Chapter 5: The End and the Beginning
It was a happy coincidence that Jason was accepted into the lab in Bordeaux just as I was at my wits' end in Baltimore. I couldn't have done another year at that school so the timing was perfect. The five months between the end of school and moving to France were no walk in the park, though. I was going insane with boredom and was just so anxious to get OUT of the city that had completely sapped my soul but Jason was not ready to go yet. He had a great thing at his lab, with lots of friends in town and I wanted him to end it all and move to another country where he didn't know the language or the people or anything. You can see why he was reluctant to pack his bags and give it all up. This certainly caused some tension between us which is a lot of the reason I ended up moving first. I had to leave.
The scars left by those final years in Baltimore have been slow to heal. There were times when I doubted that I wanted to continue teaching. This is saying something coming from the girl who dreamed of doing nothing but teaching since the day she was born. There were times when I felt like nothing and nobody was ever going to be able to fix the problems facing Baltimore City Schools. I felt like I had failed and if I had all that love and all that skill and all that passion and I still couldn't do it, then how can we expect our students to succeed, knowing how many obstacles face them?
Yet, with this distance, both physical and emotional, that I have been afforded by my time in France, I am starting to feel tiny twinges of hope again. Hope that there are schools that are leading students to academic success. That there are principals who will take responsibility for their school's culture and be the stewards even of a sinking ship. That there are schools where teachers are trusted to do their jobs well. That there are districts where everyone is held accountable, from the school board to the school nurse. I have hope that I will be better when I go back into the classroom and continue that dream that I dreamed so long ago.
In the meantime, I want to extend my appreciation to all the teachers who are still fighting the good fight back home and probably have similar stories to share. Your struggles, no matter how big or small, are real but you have to power to solve them. If your school keeps you from doing your job, find another school that will nurture your talents and respect you as a professional. You are doing the most important work in the world. Even though you don't always see the results of this work immediately (or ever), you have to trust that you have made an impact. Regardless of whether you have known since you were little that teaching was your calling or you just stumbled into it, you are changing lives. I hope the gravity of that truth moves you to be better, be stronger, and to be the educator that your students deserve.
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Friday, May 9, 2014
Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 4
Chapter 4: When It's Gone, It's Gone
In my fourth year, there was a very tangible shift. It started with the staff. We had a lot of our core members move on to bigger and better things, mostly for personal reasons. No hard feelings, of course, but it was never quite the same after they left. Despite growing student enrollment, we didn't take on many new staff members. For the ones we did, we never really took the time to get them on board with the mission or the model of the school, so some of the elements of what was once a very strict code of conduct started to loosen up and fall away due simply to a lack of consistent enforcement.
At the same time, there most recent AYP numbers were not looking good and someone was going to have to answer for them. There were a lot of finger-pointing policies that came down from the superintendent and since no one was interested in taking the blame for the failing district, it was placed squarely on the shoulders of the teachers. We were the easiest scapegoat, of course, because if the children aren't passing the tests and graduating, then it must be because the teachers aren't teaching them well enough! It couldn't possibly be any of these things that are COMPLETELY out of a teacher's control:
-student absenteeism
-malnutrition
-trauma (abuse, neglect, exposure to/participation in violence)
-poorly crafted district-mandated curricula
-malaligned standardized tests
-devalued diplomas
-ineffective school/district leaders
-allure of gang lifestyle
-lack of discipline at home (absent parents, lack of parenting skills)
-lack of prerequisite skills for high school achievement
-lack of resources (for students to complete assigned tasks)
-lack of resources (for teachers to give effective instruction)
-lack of faith in the education system in general
Yet, sadly, these were all of the things that were somehow my fault and if I just taught my classes better, it would solve everything! Kids would leave the gangs, come in off the streets, quit the jobs that they needed to support their younger siblings/junkie parents/children of their own, and come join me in Spanish 1 because that seems like something that is going to have an immediate positive effect on their lives!
