If you look at a calender just right, the boxes stack together to look like a train track. A winding relentless train track that we are all slowly traveling along. There are no acceptable options for trying to jump off the tracks. This is really a good design because otherwise I would have jumped off of the tracks by now and fallen out of time. And I am a meddler, so having me wander through time would just end up with me messing up the future. As it is, I am pulled along the train track of the new year and look forward trying to see what is coming.
That might be why I didn't see 2009 coming. January and February have hit me like a train.
My classroom has melted down in the time since Christmas. Students are not invested, behind, not working, touchy, and looking to fight. Parents are exhausted and just waiting for their kids to get promoted to middle school where the teacher won't "bother" them so often. And the teacher, well, he is fighting himself, his kids, and his team. Convinced that all the parts of this train wreck need to be overhauled before it will actually be good for the kids.
The other night I was grading papers while watching House with my roommate Austin and one of the characters said, "You are unbelievably lucky to be certain that what you are doing is right." Austin and I talked about that for awhile and I realized that is part of my problems. I know that my mission is pure. I don't feel like what I am doing is right because I haven't managed to find my balance in my classroom. I am overtly negative most of the time. I set goals to be positive and then no one does their homework, or kids fight and yell at each other, or my lesson goes wrong, or something else happens and I am sucked back into that negative place. And it continues day after day. I revise my whole class trying to find ways to invest the kids and teach reading and show them that the reason I am doing all this work is that I care- despite acting like a crabby angry bear most of the time. This worked last year. It has only worked for like 5 kids this year. So I return to the same challenges day in and day out. Kids that fight are hardly punished, parents are unreachable, kids fall into predictable traps and I am hardly convinced that what I am doing is right. The mission is noble, the actuality is jarring.
This last week I started a new plan, that worked very well for 2.5 days. Which is a HUGE step in the right direction. It is a system of Positive Points. A discipline system based solely on rewarding kids who are doing what they are supposed to or being role models. There are no punishments. I give PP's when i catch students being good. Students can use the points to buy Friday afternoons after school with me- football, video games, movies, and fun science experiments are on the schedule. The students worked harder than before to get these points, and 1 small "Delia gets a positive point for standing right" gets far faster results from my class than a minute of yelling and taking conduct points from kids.
If my class gets a compliment from anyone in the school i add it to a chain and if the chain reaches the floor we get a class party. They got 7 this week! (7 times more than before)
However the week ended with my kids making fun of an ancillary teacher's accent, 3 fights, and a pencil being buried impressively deep in a boys arm.
Despite the post Christmas Melt Down, my life contains many of the same positive glimmers it always has. Some are even glimmering brighter than they usually do. But in the train wreck that has been the beginning of the year in my classroom, those moments look like broken glass shimmering in the remains of a sunrise train wreck; beautiful, but hard to hold onto.
Some glittering glass to remember:
I still have an amazing group of people that I live with.
I have been hired onto a new campus next year as a Reading/Writing Teacher! A brand new campus. It will only be a sixth grade. Here is a website explaining the campuses mission: http://www.yesprep.org/about/index.htm this interview process was exciting and thrilling. I am officially hired, I accept and am excited to go somewhere to be part of a team and have the feedback i need to improve my lesson planning so I can make the jump from good rookie teacher with a lot of intangibles that make him strong- to actual kick ass teacher.
I have started working out again and being more careful what I eat, and I am far away from my goal, but am making good progress.
A group of friends and I play tackle football every Sunday afternoon.
Some of the kids amaze me time and time again.
Calling home and hearing my family's voice.
Not having given up.
Keena's support and smile.
So, it is Sunday morning, time to pick up my rucksack and keep marching through the wreckage. There are lessons to plan, papers to grade, and football to play.
Sunday 22 February 2009
Friday 5 December 2008
The Song of the Hope-stronaut.
There's a Universe Somewhere
near here on the edges of my perception
like recollection's identical twin:
Things that almost are.
There's a universe of could be's
that float like stones,
shocking us,
daring us to stop believing
so they can go back to sinking.
So we will give up thinking
that there is more than this.
There's a Universe Somewhere
And it's not as far as it seems.
it just needs stronger dreams
cultivated with hard work
and the most important ingredient
of every universe- hope.
