Miss Bennett in the Bay

Today begins the best week yet of Institute: WEEK 5! This is the last Monday morning that I have to wake up here. Each day this week is a milestone for that reason- it’s the last one of its kind. I know I can survive this, however painful it might be.

Today was actually a relatively good day in terms of teaching. During math/lit hour, I read a book about Chinese New Year with my group. They really enjoyed the book and talking about how different Chinese culture is from ours. The best part was when they discovered that they were all born in the year of the Rabbit (1999). They walked around the rest of the day talking about that. (Side note: the fact that my students were born in the year that I was a freshman in high school makes me feel excessively old.)

I am lead teaching math this week, but I’m only teaching two days of it because we are giving the summative assessment on Tuesday and Wednesday, then teaching on Thursday, and celebrating on Friday. So I have 2 chances to get my kids to understand as much material in 33 minutes as possible. Today I was teaching division with arrays, which is using pictures to figure out how to group things as a scaffolding tool for division. I worked really hard on these overhead transparencies with problems that I’d have kids come up and solve. Unfortunately, the overhead projector died on me right at the beginning of my lesson. Well, guess I’ll have to write them on the board. Except that it takes forever and the longer your back is turned, the worse things go. So, I cut four of the problems from the lesson. Fortunately, all of my students understood the material regardless, but I was annoyed at the fact that I spent so much time preparing materials I couldn’t use.

The high point of my week, though, was the New York Times Sunday Magazine photo shoot that happened yesterday. They are putting TFA on the cover, and needed volunteers for the picture. Duh, of course I went. And I got selected because I was wearing a white shirt. Seriously. But, I don’t care. The concept was a little sketchy. They were trying to portray that there are a bunch of really different people who all do the same thing, so we were all wearing white shirts and sitting in very straight rows of desks and sitting very straight. Whatever, I and 37 of my colleagues will be on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine! Look for the article to be published in 2-3 weeks.

Tonight the weirdest thing happened- I actually have FREE TIME! We aren’t teaching lessons tomorrow, and while I can work on my lesson for Thursday, there is absolutely nothing that must get done before tomorrow morning. Honestly, I don’t know what to do with myself. I think I’ll sleep.

I’m 80% done with Institute. Only one more week of sleeping in a dorm bed, eating dorm food, waking up before the sun comes up, writing bad lesson plans, making bad posters, and carrying said posters to school on a tiny yellow school bus. One more week.

I realize that I have not posted as much this week. I think that is because, for many reasons, this week has been the toughest yet for me. I’ve heard a lot of other people saying that Week 4 was easier for them. I am jealous of them. I don’t know what they are doing that I am not doing, but I wish they would share their secrets with me.

I’ll start with the most important thing- my teaching. Ms. Lewis has stopped interrupting my lessons. Her feedback is still almost completely negative, and now she’s writing little passive-aggressive notes to me, but at least she’s not yelling at me in front of the kids. That’s all I wanted.

My lesson went really, really well on Monday. My CMA was observing me, the kids were on task, and I felt like they might have actually learned something. At least, they learned what the definition of “pioneer” is. And they enjoyed talking about people traveling in covered wagons. I walked out of the classroom feeling like I had hit a home run. And during my debrief, I felt validated by my CMA. He told me that he saw me doing a lot of stuff that I hadn’t previously been doing, and he was impressed at how much I had grown from the previous week. I left that debrief thinking, Beginning proficiency, here I come! (BP is the rubric score that we are all supposed to attain on the different rows on the Teaching as Leadership Rubric. Basically, if you’re beginning proficient in 80% or more of the rows, they consider you to be at least a mildly competent teacher.)

Things went downhill from there.

On Wednesday the kids were fighting with each other all day long, both verbally and then physically at recess, during my lead teaching time. TFA has taught us that when this kind of thing happens, we have to do something about it. I tend to agree, and since it was a whole class issue, after recess I brought the kids onto the carpet and we had a discussion about how our classroom culture was and how it needed to be. Basically, I said, “I don’t like how we are all fighting with each other…. We can’t learn like this, and people don’t feel safe…. If one person doesn’t feel safe, then nobody feels safe.” I don’t even really know what I said because I made it up on the spot. Then we shared out ideas for making things better, and S (a new student) came up with the idea of writing I’m sorry letters to each other. So that’s what we did. During the chat, a lot of the students were just snickering the entire time. And the I’m sorry letters either didn’t get written at all, because the kids thought they hadn’t done anything wrong, or, they asserted that they hadn’t done anything wrong.

So much for creating a safe and welcoming classroom.

