First Semester Update, and Happy Holidays

First semester = (almost) survived!  (There’s only 3 weeks left.)

I haven’t updated nearly as often as I wanted to, mainly because I’m always so exhausted when I come home and so overwhelmed that the last thing I want to do is think more about my job.  Also, apparently I’m vitamin D deficient, which my doc says was seriously contributing to me feeling tired.  (I told her I thought it was my job.  When I told her I was a first year high school teacher in DC, she laughed and said, “Well jeez, no wonder!”)  Now, armed with more efficient teacher planning, a little more confidence, significantly improved classroom management skills, and some super vitamin D pills, I feel ready for some more time reflecting.  We’ll see though.  (An “A” for good intentions?)

I don’t want this to be a whole regurgitation of my first semester, so I’ll just give you the highlights via some bullet points.

What I Learned:

• The beauty of clear, rehearsed directions.
• The beauty of “points” added to just about any activity.
• To love my students.  (I adore them, minus perhaps one or two who keep trying to be my enemy, but oh well.)
• How to not teach Chinese characters (i.e. the only way I’ve seen them taught before in college courses — an overwhelming amount of rote memorization by writing lots of them a billion times each)
• How to ask a story (TPRS stuff, see the “About” page, tab above).
• Parents are my best friends, and they SO want to know that their kid is not doing homework or is talking back during my class.  (“I did not raise my child that way!  Oh, this will NOT be a problem any more, trust me!”)  And here I was thinking that they were the enemy … I think working at a small liberal arts college taught me that lesson.
• Teacher presence.  I don’t always have it, but when I remember to bring it out, oh man!  I know it’s (probably) going to be a beautiful lesson.
• Perfecting the you’re-teacher-is-not-f’ing-around voice.
• How to have an effective “you have so much potential and you’re wasting it” talk.  (Seriously, I think this might have been news to a few of them.)
• Not making “getting tough” make me angry — and being able to snap right back into supportive-and-fun-teacher mode.
• A few observation-focused phrases to quiet down a noisy class, like, “My lovely students are ignoring me and I’m becoming very annoyed.”

And to end, here is a random quote from my student that is still making me laugh:

“I’m not gonna talk today, that’s your Christmas gift.  Yep, you get 12 days of it, Ms Little Teacher.  Enjoy it!”

(Later, when she was talking and I reminded her of her “gift” …)  “Yeah well, we both knew that wasn’t going to happen, didn’t we?”

Well, now I’m about to fly home, leaving behind the big city and saying hello to hunting dogs and chicken coops.  So, happy holidays, my sorely neglected readers!

Am I a bad DC teacher blogger for not wanting to discuss the RIF issue?

Maybe, but honestly, I do not have the emotional energy to analyze the issue any further than reading the news about it.  What’s happening in my district is really sad, and honestly makes me wary about wanting to stay in it — though to be fair, these ridiculous farces could be in most districts, I don’t know.  However, I need my attention to be on my students and my curriculum, and that’s what’s going to remain the focus of this blog.  So if you’re wondering why I’m not saying too much about RIF stuff like every other DC teacher blog I’m reading, that’s why.

Make it fun (or at least interesting)

In a school that is always preaching things like responsibility and respect for authority, I’m trying to find the balance between proper school culture and not being boring.  I think world language classes have the potential to be incredibly fun and interesting; high school German was always a release from the rest of my school day, where things were humorous, my classmates were cooperative and got along, and I felt like I was using my brain.  I know it can work, but I’m still struggling.  (I guess that’s okay, as I’m less than two months into my first school year teaching.)

Coincidentally, Joanne Jacobs had a relevant video about an experiment in Stockholm, where they made a stairway into a giant piano and found that, after adding this element of fun, significantly more people chose to take the stairs (more than a few using it to play around a little, too, and not only the little kids).  The relevance for educators is obvious: things usually avoided as “work” are more likely embraced when presented in a more playful, “fun” manner.

The video:

This past week, I was having problems with numerous students in a few of my classes.  I noticed these behavioral issues were starting with the warm up; the warm up activities are certainly do-able, but challenging and kind of boring exercises.  The professional development person at my school suggested a new approach for warm-ups: instead of language-based exercise, bring some topic on culture, having students write a paragraph and then discuss it as a class or in groups.  I can’t tell you the huge difference it made, starting some amazing discussions and bringing a boatload of passion and enthusiasm from students to start the class with.

