It’s not all doom and gloom 🙂

I’ve got one student who has pretty much been a rockstar all year. He’s totally respectful, and almost always on task. He’s so consistent that it’s hard to imagine him any other way. On Friday, at the honors ceremony, he received an award for being on the Dean’s List. After the ceremony, his grandmother thanked me and claimed that his achievement was due to my efforts, and confided that this was the first time he’d ever made honor roll.

I don’t really take much credit for it. Most of the time, I feel like I’m actually letting down students like him who have to suffer through the chaos and my lack of experience as a teacher. But it is really good to know that good things are happening in my room too. I’ve got nothing but awe and respect for the kids who come to my room and do nothing but the right things, in the midst of so much gone wrong.

On another note, I’ve been reading through a fantastic series the Baltimore Sun has done profiling our CEO of schools, Dr. Andrés Alonso. I haven’t finished it yet, but from what I’ve read so far, it provides an great and truthful look at Dr. Alonso, the school system, and what his vision is for it. When I’m done reading, I’ll be sure to post my thoughts on it. It can be found here. I think he’s doing great things, but I, like many people, definitely have my reservations on some of his approaches.

Lastly, the countdown continues–5 full, 5-day weeks until spring break. I appreciate all the support I’ve been receiving. It’s going to help me keep my stamina up for this long stretch!

I got most of my NWEA test scores back, and the results are not what I hoped. I really felt like some of my kids had gained a lot of ground, but the numbers don’t back it up. On average, kids who took the test in the Fall and the Spring lost one point on the performance scale. The biggest gains were seen in the special ed pull-out class, which I don’t teach.

I just mailed off the second batch of scores, so hopefully it won’t make the situation worse. But I’m not too optimistic, because most of the tests in the batch were from students who are chronically absent or were delayed because they carelessly messed up their bubbling somehow.

So much for TFA’s big goal of 2 years’ progress in one…right now, it seems as though I’ll be lucky to see progress at the end of the year, period.

I can’t afford to spend time feeling discouraged though. I’m trying to teach my butt off to catch up with the district pace. Right now, we’re several weeks behind, due partially to the fact that we’re working with only slightly more than 1/2 the instructional time of most schools.

I just wanted to make sure to update my journal to announce that I am, in fact, still hanging in there. After my awful Tuesday, things did perk up during the remainder of the week. These next 7 weeks are going to be intense. Just one day off between now and Spring break, and the majority of my grad school coursework is also crammed into the same time period.

I finally broke down at school today.

The weirdest part about it was that it wasn’t my worst day at school. It was a fairly bad half of a day. I worked my butt off to reach those kids and try to get them to take ownership over their education, and in my afternoon class, they fired back hard. It has been a number of weeks since it’s been so bad in my room, but compared to the typical day in the Fall, it wasn’t really all that bad. Kids cursed at each other across the room. I got little to no respect when I tried to speak. I had to break up a fight between to students who were horsing around. The same old “you don’t teach us anything” accusations. Today, it wore me down though.

I was fine when I sent the class on to their next hour, exasperated with their behavior. I was fine when my Hopkins supervisor debriefed me with a look on her face that seemed to say, “I don’t know what I can do for this kid”. I was fine when one of my students told me I needed to take control of my classroom and have the kids in the class before clean up their mess behind them. I was fine when half the kids I held for detention walked out. I was fine when the last kid to leave called me a faggot under his breath as he left the door.

I might have been fine if I had the chance to spend an hour to myself to cool down, but we had a team meeting after school that I had to go to. I left the meeting to get some papers, but had to detour to my room, because I knew I was about to lose it, and when I got to my room, I just bawled. To make a long story short, I pulled it together, but when I went downstairs to try and continue my duties, I ended up breaking down again, but this time in front of students, staff, faculty and administration.

I’m kind of humiliated, but on the other hand, kind of not. I mean, I’m not freakin’ Superman. I guess it all eventually adds up, even if it takes 6 months. I hate being vulnerable, and I hate being a charity case. But everyone’s been very supportive and given that what happened happened, it makes it easier to deal with.