And when the attendance police pick the students up and dump them in a chair in my classroom, you can bet your bottom dollar that they are going to be ready to learn, bright eyed from that night they spent sleeping on a park bench because they got evicted. They will certainly be prepared to participate after missing the first 75% of the course while they were busy selling drugs on the corner. On test day, I'm sure they had a balanced breakfast of Hot Cheetos and grape soda at 10:30am when they finally decided to roll into the school with no uniform, no books, nothing to write with, nothing to write on, and a chip on their shoulder because somebody looked at them funny on their way in the building.
Around this same time when teachers were being blamed for all of the fallout of Baltimore's societal ills, our administration also sold our collective souls for a little extra cash. Since having special education students gets you more district funding, we decided to take on the PRIDE Program for students with emotional disabilities. I can't even begin to explain how completely unprepared we were to admit this group of students. We didn't have the staff, we didn't have the training, we didn't have the resources or the structure or anything that was required to give these students the services they needed so they really could get an education. We just saw dollar signs for each kid who was on the list. Shame on us for our selfishness and greed. We certainly paid for it later.
When you have students with emotional disabilities, a simple request like, "Please take a seat" becomes a personal attack. "You don't own me, bitch! Shut the fuck up! I do what I want. Can't nobody tell me nothing. Niggas think they run this shit. I run this shit!"
What do you do in a situation like that? Do you start screaming obscenities right back at them? Do you raise your fists and prepare to fight? Do you throw something? Or do you see that behind all that rage is a 14 year old child that has seen more hurt and pain that you will ever see in your privileged life? Do you know that his reaction has NOTHING to do with you and everything to do with a life of frustration and disappointment and struggle? Do you know that this is the only way he's been taught to speak to authority figures?
So you say, "I need you to step outside and come back to class when you are calm enough to learn. I'll be here when you're ready." Sometimes they never come back. Sometimes they are forced to come back and they sit in the corner with their heads down, listening to their iPods, refusing to even try. Sometimes they come back and apologize. You never know. But what you can guarantee will happen is that your general ed students will take note that this kid just punked you and nothing was done about it. They see that he doesn't have to wear a uniform like everyone else. They see that there are new limits and they are going to try to find just how far they can push those limits before everything snaps.
He said "I run this shit," and he was right. Control slipped away from the teachers into the waiting hands of the students and there was no coming back from it. The little details like having your shirt tucked in or wearing the right color shoes were completely forgotten because it was a victory just getting kids into a classroom, regardless of what they looked like or how they acted.
The district decided that suspensions were no longer an option for disciplining students except in "extreme circumstances" (read: bloodshed) so we had no option for students who were way out of line (throwing/kicking desks, cursing at teachers, making violent threats, sexual harassment, etc.) but didn't, say, stab anyone. I don't think kids should be wantonly kicked out of school either, but then you need better "in house" consequences and behavior management tactics so that you don't need to even think about suspension. We had none of those and a whole lot of situations got unnecessarily bad, but not quite bad enough, so there was nothing we could do about it.
How do you run a school where "just show up" is the standard and the expectation? Our principal must have asked himself the same question and was at a loss for a solution so he gave up, too. What was clearly a school culture issue was branded as teachers just not working hard enough. Instead of supporting us and trusting our expertise to create engaging lessons, we were scrutinized and docked points on our evaluations for inconsequential omissions like not having enough words on our Word Walls.
Trust and love were replaced with blame and bitterness. The once quiet, orderly hallways were now 24-hour party zones. The focus used to be on student achievement and now it was simply on covering your ass so they couldn't find a reason to fire you. There was no collaborative spirit anymore, no sense of family. It was us, the teachers, versus them, the administration, the district, the students and the parents and no one was going down without a fight.
Our school motto was "Excellence is the expectation," and when I first arrived at the school, the students repeated this slogan to each other, to themselves, to their parents... They believed it. I believed it. At the end of my tenure there, it was virtually forgotten, or worse, dripping with sarcasm and disdain. The only expectation was that you would end up a nobody going nowhere, just like all your friends, and all your relatives and everyone you've ever known because that's the only thing this city is really good at.
There were some positive moments in those last two years: I had another great semester with some of my students in the class of 2011. They were always such a pleasure to teach and it helped that I had their class last period because they could erase an entire day's worth of frustration with 90 minutes of awesome. They were the reason I came to work everyday.
