Miss Bennett in the Bay

With the first week of teaching comes a serious heat wave in San Jose. It’s been hovering around 100 degrees for the past three days. I don’t have air conditioning in my classroom, the lower windows have been painted shut, and I don’t have one of those poles that opens the high windows.

In short, it is pretty much unbearable in my classroom with 17 sweaty 7 year olds.

Other than that, though, the first week hasn’t been so bad. I survived, so I consider it to be a success. I didn’t have enough time to get everything together, but it wasn’t awful anyway. I don’t think the kids are learning anything at this point, but I have observed quite a few things about them that will help in the future.

Mostly, though, I just realize that I have a lot of work to do. I have a couple that are pretty high, most are about average, and then a couple who are very low. They can read, and write, sort of. The one talks almost nonstop during class despite my repeated pleas for silence. I think the problem is really that he doesn’t understand what I’m saying (in English) and in order to avoid embarrassment by asking for help, he just starts messing around. I don’t really know what I’m going to do. He barely, if at all, responds to positive reinforcement. He responds even less to punishment. When I work with him one on one during independent time, he can answer questions, but only on a very shallow level. When I move away to work with other students, he’s back off task. Like I said, I think it’s a language thing. But I need to do more work to be sure.

Because I was so far behind to begin with, I’m just now, and only barely, feeling like my classroom is ready to go. Tonight I just finished making a bunch of writing folders by gluing 3 folders together so that they would have six pockets. That’s something that should have been done before school started. But since we only really had 4 days to set up our classrooms, and our classrooms needed a lot of work, this is how it is.

I still feel like I’m not really a teacher. Like I’m somehow just pretending and that one day they’ll come and say, “oh, haha, funny joke.” When I try to comprehend everything that I have to do, I feel overwhelmed to the point of paralysis. When I try to focus on something small so that I can feel like I’m accomplishing something, I experience anxiety about the possibility that I might be missing something. Not to mention the fact that I’m completely exhausted. In case you were wondering, being around little kids all day wears you out.

It’s hard to accept that at this point in time I’m only an adequate teacher. By “adequate” I mean that I’m teaching the curriculum that I’m supposed to teach, but I’m not executing it well and I have no idea if the children are actually learning anything. I’m hoping that with the long weekend coming up I can figure my stuff out and come back on Tuesday ready to go.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. At 8:30 am I will be standing at the front of a classroom full of 7 year olds. And they’re going to look at me as if I know what I’m doing. Ha.

After a very long week of Open Court training followed by four very intense classroom set up days, my classroom is (relatively) ready to go. I was actually switched rooms, which ended up being a good thing because I was switched out of an old first grade class and into an old second grade class. So at least all the stuff in there I might be able to use at some point. Some ladies from the district office came and helped me clear everything out, which was awesome because otherwise it wouldn’t have been done. But my true savior was Scott, who came and provided manual labor when I was too busy trying to figure everything out in my head. I would not have been able to finish without him.

I feel woefully unprepared for tomorrow. I can’t say exactly what more I should have done. I have to jump right in to Open Court tomorrow, and I think the reason I feel unprepared is because I didn’t write those lessons myself. I know that I need to get over that, but I was trained at Institute to obsess over every little lesson plan detail to ensure student learning. I haven’t done that for tomorrow so it is causing anxiety. But I have put a lot of thought into my management and investment plans, and I’m hoping that as long as I can manage the children for 8 hours tomorrow I’ll be ok.

I was gong to post pictures of my finished classroom, but they kind of take a while to upload and it’s way past my bedtime. Check tomorrow for updates on the amazingness.

Now I am in the midst of Open Court Training, which means that I get up and drive to a fancy hotel in downtown San Jose every day and learn how to teach reading the Open Court way. So far it’s been pretty useful, but the best part is that all of the second grade teachers from my school are taking the training together, so we are getting to know each other. We found out that our keys were ready and we could go get into our classrooms for real this time, so yesterday after the training we went to our school to pick everything up.

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With TFA Orientation, I officially began the switch from teacher training (a.k.a. teacher boot camp) to professional development. So, we spent the week writing Big Goals and Long Term Plans. Not that either of mine are finished yet, and I have to have a draft of both ready for Saturday, and this coming week I have Open Court (reading curriculum) training. It will be interesting to get all that stuff ready in such a short amount of time. The first thing I have to do is unpack all of my standards, which in TFA speak means “figure out what the h it means.” I did all of my math ones yesterday, which I was pretty proud of. Hopefully today I can get the reading ones done so I can move forward with this process.

Yesterday I also went to a workshop in my school district about teaching English learners. Being there really showed me just how rigorous the TFA training program is. I knew that it was hard while I was at Institute, but I guess I also had this assumption about how rigorous other teacher training programs are. From what I’ve heard from teachers in the School of Education at CU, they were learning all the same stuff that I was learning during my five weeks at Institute. I guess the difference is just that TFA crams it all into five weeks, which is why it seems so ridiculous at the time. Anyway, I didn’t get anything out of that workshop that I hadn’t already learned from TFA. I’m not trying to say that Teach for America is the be-all and end-all of teacher training. But I certainly do appreciate the level of rigor that they expect from us. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I like it that way.

