedly in the worth and quality of the program, I’m just not interested in Oxford/blogs/class anymore.

 

But what has caused me to lose interest in the Oxford weekends and the whole MTC aspect of my being here was not so much any growing dislike or frustration with the Teacher Corps. Really, my experience has just become so much more about Jackson and my school than about MTC. I’m glad of this. It seems healthy—that it’s a sign that I have fully integrated myself into my school community (even if I still don’t have a big Jackson community outside teachers). In the end, this experience has ultimately been about me becoming a teacher, not an MTC teacher or a Northern teacher or whatever, but just good old-fashioned teaching and learning.

 

I think it’s fitting, then, for an English teacher to close by offering a favorite poem, and reflecting on its connection to my experience. I first heard this poem at the memorial service of a friend while I was in college, and I liked it then, but I didn’t quite get it then (this seems to be a theme in this blog; I promise I was not as naïve/dense before MTC as I am making myself sound). But when I rediscovered it—strangely enough, while looking up pictures of water buffalo for an assignment on The Things They Carried—I immediately recognized it as the best way to sum up the respect I feel for both my MTC colleagues and the simultaneous importance and everydayness of our job.

 

To Be of Use

Marge Piercy

 

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls. 

 

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again. 

 

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out. 

 

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil, 

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used. 

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

Join or don't join redux

Don’t join MTC because:

            Mississippi is very, very far away from your East Coast/West Coast/Midwest friends and family, and that will hurt you deeply at a time when you will already be hurting.

            You might gain weight/lose weight/develop a drinking problem/start listening to Justin Bieber to escape it all.

            Who wants to work at a job that many of us would, as Pete Nelson put it, rather get punched in the gut than go to on a daily basis?

            It’s really hard to plan what you think is a kick-ass lesson, and watch your kids rip it to shreds and laugh about it (it will happen, at least once). It’s even harder not to cry afterwards.

            You will fail. More than you succeed.

            Your friends will tell you that you’ve developed a martyr complex.

            You will feel guilty when you go to the gym, and you will feel guilty when you don’t go to the gym.

            More than once, you will grade your students’ tests and think, Am I sure that I am better than a sub?

 

Join MTC because:

            MTCers are the best. And the Super 8 really does have a super starter breakfast.

            It might not change your opinion of public education in America, depending on your current views, but it will sure give you a hell of a lot more credibility with teachers should you decide to voice those views in the future.

            There is really nothing more incredible than watching a child learn something new.

            You will learn to appreciate Southern rap, if you don’t already, and there are few songs better than “Wasted” at 6:50 am on a Tuesday.

            It is developmentally healthy to be reminded every once in a while that you actually have no idea what you’re doing.

            It is developmentally healthy to be reminded every once in a while that you are actually much better than you think (always a pleasant surprise).

            If you want to be a teacher, especially in a low-income school, there is no better on-the-job training, and there probably are very few alternate-route programs that offer the same level of support.

            The kids are amazing. Every day, you will be grateful that you met (at least one of) them. And once you stop hating your school, the bells, the early mornings, the grading, and the paperwork, you will love them. Or a few of them. And a few will love you, which, while maybe not the best reason of all, might help you get through the rest of it.

Quitting

            I don’t think I ever seriously considered quitting in my first year—mostly because I am too stubborn (and maybe arrogant) to admit that I can’t do something—but I think Gary Rubinstein’s question of why people quit is important. Looking at our year in MTC, only one person initially placed in a school through MTC did not make it through the year, and there was some pretty serious evidence that his was not the typical MTC experience, so it’s hard to generalize given my own (extremely limited) experience of the reasons behind quitting.

            My guess is that MTCers who quit are probably pretty similar to TFAers who quit. I used to think that TFAers were at a disadvantage in terms of classroom management, given what I had heard about their classroom management training, but the TFA teacher at my school is holding her own in that department, so who knows. In any case, the similarities the two groups face in classroom management probably dwarf any real distinctions. I mean, when it comes down to a kid cursing you out, I doubt it makes that big a difference if you were trained to use a consequence ladder or not. Given that classroom management seems to be the thing that all first-year teachers are obsessed with, I do think a big reason people from both camps quit is simply that they are worn down by what can often feel like a neverending battle to keep the kids on task and quiet.  Add the chaos of the typical first-year classroom to the general feelings of being overwhelmed, and you’ve got a great recipe for the kind of depression that leads people to quit.