I noticed a similar change when I started adding a review game at the end of every class (given that students are focused enough to get to it — they know the terms of this “deal”).  The review game is simple: it’s exactly the same as the TPR (total physical response) actions and classroom objects that we’ve learned in class, but instead of the whole class doing it, one person from each “team” go head to head to win a point.  The teams are arbitrary (one side of the room vs the other) and the points mean nothing, really, but the turnaround in student attitude was mind-boggling.  If class is a game, then of course it’s worth putting your whole self into it.

So now I’m looking at every day with the following goal in mind: how can I bring in an element of fun and interest to my class, every day?  My general feeling on the matter: if I might feel blasé teaching it six times in a row, I should liven it up a bit — as much for my students as for myself!

“Are you writing my name down?!”

Today our school got some security guards, but since we’re still understaffed in that area, the principal asked teachers to volunteer to spend their prep hour in the hallway.  Instead of rounds, which would be aggravating for such an extended length of time, the administration put a table and chair in each hallway so that we could do some work while we maintained a presence.  Security guards would focus on the entrance, but everyone else would help make sure students in the hallway were doing what they were supposed to be doing, acting decently towards each other, maintaining dress code, etc.

I found it amusing to listen to students’ theories on what I was doing in the hallway.  They are used to teachers, administrators, and security guards being in the hallway, calling out students for taking their sweet time when there’s less than a minute left until the bell (rushing to class is just so uncool).

However, a teacher sitting in the hallway writing something was a mystery.  Some students asked me what I was doing, and I just let them guess, by either just smiling or asking, “What do you think I’m doing here?”  Most saw the steno notebook in front of me (coincidentally the same type that I’ve seen the principal carry), and they called out, “Oh man, she’s writing down names!”  For being late, for using the bathroom, for not having their shirt tucked in, for looking like trouble … just about every misdemeanor in the book.  This peer warning was immediately followed by everyone looking at me wide-eyed, displaying model behavior.   Never mind that my steno pad was covered with Chinese (brainstorming for lesson plans) or that I have less than a third of the school’s students in my class and I therefore would be hard pressed to know (and thus write down) names of most students.  Never mind that most of the students looking worried should have known that, as they didn’t even know my name.

The principal, who always passes through the halls during passing periods, played it up without missing a beat.  “You bet she’s writing down names!  Don’t forget this wise guy over here, Ms Little Teacher!”  Another student I recognized but didn’t know; I dutifully feigned writing something down.

Rushing to class to be on time became a lot more “cool.”

Last period today, I was having some trouble keeping my students from blurting out comments in the middle of class.  It’s a particularly rowdy class, and every teacher has remarked that last period classes are always bouncing of the walls.  So true for me.  The thing is, students know that there are consequences for talking out of turn (participation grade reduction for being off task, talking with me after class, possibly involving parents), but they get caught up in the moment and seem to forget until I remind them.  Repeatedly.  Anyway, I remembered the writing down names incident from earlier, and pulled out a sticky note pad.  I wrote down the name of one student who was talking during class, knowing that I would be lowering his grade that day, but due to my small classes I generally just wait until right after class or during a pair/group work activity to jot something down.  As soon as I picked up the sticky pad and paper, someone yelled out, “Oh man, be quiet!  She’s writing down names!”

Suddenly, silence.

Beautiful, attentive silence.

Ms Little Teacher is a scary teacher, which comes in handy when preventing fights

I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly intimidating person.  I’m barely over 5 feet tall, white, blonde, female, under 25 years old, and most of the time, I’m a pacifistic people-pleaser.  I hate it when people are sad or upset, and I spend more energy than most on making sure those around me are happy.  I have a smile that is infectious.  I shy away from confrontation.  I come from a small, very white town, and went to college in a small, less-white but still New England-white, town.

I also happen to teach at a public school in DC.  My students are kids from neighborhoods that I would probably spend time and gas costs to avoid driving through.  I say “kids” loosely.  Most of them are taller than me, some of them distinctly so.  Almost all of them are African-American.  I do not consider myself particularly racist, but I will not hide the fact that, as a person raised in a small, white town in this country, I was not raised with a comfort level around African-Americans or the culture of their community here.  That is something that I am learning and teaching myself — or perhaps that my students are teaching me?