I also go to teach AP psychology in my 5th year. Our principal had been "teaching it"for two years but more often than not, that meant leaving the kids in a room by themselves (which happened to be my room during my planning period) to read their textbooks and answer sample exam questions. Finally, I got fed up and offered to take the class over myself. It was wonderful getting to try something different and to push the students to the next level but the fact of the matter is that none of them were quite ready to make that leap yet. Due to scheduling conflicts, I only got a semester where the principal had the class all year and I feel like I could have done so much more with a little more time.
One of the best experiences was participating in the Chill program, sponsored by Burton. My friend Heather had been the coordinator for the three years she was at the school and I picked up the slack when she left. It's a program that teaches life lessons such as patience, persistence, courage and pride, through snowboarding. Six weeks, one night a week, everything paid for and in the end, you come out a better person who also knows how to snowboard. If you work with underserved or at-risk youth, see if there is a Chill program near you. It's the only thing that got me through my last year.
That year was filled with disappointment and when it was over, I tried to be happy for the seniors but I mostly felt angry that so few of them even deserved to be on that stage. I was angry about how many had cheated and lied and complained their way to a 60% and had the nerve to be proud of it. I was angry that my principal had sold us out. I was angry that my friends had left when things were still good. Most of all I was angry at myself for being so defeated.
When I think back to what my school was and what it became, it breaks my heart. I was so proud of my school, of my students, of my fellow staff members. Maybe it was being young and maybe it was being optimistic but I really believed we were something special. I truly believed that teachers could make a difference, despite all the odds working against us. In five years, that faith was stripped away and a cold sense of helplessness was all that remained. I thought I could change the world but I turned out to be just another teacher who got eaten by the system.
In my fourth year, there was a very tangible shift. It started with the staff. We had a lot of our core members move on to bigger and better things, mostly for personal reasons. No hard feelings, of course, but it was never quite the same after they left. Despite growing student enrollment, we didn't take on many new staff members. For the ones we did, we never really took the time to get them on board with the mission or the model of the school, so some of the elements of what was once a very strict code of conduct started to loosen up and fall away due simply to a lack of consistent enforcement.
At the same time, there most recent AYP numbers were not looking good and someone was going to have to answer for them. There were a lot of finger-pointing policies that came down from the superintendent and since no one was interested in taking the blame for the failing district, it was placed squarely on the shoulders of the teachers. We were the easiest scapegoat, of course, because if the children aren't passing the tests and graduating, then it must be because the teachers aren't teaching them well enough! It couldn't possibly be any of these things that are COMPLETELY out of a teacher's control:
-student absenteeism
-malnutrition
-trauma (abuse, neglect, exposure to/participation in violence)
-poorly crafted district-mandated curricula
-malaligned standardized tests
-devalued diplomas
-ineffective school/district leaders
-allure of gang lifestyle
-lack of discipline at home (absent parents, lack of parenting skills)
-lack of prerequisite skills for high school achievement
-lack of resources (for students to complete assigned tasks)
-lack of resources (for teachers to give effective instruction)
-lack of faith in the education system in general
Yet, sadly, these were all of the things that were somehow my fault and if I just taught my classes better, it would solve everything! Kids would leave the gangs, come in off the streets, quit the jobs that they needed to support their younger siblings/junkie parents/children of their own, and come join me in Spanish 1 because that seems like something that is going to have an immediate positive effect on their lives!
And when the attendance police pick the students up and dump them in a chair in my classroom, you can bet your bottom dollar that they are going to be ready to learn, bright eyed from that night they spent sleeping on a park bench because they got evicted. They will certainly be prepared to participate after missing the first 75% of the course while they were busy selling drugs on the corner. On test day, I'm sure they had a balanced breakfast of Hot Cheetos and grape soda at 10:30am when they finally decided to roll into the school with no uniform, no books, nothing to write with, nothing to write on, and a chip on their shoulder because somebody looked at them funny on their way in the building.