It's not as far as it seems
we just needs stronger dreams
_________________________________________
The possibility of actually liking this job evades me
intregues me,
enchants me,
and keeps me playing with the idea of getting
as addicted to teaching as I am to my other vices.
It is at least as hard on my body.
Almost hard enough that I feel the need to apologize to my grandchildren for the years that the job's stress and my bad choices are taking off my life:
Hopefully you can smile and believe that I made enough of a difference to be proud. That way you can cling to the same ego lifeboat I used all those years when teaching was more a labor of unrequited love and mistakes than a vocation, and let's both pray the world is using us in the best way it can. See you in heaven, take care of your beautiful grandmother.
near here on the edges of my perception
like recollection's identical twin:
Things that almost are.
There's a universe of could be's
that float like stones,
shocking us,
daring us to stop believing
so they can go back to sinking.
So we will give up thinking
that there is more than this.
There's a Universe Somewhere
And it's not as far as it seems.
it just needs stronger dreams
cultivated with hard work
and the most important ingredient
of every universe- hope.
It's not as far as it seems
we just needs stronger dreams
_________________________________________
The possibility of actually liking this job evades me
intregues me,
enchants me,
and keeps me playing with the idea of getting
as addicted to teaching as I am to my other vices.
It is at least as hard on my body.
Almost hard enough that I feel the need to apologize to my grandchildren for the years that the job's stress and my bad choices are taking off my life:
Hopefully you can smile and believe that I made enough of a difference to be proud. That way you can cling to the same ego lifeboat I used all those years when teaching was more a labor of unrequited love and mistakes than a vocation, and let's both pray the world is using us in the best way it can. See you in heaven, take care of your beautiful grandmother.
Thursday 20 November 2008
Ask and you shall recieve...
I found out I had a 500 dollar grant to spend in my classroom for bucking the trend and agreeing to stay for a third year in an inner city low income school. I was very excited- like the butterflies in my stomach had heard that the breadflies were coming over and things were really coming together... (sorry). So I looked up a product that I had seen a part of from Keena ( <3 ), and I was all excited to order it. Then the other shoe dropped.
It costs like 20,000 dollars. Bummer. Well, I wonder if I can order a part of it, and maybe the school knows a way to order just a chunk of it. So, I emailed my principal and asked if she knew anything about this product.
Oh, we have that in our closet. We ordered it last year when we were told by the district that we had $30,000 and we had to spend it in 2 weeks or we would lose it. We had heard some good things and we ordered it. I guess we forgot about it. Good thing you asked!
Neat.
This is both AMAZING for me, and a little depressing to see the weaknesses of bureaucracy.
However, I like this ask and you shall receive thing.
Does anyone have 1,000,000,000 frequent flier miles?
It costs like 20,000 dollars. Bummer. Well, I wonder if I can order a part of it, and maybe the school knows a way to order just a chunk of it. So, I emailed my principal and asked if she knew anything about this product.
Oh, we have that in our closet. We ordered it last year when we were told by the district that we had $30,000 and we had to spend it in 2 weeks or we would lose it. We had heard some good things and we ordered it. I guess we forgot about it. Good thing you asked!
Neat.
This is both AMAZING for me, and a little depressing to see the weaknesses of bureaucracy.
However, I like this ask and you shall receive thing.
Does anyone have 1,000,000,000 frequent flier miles?
Tuesday 18 November 2008
Perspective: a Synonym for Point of View
My class has needed so much more than I have been able to give so far this year. They are so far behind it hurts, and I have been so unable to instill the 11 year old mind with a sense of urgency that it hurts worse. My classroom has been full of fights, failed tests, insults, and ignored assignments. It has been hostile (a vocab word for my class) more often than not. I have never faced this much active apathy and aggression.
I was emptied so deeply by weeks of struggle I took Friday off. The struggle was winning a slow but definite fight; it was like watching a glacier slowly carve away the hope in my chest and the bounce in my step. So I took Friday off to get some work done, get some perspective, and maybe find a blow drier or blow torch to fight this glacier with. I had a great, productive weekend, working hard surrounded with love and inspiration, and then Monday morning I came in to school and the news that while I was gone the experienced 5th grade lab teacher was unable to control my class and even the principal seemed to only stalemate them in a 2 hour stare off. This broke me on my return. I don't know how to face this. But the hopelessness was also validated by the failure of others and made me feel like I was doing as well as anyone else in the area could be doing. This perspective was helpful to my ego, but also depressing. It hardly inspired me, rather coated my gut like motor oil with a killing sense that this is the battle that hasn't been won. This is the achievement gap. If a little hard work could fix it, it wouldn't exist.
