Miss Bennett in the Bay

During our much-needed break in Colorado, I was fortunate enough to visit my friend Ms. Cantrell’s 1st grade classroom at a beautiful brand-new charter school in Reunion, CO. I spent the day wandering around, popping in classrooms and getting ideas. What I saw really struck me.

They have larger class sizes than at my school.

They have less technology than we do.

They don’t have big goals posted all over the place.

They don’t have class-wide standards-based tracking all over the place.

And yet, those first graders blow my second graders out of the water.

Why this harsh achievement gap? I thought long and hard about it. It’s not the teachers. I saw those teachers (many of whom are also first-years like me) doing similar things to what I do in my classroom. It’s not the curriculum. They teach the newer version of Open Court, and as near as I could tell there were very few differences. Certainly it could have something to do with the population, given that Reunion, CO is a middle-to-upper class White community, and Alum Rock, CA is a lower-class predominately Latino community. But that can’t be all of it because there is direct evidence that all races, all ages can succeed academically. I’ve seen it in my own classroom (my students have already grown a year in reading- how about that?) No, none of these things can account for the stark differences in these two schools. After much thinking, I identified the two key things that can explain this: 1. A strong, supportive administration that puts its money where its mouth is. 2. Parental investment and involvement in the entire school, not just one classroom.
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The grand extent of “science” in my classroom for the past few weeks has been growing butterflies. They shipped a bunch of caterpillars in a cup to us, and since then we’ve been “observing” butterflies every few days. Mostly, this consists of cries of, “Look, Ms. Bennett! It’s EATING the FOOD!” Or, “Oh, man, it’s hecka ugly!”

Today is the day we release the butterflies. I am sure this will be a fine activity, but I have to say I am glad for the ordeal to be over. Watching those things flit around is kind of gross.

Last week, we got free tickets from a TFA sponsor to the San Jose Sharks. This means that we were able to take one of our students with us to the HP Pavilion in downtown San Jose to experience the craziness that is a hockey game. It was much less chaotic than the ice skating trip from December. (Mostly because downtown San Jose is about 15 minutes away from our school.) We got to see the giant shark flying around the stadium and our students had more fun than I think they’ve had in a long time. G still comes up to me in the mornings and says, “Ms. Bennett, it was really fun when we went to the hockey place.” Yes. Yes it was.

Yesterday I was having lunch in Jess’s room and her student B came in during his recess. Somehow we got on the topic of whether Colorado or New York (where Jess went to college) is cooler. This must have been a very interesting conversation for B because after math intervention (which is held in my room) he was talking to me about it again. When Jess came in, B said, “Ms. Snyder! You are going to argue with Ms. Bennett about whether Colorado is cuter than New York?”

I don’t know how “cute” Colorado is, but it sure is my very favorite place on Earth. Scott and I are flying home tonight for a friend’s wedding. I have all of next week off (which, evidently, is perfectly normal in California. When I was growing up, I never got the week of President’s Day off.) I am looking forward to revamping my investment program and planning ahead. Also, sleeping.

41 instructional days left until the CST. Oh, my lord.

I figured that since I spend so much time with Jess, and we do all of our planning together, and we are pretty much the same corps member but with two classrooms, I should give her some space to post on my blog. A little background: her class is the worst class behavior-wise in second grade. Most of her students have some serious emotional issues to deal with, and they take it out by acting like crazy people in school. Jess’s worst day in her classroom was right before Thanksgiving break. One of her students actually gave her a black eye- not with his fist, but with his head. That’s right- he head-butted her eye. That same day another student intentionally peed his pants just so he could get out of class for the day. Needless to say, any issue that I’ve felt in my classroom Jess has felt even more so. We both have made huge improvements, and this story from the day we had the 100 Book Challenge training is just too much of a gem to pass up. On that day, I compared her students to the plant in Little Shop of Horrors. They ate anyone who got too close to them- and on that day, it was Jess’s sub- the infamous Mr. Chen. Jess writes:

The only real bad day that I have had since January started was when I had a sub named Mr. Chen. Knowing the little you do about my class, it can be inferred that they are certifiably CRAAAA-ZY. Mr. Chen came into my room that dreadful Wednesday morning as I was getting ready to go to my training. This man was small and weak and had no idea what he was about to get himself into. He walked a little hunched over–not because he had to, but because he was THAT AWKWARD. Our conversation went like this:

Me (out loud): My class can be a little hard to handle. They have a lot of energy, so please be strict with them.
Me (in my head): Man, they are f-ing going to kill you!
Me (out loud): Mr. Chen, have you taught using Open Court?
Mr. Chen: No.
Me: Mr. Chen, have you taught 2nd before?
Mr. Chen: No. I have never taught elementary, Ms. Snyder.
Me: Mr. Chen, do you know what the hell you are doing?
Mr. Chen: No. Clearly not.

Needless to say, they did kill him. The poor man will probably never teach again. The students broke EVERY school and class rule. They didn’t do any work. They stole their confiscated goods out of my box/desk. They messed up all of our materials and books. They left the room a mess. They lied to our VP about our class rules regarding Pokemon cards (no, I DID NOT say they were allowed) (PS I HATE POKEMON CARDS–I think I might bring in a lighter and burn them next time I see one). You might be thinking, poor Mr. Chen, and I did too–at first. But when I realized I had to clean up this mess (not the physical mess, I made the students do that–but the behavior mess), I thought “poor me!” Oh man, these students are crazy.

And yes, Ms. Bennett hates Pokemon cards as well. We will burn them the next time we see them.

On Monday at about 8:10 in the morning, I was in my classroom preparing for the day. All of a sudden, I heard lots of screaming coming from the playground. At first I figured that it was just some game that the kids were playing, but the racket grew. I opened my door and realized the reason that everyone was screaming was because it had started hailing. Now, as a Colorado native, I am quite used to hail storms. Not necessarily in January, but still. The teacher next door, though, is from southern California and was standing under the hallway-roof completely captivated. It clicked with me that the reason the kids were all running around in the hail instead of having the good sense to take cover was because none of them had ever seen hail before. I ran down the hallway and blew my whistle, shouting at the kids to come inside. They all paused for a moment, staring at me, then started walking towards their respective classrooms. It was as if the shrill sound of my whistle woke them up from a weather-induced trance and they realized that running around in the falling ice is actually a bad idea. My own 6 students who had already arrived at school swarmed around me, talking a mile a minute about the hail.

Them: Ms. Bennett, what is that stuff?
Me: It’s called hail. It happens in Colorado all the time.
Them: But why does it hurt?
Me: Because it’s little tiny pieces of ice falling down.
Them: But why?
Me: Because it’s too cold for it to rain right now.
Them: OHHHHH, so it’s like snow?
Me: Yes, snow that hurts your face when you stand in it.

I talked to my trainer about the hail later that day and she told me that she’s seen hail maybe 6 times in her whole life. It makes me sad that my students don’t get to experience the full joys of the four seasons. All they know is rain and not rain (and now, hail.)

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