I have survived yet another week of teaching boot camp! I must say that this time last week and up until Wednesday, I was not very sure I was going to make it. I had trouble accepting the fact that my students did not achieve mastery (80%) on our objectives in science the first week, which really discouraged me for this past week of math. I felt like I had failed them, and my biggest fear was that I would continue to fail them despite all of my efforts.
The first three days were rough. While I don't think my lessons were as bad as the week before, I still felt like my students were struggling to grasp what I was teaching. We were trying to learn how to distinguish between the metric and customary systems of mass and liquid volume, which was in addition to learning the same systems for length the week before. I struggled to make it concrete for them and to apply it to their own lives so that they could be invested in it. And they struggled to understand why we would use centimeters instead of grams when measuring mass, or how 2 cups can equal a pint, even though they had watched me literally show them how they are equal.
But in the end, I realized that I cannot expect this information to make sense to a 3rd grader after hearing about it for only 45 minutes. In a regular classroom, my resources would be better and my time allotment would be more generous. As it is now, we are just all in this together, trying to make some sort of improvement, and we are all working very hard to achieve that growth. And I think they will walk away from this experience having learned quite a bit, even if they do not meet TFA's rigorous standards.
On Tuesday, we had yet another bad day in terms of respecting one another. At lunch, we had a whole group of girls who were talking about another girl right in front of her. She came to me and told me about it. I struggled with what I should do, since I personally had not witnessed the problem. I spent the rest of the lunch hovering over that group and probably making them a touch nervous, but this obviously wasn't enough for the girl who was the subject of their bullying. I tried to tell her the limits of my power without choosing sides and tried to console her. I told her that I knew exactly what she was going through, since I had been on the receiving end once or twice when I was her age, but that I had gotten over it and been stronger as a result. I have no idea if I did it correctly. I had tried to keep in mind what I would have wanted to hear if I had been in her place. In any case, I decided that the next day, I would bring the fear of God to my 3rd graders. I had tried being nice and fostering a feel-good atmosphere the week before, but I needed something stronger.
So on Wednesday, I pulled out a tone of voice I have never used before, and I am not lying when I say that it was a tone that was scary even to me. I told them that any sign of disrespect to fellow students or to the teachers would be met with the harshest of penalties, that we would not tolerate students who harmed the learning environment, and that they would write and sign our new classroom respect promise, which would be displayed in our room. The promise ended in true TFA fashion: "I will respect everyone in this classroom. We learn together. We grow together. We get smart together." The scared looks around the room and the subsequent good behavior seem to show that my talk worked. Let's hope I don't have to use that tone too often in my career as a teacher. No one wants to witness that one again!
So as you might be able to tell, my classroom management, though not perfect, is wickedly good. My faculty advisor (Houston ISD Teacher of the Year Melanie Leavens) was pretty impressed with my ability to run workstations efficiently and quietly, and I personally was impressed with my ability to get my students to line up after recess within 5 seconds. Not even kidding. So while I struggle a little bit to make my lessons creative and hands-on, you can bet my kids are on their best behavior! I think part of that is just luck, though; I have a truly awesome group of kids. I will miss them terribly after Institute is over.
This coming week, I am teaching reading and writing, which should be interesting! These are personally my two favorite things, but we shall see how that translates to the classroom.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Week Two!
I have made it to the other side of week two of Institute! Houston is still blazing hot and the buildings are still freezing, but at least this week I met my kids! I started my teaching career with 3rd grade science, which is kind of ironic, given my persistent discomfort with the subject. All it took for me to have horrifying flashbacks to years of struggling with science concepts was to attempt to teach the scientific method to 8-year-olds! But I can happily say that I managed to pull through, and the students hopefully learned a few things along the way.
I started the week by giving the students a diagnostic test, which we will use to track their growth while they are in our inexperienced hands. My students did horribly on the test, which immediately made me frantic about the challenges we would all face together as a class, but I also realized that meant that we had plenty of room for improvement. With that in mind, I entered class on Tuesday completely unprepared for the dynamics of a science class that happens to fall after lunch and before dismissal. In other words, the students had checked out intellectually for the day way before they came to me. So the first two days of the week were a complete struggle in classroom management. The kids were restless, energetic in the wrong way, and dying to socialize--in both the positive and negative aspects. They wanted to talk with some and to bully others. We had several issues with bickering back and forth, and then it escalated into a shocking incident for a third grade classroom: one of the students left a nasty note that read "F*** you" in the locker of another student. NOT going to happen in my classroom!