            One area where the two programs do seem to differ is in the expectations of its teachers—you won’t really hear MTCers talking about closing the achievement gap, for example. We don’t focus a lot on data, and we are told repeatedly that we can only do so much. To the extent that that means we have lower expectations of ourselves, this might mean that there are fewer MTCers leaving simply because we feel we’re not doing a good enough job. I doubt too many quitters really fall into this category, though.

            In terms of what we could be doing to support those of us who are on the verge of quitting, I first want to point out that MTC has a pretty good track record in keeping attrition low. I do think that MTC could be doing more, of course; as my kids tell me, I always think something could be better. However, I’m not sure that’s possible given the constraints placed on the grad program by the School of Education. My suggestions would be to use the Oxford classes to do more intensive classroom management training and actual lesson planning (working by subject area on unit plans), but this has been brought up again and again, I know, and shot down every time. It is worth saying, though, that the TFA blogger is absolutely right in this:

        The graduate school classes had so little to do with what I actually needed help with that it         bordered on the absurd. It was a bit like you spent all day being slowly roasted over a flame         and then at night attended a class in which you learned about the chemical reactions that         caused fire. As it turns out, when your flesh is burning, you don’t really care how exactly the         fire was formed.

That’s not to say none of the classes were helpful or interesting; it’s just that when you’re driving 3 hours each way to them (HAVE CLASS IN JACKSON JUST ONCE!), it would be nice to get a little work done in the meantime.

            On a related note, it would be particularly nice to get the state-tested teachers together in each subject (perhaps along with teachers of feeder courses, such as English I or Transitions to Algebra) to work together to analyze data, come up with practice state test items, etc. This would have reduced a lot of the stress I felt last year (and feel this year) relating to state test preparation. The reality is that we are too busy to do much of this on her own, no matter how helpful it would be.

Portfolios

Honestly—sorry, Ben—I found that the majority of the portfolios are roughly the same in terms of quality. Maybe after spending several hours of the past few days analyzing patterns of correct answers on various practice state tests, I’ve completely lost my ability to discern greatness, but I really can’t tell the difference between the quality of the “winning” portfolio and the others most years. I guess I naturally gravitated toward the portfolios of the second-years I was closest to last year, so it could be that I was automatically more impressed by those portfolios.

 

With that said, while I feel that most of the written sections of the portfolios were pretty much the same, there were several differences in terms of graphics and layout that I found made a big difference in whether I actually wanted to go exploring on the site. Here is a roundup of those general layout characteristics of the portfolios I liked the best:

 

PHOTOS

            It sounds cliché, but photos and videos really do make a huge difference. I loved the various photo essays and videos. Videos of kids talking—there are a lot of videos of kids talking about the teacher’s management, teaching style, etc.—win major extra points. Loved Hayley Hill’s on this one. Especially the mini photo essays on last days and on Dustin.

 

CLEAN—BUT INTERESTING—ORGANIZATION

            I’ve had a teensy bit of experience in layout as a former college newspaper editor. I like dark fonts on light backgrounds and HATE white on black backgrounds. I like varied fonts, too, and interesting graphics. I’ve already talked about photos, but Angela Doyle’s portfolio really stands out from the others as an example of interesting layout. Jen Nelson also did a good job with this—dividing even individual pages into sections, and using those to convey meaning. Yay text features, Ms. Nelson!

 

THE NOT-TEACHER

I guess this isn’t a layout issue, really, but I also really liked portfolios that had something not at all related to teaching—photos of other friends, the Mississippi landscape; really anything NOT including kids. Example: Patrick Lasseter, Eleanor Mathis.

 

PROOFREADING (or lack thereof)

            I guess this is just the English teacher in me, but this kills me. For this reason alone, I am going to force myself to start this project ahead of time.

A typical day in the life

5:30 am – Alarm goes off.

5:35 am – Breakfast, make lunch if I didn’t the night before, shower. Curse myself for forgetting to lay out clothes the night before. Make bed (the key to happiness). Remember to put last night’s Netflix movie in the mailbox.

6:35 am – Out the door and on the way to work. Biggest difference from last year, other than a slightly longer commute: last year, I would never have listened to either of the two hip-hop radio stations in the morning because it stressed me out to hear music that reminded me of the kids. This year, I’ve developed kind of a fondness for it. Otherwise, I get back to my indie rock roots with a mix CD.

7:00 am – Arrive at school. I use the precious time before school to prepare my Promethean board presentation for the day or make copies. Last year, I was making copies every morning. This year, I’ve been better at prepping my resources and making copies beforehand, so mornings have been somewhat less stressful. Occasionally I’ll have a kid come for tutoring or detention around 7:30.

