Paradox

I sit at World Cafe working on my EdZapp application.  Filling out preferences–hmmm, Latin America or Eugene?  So many options it seems.  Yet, without money to buy a plane ticket, I think I’ll stick around here for a couple of years.  Waitress again.  Substitute teach.  Enjoy hiking this land for awhile.  Who knows. . . I’m excited to begin teaching.  Just this morning thinking of what my perfect job would be–who my students will be, what my classroom will look like once I put posters on the wall–like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Art.  Writer’s quotes to inspire.  Gorgeous photos of people and lands that open eyes to other worlds.

I feel ready.

So sad to leave my students on Thursday, my last day in the classroom.  I wasn’t prepared to be so emotional, so attached.  I’m grateful to return in the spring to teach poetry for a month.

So, Thursday night, I went into my cave of a room at 4pm and did not come out until noon the next day.  Just recovering.  Watched a video of me teaching, read the 80 evaluations I asked my students to fill out honestly.  They did, I think.  Great to have the feedback, a sense of closure as well.  I’m more traditional in style than I thought–which really gets me thinking.

My mentor teacher was ready to take over.  She allowed me to copy materials from her computer–so generous.  Gave me a gift certificate to Learning Palace so that I could get some materials for subbing.  So thoughtful.  It was time to leave.  I felt it.  She felt it. Turned in my keys, cleared my space.

This next week, I grade 80 essays.  Then, we MAT students march together to Pomp and Circumstance.  Is that the name of the tune?  So pompous!

Well done y’all!  We made it through this part.  Now, open doorways.  Choices.  New adventures.  I wish you all the best!  Let’s enjoy the process and never get stale.  Keep learning, keep fresh!

See ya on Friday when we wear ritual clothing, join the ranks of teachers around the world who have had to begin somewhere–we may revel in our challenges and recoveries, feel accomplished, and say farewell–fare the well.

Mariah

I enjoyed teaching immensely Monday thru Thursday.  Friday came and I didn’t sleep well the night before–my last observation sucked.   A guest teacher, Ms. AP English, kept interrupting my flow.  Offering good insight and connections, but I am not used to being interrupted.  Just so tired that I felt edgy and not “on”.  Whatever.  We teach when tired, we teach when frustrated, when happy, when sad.  We are human beings and though constancy would be my preferred mode of being, I allow myself a little room for these kinds of days.

I just wish that it wasn’t my last lesson taught.  my last observation–

Remind myself that we will live through so many textures, frustrations, joys.

On the positive side:  a student who I thought dropped out, a student that I went to the counselor about to seek support, came back to my class on Thursday.  I got to tell her in private on Friday that I missed her in class–that I was concerned and glad to see her again.  She smiled shyly and seemed touched.  Ya never know when words can form a bridge.  I had the feeling that she felt invisible.  i wanted her to know that I saw her and cared.

Amazing to have a free weekend to sleep in late, hike the Butte, read a book for pleasure, and hang with friends.

So, it’s obvious that I care for each student’s development.  I really have grown to love them.  I will miss these students.  There is a certain distance I maintain.  But, I believe they feel my authentic appreciation of them.

i try to keep my ego out of it all.  But, this week the librarian mispronounced my name and during work time, several students came up to her to correct her.  So sweet to witness.  They care because i care.

I overheard a couple of students discussing how much they miss the journals I initiated.

Now, I’m comfortable enough to relax and enjoy the silliness of middle schoolers.  That is a joy.

The ephemeral quality of teaching mirrors my experience as a choreographer.  I would spend months creating a work only to see it performed live and then dissipate into memory.  In a couple of weeks, I am certain that I will feel a similar loss.  The 80 students will be a memory; I will no longer be connected to them.  I step away, into my restaurant serving position again, into my new life of substitute teaching, and they continue separately.  I must release them to their lives of education.  I must let go.

As an artist working with the most ephemeral art form–dance, and as a person who has moved through many lives already, I feel the loss with a sense of reverance and beauty.  I understand that this all takes place for just a brief moment of our lives.  So, we must be present enough to enjoy the experience while it all lasts.  I will do my work, create the dance, and then release.  Wait for the new work to emerge.

When I visited Texas a couple of years ago to visit family, I heard this from veteran teachers:  “You don’t fatten a pig by weighin’ it.”  It seems in-line with the great Molly Ivins’ tradition of witty Texan commentary.  As much as I don’t get into the Texas trucks with guns, belt buckles, and culture overall, I appreciate some Texan wit which Ivins embodied.   I appreciate this comment on testing in public education.

This week, I had the great pleasure of proctoring the second week of reading tests since school started.  The kids are good sports. . . really quite attached to their performance.  I just did my duty.  Interesting.