Then today I had a parent conference. And as I stared into the tired eyes of this single working mother of four and she told me in a slow voice that dragged itself blearily out of her throat: she is doing "the best she knows how" on her kids, and it has not gone great. I could see in her eyes that she had been over stretched for 18 years and was trudging forward with hardly a hint of hope, but with an inspiring sense of obligation and in this tired voice came a new perspective for me.
Even the worst year lasts only a year, and these kids are living in houses that give them everything they have. Who am I not to do the same? Parents, like teachers, are only as good as they know how to be. Teachers, though, get to take weekends and evenings and recharge with those they Love. So, broken or not, winning or not, it is time to force joy until it is real. (Which might be like squeezing a rock until orange juice comes out... but when I figure that out, it sounds like one hell of a party trick (and adds a whole new meaning to a screwdriver on the rocks...))(sorry).
If I am modeling to the kids what life is like; if I am an example of what life can be: young, employed in the job of my choice, and chasing dreams; if choice makes me seem tired and miserable- how am I supposed to get my kids to follow this piper's song of "work hard, get smart"?
I don't have answers yet, but I do have a warning: Watch out, this change is coming like a glacier. When we are done we will have moved mountains. And, I can't care if I only move the first hill in the range for each kid. That is one less hill for them to climb on their own
Final Question: How does one become a permanent place of solace to kids who need it, but who don't realize they do?
Answer: Slowly- I am doing the best I can. Come back at 7:15 tomorrow morning for tutorials and we will try again. This time slightly better.
I was emptied so deeply by weeks of struggle I took Friday off. The struggle was winning a slow but definite fight; it was like watching a glacier slowly carve away the hope in my chest and the bounce in my step. So I took Friday off to get some work done, get some perspective, and maybe find a blow drier or blow torch to fight this glacier with. I had a great, productive weekend, working hard surrounded with love and inspiration, and then Monday morning I came in to school and the news that while I was gone the experienced 5th grade lab teacher was unable to control my class and even the principal seemed to only stalemate them in a 2 hour stare off. This broke me on my return. I don't know how to face this. But the hopelessness was also validated by the failure of others and made me feel like I was doing as well as anyone else in the area could be doing. This perspective was helpful to my ego, but also depressing. It hardly inspired me, rather coated my gut like motor oil with a killing sense that this is the battle that hasn't been won. This is the achievement gap. If a little hard work could fix it, it wouldn't exist.
Then today I had a parent conference. And as I stared into the tired eyes of this single working mother of four and she told me in a slow voice that dragged itself blearily out of her throat: she is doing "the best she knows how" on her kids, and it has not gone great. I could see in her eyes that she had been over stretched for 18 years and was trudging forward with hardly a hint of hope, but with an inspiring sense of obligation and in this tired voice came a new perspective for me.
Even the worst year lasts only a year, and these kids are living in houses that give them everything they have. Who am I not to do the same? Parents, like teachers, are only as good as they know how to be. Teachers, though, get to take weekends and evenings and recharge with those they Love. So, broken or not, winning or not, it is time to force joy until it is real. (Which might be like squeezing a rock until orange juice comes out... but when I figure that out, it sounds like one hell of a party trick (and adds a whole new meaning to a screwdriver on the rocks...))(sorry).
If I am modeling to the kids what life is like; if I am an example of what life can be: young, employed in the job of my choice, and chasing dreams; if choice makes me seem tired and miserable- how am I supposed to get my kids to follow this piper's song of "work hard, get smart"?
I don't have answers yet, but I do have a warning: Watch out, this change is coming like a glacier. When we are done we will have moved mountains. And, I can't care if I only move the first hill in the range for each kid. That is one less hill for them to climb on their own
Final Question: How does one become a permanent place of solace to kids who need it, but who don't realize they do?
Answer: Slowly- I am doing the best I can. Come back at 7:15 tomorrow morning for tutorials and we will try again. This time slightly better.
Sunday 9 November 2008
The Future:
Two years from now I want to start the legwork on starting my own school.