I think what made this day different from any of dozens of bad days last Fall, is that I’ve really tried to reach out to individual students, and the more I connect with them, the less I can keep my guard up. I’ve probably had 20 or more individual conferences with students just these last 2 days, and although I don’t usually take misbehavior personally, when I reach out to a student, it does hurt to have it thrown back in my face. It’s a lot easier to take it on the chin when you keep your distance.

A tiny part of me says take a day, but the rest of me says forget about it. A day off wouldn’t make my problem disappear. I’d have to go back to school eventually, so it might as well be tomorrow…

As I alluded to in my last entry, I’m really starting to pick up on major changes in some of my students.

One girl started the year barely attending school at all. When she was present, she could barely keep her mouth shut. She showed little-to-no effort in her work. Then she started showing up consistently, and being a consistent thorn in my side. I had to throw her out of most tests and quizzes for disruption. Most days, she didn’t do a lick of work, and she was really dragging down one of my best students, who idolized her for being the class clown. Then I started dedicating part of my walk-around time to really working with her one-on-one. As it turned out, she was way more capable than she was letting on. I think like a lot of my students, she lacked confidence and would rather not try and fail than try, fail, and look stupid. I complimented her for doing better work. As the semester went along, I tried to devote some time to getting her started on her work. By the end of the semester, things hadn’t turned around completely, but she was doing some of her classwork, attempting to take test and quizzes, and refraining from disrupting class most of the time.

I can name a whole bunch of other students who have shown similar turnarounds. Most of them no longer act like they hate being there. Although I’m happy with the direction of these students, unfortunately, many of them are still going to fail their first semester of Algebra I. I hope that it’s not going to be too discouraging, but they need to understand that you can’t piss away most of a semester, put in average effort, and still pass the class. They’re starting to learn how to work, but they’re going to need to learn just how hard that work needs to be to succeed. The HSA test at the end of the year is going to show them no mercy, and neither will I. So the challenge for me this new semester is figuring out how to take these from walking in the right direction to sprinting.

I’m slightly excited about next week. My student are going to take the NWEA, a standardized exam for measuring overall math abilities. They took the test for the first time this past Fall, and it indicated that I’m teaching students ranging in math ability from 2nd grade, all the way to 10+. The 9th grade average performance is on-par with the average American student halfway through 5th grade. The Algebra I HSA is a tough test. Needless to say, it’s almost audacious to expect that all 100 of my students will grow enough pass. However, if I can push them to make more than a year’s worth of growth in math, at least they are on track to catch up with their peers.

The big goal for my class is to grow an average of 2 years in math ability. A tiny handful of my kids have already maxed out the scale, and a couple are on the low end and probably haven’t moved much, but I think there’s a big chunk of kids in the middle who will hopefully show some major gains. I’m looking forward to (hopefully) seeing some good numbers on academic growth for the 1st semester.

I haven’t been doing such a good job lately of keeping this journal up to date, but I see that people are still checking in, so an update is in order.

Most of my days since coming back haven’t been too eventful. I think my biggest problem lately is that I’m struggling to attain the level of respect I should be receiving from my students. I’ve been hammering on them. My homeroom class has been the toughest to deal with. They’re still super snotty, but I think I’m making some progress. I’ve had to make a whole bunch of phone calls, punish the entire class as a group, and be extremely vigilant. It’s been hard, but I hope it will start paying dividends. They need the biggest kick in the butt. My interim assessment scores show that all my classes are performing dismally. But my homeroom significantly lags the other three. I’m hoping that when/if I can finally break them, we can start moving them forward. I am excited that Ms. Cleveland, our most experienced teacher and our best at relating to the students, will teach them every day, because she will hopefully have a big impact in getting them into shape.