Around this same time when teachers were being blamed for all of the fallout of Baltimore's societal ills, our administration also sold our collective souls for a little extra cash. Since having special education students gets you more district funding, we decided to take on the PRIDE Program for students with emotional disabilities. I can't even begin to explain how completely unprepared we were to admit this group of students. We didn't have the staff, we didn't have the training, we didn't have the resources or the structure or anything that was required to give these students the services they needed so they really could get an education. We just saw dollar signs for each kid who was on the list. Shame on us for our selfishness and greed. We certainly paid for it later.
When you have students with emotional disabilities, a simple request like, "Please take a seat" becomes a personal attack. "You don't own me, bitch! Shut the fuck up! I do what I want. Can't nobody tell me nothing. Niggas think they run this shit. I run this shit!"
What do you do in a situation like that? Do you start screaming obscenities right back at them? Do you raise your fists and prepare to fight? Do you throw something? Or do you see that behind all that rage is a 14 year old child that has seen more hurt and pain that you will ever see in your privileged life? Do you know that his reaction has NOTHING to do with you and everything to do with a life of frustration and disappointment and struggle? Do you know that this is the only way he's been taught to speak to authority figures?
So you say, "I need you to step outside and come back to class when you are calm enough to learn. I'll be here when you're ready." Sometimes they never come back. Sometimes they are forced to come back and they sit in the corner with their heads down, listening to their iPods, refusing to even try. Sometimes they come back and apologize. You never know. But what you can guarantee will happen is that your general ed students will take note that this kid just punked you and nothing was done about it. They see that he doesn't have to wear a uniform like everyone else. They see that there are new limits and they are going to try to find just how far they can push those limits before everything snaps.
He said "I run this shit," and he was right. Control slipped away from the teachers into the waiting hands of the students and there was no coming back from it. The little details like having your shirt tucked in or wearing the right color shoes were completely forgotten because it was a victory just getting kids into a classroom, regardless of what they looked like or how they acted.
The district decided that suspensions were no longer an option for disciplining students except in "extreme circumstances" (read: bloodshed) so we had no option for students who were way out of line (throwing/kicking desks, cursing at teachers, making violent threats, sexual harassment, etc.) but didn't, say, stab anyone. I don't think kids should be wantonly kicked out of school either, but then you need better "in house" consequences and behavior management tactics so that you don't need to even think about suspension. We had none of those and a whole lot of situations got unnecessarily bad, but not quite bad enough, so there was nothing we could do about it.
How do you run a school where "just show up" is the standard and the expectation? Our principal must have asked himself the same question and was at a loss for a solution so he gave up, too. What was clearly a school culture issue was branded as teachers just not working hard enough. Instead of supporting us and trusting our expertise to create engaging lessons, we were scrutinized and docked points on our evaluations for inconsequential omissions like not having enough words on our Word Walls.
Trust and love were replaced with blame and bitterness. The once quiet, orderly hallways were now 24-hour party zones. The focus used to be on student achievement and now it was simply on covering your ass so they couldn't find a reason to fire you. There was no collaborative spirit anymore, no sense of family. It was us, the teachers, versus them, the administration, the district, the students and the parents and no one was going down without a fight.
Our school motto was "Excellence is the expectation," and when I first arrived at the school, the students repeated this slogan to each other, to themselves, to their parents... They believed it. I believed it. At the end of my tenure there, it was virtually forgotten, or worse, dripping with sarcasm and disdain. The only expectation was that you would end up a nobody going nowhere, just like all your friends, and all your relatives and everyone you've ever known because that's the only thing this city is really good at.
There were some positive moments in those last two years: I had another great semester with some of my students in the class of 2011. They were always such a pleasure to teach and it helped that I had their class last period because they could erase an entire day's worth of frustration with 90 minutes of awesome. They were the reason I came to work everyday.
I also go to teach AP psychology in my 5th year. Our principal had been "teaching it"for two years but more often than not, that meant leaving the kids in a room by themselves (which happened to be my room during my planning period) to read their textbooks and answer sample exam questions. Finally, I got fed up and offered to take the class over myself. It was wonderful getting to try something different and to push the students to the next level but the fact of the matter is that none of them were quite ready to make that leap yet. Due to scheduling conflicts, I only got a semester where the principal had the class all year and I feel like I could have done so much more with a little more time.