On Wednesday night I hit the wall. I just couldn’t write the last two lesson plans of Institute. (We only have two instructional days next week.) I sat in front of my computer for hours, just staring at the screen. I’m teaching math next week, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. I have no resources for coming up with engaging ways of teaching division with arrays to second graders. I’m not even sure I know what an array is. I was so tired on Wednesday night that I could barely even stand up. Those two lesson plans were the worst ones that I’ve written at Institute, even worse than the first two I ever wrote. Seriously. I ended up staying up much later than necessary because I had to finish them.

On Thursday I was almost late for the bus. It was a scary feeling. And I was so tired that my teaching suffered. It was bad. That’s all I’m going to say about Thursday.

And then, Friday. You’d think that after such a hard week, I’d be really excited for Friday. But actually, Fridays are my worst days. It’s the end of the week and I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve lived through about three years of my life, and yet, there’s still one more week to go. (Actually, Institute probably did take about three years off of my life, so that’s not entirely inaccurate.) At the beginning of the day, I have difficulty comprehending the fact that I do still have one more week. And then, the bus breaks. For whatever reason, the door of the bus won’t close. Of course, we can’t drive on LA freeways with the door open, so we just hang out. The transportation people were amazing and got the Pre-K vans to come pick us up. Now, there are more people teaching at Grape Street than ride in the Pre-K vans at once, so we had to cram ourselves in there. I was sitting in the front seat with three other people. It’s only meant for two. Obviously, I survived, so don’t worry yourself.

That was actually the most fun ride to Grape that I’ve had. Mr. Coleman, our bus driver, normally listens to some pretty intense elevator music that puts us all to sleep. On the Pre-K van, Justin, our escort for the morning, cranked up the rap dance music and we had a dance party on the 405. We were almost late for school, but it was a great bonding experience.

In spite of the fun morning, the day still wasn’t all that great. My teaching was only mediocre at best, and I couldn’t even get feedback on it because no one else was in the room while I was teaching. Not even Ms. Lewis. Her disappearance is the newest thing that she’s doing. I’m not sure if she does it to anyone else in my collab, and why she leaves the room for large chunks of the day. Technically, it’s illegal for me to teach without her in the room. I haven’t figured out the best way to deal with this situation yet. I suppose I should talk to my CMA about it, but honestly I’m tired of being the girl who complains about her FA. (I’m also tired of being the girl whose FA picks on her, but that’s a different story.)

After my mediocre lesson, we have DCA (Diversity, Community, and Achievement). I know I’ve talked about DCA on here before. Last I spoke about this, I’d made the very conscious decision to never talk in DCA again, because I don’t feel safe doing so. That hasn’t changed, and now other people are starting to make that decision as well. Yesterday we did the privilege walk, which basically just shows you how your class or race affected your ability to get ahead (or not) in life. I still haven’t quite figured out how I feel about it. I was already very aware of where I would end up in the grand scheme of things, so I wasn’t uncomfortable with that. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t like it.

Then, we got our rubric scores. Remember from Monday that I thought I was going to be all (or almost all) BP. This was not the case. Some of my scores did indeed go up, but I’m not anywhere close to where I need or want to be. At the end of Week 3, I was at 15% BP. Now, at the end of Week 4, I’m 38% BP. The goal is 80%. Like I said, it did go up, but it’s still a failing percentage. I have a really difficult time believing that I will gain more than 40% in one week. Really, in one day, because the only true instructional day is Monday, and that day is probably what I will be assessed on. It’s discouraging.

And then, there’s the data from my kids. Last week we gave them the formative assessment. It is intended to show us how much the students have grown in the summer so far. Well, the results were not so good. I think about 3 of them had growth. The rest had 0% growth. Some of them even had negative growth, which means that they are losing knowledge as a result of having me as a teacher. I already talked to my CMA about it. I’m trying not to take the data personally.

The week wasn’t all bad. Last night, the Bay Area staff came to town and we had our regional meeting and social. I didn’t realize how much I missed them until I saw them again. The Bay Area staff is truly amazing. It’s obvious that they do care about us as individuals and not just as achievement-gap-closing robots. I found out that Julia is going to be my Program Director in the fall, which I am really excited about because we had already become friends at Induction and she is so amazing that I pretty much want to be her when I grow up. Then, the staff took us extreme (which we in Colorado call cosmic) bowling. It was really, really fun. I missed the Bay Area CMs so much. We danced to crazy music at the bowling alley and bowled the night away (until 10:30 that is.) I bowled a 130 my first game, which I was pretty proud of. Seeing the Bay Area staff and being with my colleagues really re-energized me about TFA and teaching in general. I am so looking forward to getting back to the Bay, putting the insanity of Institute behind me, and doing what I need to do to be a better teacher. It’s obvious that I’ve got a lot of work to do and I won’t accomplish what I want to accomplish for the summer. But I think, but a lot of work and support, I can accomplish what I want for my students in the Bay.