Before this week, I felt that all this testing seemed ridiculous.  I didn’t like how test scores have been tied to funding without regard to demographics and SES.  I feel like it has been an oversimplification of educational “product” without regard to power and privilege, support and funding.  In any case, this week I had parent conferences, and I must say, it was helpful to have cold hard numbers to share. Yet, I feel that the essays that I copied off from their “School Experience” writes were more comprehensive.

Mixed feelings now.  I looked over reading scores and interpreted for some students.  For example, this one kid who cannot verbalize well or write well, scored high on reading comprehension.  It is possible that I would have thought that he was not capable of grade-level tasks.  After seeing the reading comp. scores, I thought maybe there was a hearing issue.  I intuited that he may not have had good hearing during developing years because his speech patterns are so bizarre.  I shared this insight with my mentor teacher.

During parent conferences, I brought this issue up.  His parents confirmed my intuition–telling me that he couldn’t hear for the first two years of life.  So, reading tests can tell us things.  And, intuition can as well.

Interesting political field that we play in as educators!

Parent conferences were so much fun for me.  I love meeting the people in my students’ lives.  It is the sociologist in me that loves it so.  Some parents freak out about one “F” assignment though the kid gets an A+ in the class.  Weird school that I am working at right now.  So type “A” –business class.   I feel like I impressed my mentor teacher because so many insights and teaching moments I tend to keep to myself.  She realized, I think, that I process a lot of information about 80 kids–and I do so in a deep way.  It was nice to be able to share my understandings with at least 25 of the students.

I also thought of how my mother never came to parent night because she was working, or intimidated.

How impressive that one of my students has only been in this country for two years and I would never have guessed that she is an ELL student.  Amazing.

Essays on Schooling: Monday, each class completed a survey, wrote essays on their experiences of school, and shared some ideas in discussion.

The majority of students think:

1. School is “okay”
2. Social aspects of school are the most enjoyable
3. School helps you get into college to get a good job
4. School can be boring and they resent homework
5. “good” teachers make a difference
6. It can be fun to learn new things
7. Grades are more important than learning

“Clickers”–Today I used “clickers” for a quiz.  Amazing how exciting a quiz can be if you hand 30 kids something interactive.  For assessment purposes, it’s great to have instant feedback–to see what students “get” and “don’t get”.  You can easily print the scores out for each class.

I enjoyed using them.  More importantly, the students enjoyed using them.

Consistency. I want to be consistent in my mood and in my practice.  It is important that when practicing discipline, I am consistent.  Right now, I am so inconsistent with that aspect of teaching still. I encourage liveliness and freshness of thought.  I want the kids to feel natural and not machine-like.  Yet, they don’t know how to come back to attention because I am not clear enough in the transitions.   I talk over them too much.  Need to practice silence.  I don’t like the bell that I brought in last week.  It’s just one I had laying around.  Doesn’t feel right.

Glad that I have 25 years to improve my practice!

“One must fight for a life of action, not reaction”.  –Rita Mae Brown

I saw this quote on the board while observing a 6th grade language arts class last Wednesday.  I wrote it down.  Little did I know that I would be thinking about it a week later in my graduate level class.

I just hate it when I am reactionary.   This Wednesday in LCIII, we discussed Britzman’s “Jamie”.  I could not discuss this case study from the cool intellectual lens of my peers;  I felt too close to Jamie.

Emotions–they tell us things.  I would like to be cool and disconnected.  But, I feel.  I think.  I love literature because it helps us understand ourselves better, our world better.  In this case, myself in the world of education.

I seek to be skillful– not react to emotions–to let them rise and fall like waves in the ocean.  We are teachers in an active sea.   We are role models with a responsibility to keep as calm and clear as possible.

So, I evaluate my own emotional reactivity for signs of truth and insight.  I think about what it means that I teach in a system that really supports middle class values and conformity.  I do not come from middle class values and ideas. Right now, I am just getting a feel for teaching on a basic level (which is still so complex).  In time, I will explore more of these issues of school values and the pressure to assimilate.

Of course, there are contradictions inherent in all of this and we feel them in ourselves.  When teaching critical thinking skills, students will seek differentiation.  In order to encourage civility, we teach socialization–much of socialization requires assimilation.  Unless, of course, you remain an outsider–which is difficult to maintain.  Artists do this quite well.  I want to teach, to engage, to be a part of the process of learning.  It’s exciting work.

Something else that I need to think about–my own level of satisfaction in teaching.  While planning for high school classes, I spent hours and hours researching, reading, thinking of connections with literature, history, art.  Literature with depth and richness appeals to me.  The cute animal stories?  Maybe I will end up teaching 5 years at middle school and then move to high school.  I suppose that for now, I don’t have the luxury of choosing my perfect placement–even if I knew what that would be.  I just need to begin somewhere.