One of the best experiences was participating in the Chill program, sponsored by Burton. My friend Heather had been the coordinator for the three years she was at the school and I picked up the slack when she left. It's a program that teaches life lessons such as patience, persistence, courage and pride, through snowboarding. Six weeks, one night a week, everything paid for and in the end, you come out a better person who also knows how to snowboard. If you work with underserved or at-risk youth, see if there is a Chill program near you. It's the only thing that got me through my last year.
That year was filled with disappointment and when it was over, I tried to be happy for the seniors but I mostly felt angry that so few of them even deserved to be on that stage. I was angry about how many had cheated and lied and complained their way to a 60% and had the nerve to be proud of it. I was angry that my principal had sold us out. I was angry that my friends had left when things were still good. Most of all I was angry at myself for being so defeated.
When I think back to what my school was and what it became, it breaks my heart. I was so proud of my school, of my students, of my fellow staff members. Maybe it was being young and maybe it was being optimistic but I really believed we were something special. I truly believed that teachers could make a difference, despite all the odds working against us. In five years, that faith was stripped away and a cold sense of helplessness was all that remained. I thought I could change the world but I turned out to be just another teacher who got eaten by the system.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Get Into the Groove
Year 2 came faster than I expected. For various reasons, I didn't quite have the productive summer I was hoping for but in retrospect, it was probably better I just took the time to unwind. I had earned it! School was always on my mind, though, and by August I had a much clearer picture of what I needed to do and the systems I could put in place to work smarter, not harder. Plus, I was returning to a staff I already knew and trusted as well as students with whom I had formed some pretty solid relationships. I was excited to get back into the classroom and prove I wasn't a total n00b anymore.
We had our first senior class in my second year. Teaching the 12th grade is simultaneously the best and worst grade to teach. They are the oldest and (usually) most mature students in the building. The other students look up to them and with good reason. These seniors had built our school from the ground up and they had an infectious sense of pride about it. They weren't necessarily the brightest bunch but they cared about each other, which is a lot harder to teach.
Unfortunately, the typical symptoms of senioritis, which we had in spades that year, were aggravated by district-wide pressure to graduate everyone. This was a strange concept to me. How can you graduate a kid if they haven't done the work to pass their classes? Enter: "the make-up work packet." Teachers were expected to put together a stack of worksheets for students to complete in lieu of the assigned work from the semester. That way, if a student was absent all semester, for whatever reason (usually not a good one), they could still get their credit for the class by doing the packet.
Unbelievably, there was a similar system invented for the standardized state tests that all students were required to pass. If you failed them twice, you were eligible for a series of "projects," the number of which was determined by how badly you failed the tests. The projects were completed with the aid of teacher "project monitors" who were supposed to "coach" the students through the projects so that the projects would be accepted.
These last minute scrambles to give kids credit were all due to the stipulations of No Child Left Behind, which basically stated that all students must meet state standards for graduation (passing their classes and any required tests) or their schools would lose their funding. Of course, none of these alternative methods actually proved that students had learned anything. No self-respecting teacher would say that a semester's worth of work could be made up by a series of take home worksheets and zero class time but what choice did we have? If your school loses funding, you lose your job. So what do you do? You make up a bunch of stupid worksheets, you give a kid a D-, you do their projects for them. All of this at the request of your administrators.
Watching the first class graduate was bittersweet. Some of the students had overcome so many personal obstacles and worked so hard and it was such a great feeling to have helped in some way along their journey to this milestone. Others had slacked off until the very last moment, gotten their teachers or friends to do all their work for them and somehow still thought they were going to make it in college. Also, literally half the senior class had at least one child before graduation. It was a bit surreal.
Though it wasn't always pretty, we loved those kids anyway. They were our first graduates and with one class under our belts, we were better prepared to take on the next one. Okay, Class of 2010. Bring it on.