I think I speak for everyone here when I say the hell-hole that is Institute cannot be over soon enough. I am having difficulty comprehending the idea that I still have two more weeks of this. I am trying to stay positive, and tell myself that there are only two more weeks, but after yesterday it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain upbeat.

Yesterday was my worst at Institute so far. Not only do we have DCA and get our rubric scores on Fridays, but my FA yelled at me not once, but twice. I had spoken to my CMA about Ms. Lewis on Wednesday night, but we hadn’t done anything concrete about the problem yet. I was to talk to my collab members to see if she does it to them, and my CMA was going to try to make it into the classroom to observe. I don’t feel comfortable talking to my collab members about anything. One of them in particular is really mean to me; she’s always saying nasty comments and rolling her eyes. I think she’s insecure. I really don’t care. But she is the controlling one in the group and the other two people just go along with what she says. So, exposing my vulnerability of Ms. Lewis picking on me to them is less than desirable. And my CMA did observe on Thursday, but that was while we were taking the formative assessment so Ms. Lewis didn’t really have a chance to yell at me or interrupt anything so we were still waiting.

Then Friday rolled around. During math/lit hour I was attempting to teach my group a new way of blending that we learned on Thursday with our Literacy Specialist. Let me pause and explain the difference between phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonemic awareness (what I was teaching on Friday) is spoken only. There are no written words during phonemic awareness instruction. The students just need to listen to the sounds in the words and blend them together. Phonics, on the other hand, is written. It includes identifying written letters and the like. Blending is usually pretty boring for my second graders, but I am supposed to get them to be able to read multisyllabic words. I figured blending them would be a logical first step and I would go from there.

So, I’m just beginning my blending lesson on Friday morning. I’m teaching my students how to use the “arm method:” they stick out their left arm and tap down it with their right hand as they say the sounds in words. It’s not like using their arm has some sort of intrinsic value, it just makes it less boring for them. I’m sitting there with my group of four students and we’ve got our arms stuck out in the air. Ms. Lewis swoops down on us like a hawk swooping down on a helpless mouse.

Ms. L: What are you doing?
Me: Teaching blending…..
Ms. L: Why are you doing it that way?
Me: uh……………….
Ms L.: Who taught you how to do that?
Me: Our literacy specialist….
Ms. L: Stop teaching it that way!
Me (completely flabbergasted): Why?
Ms. L (actually yelling now): If you have them use their arm it takes away from the word on the board!
Me (now I’m thinking that she’s actually crazy, because a) there is no word on the board during my lesson and b) I’m teaching phonemic awareness, which doesn’t require words on the board anyway): but….
Ms. L: No! Stop teaching it immediately!
Me: Ok…..

And that was it. I got a cease and desist order from my crazy FA about blending. Right after this surreal conversation (which, you must remember, was in front of my students), Ms. Lewis left the room. She does this all the time. She’s there just long enough to yell at me during my lesson and then she leaves for like half an hour. I don’t know where she goes. Right after she left, my students were in shock. A was the first to speak.

A: She scares me.
Me: She scares me too.
A: She yells at me when I get the wrong answer.
Me: Yeah, she yells at me when I get the wrong answer too. But I will never yell at you when you get the wrong answer. I will help you figure out what is confusing to you. Remember (points to poster) It’s ok to be wrong, Learning makes us strong!

Yes, it’s corny. But the kids have apparently never had anyone tell them it’s ok to mess up and that they can learn from their mistakes. That just makes me sad.

After the cease and desist order from Ms. Lewis, our Literacy Specialist walked into the room to observe. She stayed until the end of math/lit hour, so I asked her if I could speak with her. I told her what happened, and she told me that I had been teaching the blending lesson right. She also was pleased that I was attempting to take what I had learned in session and put it directly into my lesson plans (yes- finally some validation!) Then she said I should talk to my CMA about Ms. Lewis because he would have more context about her. But, my LS did sympathize with me- she’s heard that Ms. Lewis is a “tough cookie.”

Tough cookie indeed.

The second time Ms. Lewis yelled at me was during my lead teaching lesson about point of view. I had put a lot of thought into this lesson, I spent a few minutes at the beginning investing the kids in it, and I was on a roll while I was teaching. The kids were responding to me with right answers and I was feeling pretty confident. What’s more, it was my best day so far this summer in terms of behavior. I was feeling really good about myself. Then, Ms. Lewis went for the kill.

