Miss Bennett in the Bay

As part of my preparations to return to school, I realized the need to organize all of the computer files saved on my laptop and flash drive from last year. After spending two and a half hours banging my head on my keyboard as I sorted through the mess I had made of things back when I had no idea what I was doing, I realized that the problem was really that nobody had ever explained to me how to effectively organize the plethora of documents that I would create. As I begin my second year in TFA, I figure it makes sense for me to share my new-found organizational skills with the world.

1. Make a folder for every subject. This doesn’t just include things like math and reading. It also includes Big Goals, investment, management, etc., etc. I had previously organized all my files by week. So, when I wanted to find a lesson plan or a worksheet I had created for our place value unit taught in early October, I either had to search my computer and hope for the best, or sift through all folders from Week 4-10. Now I’ve reorganized all those files into neat, orderly folders that directly correspond to the contents of the folder. When I start teaching again, and need to quickly access those kinds of files in the classroom, I will probably duplicate the file into more than one folder. So, I’ll probably still have folders organized by week, but all of that stuff will also be filed in places like “Math” or “Reading.” I’d rather take up slightly more storage space than be unable to find the document I’m looking for.

2. Similarly, name documents things that correspond to what is in them. After opening up countless documents titled things like “Math Week 4 Non-Saxon,” I realized the importance of this one. If I had even said something like “Place Value Week 4,” I would at least have been able to know which unit it went with. A much better solution to this problem is to write unit plans in one document, filed in the folder created for unit plans of that subject, and then to copy and paste lesson plans into your weekly schedule. It’s duplicated in case something happens, and then you can easily access it later to edit for the next year.

3. Number folders consecutively to make them easier to sort through. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to find a unit plan to edit and having to scan through a bunch of files until you find the one you want. Even if they’re named appropriately, storing them in alphabetical order is often less than ideal. What worked for me was saving the folders with numbers in front of them, things like “1. 10 More 10 Less,” “2. Place Value,” and “3. Comparing Numbers.” These represent the first 3 math units, and I can save any files related to these units in these folders. When I need to access them again, there are my units, right in the order I’m going to teach them. Of course, you can’t organize this way until after you’ve written a long-term plan, but I’m assuming you were going to do that first anyway.

So there you have it. Ms. Bennett’s suggestions for not having to spend hours upon hours organizing computer files.

Today, Jess and I fired up Team Like Woah’s engines and started the race towards significant academic gains. Meaning, we started planning for our second year of teaching. To be fair, we’re starting with things we didn’t do as well as we would have liked in our first year. I’m really excited to re-think my classroom and to not suck it up as a teacher for the first three months of the school year.

It’s quite an exciting time. I’ve taken a good, long rest, and while we have started working, we are still taking advantage of our vacation with frequent visits to the beach. I’m looking forward to meeting my students and seeing how far they can go next year.

In the midst of our planning today, we were reminded of a rumor that had been floating around at the end of the year. A lot of people were saying we were going to get a new reading curriculum next year in addition to our new math curriculum. We got plenty of information about the math curriculum and signed up for the training for it and everything. But nobody really said anything about the reading curriculum outside of vague rumors.

As we were planning today, we realized it was useless to try to write an English Language Arts long term plan if we were just going to get a new reading curriculum anyway. So, I emailed a lady at our district office who seems competent at her job. She wrote back almost immediately, telling me that she was “surprised” that I hadn’t heard anything, and that yes, we are indeed getting a new reading curriculum next year. And, oh, by the way, you need to sign up for the training for it by Monday. She wondered, hadn’t my principal informed me of this in June?

No, in fact, my principal hadn’t informed me of anything. Ever.

I had gotten used to the total lack of communication about anything at my school. I had accepted the fact that if I was unable to check my email at 9 a.m. every morning that I would miss important announcements of events that were happening at 10:30 that same day. I was ready for any amount of passive-aggressiveness they could throw at me.

But, despite all these things, I also made the (evidently false) assumption that they would tell me about something as important as getting a new curriculum. Even if they assumed that I would not be planning ahead over the summer, which would not be an unreasonable assumption given a lot of the teachers in my district, they should have still wanted us to all be trained on how to actually teach this curriculum. I have a friend in Colorado who teaches this new curriculum already, and though it was written by the same company that wrote our current one, there are plenty of substantial differences between the two. They can’t just throw a Teacher’s Edition at us a week before school starts and expect us to be totally effective at teaching it. Especially when they’re running a school full of brand-new teachers! Professional development is a key component of effective teaching, and that includes familiarizing yourself with the material. It totally blows my mind that an administrator who claims to be a proponent of student achievement would neglect to pass on such a key piece of information.