In the third year, I felt like I really hit my stride. I had solid curricula for both Spanish 1 and 2 and I was overflowing with cool ideas to jazz up my lessons. My Spanish 2 students were a little less interested in learning and working than I would have preferred but it wasn't just in my class so I didn't feel too bad. The Spanish 1 classes were amazing. I had my dream class, where every student was incredibly motivated and ready to learn. They pushed each other and they pushed me. It was a joy to teach them. I remember saying to myself after teaching a class with them, "I finally understand how people can do this job forever."
You're thinking, "What?!? In an inner city school in Baltimore?" but yeah, they were that good. They were my class, the ones that came in when I did so we had a special bond, which certainly helped my classroom management, but more importantly they seemed to care about learning and they tried hard. That may seem like a given in other school districts but it certainly was not the case in mine and it made all the difference. My problems no longer centered on what to teach, but how to make sure every student understood it. It was a big shift and one that meant I could really stretch my wings as an educator and do whatever it took to get them there. INVIGORATING.
The spring was wrought with the same issues we faced with the class of 2009, but I was so eager to have my '11s again in the fall that I didn't even really care. 2010 had a few shining stars but overall, we were all pretty happy to be done with them. I must admit, my "why I teach" moment came from a student from the class of 2010:
One of my favorite students of all time, Parquita, was looking a map in my classroom with stars indicating all the places I had traveled in the world. I had been around thanks to my semester in Spain and having summers off so there were quite a few stars. It has always been a topic of conversation with my students since many of them have never left Baltimore.
With wonder in her eyes she turned to me and said, "Is it really possible?"
"Is what really possible?"
"To be a teacher and to go all those places. I want to see the world. I always thought about becoming a teacher but I didn't know if I would make enough money to support my family and travel some."
"It's definitely possible," I said. "I'm always going somewhere. It's good to get away and you definitely have the time to do it as a teacher."
"Then that settles it, Ms. Stich. I think I want to become a teacher. And when I come back and see you in a couple years, just you wait. I'm gonna have some stars on my map, too."
Year 2 came faster than I expected. For various reasons, I didn't quite have the productive summer I was hoping for but in retrospect, it was probably better I just took the time to unwind. I had earned it! School was always on my mind, though, and by August I had a much clearer picture of what I needed to do and the systems I could put in place to work smarter, not harder. Plus, I was returning to a staff I already knew and trusted as well as students with whom I had formed some pretty solid relationships. I was excited to get back into the classroom and prove I wasn't a total n00b anymore.
We had our first senior class in my second year. Teaching the 12th grade is simultaneously the best and worst grade to teach. They are the oldest and (usually) most mature students in the building. The other students look up to them and with good reason. These seniors had built our school from the ground up and they had an infectious sense of pride about it. They weren't necessarily the brightest bunch but they cared about each other, which is a lot harder to teach.
Unfortunately, the typical symptoms of senioritis, which we had in spades that year, were aggravated by district-wide pressure to graduate everyone. This was a strange concept to me. How can you graduate a kid if they haven't done the work to pass their classes? Enter: "the make-up work packet." Teachers were expected to put together a stack of worksheets for students to complete in lieu of the assigned work from the semester. That way, if a student was absent all semester, for whatever reason (usually not a good one), they could still get their credit for the class by doing the packet.
Unbelievably, there was a similar system invented for the standardized state tests that all students were required to pass. If you failed them twice, you were eligible for a series of "projects," the number of which was determined by how badly you failed the tests. The projects were completed with the aid of teacher "project monitors" who were supposed to "coach" the students through the projects so that the projects would be accepted.
These last minute scrambles to give kids credit were all due to the stipulations of No Child Left Behind, which basically stated that all students must meet state standards for graduation (passing their classes and any required tests) or their schools would lose their funding. Of course, none of these alternative methods actually proved that students had learned anything. No self-respecting teacher would say that a semester's worth of work could be made up by a series of take home worksheets and zero class time but what choice did we have? If your school loses funding, you lose your job. So what do you do? You make up a bunch of stupid worksheets, you give a kid a D-, you do their projects for them. All of this at the request of your administrators.
Watching the first class graduate was bittersweet. Some of the students had overcome so many personal obstacles and worked so hard and it was such a great feeling to have helped in some way along their journey to this milestone. Others had slacked off until the very last moment, gotten their teachers or friends to do all their work for them and somehow still thought they were going to make it in college. Also, literally half the senior class had at least one child before graduation. It was a bit surreal.