So, you can imagine my surprise when students exhibit fear of crossing me.  Certainly not fear for their lives or anything, but, for example, when I look at a student talking to a friend when s/he is not supposed to, and they throw away the tough bravado.  Their eyes widen nervously as they stop mid-sentence, hurrying to look attentive again.  Or when I tap on a student’s shoulder and say, “Come with me,” because they need to follow me to the trash to spit out their gum.  Or when I tap another student on the shoulder and tell them they need to tuck in their shirt (it’s dress code to tuck in their uniform shirts), and they do so immediately and quickly with an apology in an “I’ll be good now, I swear” tone of voice.

Certainly this is not every student.  Some draw the moment out by testing me, but as the interaction continues, they do what I say they need to do (nothing beyond the school’s general expectations, of course).

Every time this happens, I internally marvel at the situation.  Why on earth are they doing what I say?  What could possess these tough kids, full of bravado and wanting to be “cool” by shirking responsibilities and telling off authority, kids that are not even my students, to think that I really have any power over them?  Okay, some power maybe, but only through other people: the administration who could kick them out, their parents, etc.  But after these interactions, I’m always tempted to ask them, “Really?  I mean, really?! Just look at me!  How on earth am I scary?”

And yet apparently I am.

It came in handy Friday.  As everyone in DC knows by now, Friday, without warning, no public school in DC had security guards, more necessarily at some schools than others.  Our school survived unscathed, due to some borderline draconian measures by our principal.  The school next door, another high school but notorious for being a “rough” place, also did okay (or at least it did not make the news), but we made sure our uniformed students walked together to the bus stop with some administrators so they did not run into trouble with the kids at the “rough” school.  I usually walk to the bus stop alone, but on Friday I decided to ride with a teacher, and to leave much earlier than I normally do (only ten minutes after 4pm, when I stop getting paid for my time — a new record!).

As we drive past this high school, I notice some kids rough-housing on the sidewalk.  Then I see someone in my school’s uniform.  It’s one of mine.  He’s smiling, but he’s dwarfed by the other students, and it looks like it could be trouble.  We happen to be stopped right next to them, waiting behind some cars at a stop light to turn onto the main street.  I roll down my window and yell out in my most scary teacher voice, “Hey!  What do you think you’re doing!”

Everyone stops.  Everyone turns.  I expect the other students — who have no idea who I am, other than a little white girl in a car about to drive off — to just laugh in my face.

Amazingly, they don’t.  They look sheepish, like they’ve been caught.

My student yells out, “Hey Ms. Little Teacher!”  And then he wisely takes off towards the main road as the others are distracted by me.

“We’re just playing around,” the others tell me.  “We’re all friends!”  One of them seems to be casually following my student.

I said something else, something teacherly and authoritative.  They listen, and continue to look sheepish; they know they’re being told off, and they’re accepting it.  By the time it’s over, my student is safe on the main street, where there are cops because the city’s cops are everywhere.  School has let out, and no school has security guards, so of course cops are nearby.

And when it’s all said and done, I still can’t believe I’m that scary.

(Just FYI for those who may be concerned about the follow-up — yes, I immediately called my school to inform them, and fortunately my school takes these sorts of incidents very seriously, and I will also be speaking with the student as soon as I see him next week about how he needs to never put himself in that sort of situation again.)

Trying not to feel alone

I love blogs.  I love everything that blogs can do.  I love everything that reflection can do for anyone.  And I know how much of an impact it can have on teachers wanting to improve their practice.

And yet, I haven’t been making the time to write in this blog nearly as much as I’ve wanted to.  My sincerest apologies, web 2.0.

One complication is that my school has every website blocked (okay, not every website, but a lot of them, including wordpress).  I know why, and to some degree I don’t disagree outright (something that I would not have predicted a few months ago).  But it makes blogging right after classes to reflect on certain incidents less of an option.  Then there’s the commute home, sometimes lasting two hours, and the long days, which means that I’m lucky if I have an hour between me walking in the door and bedtime.  Eating and a break from thinking about work is necessary.

