Over Halfway!!

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.