Miss Bennett in the Bay

I know that at some point, my mother once spoke to me about the novel Up the Down Staircase. I hadn’t picked it up to read until recently, and I find myself instantly sucked into a book about myself.

Well, not entirely. I don’t teach high school. And there’s a little bit more technology these days.

But otherwise, yep, that book’s the story of my life.

Surrounded by red tape and bloated bureaucracy, I find myself continuously unable to accomplish anything. Every time I’ve written what I think is a truly solid week’s plan, I find out that there’s something else that has to happen, which forces me to change my plan and cut things out.

From random assemblies, to ridiculously large assessments, to minimum days for parent conferences, to vacation days, something has been weird about each week for a period of about 4 weeks now. You’d think we would have grown out of this.

Thing #1 that blows my mind (but probably shouldn’t): last week we had a review week at the end of our first reading unit. It does make total sense to give an end of unit assessment during this week. What does not make sense is to give a unit assessment and a benchmark assessment in the same day. Yep, the district scheduled our testing so that we would have to give 2 10-page assessments to our students at the same time. No, I did not follow this guide, and neither did any other teacher. Regardless, though, there goes an entire week of reading instruction. The best part is, those tests aren’t even helpful in guiding instruction. The way the curriculum is set up, there’s no time to go back to those concepts if they didn’t get them. Awesome.

Thing #2 that blows my mind (but probably shouldn’t): in addition to the ridiculousness of the reading tests, we also had to give a math benchmark. This test I didn’t feel so bad about giving because it was clearly standards-aligned, and I have more flexibility in math to re-teach. So, I and the other teachers at my grade level happily go forth and give the test on the assigned day. The next day, the principal delivers an envelope to our grade level leader. In it were scantron sheets for the math benchmark. Apparently, that test was supposed to be a scantron exam, but nobody ever told us. Plus, we received the scantrons the day after we gave the exam! The other teacher asked our principal when she had gotten them, wondering just who it was who dropped the ball here. The principal said she gave them to us as soon as she got them. So, the other teacher emailed the person in charge of them at the district and told her that we didn’t use them since we didn’t have them. The district person told her that the scantrons had been sent out on Monday. So, basically, nobody was in charge, so it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Long story short? I get to sharpen my number 2 pencil and bubble in all those scantron sheets myself. Great. I guess I’ll do that between parent conferences this week. Oh, did I mention that we have to have them in by Friday?

I have to wonder- there must be a better way, right?

October, How I Hate You.
A poem by Ms. Bennett

I hate the way I’m working
14-hour days
I hate the way I’m planning
And living in a haze.

I hate the way you tempt
Children with Halloween
I hate the way they crave the candy
I hate the way they scream.

I hate how I must
Give them all these tests
You took away my time to teach them,
How can they do their best?

I hate how there is just
No time for me to stop
Policing all these children;
Am I the Kindergarten Cop?

I hate the way you tease me
With fall activities
Here I am asking you,
Give me a break, please!

I’ve hated you this way
As long as I can remember.
I hate you so, October,
SO GET ME TO NOVEMBER!

This year, I’ve been able to take on a lot more leadership roles at my school. I’ve spent a lot more time working with my principal and trying to really organize things. I’m the chair of the safety committee, and I feel much more like a real teacher. As opposed to, say, a college graduate posing as a teacher.

I feel like I have a much deeper understanding of the inner workings of my school, and I know that I’m taking care of things that are actually important outside of my own classroom. Last year, this was completely out of the question since I spent the entire first half of the year just trying to keep my head above the water. Now, since I’m handling my own work so much more effectively, I’m really happy that I can take on these more important roles. I had sort of forgotten how much I enjoy being a leader. I spent a lot of time in leadership roles in college, and now that I’m doing it again in the “real world” I see that I really thrive in this area. Knowing that helps me gain perspective on what I could possibly do after I’m done with TFA.

Speaking of TFA, a couple weekends ago I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Bay Area Alumni conference. I loved being around all those alumni who are doing such awesome things. The best part of the whole day was lunchtime, when I was able to attend an informal round table with the executive director of my region, talking about the direction that TFA is headed in. He talked about some really great things that make me excited to be part of this movement. Even better than that, though, was during the question and answer part. An alumni wanted to know how effective first year teachers can possibly be. (She wondered, aren’t they, by definition, ineffective?) Our executive director acknowledged her point, that yes, it is up and down in your first year, but then he said, “But, take a school like Ms. Bennett here works at. Her entire school is full of first year teachers. And yet, they raised their API score by over 100 points- the highest the school has ever seen! I know that they had students who couldn’t read at the beginning of the year who now can read on grade level because they were there. So, actually, first year teachers can be very effective.”

Wow, that was pretty powerful. Not only did he know who I was and where I taught, he also knew about some of my students specifically! How’s that for the old atta’ girl?