Yet, I need to make time for it anyway.  On many days I feel alone, and even if no one ever comments (which is unlikely, as my few posts have drawn in a few comments already — my most gracious thanks to those people!) — I would still feel less alone writing a post.  The time to take a step back and describe what’s going on as an observer is precious.  I’m also trying to take a few minutes each day to strike up a conversation with another teacher.  Whether it’s a conversation about a student we both have, some aspect of pedagogy, or even our non-school life, it’s nice to see these people that are doing what I’m doing: getting up early, spending long days at work with kids who need every ounce of our compassion and high expectations, and going home exhausted but hopeful that today meant something.

I am not alone, and I refuse to give myself reason to feel that way.

So, back to blogging.  Let’s hope you hear more from me from now on.

Not much hits school morale more than lack of job security

Things in my classroom have been great overall.  Sure, there are lots of things that I’ll do differently when I start a year next year and re-teach Mandarin I material, and there are certainly some issues that I’m trying to tackle for this current year, too.  And yes, the hours are long and the days exhausting.  However, I love my job.  I feel challenged, I feel like I’m making a difference in students’ lives, and I am endlessly amazed and amused at my students.

Things in my school are also awesome.  I really love my school; my colleagues are all engaged and engaging, and all staff are so devoted to educating each student that walks in its doors.  While I’ve heard horror stories of principals and APs, I really like mine; while I’ve heard horror stories of so-called “professional development” meetings, I’ve actually learned a lot from mine, or at least for the stuff I knew, it made sense and was helpful to go over again.

Things in my district … are not so great.  The Chancellor sent out a letter to students’ families saying that a reduction in force (RIF) — i.e. firing lots of teachers district-wide — was necessary due to enrollment not being as high as projected.  (Interestingly, I didn’t really receive this same letter … instead, after I handed out these letters to students in class for them to take home, a copy of the same letter written to students’ parents/guardians was placed in my mailbox at work.)  In the same week, others (like the Washington Post) have reported that enrollment is actually on target right now, though it did start out lower.  In this same school year, hundreds upon hundreds of new teachers were hired, many after the official hiring deadline (July 15?) because of what I can only assume is high need.

I don’t pretend to fathom the bureaucratic mess of my district, but I am upset that — about a month into my career that I love, the career that I feel is my calling — I am losing sleep and watching spending in case I am abruptly let go 6 weeks into the school year.  If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else — or likely more than one person — at my school.  I see the superb quality of educators at my school from teachers to administrators, counselors to kitchen staff, security guards to custodians.  Then I see them break into divisive gossip about what criteria they’ll use to cut people, predicting who will be the ones to go.  And then I know that in the end, some will be fired in hard economic times not even 1/4 through a school year … it makes me lose hope that this — that public education — can work.  If public education wants to attract the best and brightest, why is it firing them?

But then, what do I know?  I’ve spent all of a month in the profession.

I will not be at war with my students

This has been one of my mantras these first few weeks.  Some students aren’t making it easy to remember.  Some students seem like they are doing everything possible to start a war: outright (and vocally) refusing to cooperate in class, not shutting up about whatever gossip they’re trying to chat about, etc.  However, I can’t fight back.  I can only work with them.

My personal idea about student-teacher relationships is this: when it becomes a war, the teacher has already lost.  There should be no battle, no war.  I cannot validate a student’s uncooperative behavior by “fighting” — being snippy, relying solely on threats and punishments, getting angry, yelling/scolding, etc.  I can only state what behavior I want in a way that does not leave room for doing anything else.  The only option is participation, working with me.  There is no fighting against me.  That just doesn’t exist.  Those who are not working with me are actually just not working with me yet.  But they will — because that’s the only possibility.

For example, there’s a student who often gives me this rather snotty look throughout most of class, the look that’s supposed to scare off the weak at heart by crushing them with telepathic insults like, “You’re so stupid.  Whatever you’re saying is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.  What a dork.”  And so on.  She is one of them who has vocally refused to do something I asked of her.  I said it was not optional.  She did not care, and told me so.  I told her to speak to me after class and moved on with the class, still expecting at least minimal participation from her.

