Miss Bennett in the Bay

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.

Dear Mr. Rubenstein,

Hi.  You don’t know me, but you can probably guess a lot about how the way my first year of teaching went when I tell you I am a 2007 Bay Area corps member.  As I’m sure you are painfully aware, I didn’t receive any of the “reality checks” that you are clearly so adept at giving to new corps members.  Now that I have been exposed to them, I really wish that I had been given these tools earlier.  As in, a year ago.

Now, here’s my quandary.  According to TFA, my first year was just fine because my students met their Big Goals (I teach 2nd grade).   But when I think about what happened in my classroom on a minute to minute basis, I know I have a long way to go before I’m a truly effective teacher.  At least, effective to the level that I want to be.  By the end of the year, most of them would be quiet long enough to do their work at least, but it took 7 of the 9 months I had with them to get there.  Their behavior on the playground was atrocious.  (I try to tell myself that that was due, at least in part, to the culture of my school and not just my classroom.)  I’d say that basically the reason they met their goals is because I forced them to.  And some of them really hated it.

But, given that I am a Teach for America corps member, one of my strongest points is reflection.  So, I’ve spent the first 2 weeks of summer mulling over all of this in my head.  That’s when I discovered your blog and your workshop videos. Suddenly, everything makes sense to me. When I think about days (or even just lessons) that went well, I realize that they went well because my students were behaving. Why were they behaving? Because I was teaching. Like a real teacher. I wasn’t standing there telling them how awesome they were and how I knew they could do it, looking into their highly skeptical eyes. I was showing them that through their own accord they could do it, and that’s when the turnaround really happened in my classroom. When my focus students passed one (that’s all it took!) quiz, they were suddenly hungry for more and their success helped the entire class make quantum leaps. I didn’t make that connection until now.

So why has nobody bothered to tell me this before? Why did I walk into my classroom on the first day of school feeling like all I had to do was challenge my students to meet some (rather arbitrary) Big Goals, and they would be fine? The short answer is because that’s what TFA taught me. Your point on your blog is right. Everybody at institute had awesome experiences as corps members and that’s what they want you to do, too. But it’s not as balanced as it needs to be. I hope that TFA will do some of that reflection that it’s so famous for and even out the scales.

But even if they don’t, I have to say thank you, Mr. Rubenstein. After spending an hour watching your workshop, I now feel a great urge to re-do my entire (yes, all of it) classroom management system. I’ll spend some time thinking about what I want my teacher persona to look like (since right now it’s pretty schizophrenic.) And on that first day of school, I’m going to do something totally crazy: teach them something.

So thank you for starting your TFA blog. I look forward to reading your posts in the future.

Sincerely,
Ms. Bennett
Bay Area 2007

Today is my half birthday.  And the summer solstice.  And it is hot.  I mean, really. really. hot.  There’s nothing like a classic California heat wave, combined with the effects of finishing a first year of teaching, to make you go completely insane.

I, along with about 99% of TFA corps members, am not the kind of person who is used to having nothing to do.  No obligations, no meetings, no homework, no lesson plans, no full time summer jobs.  This is the first summer that I have truly had off in 6 years.  No joke.  For that entire time, I’ve had full or close to full time jobs to keep me busy and friends to hang out with when I wasn’t working.  Now, I still have friends of course, but you can’t be hanging out with friends 24/7.  I’m just going to have to learn how to take advantage of something that has long been lost to the American work ethic: free time.

Now, you may say to yourself: is this teacher crazy?  She doesn’t know what to do with her free time?  She’s spent months just trying to survive to summer break and she’s already losing it?   I know, I know.  Really, the problem is just that I’ve spent the past year of my life giving all of myself to this crazy thing called Teach for America and now I’m actually in a place where I can do things for myself.  I just don’t have anything to do for myself.

I’m going to need some real hobbies if I’m going to enjoy the summer.  I’m going to start by going to Colorado tonight and wandering around in the mountains for a while.  That might help me reconnect with the part of me that likes having nothing to do.

