Miss Bennett in the Bay

You can really feel it in the air these days, like an ever present whisper getting slowly louder and louder.  It feels like the beat of distant drums driving an army marching on and on, never stopping, never faltering, gathering strength towards the Last Day of School.

I feel it looming on the horizon.  And yet, three weeks seems like an eternity in terms of what I actually want to accomplish with my students.  We are so close to our Big Goal!  I want to do projects, perfect my math centers, and get my focus students to their individual goals.

I don’t want them to leave.  After June 12, only 14 instructional days away, my little babies will go off and I will no longer be able to push them to the great heights they have achieved.  I won’t be able to see how far G, who in February had already grown almost 2 years in reading,  can go.  I won’t be able to see if I can get E to control his impulsive behavior.  I won’t be able to make sure M gets tested and is put where he can get the help he needs.

It is bittersweet, this end of my first year of teaching.  A year ago, when I was standing on the precipice of the TFA way of life, I didn’t know where I would end up or how I was going to get there.  Now, I can’t believe I survived.  It was the hardest, most challenging, most exhausting, most mentally and emotionally draining year of my life.  (I actually think it might have taken 2 or 3 years off my life span.)  I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

It is ironic, standing at this point.  I know in my heart that I could not have possibly given any more than I gave to my students.  And yet, I am still left feeling that I did not do enough.  Most of my students made tremendous gains.  Some of them only made average gains.  The next 3 weeks, with all of its final testing, will be the verdict.   We will see, when it gets right down to it, whether or not this TFA-er made significant gains with her students.

It is 9:30 am and I have only been awake for about 30 minutes.  It’s Friday, and after a grueling week of Open Court Police and an intense heat wave, I decided to give myself a mental health day.

Granted, I do have to re-take a section of a stupid technology exam for my credential today.  But, it will take about 20 minutes, and then another corps member (who also has to re-take the test) and I are going to get pedicures.  It will be fabulous.

I managed to survive the gamut with the OCR Police.  On Monday, it did not go so well.  I was extremely defensive (just like all the other teachers, because we’ve been trained to be defensive since these people are always critical.)  The lady was a little hostile, and I walked away from the debrief on Monday dreading the rest of the week.  But then, during my next debrief on Wednesday, the lady apologized for us “getting off on the wrong foot.”  Then, she proceeded to actually be helpful.

I didn’t know how to react to this situation.  I can count the number of helpful people employed by my district on one hand.  I am not exaggerating.  Maybe there are other helpful people out there and I’ve just never met them.  But for me, over the course of the past 9 months, I’ve met more critical, passive-aggressive people than I had ever previously known- and the only helpful ones I encountered were not employed by the district.

And they wonder why our district continues to fail.  (Let me guess- to them, the reason has something to do with teachers not implementing the program faithfully.  Right.  It doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with teachers not being supported by anyone in our district.  Of course not.)

So when this lady gave me resources I could actually use in my classroom, I was blown away.  She did something similar with the rest of the second grade teachers, and from what I heard of the other grade levels’ experience, we certainly had the most positive one.  I am eternally grateful for that.  (more…)

Lately it seems like every time I turn around, I’ve passed some kind of important anniversary in this journey.  April marked the anniversary of making the life changing decision to join TFA.  Last Friday marked the one year anniversary of graduating from dear old CU (!).  This weekend is the anniversary of the May Hiring Fair and CSET Testing Weekend.

This time last year, I was studying for the CSET like crazy (and also going to graduation parties like crazy).  Then, I was traveling to San Fransisco and hanging out with people I didn’t know and pretending like I knew what I was doing.  Oh, and trying not to starve to death.  I do hope for the sake of the ‘08 corps members that they will have a richer supply of food this time around. It was quite miserable attempting to live off of tiny bagels and mushy bananas.

Now, the things I do like crazy include a whirlwind of paperwork, trying to get all the stuff back up on my walls after the CST, and trying to organize myself enough to get my students to meet their Big Goals.  What a difference a year makes.

There is no doubt in my mind that TFA was the right choice for me.  It’s been an incredible experience so far, and though I’m not sure if I’ll stay in education forever, I do know that I did make a difference for my students.  I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

But looking at my friends’ graduation pictures, I can’t help but feel a strong wave of nostalgia.  It’s impossible not to feel sentimental when I think about how dramatically I have changed from the person I once was.  What if I had stayed in Boulder, CO?  What if I had chosen a psychology lab job somewhere?  What if I had (gasp!) moved back in with my parents?  None of those other possibilities would have forced me to undergo such a complete transformation in such a short period of time.  I’m a stronger, wiser person because of the choices I made a year ago.  And though I might feel sentimental about the life I could have had, I know that I could never be content with going back to it.

5 weeks.  23 days.  Oh, my Lord, I am actually going to survive this school year.

I really didn’t think I would make it.

The stress, long hours, ridiculousness of my school, and not having much of a life outside of work are getting to me.  But, now that I can taste the end of the school year, I know I can finish this.

The CSTs are finally over, no thanks to my principal.  She was “sick” for three days of the testing, and the ELD coach had to coordinate all of our testing AND be the principal-designee.  Awesome.  Of course, in those three days, there were several suspensions of students as well as students cheating, fighting, and generally not following the rules.  My ELD coach deserves an award for her performance.

In my classroom, though, testing was pretty uneventful.  The kids were really giving it their best.  We said our Super Test Takers poem every morning before handing out the tests, and over the course of the 2 weeks I caught several of my students copying that poem onto their own paper during class.  It was pleasing to know that something that simple made that much of a difference for them.  I was peeking over shoulders during the math portion and saw a lot of right answers (I also saw some heartbreaking silly mistakes- but whatever.  They’re in second grade.)  Overall, the testing was a positive experience for me- but we are all glad it is over.

Now, we have to jump right back on the Open Court Reading bandwagon.  On Monday, the OCR Police are coming again.  This time, though, they’re pulling out the big guns and bringing the HEAD of the OCR Police- one of the representatives for the curriculum.  They’re calling this “coaching support,” but what it really means is that they are trying to catch us not being faithful to the curriculum.  My literacy coach came in on Tuesday (while we were still giving the CST, so my room was basically empty) and harped on me to get all my OCR stuff back on the walls as quickly as possible so they could see it before Monday.  She also showed me exactly what we need to be doing with our curriculum when they come to see us.  Basically, if you follow OCR exactly the way it is written, you would spend about 4 hours a day on it.  Factor in recess and lunch times, and you’d have time for that plus maybe 45 minutes of math.  Since we’d really like to teach our students some science now, that’s not realistic.  Also, it’s pretty ridiculous to expect us to do this now, with only 5 weeks of school left.  As if somehow, in the next 5 weeks, our students will suddenly jump to the category of advanced.  Ridiculous.

I know I made significant reading gains with my students.  Those gains did not come as a result of me following the curriculum faithfully.  I also know that nobody ever noticed that I made those kind of gains because my students are still below grade level.  They only care that my students aren’t proficient on the stupid 6-week test we give at the end of every unit.  I’ve shown my DRA data to them before showing where my students started (early first grade) and where they were the last time I tested in February (early second grade.)  It doesn’t matter one bit to anybody who works for my district, though.  I still have to give the DRA again, which I’m going to start now.  But, for this week at least, I have to put on a charade that I believe that the curriculum will get my students where I want them to go.  What a huge waste of everyone’s time.