Ms. L: You need to write the words on the board next time.
Me: Ok. (Continues with lesson.)
Ms. L: WRITE THE WORDS ON THE BOARD!
Me: Ok. (Interrupts entire lesson to write words on board)
Ms. L: (Gives me looks of death for rest of lesson)

Not only was that just plain rude, it interrupted the entire flow of my lesson. It brought my energy level down a notch and some of the kids started acting up. My assessment showed, for the most part, that they understood the material, but their investment at the end was waning.

After my lesson, I spoke with Ms. Lewis. My objective in this conversation was to simply get her to stop interrupting my lessons.
Me: I really appreciate the feedback that you give me, and I try to incorporate it into my lessons. But, I would really appreciate it if you could give it to me after the lesson is over.
Ms. L: You taught the lesson wrong.
Me: Yes, I understand that you feel that way, but it really interrupts me when you give me that feedback while I am trying to teach. I also feel that it makes the kids see me as less of a teacher when you interrupt me.
Ms. L: You don’t need to worry about that! You’re not teaching them after this anyway!

We went around and around in the conversation. I can’t remember everything that was said, but I know that at one point Ms. Lewis said, “I’m here for the kids.” I highly doubt that, since she just yells at them all the time, and I really wanted to ask her why she thought I was there. Her voice was dripping with malice, and the look on her face made it quite obvious that she thought I was not there for the kids. Whatever. She eventually said that she would “accommodate” me. As if I was making some kind of special, unreasonable request.

After this conversation, I calmly gathered up my things, walked to the auditorium, went into the corps member workroom, locked myself in the bathroom, and cried. I broke the cardinal rule: I took out my cell phone and called Scott.

I feel better today. I went out with my friends and they always make me feel better. I also emailed my CMA and asked him if we could meet so I can talk with him about this new development. I have an awful feeling that things with Ms. Lewis are only going to get worse, despite her claims that she will “accommodate” me. I want to have TFA on my side in case that happens.

This week (Week 4) the Bay Area staff is coming down to observe us and take us on an extreme bowling trip next Friday. I am really looking forward to seeing all of them again. I felt a lot better about Teach for America when I was in the Bay. The staff there is amazing and they do an awesome job making us all feel welcome. I can’t wait to see them again and feel re-energized about TFA.

Today I am officially more than halfway done with Institute. It has been a crazy emotional roller coaster, and today was no exception. Half the time I feel so incompetent that I think the kids would be better off with a monkey for their teacher, and the other half I think that at least what I’m giving these kids is better than what they would have gotten otherwise.

But today is a true milestone: I have tangible evidence that the kids appreciate my presence. The kids finished their friendly letters today, but some of the kids had finished yesterday. As an extension activity, I wrote them individualized letters and asked them to please write back to me. Only two of the kids actually did (while the other three did not finish their letters back to me.) Here is what they said (spelling and syntax are, as usual, intact):

Dear Ms. Bennett
How are you doing today Ms. Benntt. Ms. Benntt you gife us sum hord homework I stle duse it. Ms. Benntt you is the good teacher I like it ceep up the good work. I’m so in rest uf your riting. When I do math
Love R

Roughly translated as: How are you doing today, Ms. Bennett? Ms. Bennett, you give us some hard homework, but I still do it. Ms. Bennett, you are a good teacher. I like it. Keep up the good work. I’m so impressed with your writing. (When I do math? I have no idea).

The other letter is easier to translate. It reads:
Dear Ms. Bennett
I like the litter that you made me. I’m glad to have you as a teacher. I amer (I can’t decide if this is some conjugation of the spanish word amor, for to love, or if it’s supposed to be admire) you I hope you have a nice day. I hope you don’t have nothing to do for you cold set next to me in lunch.
Sincerly,
D your third grade thinker

In case you were wondering, I sat next to both of them at lunch. They loved it.

All the other kids completed their friendly letters. They at least understand the different parts of the letter now, though some of them needed prompting: I think you left something off of the end of your letter. “Oh, the closing and signature!”

I was still feeling pretty bummed out this afternoon though because my classroom management skills are not quite there. It’s not just me, it’s my entire collab, so I don’t feel that bad. So, I went to my curriculum specialist’s office hours tonight. Jonathan has such a calming and soothing voice, talking to him just makes me feel better. He gave me some awesome ideas that are easily implemented into my classroom tomorrow. I can now rest easy feeling at least mildly competent.

Today we had a code blue at school. Code blue means that the school goes on lockdown. There is some kind of nasty stuff happening in the surrounding neighborhood. So, wherever you are on campus, you go inside the nearest door, with whichever kids happen to be near you at the time, and shut the door behind you. You do not leave until they give the all clear.