8:15ish am – Kids start coming in the door. And we’re off!

10:00 am on A-day/11:45 am on B-day: Planning period! Last year, I rarely did work during my planning period because I was too exhausted or stressed. This year, I’m a little more productive; I try to knock out a little grading or a few parent phone calls during this time. I also visit with a few other teachers to get ideas or just hang out.

3:45 pm – End of the day. During soccer season, I may have a practice or game; generally, I’m at school until at least 4:30 just catching up on email, parent phone calls, etc. If I have a student for tutoring or make-up work, I’ll usually be at the building until 5:30 or 5:45.

6:15 pm – Home! Occasionally I will go to the gym. I make dinner (although I’ve been slacking in that department as I’ve gotten more exhausted toward the end of the term). If I have to plan and prep, that generally takes the rest of the evening, although as a second-year, I would say that about 60 percent of my materials are old. This makes it a lot easier to prep lessons, so I’ve been spending less time on that. If I have to grade tests or folders, I can do that in front of a movie.

8:30 pm – Make dinner and get ready for bed. I always, always, always read before bed. This was the biggest lifestyle change I put in place last year, and it worked wonders. I couldn’t sleep at the beginning of the year, but once I started reading before bed, I was fine. Last night I just finished Krakatoa: highly recommend.

Documentation strategies

A word of caution: if you aren’t a teacher, this is going to be a boring post.

 

Ah, documentation. Last year, my biggest documentation struggles came at the beginning of the year. I didn’t start the year with a system to document consequences. When I came into the program, I thought I would be able to rely on my memory to remember consequences given, etc. I was so wrong. I quickly realized this, and thought it would be a good idea to start writing stuff down. I started by just writing down a kid’s name and the consequence when I assigned one. This didn’t solve the problem either—it took way too much time to write down the kids’ names, and not having a standardized way/place to write consequences down meant I had my “documentation” all over random sticky notes. Not good. I’m naturally pretty disorganized and also very mobile in the classroom, so I had to come up with a system where I was always writing the same thing in the same place.

 

So I changed it up. This was probably about a month into the school year. This has been my system since then:

-       I make an Excel spreadsheet for each class period, and I print out one copy of the spreadsheet for each day. I keep the daily sheets organized by class period in a discipline binder that stays on my desk in the same place at all times, open to the current period (the kids figured out very quickly what this meant—they would get quiet as soon as I would walk over to my desk, where I normally never go during class).

-       Each spreadsheet has rows labeled with the student’s name, and columns for each consequence (warning, writing assignment, doubled writing assignment, detention, and referral).

-       Every time I give a consequence, I make a note in the appropriate column. For minor offenses, I have a code: T = talking, P = crumpling paper, S = sleeping, H = head down, O = passing objects, G = gum, F = food. For more serious offenses, I will usually make a more detailed note (for example: if a student curses, I write whatever he or she said, too).  If a student refuses to do work, I note it in the appropriate column, have them write out on a piece of paper that they refuse to do work, date and sign it, and then I staple it to that day’s sheet. If I am looking to build a case for a referral for a student who is constantly breaking minor rules, I also write down times.

-       One sheet per period per day means a lot of paper, which kills trees and costs money. Sure, this is not ideal. However, walking into a parent-teacher conference with a giant discipline documentation binder—and being able to open up to a section with a record of every student’s rule-breaking every single day of class is extraordinarily convincing for skeptical parents and administrators alike.

-       The other advantage of this system is that the column system allows for a visual representation of patterns in behavior. As you flip through the sheets, parents can quickly see that their kids are breaking rules much more frequently than other kids, and if it’s always a T for talking, they can clearly see why.

-       If a student earns a writing assignment, I put a sticky note on the sheet for the following class period to remind me to collect the writing assignment or note that the student has earned the next consequence. If they don’t have it, I mark an X in the double writing assignment or detention column. This helps me keep track of whether or not students are returning writing assignments.

 

This is the way I document normal classroom behavior. Last year, the binder was the only documentation system I had—the behavior sheets, and then the signed detention slips and referral forms that were at the back of the binder in chronological order. This worked well enough, because if I needed to I could refer to those sections to pull out individual referral forms.

 

But this year, I decided the best way for me to be more on top of documentation would be to keep individual files on each student. I put several things in a student’s individual file. If a student earns a detention or a referral, I make copies of the signed detention slip or referral and stick the copies in the file. I keep all parent contact info in the file. I keep all completed writing assignments in the files.