One thing I’m concerned about coming up is that a large number of my students are missing very major assignments (i.e. tests and quizzes). I’ve gone out of my way to post due dates and past due notices for make ups, and still, most of missing assignments are still outstanding. It’s so frustrating. On one hand, I do not want to baby these kids. They need to learn to take care of their own responsibilities, and learn that there are major consequences if they don’t. On the other hand, some of these kids are already on the verge of being lost.

Another thing that is a major concern to me is the ebb and flow of individual students. It’s amazing how far some kids have come over the year. I can think of several kids who started the year off severely behind, completely unmotivated, and/or totally unmanageable and have turned their acts around. But there are a handful of kids who have moved in the opposite direction. I can think of three, all in my homeroom, who started off way ahead but have really been crashing and burning for the past couple of months. They are supposed to be three of our best, and right now, everybody is at a loss as to what to do with them. I talk to each of their parents just about weekly, to little effect. We’re all busting our butts to get them to stop throwing their lives away, but at this point it’s on them. First semester is about done, and they’re going to have to lay in the bed they’ve made for themselves.

On the bright side, January is glorious: winter break, two weeks of school, 2 days off for MLKJ Day and Inauguration, exams this week, and then professional development days next week. Supposedly, I’ll be paying dearly in February and March. Days off will be fewer and far between, Hopkins will be back in session, and HSA’s will be becoming more and more urgent. I’m enjoying the slower pace, but also trying to buckle down as best I can.

Coming back from break was harder than I thought it would be. Having almost 2 weeks off was fantastic, but it almost felt too long. By the end of the break, I was starting to feel tired of being aimless. I was looking forward to having structure again.

But as soon as my alarm went off, reality set in again. The first day was a struggle. Strangely enough, nothing went horribly wrong that day; I was just not into to it. I had planned on coming back with enthusiasm, but that morning, it was tough to muster the energy to interact with my students. It was one of those days when I just didn’t like any part of my job. A full day of butting heads with students and dealing with dozens of manifestations of social problems was a lot to handle after such a break from responsibility. I came home exhausted and slept most of the evening away.

Fortunately, after some long conversations, I cheered up considerably. I realized that maybe it was too much to expect that I’d set right back in the groove where I’d left off before break, and that maybe I’m not abnormally bad at or ill-suited for teaching.

These last couple days have gone much better, at least in terms of my feelings internally. And although my classroom is far from the well-oiled machine I’d like it to be, I really do feel more comfortable in my role. My lessons are going way better lately, and my ability to assert my authority is definitely coming along. It’s still hard as heck and exhausting, but I’m not feeling so dismal anymore.

The first long stretch of school ended on a crazy note. The main event of the day was the rematch of the legendary pre-Thanksgiving student-faculty basketball game. Much like the last time, it was a pretty epic game. In the end, I don’t even know or care who won, because one of my students ended up leaving school in an ambulance.

We were in the last couple minutes of the game, and the score was close. I was taking the ball to the rim, looking to draw a foul. One of my students stood in the lane to try and take a charge, and two others homed in from the side and behind to try to block my layup. I side-stepped to avoid running directly into the kid in the lane, and went up for the shot. I don’t really know what happened, but next thing I know I was picking myself up after slamming into the floor.

I got up, and not hearing a whistle, I ran back to defend, assuming that there was no foul called. But then I realized that the student who was in the lane was on the ground, and must have been for a while. Then when I looked more closely, I saw that he was out cold and convulsing.

Reportedly, what had happened was that after I went up, the player who jumped from behind me to block my shot knocked the kid in the lane over, and when I came down, my foot or leg hit him right in the head, slamming his head into the ground.

The teachers and the principal stopped the building panic in the stands and got everyone in their seats and quiet. The kid didn’t seize for very long, and he regained consciousness, but he still could not get up. I sat on the gym floor and watched and waited for tense minutes while we waited for the paramedics to come. It was a crappy situation–a freak sports accident, but a highly awkward situation, nonetheless. There was nothing I could do but pray that he was okay, because I had to leave before the paramedics arrived so that I could be on time to catch my plane back home for break. Fortunately, I heard the next day from the principal that everything is okay, which is a big relief. But still, what an awful good way to end what had been a very fun and hard-fought contest.