Open questions.  As the poet, Rilke, expressed–

“Love the questions themselves. .  .and one day you will live your way into the answer.”

What is Expected of Us?: So, I feel this expectation that I am supposed to offer innovative lessons each week.  I feel as though I should be impressing someone.  I do not feel impressive or innovative at this point. 

Of course I wish to be innovative and inspiring.  Don’t we all?  I could be doing so much–I feel that I have many years ahead of me for designing curriculum that inspires.

Wanting to Save Them/Advocacy: It will be difficult for me to let students slide through the cracks.  I read a journal entry this week that exposed her feelings about school.  This student only shows up once a week.  She talks of dropping out.  She wants freedom and something meaningful (like TV).  I responded in writing.  Gave the journal to my mentor who forwarded it to the half-time, over-worked counselor.  I don’t have faith in this part of the system.  I want that student to get all that she needs right now–options, support, advocacy.  I want swift action.  I haven’t heard a word about this student all week.  I am concerned.  Who do we go to if the system fails at meeting her needs?

Figuring out my own rhythm: I want the students to write daily.  They journal.  They write formal essays once a week.  It takes me 8 hours to grade the essays.  I need quiet to grade them–which means before school and after school.  I found out that I cannot work well at home.  I need to work 10-12 hour days during the week so that home can be about relaxation.  Journals are fine to read at home on the weekends.  Oh, and then there is the work sample. . . a lovely relaxing Sunday!

Classroom management still remains an annoyance for me.  I have 7 weeks or so to find some way that works.  Today, with all of my extra money, I will go find a soothing bell of sorts to call them to attention.  Have a sound cue in collaboration with a discussion on Monday.  I think this might work for me.  I don’t like using my voice to quiet a room.  It feels forceful.

I realize that when something happens that is serious, I am quick and strong in responding.  I witnessed some bullying outside of my window recently.  I ran down the flight of stairs to the front of school so fast!  I quickly broke up the rows of 8th grade boys harassing a student with OCD.  I feel confident with anything serious.  It’s just the daily attention-getting that leaves me puzzled.  I’m working on it.

Highlights: Talked with a student about her work not being turned in–found out that she has read each night, but has no one at home to sign the required “bookmark”.  So glad that I discovered this with her.  We made a deal.  She caught up on bookmarks by writing a review of what she’s read.  Now, she no longer needs the parent signature for her work.  She had this mix of humiliation and shyness about the whole thing.

Much fun supervising the Halloween Dance.  The middle school kids can be wonderfully awkward, fresh, alive.  You should have seen them slow dance!  So tentative and uncomfortable.  Do you know that Michael Jackson’s Thriller is a big hit?  Somehow, this felt strangely comforting–something endures through the years.  So, I lapsed into memory with my first dance combination as a third grader. . . the whole monster moves, buried for so many years, surface when you least expect them.

Okay, I am editing this.

I love my work again.  I just finished reading journals from my third period class.  So creative, funny, human, open.  Some students grapple with really big ideas while others think only of football.  Such an interesting line of work–to encounter all of these human beings in the process of developing, of asking questions.

Teaching as a practice

First of all, I love weekend recovery time.  I am sitting in front of a wood fire that I built, and finally, am feeling relaxed.  Thursday and Friday were possibly my worst days of teaching yet.  But, I made it through.  Took my break at school to “walk the track”–code words for “me trying to get my head straight.”  It’s tough not having the skills that I know I will develop through years of teaching.    Teaching is a practice.

Of course I failed!  Most 7th grade students cannot think abstractly.

I was attempting to teach THEME to 7th graders.  At the same time, I thought they could get their ideas into a clear thesis statement.  Only about 3-4 students from each class could actually think in this “big idea” way.   I tried to scaffold and found that the “scaffolding” was made of sand–nothing solid to stand on.  Confusion and more confusion.  The students felt stupid and I felt ineffective.

I let them know on Friday how difficult “theme” is to state clearly.  It’s often something felt and not easily put into words (especially for a 7th grade brain).  Well, next time they encounter “theme”, it won’t be so foreign.

Don’t Tell.  Show.

In the future, I need to give students a lot of examples.  I am talking too much.  Words, words, words.  What if students don’t think well in words? I need very clear, specific examples.

Rearranging the Room.

Third period cannot stop making facing at each other and chatting in my favorite “U” shaped classroom.  The students voted to go back into classical rows so that they can focus.  My heart sank.  It was difficult for me to see my idea of a democratic, student-centered classroom shift.  The classical rows work for these students.