I happened to be on my differentiated time, so I was in the corps member workroom adjacent to the cafeteria. There were no other corps members in there with me at that time, but I did get to chill with the cafeteria ladies.

We could hear the helicopter flying very low outside the window. The principal explained to us before that we will hear helicopters all the time, but when they get close enough the police will call the school and tell us to go on code blue. Evidently the kids don’t get freaked out about this, even though they all know what it means, but the adults start freaking out.

From where I was sitting in the corps member workroom, I could see the helicopter circling, not very far away. Police cars drove by every few minutes. The main gates of the school were all closed and locked, and I was behind windows with bars and a locked door.

Besides, I had the cafeteria ladies to save me.

The Code Blue began 15 minutes before the end of school. We were instructed not to dismiss our kids at noon as a result. However, as I think I’ve mentioned before, half of our kids are bussed from another school and at 12:30 must be on the bus to go back to their school. So, at 12:05, the announcement came over the PA system:

“Teachers, even though we have activity in our area, in the interest of time, we are modifying our code blue. So, you may notice activity in the area, but please line your kids up and bring them to lunch.”

“Activity”- just another euphamism that I need to get accustomed to.

I was freaking out. It was terrifying. I was so glad that I was not lead teaching at that moment because I don’t know what I would have done. Ms. Lewis would have had to take over.

Speaking of my FA, Ms. Lewis yelled at me today because I did not give the kids enough time to draft their letters. This is not my fault. The writing block only gets 37 minutes instead of the normal 40 to begin with, and then with transition time added in there plus kids not paying attention… you really only get 35 minutes, on a good day. I’ll tell you right now, 35 minutes is not enough time for second graders to do anything. They’d need 35 minutes for the entire work time, not the entire lesson. If I have to do an opening, intro to new material, and guided practice before the independent practice, like TFA tells me to, then the kids get a maximum of 20 minutes to work, even if I bust my butt to get through the other parts of the lesson. In addition to the timing issues, the Institute Student Achievement Toolkit gives me my objectives for each day. Even if my kids do not master my objectives, I am supposed to bulldoze through them by the end of the summer. So, my objectives are telling me that my kids should be done writing their letters by today, even if that is not feasible.

My conversation with Ms. Lewis went something like this:
Ms. L: They did not have enough time to finish their letters.
Me: My hope was that between yesterday and today they could finish.
Ms. L: They can’t copy their letters in that much time. You didn’t give them enough time.
Me: It is very difficult to complete these lessons in only 40 minutes….
Ms. L: I understand that they are giving you a calendar for the summer. But real teaching does not work like that. You need to tell them to build more drafting time into the lessons. It’s your responsibility to make sure they finish.
Me: Ok, I’ll relay that message.

And I will. But I seriously doubt that they will listen.

After lunch, we had our differentiated CMA sessions. We couldn’t get into our normal classroom, so we went into somebody else’s classroom for it instead. They started teaching us about SURFing… Silent Uninterrupted Reading Freedom. Then, our school director came in and apologized for interrupting us. She said that at Figueroa Elementary they had a water mane break and the CMs over there were coming to Grape, in like five minutes. She had a giant piece of paper and she explained that she had made a map for them… and she opened it up to reveal TFA Day! Totally Free Afternoon! We got back on the bus and came back to CSULB. They were giving free chair massages, which was amazing, and later they are having a bbq. I also took a nap. It was the greatest afternoon of my life.

I am officially 50% done with institute. Everything after this is less than what I have already experienced. I know that I can survive.

And 40% done with Institute. I have to keep reminding myself of these kinds of arbitrary milestones, otherwise I will never make it.

Many people have already not made it. It’s discouraging to see some of my friends from the Bay packing up their bags.

We’re exhausted, overworked, stressed, delirious, and yet, somehow, we do it. Last night I really didn’t know how I was still standing up and talking. Six of us from the Bay went to dinner and drank two bottles of wine. It was necessary. Then we had this amazing frozen yogurt that was like actual yogurt, not fake ice cream. Apparently it’s a California thing. But we came home at 10 and I slept for 11 hours. That is almost as much sleep as I’ve gotten all week.

Yesterday my lesson plan didn’t go very well. At least, I don’t think it went very well. My FA (faculty advisor) kept interrupting me to tell me to change things on the fly. Not very helpful considering I spent too many hours to count on that lesson plan. Afterwards, my FA did give me some helpful feedback. She told me that I need to be explicit in my instructions. I guess she didn’t realize that we had had a whole session on that on Thursday and that I thought I was being explicit in my instructions. She told me some other stuff that conflicts with what TFA tells me. Her definition of “guided practice” and TFA’s definition of “guided practice” are completely different. I don’t know how to resolve that one.