Today is another one of those times where I am forced to really think about what my life will look like after Teach for America. Should I go into administration? I feel I could do a better job than a lot of administrators out there. But then I think about what I read about in Relentless Pursuit and I wonder if mediocrity affects that profession so much because of the system trying to uphold itself. Spending my day “putting out fires” instead of actually affecting change is not what I want to find myself doing in a few years. Where do you go when your dreams are bigger than the system they want to change?

Yesterday, I was watching a healthy dose of Cash Cab when the $100 question was posed to the contestants: “What non-profit, founded by a Princeton senior, sends recent college graduates to teach in low-income schools for two years?”

TEACH FOR AMERICA! I unabashedly screamed at my television. I watched in horror as the contestants hummed and hawed their way to foolishness. I screamed the answer at them again, unconvinced that they could not, in fact, hear me. I was dumbfounded when at the last second they went for their life line, a street shout-out. I was even more blown away when the person on the street, without even thinking about it, said, “I have no idea.” The contestants finally guessed “teaching corps.” (I will ignore the generic-ness of this answer and instead ponder the most important question: how have these people not heard of my organization?)

Cash Cab takes place in New York City, where the TFA National Headquarters are located. The New York corps is the largest corps with 1,000 current members. But I can see how, in a city of millions, this alone would not be enough to educate you about the existence of TFA. Let’s consider the broader picture. TFA’s been around since 1990. Since then, it’s grown so astronomically that newspapers all across the country are profiling the organization as a desirable place to work after college. Even if these people are not reading country-wide newspapers, surely, at some point, they must have been exposed to The New York Times? Or, perhaps, Time Magazine? Or, if they’re book readers, this well-publicized book?

But, obviously, they hadn’t been exposed to any of these things. Which got me thinking. What does Teach for America have to do to educate the general public about not just the organization, but the achievement gap in general? I mean, I’m sure that just the fact that TFA was a question on Cash Cab is a huge leap forward from 18 years ago. And I know that TFA has worked really hard on publicity, which has spurred the huge influx of applications they’ve received. But what about people who aren’t in college, thinking about societal issues? I know that nobody that I know from my hometown of Highlands Ranch, CO knew what Teach for America was until I joined it last spring. (I also know that they all looked at me like I was nuts when I explained it to them. And then looked at me with disbelieving admiration when I told them about my students’ successes this summer.) I think general awareness is opening up, slowly but surely. Particularly in places where TFA places corps members, local newspapers write lots of articles about this new-fangled thing we call working relentlessly.

But then, on the other hand, is it really TFA’s job to educate the public about the achievement gap? I could see how higher-ups in the organization could make several arguments about this. First, I think they would say that just by being who we are, with so many members and alumni, and with Wendy Kopp working a million hours a week, all that publicity is, by itself, educating the public about the achievement gap. It’s up to our members, they would argue, to spread the word to everyone we know. Second, I think they would say that to use precious resources to meet some grandiose goal of having the general public know about the achievement gap would not be worth the small amount of return they would get for it. Would that really be meeting our goal of having all children receive excellent educations? Probably not, at least not directly, measurably, in the short run. But I do think that having the public know, concretely, about the poor state of education in this country is a worthy goal.

I’ve always believed that education is the key to a better future. And I don’t just mean knowing how to analyze literature and do math. I mean being educated about the world around you to become an effective citizen. Americans think we are educated because we are force-fed information every second of every day. But, in reality, we have grown complacent, content with receiving sound bytes instead of depth. Gas prices are out of control. Stock market falls. War in Iraq. Politics. McCain. Obama. Health care. If, at the end of a 30 minute news cast, you remember what the first story was, please, tell me how you do it. I’m busy trying to remember what that commercial was about 30 seconds ago.

My point is that complacency is our enemy. The world will not change, the achievement gap will not close if the public does not demand that something be done about our nation’s greatest injustice. And the first step towards that is education. What is the achievement gap? Why does it persist? What are Teach for America and others doing to close it? What systems currently in place are holding our progress back? These are the questions that need to be asked, and answered, in a public, simple way. No rhetoric. No politics. No skewed statistics. Just the simple facts. I know TFA has that data. It just needs to be shared in a way that evokes the passion that I know the American public is capable of.