 

I also decided this summer that I shouldn’t limit my documentation to just keeping track of consequences. I wanted to do a better job of tracking my students’ performance on individual objectives for the state test; I’m hoping this will help me target particular students or particular objectives. I decided I wanted to do it in a way that would get parents and students involved. So after each test I’m sending home a form with each student that lists their overall score on the test, the different objectives tested, the subscores on each objective, the number of writing assignments and detentions earned in that two-week period, and what they were for (we test every two weeks). The kids have to have a parent sign the form and bring it back for homework. This is literally working WONDERS. In the two weeks since I sent home the forms, I’ve had 15 kids come to me for tutorial before or after school—and I didn’t get those kinds of numbers in tutorial until a month before the state test last year! I even had parents call me to set up tutorials just because of the objective mastery reports. It’s been amazing. A copy of the student’s report goes in their file, so I have access to it at any time if I want to check on a student’s performance or show it to a parent or administrator in a conference. I have the kids sign for the reports so I can document that they received it in class and knew they were supposed to bring it home; it was also in my syllabus that parents should expect the reports and contact me if they do not receive them. This means that if a student continually performs at a failing level on tests, I will have more than enough documentation to require tutorial or fail the student.

 

Letter to the second-years

Dear second-years,

How amazing it is that it’s already been almost eleven months (and how amazing that it’s only been eleven months!) since Sara Rowley sat down next to me on the summer-school bus and asked me if my hair naturally flipped out like that.

What a year.

And through the ups and downs—of which, you know all too well, there were many; particularly of the latter variety—you were there. There, speaking with the grave knowingness that only a 23-year-old second-year teacher possesses. Yes, you promised, it will get better. After it gets worse, of course—said with the cheerful resignation of someone who has gone through endless holding days, lunch-period disasters, failed lessons, grading piles, and student meltdowns. And the occasional teacher meltdown.

It’s funny how wise you seemed from that very first day—not old, really, but certainly experienced. I was intimidated by your easy familiarity with one another and awestruck by your mastery of this mysterious art called teaching. Then I hung out with you and realized you were actually just awesome, goofy kids. And I heard you laugh that everyone looks good teaching summer school--just wait 'til you get the real stuff in August! You were right, as always, and your success this year as second-years has given me hope on even the worst February day that I, too, will make it through these two years.

We all know how hard it can be in this job to know if we are making a difference. Our administrations may not tell us; our kids certainly don’t; we’ve written whole blog posts (required) on how no one is really sure what a good teacher looks like anyway.

But please, know this, too—that you have attempted something worthwhile and noble, even if your day-to-day existence felt more like Karl’s parody of Taylor Mali than the real thing. Know that, if 90 percent of success is showing up, well, that’s a damn good grade in my class. And really, all of the complaining and self-deprecation aside, can you really not think of one kid who will remember your name in ten years? Or if not your name, your way to memorize the quadratic formula? Or how funny it was every time you said, “That’s your warning”?

At the very least, you can say one thing (the one thing all first-years envy you at this moment): you’re done. (Or you WILL be done soon. So happy you will be staying with us a little while longer, T.) Go on, brush your shoulders off.

Colleagues, friends, mentors, partners-in-crime: it was weird to have you gone from the Super 8; it will be even weirder to have you absent at karaoke in Oxford this summer. We will pour out a deceptively strong margarita in your honor our first Thursday back.

As Garrison Keillor says: be well, do good work, keep in touch.

Elise

A small, good thing

Today I was giving a random kid a hard time in the hallway for having his shirt untucked when, all of a sudden, his friend--also a kid I don't have, in a school of 1300 students--goes, "Hey, ain't you that teacher who fought that bear?"

Why, yes.

The ultimate join vs. don't join showdown

Days When I Feel Good (or for inspiration at 6 am on a Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday morning) vs. Days When This Job Kicks My Ass (or for when I want to whine).

Depends on the day.

The best reason to join MTC

Interesting article in the NYT about changing demographics in the South that have made this area the first in the U.S. to have a majority of students in public schools that are poor, and a majority that come from a minority background.

Best reason to join MTC, from the article:

The South, desperate for a well-educated work force that can attract economic development, will face an  enormous challenge in tackling on such a broad scale the lower achievement rates among poor and minority students, who score lower than average on tests and drop out more frequently than whites. Four of the 15 states in the report — Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — now have a majority of both low-income and minority pupils. Only one, Virginia, has neither.

“This is the beginning of a very clear trend that has enormous implications,” said Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. “When we realize that the majority of graduates of our schools in the long run are going to come from backgrounds with educational deprivation, it makes it imperative that schools be improved.”