Yesterday we had Literacy hour. From our assessments, I was under the impression that the four kids in my group were reading on a second to third grade level. I picked a book for them that was at the highest rating for second grade. It was way too easy. So much for valid assessments of reading level. Or, so much for valid assessments of book level. Not sure which one is incorrect.

My kids from Math hour on Thursday loved the worksheet I brought for them. J said, “I thought we were going to get a hundred problems?” (I made no such promise. I’m not going to make up a hundred problems when I have to do a hundred lesson plans. The worksheet that I copied from a book had like 40 problems.) I told him if he got done and wanted to do more he could make up his own problems and try to stump the rest of us. That satisfied him.

Yesterday when I was teaching about synonyms and antonyms D was complaining that his head hurt. I told him to put his head down and keep paying attention. During the guided practice he was trying to tell me something but he was completely incomprehensible. I thought he was just complaining more about his head hurting. (The head hurting thing is a daily occurrence. I am not sure if it’s a ploy to get out of class or if he’s got some kind of illness or what.) I told him the lesson would be over in a few minutes and he could go get a drink of water after that. Then, he put his head back down. Next thing I know, his table mate raises his hand and says, “Miss Bennett, he’s crying.” I look over at D and see tear marks on his paper.

Me: D, what’s wrong, does your head still hurt?
D: No, Miss Bennett, I can’t see what is written on the board. My mom told me it is because I opened my eyes under the water in the pool and now I can’t see.
Me (suddenly realizing the cause of so many headaches): I understand why you are frustrated. In the future, if you can’t see, you can just bring your paper and pencil up onto the carpet during the lesson. You don’t have to raise your hand to ask. You can just move, ok?
D: Ok! Thanks, Miss Bennett.

Lord. Kids who can’t see because they opened their eyes under the water in the pool? Maybe his mom doesn’t know to take him to the eye doctor. Maybe she can’t afford to take him to the eye doctor. But if that kid doesn’t get glasses, he’ll probably continue to be left behind. I’m only teaching him for three more weeks. He’s really smart. He just can’t see the board.

I think some of the kids got my lesson on synonyms and antonyms. (They can’t, however, pronounce the word “synonym.”) We just ran out of time because my FA kept interrupting me. I don’t understand why she does that. I’m never going to learn how to be a good teacher if she keeps undermining my authority in front of my kids. Ugh.

The last thing of note from yesterday was not a teaching moment. It was a session moment. (Short tangent: it is very difficult to go from teacher role to student role and back again in the same day.) Every Friday we have these DCA (diversity, community, and achievement) sessions. At DCA, we sit around and talk about diversity issues and how they might play out in our classrooms. I generally hate these kinds of discussions. It’s not because I’m opposed to having them, or racist, or anti-diversity, or any sort of thing like that. It’s mostly because the way they are set up is ineffective. You can’t put 40 people who barely know each other in a room together and expect them to have an honest discussion about these issues.

I also don’t like them because I always feel like my viewpoint is never valued in these discussions. Not just at TFA, but whenever I’ve been a part of these groups, somebody always says something in response to my comments that is nasty, or sarcastic, or passive-aggressive to the point that I get that they just think that I’m stupid. I would rather not talk than be faced with that kind of situation. I get that I grew up with “privilege”. That doesn’t mean that I’ve never had trials in my life or I didn’t have to work very hard to get here. I’m not discounting other points of view. I’m not telling other people what they should or should not think. I’m merely trying to get other people to understand that they don’t necessarily know where I came from. And it really, really pisses me off that I am getting the distinct message that I could never understand hardship. Don’t even go there.

As a result of yesterday’s session, I’ve made a conscious decision to never speak in DCA again. The point yesterday was to talk about “feeling safe and valued” in the classroom. I feel neither safe nor valued. But nobody bothered to ask how I feel.

Back to lesson planning. My Big Goal for the weekend is to get as many lesson plans for next week done as possible so that during the week I can get at least 7 hours of sleep every night.

The last two nights I’ve only gotten 4 and a half hours of sleep each. That is a long amount of time in comparison to most people that I’ve talked to. 2 or 3 hours is the norm. Last night my roommate got 30 minutes of sleep. I haven’t seen her yet today, so I don’t know how she’s doing.

As a result of collective sleep deprivation, everyone is down right loopy. My team teacher and I today got into a laughing fit about……. I don’t even remember. Something not at all funny.