Today is my first “official” day of summer break.  (I use quotation marks because I didn’t consider it break for myself until I finished organizing my classroom yesterday.)  I am having difficulty with this new schedule:

6:30 am: Open one lazy eye to see the time on the clock.  Blissfully roll over and continue sleeping.

8:15 am: Scott wakes up for work.  I realize I have to be at the gym in 45 minutes to work out with my trainer.  Get up, eat, go work out.

10:30 am: Get home from gym, shower, and stare at the apartment for a few minutes.  Tactfully overlook the need for cleaning in the kitchen and finally settle on finishing the last few hundred pages of Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History But Never Learned.  (Great book- I highly recommend it.)  I read about U.S. history from The 1960’s to present.  Pause a few minutes to eat lunch.  Enjoy cool breeze on back patio.

2:00 pm: Finish book, look around apartment again.  Settle on blogging.

It’s a tough life, but somebody’s got to do it.

Despite the calm of today, last week was quite a hectic one.  On Thursday, before school, I took down all remnants of my tracking stuff in my classroom so my students wouldn’t know what our final averages were.  We spent the day saying goodbye and cleaning.  Then, right before lunch, I wanted to give them their final goal sheets along with books I had gotten from the used book store.  I posed the question, “Do you think we met our Big Goal?”  The opinions were split.  Half of them thought we had and half thought we hadn’t.  When asked why they thought we hadn’t, V said, “Because I didn’t get to finish taking all of the tests.”  While that is true, due to her absences last week, I pointed out that everybody else had finished their tests.  They were getting fidgety.  I pulled out our tracking graph that showed we had gotten to 85%, and they went wild!  They were cheering and high-fiving each other in a moment of classroom solidarity unmatched this year.

It was a beautiful moment.  I am very much looking forward to this break so I can regroup and get ready for next year.

Well, the results are in.  It’s the last day of school.  Desks have been emptied, posters have been taken down, shelves have been covered, and the only thing left to do is celebrate our Big Goals.

We met them, by the way.

My final classroom average reading growth was 1.5 years of growth!  4 of my kids grew 2 years or more in reading!  Seeing their success is just incredible.

Our final math average was 85%!  They really cranked it up at the end there, and I know they will be so excited when I tell them about the final growth.  I am so proud of them.  I will miss them all.

Last night, all current corps members traveled up to San Francisco for a wonderful end of year celebration.  We sailed around San Fransisco Bay on a Hornblower Yacht while the ‘06 corps members were welcomed into the alumni movement.  It was quite inspiring, even for Scott.  It was nice to take a moment to reflect on everything that’s happened to us this past year, and made me really excited to take a break, and then redouble my efforts for next year.

My favorite part was when the executive director of the Bay Area spoke.  He talked about TFA’s incredible expansion efforts nation wide and the huge impact we are having not only in the Bay Area, but all around the country.  He closed his speech thusly:

“We have an incredible opportunity here.  We can change educational inequity in this country.  We can… so we have to.”

I love it.

As I reflect on my own impact on my own students, I can’t help but feel proud.  My students and I have been working extra hard the past couple of weeks, retaking quizzes and reteaching material.  As a result, their math average went from a 77% to an 83%!  They FINALLY met their big goal!  All but 4 students are at 80% or higher in math.  Those other 4 are between 70-80.  I feel like that’s a pretty big accomplishment in and of itself.  I didn’t tell my students about the average growth for a couple of days while we were finishing the last of the retakes.  When I finally told them, they were so excited!  We all knew we had accomplished something great.

The best moment for math growth was when V, who has been struggling with subtraction all year, finally mastered that subtraction with borrowing quiz.  It was the difference between meeting the goal and not meeting the goal for her.  When I told her she mastered it, she was literally jumping up and down and crying with excitement.  I got a little misty-eyed myself.

I have not yet finished giving the DRA, so I don’t know my final reading growth yet.  I’ve got 5 kids left, the kids who had made the most growth in February.  As of right now, the class average growth is 1.3 years in reading.  We’ll see if those 5 kids can take it to our goal of 1.5.

On Monday we are going on a field trip to San Jose State University.  Then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are cleaning and saying goodbye days.  I am sure it will be sentimental for all of us.

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.