After class, the conversation didn’t go all that well — that is, she seemed unreceptive.  However, I kept being civil, and when I saw her a few times between that class at the next time we met, I said hello enthusiastically.  Unsurprisingly, she tried to avoid my gaze, and when she could not do that, gave me the “you are the biggest dork” look along with her muttered “hello.”

Today, the next time we saw each other for class, she was one of my most cooperative students — not brimming over with enthusiasm, but cooperative and attentive.  Later that day, when I saw her in the hall with a friend, she smiled genuinely and said, “Hey, Ms. Little Teacher, how’s it going?”

Win.  Total win.  A(nother) three-day weekend would not have made me happier.

First week of working: complete

What a whirlwind of a week.  So many meetings, and so much vital info and materials getting to me only yesterday and today.  Highlights from the week:

• New textbooks have to be ordered.  Previous ones were ordered before I was hired, but they’re unsuitable.  They’re not aligned with national world language standards from ACTFL (very important with DC’s push towards standards-based teaching and learning), and also they’re meant for grades 4-8.  (To be fair, the U.S. distributor’s website says “Ideal for 4-12″, as if a world language textbook could ever be “ideal” for a 4th grader AND a 12th grader.  The original publisher’s website recommends late elementary or middle school.)
• I have to use the ordered textbooks until new ones come in, which might not happen until towards the end of the semester.  I feel weird about that since the books are so childish, and also because I feel like they were written by a PRC upper-level party member.  Saying that Mandarin is the “traditional” language in China and that Cantonese is just a dialect is so very wrong, and fortunately I have a bit of background in historical and comparative linguistics that informs me of just how wrong that is.  Oh well — a good learning opportunity for politics in China!
• I’m supposed to get a laptop like all teachers (yay!), but I haven’t received it yet.  I just got the login information for a classroom computer late afternoon today, which is necessary to print anything.  This means that I will definitely have to go in tomorrow to print stuff for bulletin boards (required by the district) and to make copies of things like a syllabus.
• Got my rosters today, and while I expect a few more students to enroll that aren’t on my list, my classes are currently 5-10 students each.  They can’t give me too many because I’m starting a Chinese program and will eventually teach four years, but they also wanted me teaching six classes.  Oh well, I’d much rather it be this than 25 students compacted into 2-3 classes!
• Public school politics are crazy, and I am going to try very hard to just stay away.
• For any complaint I may have, I must say, my school rocks so much and I’m still in disbelief that this is my first teaching job, and that this is the first position I got in a notoriously troubled urban district.  Everything looks so nice that it’s kind of wigging me out.
• I’ve gotten so little sleep this week and I’ve spent so much time at work or working at home, and I’m completely wiped out.  I’m thinking this may be how it goes for the entire year, and if so, you can expect extremely few entries during the week.
• Thank the lord for veteran teachers, especially the ones on my hallway.

A Noble Profession

DC Teacher Chic wrote recently about seeing “They Call Me Mister Fry,” a play about a first year teacher:

Mr. Fry poked fun of the stigma that teaching is neither an honorable nor a noble profession, which unfortunately, is true. When I told my father that I was accepting a job as a teacher, he was none too thrilled. He admitted to thinking that the profession was beneath me and asked why I was wasting my time. Why he held these beliefs, I can never be certain.

I’ve gotten this sort of reaction from college professors who expected “more” from me than being a K-12 teacher, including the advisor for my senior thesis, which included a teaching practicum.  He said he wanted me to transform language education.  I said that was the point of teaching (“be the chance you want to see in the world” and all that jazz).  I’ve actually even gotten confused looks from a previous high school teacher, wondering why in the world I would want to teach (versus something more “exciting” I guess?)

Despite this, I consider myself lucky.  I have a family and friend group full of people from various professions and income levels who believe that teaching is a noble and honorable profession, and to not have my sources of support question that, even once, even indirectly, is part of the reason I’ve never seriously questioned it myself.

However, American society really doesn’t do a good job as a whole in validating teachers as well-educated professionals serving their communities, which I find rather odd, since so many Americans remember a select few teachers fondly for the difference they made.  “Oh, that Mr. Johnson/Mrs. Smith/etc, if it weren’t for him/her, I don’t know where I’d be!”  When it comes to the profession as a whole, though … well, it’s easier to remember the “stars” and chalk it up to their personal qualities than the field’s (potential?) professional excellence.