On lighter note, I’ve made it to winter break! This is the longest period of time off I’ve had since Induction, in mid-June. I’m going to try hard to savor it! When I’m done relaxing, I might write something a bit more retrospective.

This past week has gone fairly well. Late December is known to be a time when students are “off the hook”, and that has rang true, but I’ve been dropping the hammer in response, and generally speaking, things have been manageable. I hope it’s not just a temporary phase or transient holiday joy, but things do seem to improving on the whole. Another big part is probably that I’ve really been putting a lot of effort into turning my outlook around. Oh yeah–and Hopkins is done for the semester!

We had our bi-weekly 9th Grade All-Men Meeting on Friday, which seemed to go reasonably well. We’re trying hard to start forming these 9th grade males into disciplined men, and I can see it coming along bit by bit. Right now, we don’t really have a set plan going into these meeting, which is something that’s going to have to change for them to be successful. But for my part, I’m trying to establish a culture of manhood, based not upon machismo, or even traditional masculinity, but on self-control. I’ve been doing this by framing disruptive and disrespectful behaviors I want to eliminate as boyish, and productive behaviors I want to foster as manly. This has been pretty effective for about 90% of my 9th graders, particularly the ones who aren’t deeply involved in the street culture. You can see it every day; these kids are still planning out their developmental route.

For the other 10%, they’ve already decided what “being a man” looks like, and it typically involves bucking authority. We’re going to need something more comprehensive to reach them. In the meantime, continuing these meetings is going to be key to making sure that their twisted idea of manhood isn’t the only perspective out there for those 90% who are still up for grabs.

On a lighter note, I taught what was probably my best lesson yet on Thursday and Friday. The big difference is I cut the lecture to a minimum, and got started with real-world application right off the bat. I had a rude awakening last week when I looked at the Benchmark assessment my students would be taking. I realized that the majority of the questions were word problems, and that the HSA was going to be quite similar. Unfortunately, I’ve put very little emphasis on word problems all year, and I feel like that has really set my students back. I thought that incorporating word problems in the lesson might make learning the skills more complicated, and maybe it has, but at the same time it makes the math a bit more engaging.

Just two more days until some much-needed rest and relaxation!

Last week was not my best week, even though I was only at work for 3 1/2 days. I felt like I was running on fumes. But I think/hope I’m starting to come around. I’ve been really trying to work on my attitude. It kind of feels like little by little, I’m gaining perspective on what I should be doing. I’ve been trying new strategies to get control of my classes, and I think I’m making some headway. Changing my classroom culture is going to be a long process. The biggest thing I’ve had to change for myself is holding higher expectations for student conduct in my own mind.

At the suggestion of one of my roommates, I’ve tried one little thing that has made a notable difference. It’s one of those new-school strategies with stupid names that sound like they would never work: “accountable talk”. The idea is, instead of repeating expectations or directions, I say them one time, and if I notice someone is not moving, I ask them what they’re supposed to be doing. Sure enough, it often gets them moving. When it doesn’t, I still do not repeat the directions. I ask if there’s someone who can explain the directions, or I give hints by pointing out groups who have the hang of it. It’s not the magic bullet, but the strategy has been very helpful for students who are daydreaming or engaged in benign off-task behavior. As it turns out, it really does seem to empower students, and reduces the number of direct commands I have to issue.

I feel exhausted, but the good news is that grad class is done for the semester, and there are only a few days left until break. I’m told that I can expect things to come together for me a little bit more after Christmas, and I’m going to do my best to make sure I come out swinging in January. As for tomorrow, judging by the fact that I’m still awake at 2am (thanks, 5-Hour Energy!), I can only imagine it’s going to be a bit of a rough day.

By the way, thanks to everyone who’s read about my adventure and lent support. It means a lot to me. I’m going to try to continue to document the experience, so keep checking up.