I think I know the talented people to start something that isn't offered anywhere else. Now I just have to develop the vision, find the money, and get people on board.
That is easy right?
I think I know the talented people to start something that isn't offered anywhere else. Now I just have to develop the vision, find the money, and get people on board.
That is easy right?
Saturday 18 October 2008
TGIAM
Thank God It's Almost Monday :)
I have a new team member this year. Another brain to pick, cry to rally around, and shoulder to lean against. She teaches my students Math, and respect. I teach her students reading, and sarcasm. She teaches me tricks of the trade from an efficient, caring and confrontational viewpoint. I teach her that puppy like energy and quasi-competence can seem ALMOST like a strength when it refuses to quit.
She told me early in the year that I need to toughen up most of the time. I nodded. Because I couldn't bring myself to say that I wasn't consistent enough to be strict- because I wasn't sure what they were to look like when they were behaving. How could I expect the to behave when I really wasn't sure what that looked like?! Was it silently working at their desks all the time? That didn't seem to capture the beauty and power of being 11. Was it to be reading all the time? How could I expect that if they weren't able to read? Was it to learn from all the mistakes I have made, feel the caring pouring from my tired eyes and dorky jokes, and then just behave? Well, yes- that is what I wanted but I didn't have a vision.
She continued on as she saw my nod and told me that the most important moment of the week was Friday afternoon. You needed to show your kids that you loved them right before they left. You could be strict, harsh, biting, and driving all week; As long as on Friday you let them see the side of you that speaks a language of Love that they understand. They will return on Monday, tired and drudging, but relieved to have a structure and a second family- and somewhere primal and deep inside excited to be able to become better than they have ever been: Stronger, Faster, Smarter.
This is harder than it looks. The kids can smell the weekend like Sharks smell blood- if it is within a mile of where they are they start priming up for going berserk, and are already transforming during the last hour of the day. This does not make it easy for me to show my love with anything other than tired yelling and frowns trying to contain the avalanche of energy that is pushing on the classroom door.
Except yesterday. Yesterday, we achieved it. We learned until there were 20 minutes left, then they packed up, we shared a read aloud, and then as we walked outside we talked and made plans for tutorials, extra learning, and next week. These conversations switched easily to talks of video games, cute boys, annoying girls (note- when puberty hits the respective genders). Then as we stood by the tree waiting for parents, grandparents, girl friends, and older brothers I had two conversations with mothers and we all left the week ready to come back to our school family on Monday.
Once I am good at this regularly, I don't even think the long hours will bother me. But for now, it is Saturday morning, I am outside planning at a coffee shop because I finally know what my classroom needs to look like, and I know why it needs to look like that: Because I really do Love these kids. And despite the fact that they aren't my last year kids, can't seem to believe that this is the most important year of their life so far, do way less work than they should, and talk more than is reasonable even by my Dolezal standards. I finally know where we need to go, and I am going to show them with baby steps until everyone of them is learning and understanding that learning should drive their every waking moment. NOT be something they are forced to 8 hours a day because they have to.
First, we will learn to walk together-
then they will discover
that their brains are actually wings
And some of them will believe.
By May look to the sky
to find my kids
because they are
hope for the future
and that's the only place to look
for such things.
Hope
holds us aloft like wax,
and we must believe that
all children can fly
or they shall miss their course
and we will melt their wings
with apathy
and the world will keep spinning
as they sink into the waves
unseen.
I have a new team member this year. Another brain to pick, cry to rally around, and shoulder to lean against. She teaches my students Math, and respect. I teach her students reading, and sarcasm. She teaches me tricks of the trade from an efficient, caring and confrontational viewpoint. I teach her that puppy like energy and quasi-competence can seem ALMOST like a strength when it refuses to quit.
She told me early in the year that I need to toughen up most of the time. I nodded. Because I couldn't bring myself to say that I wasn't consistent enough to be strict- because I wasn't sure what they were to look like when they were behaving. How could I expect the to behave when I really wasn't sure what that looked like?! Was it silently working at their desks all the time? That didn't seem to capture the beauty and power of being 11. Was it to be reading all the time? How could I expect that if they weren't able to read? Was it to learn from all the mistakes I have made, feel the caring pouring from my tired eyes and dorky jokes, and then just behave? Well, yes- that is what I wanted but I didn't have a vision.