Need more time for preparation.

I find that I don’t have the time to teach in the way that I want.  I know that I am quite capable and will become a skillful and effective teacher.  I just need more time.  Difficult to be fluid and patient through this process.  I WANT TO BE A MASTER TEACHER NOW!  I am just beginning.

Highlight 1: Beginning journal writing.  I love the feeling now of students coming into the room and beginning the class with writing immediately.  We have a system in place.  They can respond to the prompt or free write.  Instead of battling for attention to begin class, now they have a ritual in place.   They write daily and encounter themselves on the page.  I’ll continue this practice no matter what level I end up teaching.

Challenge 1: Technology.  I couldn’t find a file I saved with a collage of photos of students working on the Magnetic Poetry Writing Project.  Then, I couldn’t set up the printer in the classroom to my computer.  Days go by and I struggle to figure this stuff out.  Finally, today I went to Kinko’s with my thumbdrive.  I couldn’t download the photos there either.  So, bought a disc.  Hopefully, tomorrow at Kinko’s I will get the photos printed, go to school, and finally create the board with their photos and poems.

Highlight 2: My mentor and I ate lunch at the school BBQ on Thursday afternoon.  A student of ours came to sit with us and chat.   In the halls and on the soccer field students now call out, “Hi Ms. Hyde!”.  I like this aspect of middle school–there is a sweetness and openness about the kids.

Challenge 2: Paperwork piles up!  As a language arts teacher, we must protect ourselves.  I mean, essays take a long time to grade.  I haven’t entered grades into my mentor teacher’s computer yet.  I want so much to be on top of things.  We’ve got to manage the paper load in a kind way.  Many students are falling behind in assignments and I have not yet talked with them.  This is my responsibility and I just haven’t had time to sift through the 80 students and find the ones who need a little chat.  I’m sure that we’ll all get better at managing all the tasks.

Highlight 3: A student who struggles to connect with her peers and seeks out attention from adults-she reads poetry to me daily–felt a moment of real recognition from classmates this week.  Friday I read to the class the poems and stories that I chose to post on the bulletin board.  Her poem impressed them.  They asked, “Who wrote that?”.  I read them anonymously.  But, she owned up to the poem when the students expressed how impressed they were with her work–”that is so good”. . . “read it again”. . .I read it again and the class listened intently.

Challenge 3: Keeping my energy up each day.  I’ve been trying to work out at the “Y” nightly.  Trying to eat well and sleep enough.  My goal is to maintain positive, clear, helpful energy daily.  This takes work.   My goal this week:  work out 3 nights, sleep at least 7 hours/night, manage the paper load wisely.

We finished the creative writing project this week.  The students had their poetry kits covering the blue lockers in the halls.  They actually played with language and some came up with really surprising poems and stories.  I took photos and will create a wall of their work with photos of all kids.  One student, an adopted, low-skilled kid got some extra help with the writing and felt proud about his work.  He expressed excitement about taking his poetry kit home with him.

I’m still struggling with discipline.  I’m learning.  The students need consequences for actions.  I need to see discipline in a new light–that it can help the students in the class learn.  It is an important part of the relationship.   I’m currently reading Love and Logic to help with this process.

This week, I was interrupted many times while reading Seedfolks aloud that I missed an opportunity for a meaningful discussion.  After many unworthy disruptions, I plowed through the reading even though some students laughed at the word “negro” in the story. A couple of the “disruptive” students who laughed at this point are minorities in a mostly white school, mostly white community.  I think they are “checking-out” partly because of this.  I will talk to my classes on Monday about “important disruptions” before I read the next chapters.

We could have discussed the history of “naming” people;  people “naming” themselves.  What does the word “negro” mean?  We could have discussed the history of naming/categorizing people.  Start with 1400’s and “negro” (black–from Spain/Portugal). . .In the U.S.:   “African” from 1600-1800 (tribal designations not allowed), “negro” and “colored”, the “New Negro”, then “black”, then “African American”. . . what is this language all about?  How about “Indian vs. Native American”? “Latino/Hispanic”?  Why do some groups decide to change the words used to describe them throughout history?  Why does the government require that we name our color?    Maybe that is all too much for 7th graders.  I will allow them to ask the questions, to lead the discussion.

Teaching can open doors to real discussions.   I was so frustrated by previous disruptions that I was not present or relaxed enough to stop class for a meaningful discussion.  Discipline helps to create a climate in the classroom which supports learning.   I want the kind of discipline that allows students to laugh in parts of a book that makes them feel uncomfortable.  I want the kind of discipline that creates an environment where we are all ready to learn together–even from disruptions.