In my last post I was having serious classroom management issues. So yesterday I just clearly outlined my expectations for behavior in the classroom. My kids always screw around in line, so I made them practice lining up during what was supposed to be my lesson on prefixes and suffixes. I told them we’d do it as long as it took. It took about 25 minutes. My teaching block is 40 minutes long. Combine that 25 minutes with a bathroom break and I’ve got 10 minutes of teaching time left. I realized there was no point in starting my lesson, so I just went through the rest of my expectations. When I am talking, you will be quiet. You will sit in active listening position. When I do the quiet coyote, you will all follow me in doing so. You will stop talking. You will be respectful. Going through that last part of the lecture ate up the rest of my 40 minutes.

My behavior management investment really paid off. Today, when I actually taught prefixes and suffixes, I barely had to ask for quiet. My best technique so far is just stopping in the middle of a sentence when I hear kids talking and waiting. When I do that, R holds up the quiet coyote. He loves the quiet coyote. The kids at least seemed mildly interested in what I had to say. We’ll see if they could fill out their worksheets.

Today we began math-literacy hour. We split the class into small groups based on their diagnostic scores, and each teacher works with one group. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we do math and the other days we do literacy. I am working with the second lowest group for math and the second highest group for literacy.

I looked at the diagnostic scores for my math group and saw that they were having trouble with using the inverse operation to check their answers. So, if I add, then I should subtract to check my answers. I based my math mini lesson around this. It took them a few minutes of me explaining it to finally get it, but when they did, boy did they get excited. I was giving them practice problems and they just ate it up. One of the boys said, “Miss Bennett, can we do a hundred problems?” Of course, I had not prepared a hundred problems. But I did tell them that if they wanted, I could go home and find some worksheets for them to take home tomorrow. They were jumping with excitement. “Yes! Yes! Give us worksheets!” A put it very well when she said, “give us more practice so we can learn more!”

Ah, yes. That was a gratifying moment.

That is the TFA tagline for “things that you suck at doing.”

Or, in my case, classroom management while giving second graders math diagnostics on the second day of summer school.

To be fair, pre-recess wasn’t that bad. The kids were very respectful about listening while I was explaining the consequences, following my instructions, and answering my questions. We did a 15 minute break from diagnostics entitled “things that make me special.” We each wrote a sentence on a piece of paper about what makes us special, and then got to color a picture about that. I explained to the kids that I’m from Colorado, which they all described as “really far away.” Here are some of the kids’ examples of what makes them special (spelling and syntax intact):

“I am reading to: 4-forth grade”

“When I went to this school I liked.”

“I went to third grade”

“I am rrespeshobe quos se” (I really don’t know)

“Wat make me spEciAl is my Birthday.” (Her birthday is on Friday)

“What made me speciAl nots berry farm.”

And, my personal favorite, “green.” That is all it said. My collab member and I had a long, good laugh about that one. She says, “Maybe don’t show our CMA that one.” Although, I probably shouldn’t laugh because the girl who wrote that can’t really read.

Recess was fine. We played a game where somebody stands in the middle and we have to try to run past them. Except, there’s a fence at the end of the playground. Recess ended with tears. Not a good segue into my wonderfully unprepared math diagnostic.

And, of course, my CMA chooses then to do my in-depth observation for the week. (Each week, our CMA observes us once for 30 minutes and twice for 10 minutes.) He wasn’t there when the lesson went really well. No, he was there when the kids were wound up from recess, still wanting to finish coloring their pictures, and not at all excited about taking yet another ridiculously long math diagnostic. Actually, it wasn’t even supposed to be happening then. We have been informed that when giving math diagnostics, you must read each and every single question out loud with the kids and then wait for each and every single one of them to finish that question before moving on. The kids are not allowed to move on on their own, even if they want to. The reason for this is that we aren’t assessing their reading ability; we’re assessing their ability to do math. I really don’t know why the kids are not allowed to move on. As a result, it takes for-freaking-ever to do these diagnostics. So, we were trying to catch up with the one that didn’t get finished yesterday after recess.

The day after recess went something like this: students enter classroom from recess and are instantly reminded of coloring project that didn’t get finished. All immediately run to start coloring again.

Me: Take two minutes to finish your coloring.
S, a student: Miss? I need a new paper.
Me: Why?
S: I messed this one up.
Me: What’s wrong with it?
S: I don’t like it.
Me: We only have a minute and a half to finish our coloring so I need you to just work with what you have.
S: BUT I DON’T LIKE IT!
Me: Ok, what can we do to solve this problem?
S: I don’t like it.
Me: Can you take it home and finish it tonight?
S: I don’t have no crayons at home.
Me (kicks self in head): Ok, can we think of creative ways to work with what we have?
S: NO! I don’t like it!
Me: We only have thirty more seconds to finish this.
S: I need a new one.