She continued on as she saw my nod and told me that the most important moment of the week was Friday afternoon. You needed to show your kids that you loved them right before they left. You could be strict, harsh, biting, and driving all week; As long as on Friday you let them see the side of you that speaks a language of Love that they understand. They will return on Monday, tired and drudging, but relieved to have a structure and a second family- and somewhere primal and deep inside excited to be able to become better than they have ever been: Stronger, Faster, Smarter.
This is harder than it looks. The kids can smell the weekend like Sharks smell blood- if it is within a mile of where they are they start priming up for going berserk, and are already transforming during the last hour of the day. This does not make it easy for me to show my love with anything other than tired yelling and frowns trying to contain the avalanche of energy that is pushing on the classroom door.
Except yesterday. Yesterday, we achieved it. We learned until there were 20 minutes left, then they packed up, we shared a read aloud, and then as we walked outside we talked and made plans for tutorials, extra learning, and next week. These conversations switched easily to talks of video games, cute boys, annoying girls (note- when puberty hits the respective genders). Then as we stood by the tree waiting for parents, grandparents, girl friends, and older brothers I had two conversations with mothers and we all left the week ready to come back to our school family on Monday.
Once I am good at this regularly, I don't even think the long hours will bother me. But for now, it is Saturday morning, I am outside planning at a coffee shop because I finally know what my classroom needs to look like, and I know why it needs to look like that: Because I really do Love these kids. And despite the fact that they aren't my last year kids, can't seem to believe that this is the most important year of their life so far, do way less work than they should, and talk more than is reasonable even by my Dolezal standards. I finally know where we need to go, and I am going to show them with baby steps until everyone of them is learning and understanding that learning should drive their every waking moment. NOT be something they are forced to 8 hours a day because they have to.
First, we will learn to walk together-
then they will discover
that their brains are actually wings
And some of them will believe.
By May look to the sky
to find my kids
because they are
hope for the future
and that's the only place to look
for such things.
Hope
holds us aloft like wax,
and we must believe that
all children can fly
or they shall miss their course
and we will melt their wings
with apathy
and the world will keep spinning
as they sink into the waves
unseen.
Wednesday 15 October 2008
Finally willing to open his eyes and run:
There are two kinds of darkness:
Sometimes darkness is suffocating.
Because each thing we can’t see
We can’t count as a friend
And the world seems a lot smaller
When one can’t see the dangers.
The infinite space
Of loneliness crushes the air out
from forced smiles in gasps.
Finally my smiles are coming slightly less forces. After an oppressively disappointing start to the school year: 7 weeks of school, 1 hurricane, 2 new starts, 4 restructurings of my classroom, 12 special need students which I have no idea to need, 6 two time retainees, and far too many personal mistakes to count- I am starting to finally have a vision for my classroom.
Just stepping into the light from a rough start to the year- keeping my chin up, reading great books (Everything and Anything by Jerry Spinnelli). I thought the second year would be easier: I never thought I would ever say that I miss the first year of teaching. And I am sure that if I could time travel and the one-year-ago me was standing right next to me, he would punch me in the nose.
But, I am finally making positive gains from my first year. I can finally see the obstacles between my kids and their success. Maybe my smile won't be so forced anymore. Bring on the dawn!
Sometimes darkness is suffocating.
Because each thing we can’t see
We can’t count as a friend
And the world seems a lot smaller
When one can’t see the dangers.
The infinite space
Of loneliness crushes the air out
from forced smiles in gasps.
Finally my smiles are coming slightly less forces. After an oppressively disappointing start to the school year: 7 weeks of school, 1 hurricane, 2 new starts, 4 restructurings of my classroom, 12 special need students which I have no idea to need, 6 two time retainees, and far too many personal mistakes to count- I am starting to finally have a vision for my classroom.
Just stepping into the light from a rough start to the year- keeping my chin up, reading great books (Everything and Anything by Jerry Spinnelli). I thought the second year would be easier: I never thought I would ever say that I miss the first year of teaching. And I am sure that if I could time travel and the one-year-ago me was standing right next to me, he would punch me in the nose.
But, I am finally making positive gains from my first year. I can finally see the obstacles between my kids and their success. Maybe my smile won't be so forced anymore. Bring on the dawn!
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