In other news, I met another second grade teacher from my school (three of us will be TFA and three are non-TFA; 6 second grades! I can’t believe it!) and we chatted for a while. She told me that she went to the orientation for our school that I missed while I was at Institute. They found out that Cisco sponsors our school (being a program improvement school) which means that they are turning it into a technology school. What does that mean for me? Well, it means that every classroom gets interactive whiteboards. Every classroom gets an lcd projector. Every teacher gets a laptop. Every classroom has 4 or 5 desktop computers. And there are 2 laptop carts per school (remember, we are two separate schools on one campus). The teacher can reserve the laptop cart in advance and then bring it into the class for a given lesson so that every kid can have a laptop for the day. Pretty sweet, if you ask me. Oh, there’s also a rumor that since Cisco funded Oprah’s school in Africa, they might get Oprah to come to our school. If Oprah came to my school, I wouldn’t be able to control myself.

Getting all of this cool stuff makes it easy for me to forget that I’m actually teaching in a low-income, low-performing school. I still haven’t spoken with my principal. One of the other second grade TFA teachers did speak with our principal when she stopped by the school the other day. Basically, the place is still in chaos because the two principals are working so hard to get everything ready. We have our district new teacher orientation tomorrow, and I’m hoping that my principal will come to that. I really just want to be able to see my new classroom so I can start fleshing out all of my ideas.

Now that I’m back from Institute, I’ve been trying to synthesize everything that happened there. I’d be doing a lot better job if I had a spare moment to myself, but I haven’t. Friday night after I got back from Grape Street Elementary for the last time, I packed up all my stuff and moved out of the dorm. I went to LAX and picked up Scott, who flew down to help me drive back (in my sleep-deprived state, there was no way I would have survived the 7 hour drive by myself.) Then, we drove to Riverside, which took forever, and slept in a hotel. The next morning, I had to get up early to take the PRAXIS test to get out of a bunch of my credentialing. It was intense.

Then, Scott drove us back to the Bay. I slept. It was amazing, and I am eternally grateful to him for helping me.

The next day we began Orientation, and that’s what I’m in the midst of right now. I’m finding the Orientation sessions incredibly useful because they’re giving me concrete things for my classroom in the fall. Plus, we end at 3 pm every day so I can actually come back to my apartment and hang out with Scott and organize my life. But more about Orientation later.

Now, I want to talk about what I learned at Institute. Like I said, I haven’t had time to organize this in my head really, but I think I can just write it all down here and that might give you some sense of what Institute was really like.
I learned…
I have infinitely more patience than I ever thought I did.
I am infinitely stronger than I thought I was.
I can actually function on 5 hours of sleep (but not for long, and it is really awful).
I will never eat another turkey sandwich as long as I live.
I could never live in southern California.
Since I’m living in California, I am glad it is in the Bay Area. It’s truly beautiful here.
I need to be a real hard ass on the first day of school.
I need to plan EVERY SINGLE SECOND of my day, or the kids will break down my plans in half a second.
I need to have time to myself.
I need to have something that reminds me of why I’m here (at KIPP they call it mental Gatorade).
And finally, I learned that I can be a good teacher, and I can make gains with my students. It certainly won’t be easy, but I can do it.

I took a good look at myself in the mirror when I got back to the Bay. This is cliched, but I hardly recognize myself, after only 5 weeks. Besides the broken-out skin and the giant circles under my eyes, I feel completely different. I am no longer a senior at CU-Boulder and the President of the Delta Sigma Chapter of Phi Sigma Pi. Now I am Miss Bennett, second grade teacher. I’m an adult. I have to make decisions that impact other people’s lives. I didn’t expect that transformation to be this fast or this complete. But, I am content with myself and the life I lead.

Well, I did it.

Almost, anyway. It is 6:12 am here on Friday, August 3, 2007. The last day of Institute. There are many things that I want to say about my experience overall, but I think that is for a later post.

Today, we’re talking data.

Last time I analyzed my students’ data, they had had negative growth at the formative assessment. I was very discouraged. Now, I have the data from the summative (fancy word for final exam).

I could not be more proud of my students.

I should start by explaining a growth goal that TFA gave us: based on the diagnostic score, each student was given an individual growth goal that they were trying to meet. It was based on how many points they should improve on the test over the summer. So, when I say that my students grew X%, it means that’s the percent of their growth goal that they achieved.

(Deep Breath) OK. Overall, in math, my students grew 64%. In reading, they grew 72%. Those numbers should be 100%, but, I consider them to be successes anyway. H, our ELL student, grew 140% in reading and math. A, one of my students from math/lit hour, grew 130% in reading. They both did such an amazing job this summer. Every single one of our students showed some growth on those tests. Those that met their growth goals all far exceeded them.

Last night, we had Institute Closing Ceremonies. This is basically just a bunch of teachers being really rowdy and saying their school chants over and over again. I might be a little biased, but ours was the best.

We begin by stomping and clapping our beat:
stomp-clap stomp-clap stomp-stomp-clap-stomp-clap
Which repeats as we say:
You’ve been waiting for this…. (3x)
And then we begin our full chant:
You’ve been waiting for this
For way too long
For G-R-A-P-E to come along
With the gold and the blue,
We’re the UL-TI-MATE crew
G-R-A-P-E (6x)

It was, as Jonathan would say, the bomb DOT com.

They had a picture slideshow, and a picture of me with a dumb look on my face was on it. Everybody from Grape Street cheered anyway. We cheered for everyone. Now, my voice is gone. But that’s ok, because I made it!