I went home and spent a great deal of time that night reflecting on how best to handle the situation the next morning. I can't really say that I stressed about it, because I knew what had to happen and I had a general idea of how I would say it, but I could not predict how this serious talk would be received. To my surprise, the community circle was all it took to bring my kids back into line. By the end of the week, all I had to do was say a name, look in the direction of the behavior chart, and that child would quietly get up to give himself his own punishment (in this case, a card on the behavior chart, which was connected to other penalties). Unbelieveable, right?
Aside from classroom management, I do not feel that I made significant gains with my class. I was quitely literally a fish out of water for the entire time I was teaching the scientific method. I had no idea how to make it interesting or applicable to third graders, who are too young to understand the concept in its necessary entirety. I spent all week thinking back to my third grade experience and tried to remember how I had learned the scientific method, but all I could remember was that I had learned the steps and then the information got increasingly complicated with every passing year. I certainly did not remember making my own questions, hypotheses, identifying materials for the experiment, analyzing data, or making conclusions! I think those objectives (which TFA supplied) are far more fifth grade concepts than third, but we did our best to grasp the information, and I think my kids will walk away with at least a little more than they came to me with.
This coming week, I am teaching math, which will be a welcome change. We will be focusing on the customary and metric systems of mass and liquid volume, which has plenty of opportunities for hands-on learning.
I feel obligated to say, in case you were wondering, that I have no life outside of TFA; I was thinking the other day that when I am done, people back home will ask me, how was Houston? Did you like it? But I will have no response for you at all, other than, well, the skyline from my window was pretty cool. So I warn you now: if you have a burning desire to learn about Houston, I would recommend that you google it! :)
I started the week by giving the students a diagnostic test, which we will use to track their growth while they are in our inexperienced hands. My students did horribly on the test, which immediately made me frantic about the challenges we would all face together as a class, but I also realized that meant that we had plenty of room for improvement. With that in mind, I entered class on Tuesday completely unprepared for the dynamics of a science class that happens to fall after lunch and before dismissal. In other words, the students had checked out intellectually for the day way before they came to me. So the first two days of the week were a complete struggle in classroom management. The kids were restless, energetic in the wrong way, and dying to socialize--in both the positive and negative aspects. They wanted to talk with some and to bully others. We had several issues with bickering back and forth, and then it escalated into a shocking incident for a third grade classroom: one of the students left a nasty note that read "F*** you" in the locker of another student. NOT going to happen in my classroom!
I went home and spent a great deal of time that night reflecting on how best to handle the situation the next morning. I can't really say that I stressed about it, because I knew what had to happen and I had a general idea of how I would say it, but I could not predict how this serious talk would be received. To my surprise, the community circle was all it took to bring my kids back into line. By the end of the week, all I had to do was say a name, look in the direction of the behavior chart, and that child would quietly get up to give himself his own punishment (in this case, a card on the behavior chart, which was connected to other penalties). Unbelieveable, right?
Aside from classroom management, I do not feel that I made significant gains with my class. I was quitely literally a fish out of water for the entire time I was teaching the scientific method. I had no idea how to make it interesting or applicable to third graders, who are too young to understand the concept in its necessary entirety. I spent all week thinking back to my third grade experience and tried to remember how I had learned the scientific method, but all I could remember was that I had learned the steps and then the information got increasingly complicated with every passing year. I certainly did not remember making my own questions, hypotheses, identifying materials for the experiment, analyzing data, or making conclusions! I think those objectives (which TFA supplied) are far more fifth grade concepts than third, but we did our best to grasp the information, and I think my kids will walk away with at least a little more than they came to me with.
This coming week, I am teaching math, which will be a welcome change. We will be focusing on the customary and metric systems of mass and liquid volume, which has plenty of opportunities for hands-on learning.
I feel obligated to say, in case you were wondering, that I have no life outside of TFA; I was thinking the other day that when I am done, people back home will ask me, how was Houston? Did you like it? But I will have no response for you at all, other than, well, the skyline from my window was pretty cool. So I warn you now: if you have a burning desire to learn about Houston, I would recommend that you google it! :)
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Newest Adventure: Teach for America!
The last I used this blog, I was finishing my semester abroad in Germany in July 2007. A great many developments have affected the course of my life since then, but since my readers are very familiar with them, I will not articulate them here. And besides, that is too much self-reflection to do on a sunny Saturday. So, enjoy my latest update in my Teach for America (hereafter TFA) adventures!