I ended up giving her a new one and she put it in her desk to finish later. My CMA told me later that I should have just explained that there weren’t enough for everyone to get two and so she was just going to have to deal with it. He says, “She’s a second grader. She’ll get over it.”

Thing 1 I need to work on: realize that second graders WILL get over it, and that I am the teacher, they are the student, and they WILL do what I say because I said so.

Moving into giving the diagnostic. The kids could have given two shits about this test. Who can blame them? They’ve been doing nothing but taking really long tests for two days. They’ve been taking tests about stuff they can’t do. (A very small few of them can do it, and they’re frustrated by how stupid the process is, so they screw around as well.) They disengage in the test process. They start playing with the supplies in the middle of the table. And they stop listening to me.

I repeated myself a bunch of times. I tried to use my proximity with the kids to get them to work. I gave some of them verbal warnings, which is the first consequence. The second consequence is they have to remove themselves from the group and fill out a behavior reflection sheet. I never got to that second consequence because I felt like I had to get that stupid diagnostic done, because TFA said I did. Removing the kid from the group doesn’t accomplish the goal of getting the test done.

I also don’t accomplish my goal if my kids are F-ing around the entire time. The classroom was chaos. Nobody finished. We have to give another assessment tomorrow as a result.

Thing 2 to work on: be consistent in giving consequences. Or, give consequences at all.

Then, I had to have my debrief session with my CMA tonight. After every observation you have a debrief consistent with the observation. The good thing about the debrief session was that I was already quite aware of everything that I had done wrong in the classroom today, so I was prepared. The bad thing about the debrief session was that I had not done anything good in the classroom today.

Thing 3 to work on: don’t take feedback personally.

That last one is the hardest of all.

…Amazing. Exhilarating. Terrifying. Inspiring. Incredible. Saddening. Uplifting. Unbelievable.

In short, I loved it.

My kids are awesome. Not everyone showed up on the first day, and there were some last minute add-ons that we hadn’t planned for. But they were, for the most part, pretty engaged, for kids in summer school. They hate taking tests, especially on the first day. I wish I could change that, because they had about 3 hours of testing today. That’s a lot for anyone on the first day. We’re going to have to work on our seating chart because some of the kids are very rowdy. My collab member had a bit of difficulty with classroom management, but that is probably because we weren’t able to go over the rules this morning. There was a lot of confusion as to who was supposed to go where, so it took the kids forever to get into the classroom. By the time they were in, we had to go straight into the diagnostic because otherwise they would have run out of time. Establishing those rules first would have been awesome, but it wasn’t that bad.

Because our schedule got all messed up, I didn’t really do much lead teaching. I taught the kids how to take the test, how to line up, and how to come to the carpet. Not much really. I got to spend recess with them, which was awesome. During summer school, the whole school has recess at the same time. I stood on the black top watching all those kids just trying to do kid stuff. Then, I looked at the surrounding neighborhood and a pang tugged at my heart. Those kids deserve better. All of the people here deserve better.

Little D told me an awesome story about how on “fireworks day” she was at her uncle’s house and they accidentally lit the lawn on fire. Her friend M wanted us to play games with them because they didn’t want to play tetherball. We’re trying to come up with something fun for the girls to do at recess. Anyone remember any of those handgames that we used to play?

The way our schedule is set up, 2 corps members (CMs) teach while the other two are in sessions. Then, we switch. So, when the other 2 CMs came into the classroom to take over, we said goodbye to our kids. They all waved enthusiastically and told us they couldn’t wait to see us again.

Yes, I love teaching.

Today marks the day that I am officially 20% done with Institute. Four more weeks to go. Probably the four hardest weeks of my life…. until I begin teaching on my own.

I meet my “babies” on Monday. That is what my school director (SD) calls them. Tiny little second graders with their tiny little backpacks. I’m so, so excited.

My excitement right now is curbed by a deep, deep exhaustion. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I mean that quite seriously. I knew it was going to be hard. I didn’t know it would be this hard. People have already quit. I don’t know how many and I didn’t know any of them personally (there are 500 of us here). I am sure more will quit in the coming weeks. We have all asked ourselves why we are putting ourselves through this. Maybe once a day, maybe once every other day. We each have our own motivation, but it all comes back to our bottom line: student achievement.

Ok, this is getting a little smarmy. Combine sleep deprivation with a Friday night off and you get bad writing. I’m going to get myself a margarita now with some of my Bay Area friends.