I arrived in the Delta during a freakish cold snap, which definitely gives the casual observer the wrong impression of what Delta summers are really like. I experienced a couple days of long and wordy indoctrination sessions and interviewed with two elementary principals. I suppose it was important to acquaint the new corps members with the TFA vision and to create a unity of purpose, but a lot of it was just eye roll-worthy (which I did, internally, on many, many occasions). It did help, however, that I got to meet my fellow newbies, who are generally incredibly nice, brilliant, and fun. We may number almost 300, but the sense of community is immediately apparent. This will be one of my favorite aspects, I can already tell.
I made it to Houston Sunday evening amidst a whirlwind of chaos as 832 TFA corps members from the Delta, Dallas, Houston, Memphis, Rio Grande Valley, and Hawaii regions scrambled to get themselves moved into Moody Towers at the University of Houston. We started bright and early Monday morning, and I spent the week getting the biggest crash course of my life in the world of teaching theory and practice. Some of it was helpful, some intimidating, and some, sad to say, made what skills I thought I already intuitively possessed seem inadequate and misinformed--even though I am not convinced that this should be the case. TFA prides itself on building teachers from the ground up (using the slogan, "teachers are made, not born"), which has been a source of discomfort for the few education majors among us. But hopefully, when I get into the classroom for the first time on Monday, the pieces will finally settled into their appropriate places.
I work with two other corps members to teach a 3rd grade summer school class at Wainwright Elementary in Houston, and I will be starting out teaching science! This is hugely intimidating to me, since science was never my strongest subject--in fact, my weakest by far--but I am doing my best to just roll with it. My objective is to teach the scientific method and to lead a class experiment! This has two possible outcomes, as far as I can see: 1.) make me the coolest and favorite teacher of the three, or 2.) make my first week into out-of-control chaos. Since I am well-aware of these possibilities, I am planning very, very, VERY carefully. :)
I have met many great people, and I am having a pretty good time. If I could change one thing, though, I would like to get a bit more sleep... But I do have to say, 5am every morning feels too early no matter how much sleep I managed to get! Anyway, I will try to send an email update/blog post every weekend during Institute to keep you all informed of my progress. Wish me luck, and have a great weekend!!
I arrived in the Delta during a freakish cold snap, which definitely gives the casual observer the wrong impression of what Delta summers are really like. I experienced a couple days of long and wordy indoctrination sessions and interviewed with two elementary principals. I suppose it was important to acquaint the new corps members with the TFA vision and to create a unity of purpose, but a lot of it was just eye roll-worthy (which I did, internally, on many, many occasions). It did help, however, that I got to meet my fellow newbies, who are generally incredibly nice, brilliant, and fun. We may number almost 300, but the sense of community is immediately apparent. This will be one of my favorite aspects, I can already tell.
I made it to Houston Sunday evening amidst a whirlwind of chaos as 832 TFA corps members from the Delta, Dallas, Houston, Memphis, Rio Grande Valley, and Hawaii regions scrambled to get themselves moved into Moody Towers at the University of Houston. We started bright and early Monday morning, and I spent the week getting the biggest crash course of my life in the world of teaching theory and practice. Some of it was helpful, some intimidating, and some, sad to say, made what skills I thought I already intuitively possessed seem inadequate and misinformed--even though I am not convinced that this should be the case. TFA prides itself on building teachers from the ground up (using the slogan, "teachers are made, not born"), which has been a source of discomfort for the few education majors among us. But hopefully, when I get into the classroom for the first time on Monday, the pieces will finally settled into their appropriate places.
I work with two other corps members to teach a 3rd grade summer school class at Wainwright Elementary in Houston, and I will be starting out teaching science! This is hugely intimidating to me, since science was never my strongest subject--in fact, my weakest by far--but I am doing my best to just roll with it. My objective is to teach the scientific method and to lead a class experiment! This has two possible outcomes, as far as I can see: 1.) make me the coolest and favorite teacher of the three, or 2.) make my first week into out-of-control chaos. Since I am well-aware of these possibilities, I am planning very, very, VERY carefully. :)
I have met many great people, and I am having a pretty good time. If I could change one thing, though, I would like to get a bit more sleep... But I do have to say, 5am every morning feels too early no matter how much sleep I managed to get! Anyway, I will try to send an email update/blog post every weekend during Institute to keep you all informed of my progress. Wish me luck, and have a great weekend!!
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