Though it wasn't always pretty, we loved those kids anyway. They were our first graduates and with one class under our belts, we were better prepared to take on the next one. Okay, Class of 2010. Bring it on.
***
In the third year, I felt like I really hit my stride. I had solid curricula for both Spanish 1 and 2 and I was overflowing with cool ideas to jazz up my lessons. My Spanish 2 students were a little less interested in learning and working than I would have preferred but it wasn't just in my class so I didn't feel too bad. The Spanish 1 classes were amazing. I had my dream class, where every student was incredibly motivated and ready to learn. They pushed each other and they pushed me. It was a joy to teach them. I remember saying to myself after teaching a class with them, "I finally understand how people can do this job forever."
You're thinking, "What?!? In an inner city school in Baltimore?" but yeah, they were that good. They were my class, the ones that came in when I did so we had a special bond, which certainly helped my classroom management, but more importantly they seemed to care about learning and they tried hard. That may seem like a given in other school districts but it certainly was not the case in mine and it made all the difference. My problems no longer centered on what to teach, but how to make sure every student understood it. It was a big shift and one that meant I could really stretch my wings as an educator and do whatever it took to get them there. INVIGORATING.
The spring was wrought with the same issues we faced with the class of 2009, but I was so eager to have my '11s again in the fall that I didn't even really care. 2010 had a few shining stars but overall, we were all pretty happy to be done with them. I must admit, my "why I teach" moment came from a student from the class of 2010:
One of my favorite students of all time, Parquita, was looking a map in my classroom with stars indicating all the places I had traveled in the world. I had been around thanks to my semester in Spain and having summers off so there were quite a few stars. It has always been a topic of conversation with my students since many of them have never left Baltimore.
With wonder in her eyes she turned to me and said, "Is it really possible?"
"Is what really possible?"
"To be a teacher and to go all those places. I want to see the world. I always thought about becoming a teacher but I didn't know if I would make enough money to support my family and travel some."
"It's definitely possible," I said. "I'm always going somewhere. It's good to get away and you definitely have the time to do it as a teacher."
"Then that settles it, Ms. Stich. I think I want to become a teacher. And when I come back and see you in a couple years, just you wait. I'm gonna have some stars on my map, too."
 |
| CRYING |
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 2
Chapter 2: The First Year
To be fair, I don't think I had a very typical Teach For America experience. You hear these horror stories of people feeling completely underprepared and they get eaten alive on the first day of school. The children can smell fresh blood and they know exactly how to draw some more if you aren't ready to deal with them from the get go.
Thanks to my teaching degree and a really great content specialist at the TFA summer institute, I was a few steps ahead of the 80 other corps members that joined along with me. I already knew how to lesson plan, I had some classroom management strategies, I knew several instructional methods to get kids engaged and, most of all, I knew my content inside and out. I got some practice during my student teaching and at institute, so I knew what teaching Spanish was supposed to look like.
The next big challenge I was told to expect was a disengaged staff at my placement school. Incompetent administrators, ornery old teachers who forgot long ago why they ever went into teaching and were now simply collecting a paycheck, secretaries who wouldn't help you unless you bribed them... I was steeling my nerves for the worst, but my colleagues turned out to be amazing. Young, passionate, talented individuals who were eager to get their hands chalky and several seasoned veterans that still had the love of teaching in their hearts. I was very lucky. Sure, there were a few folks that I didn't agree with, but I knew I still had a lot to learn so I shut my mouth and opened my ears.
It was hard not to fall in love with my school. The halls were bright and inviting, with gold-yellow walls and burgundy lockers, the school colors. Since it was still a new high school, we only had grades 9, 10 and 11 my first year, and total enrollment was around 200. Class sizes were fairly small for a city school; no more than 25 students in each class and usually a lot less than that.
The biggest difference between my school and most other schools in Baltimore was that we were modeled after another successful charter school network in Chicago. We had a very strict code of conduct that outlined consequences for positive and negative behavior, the dress code, and the emphasis on the culture of achievement above all else.
In that first year, I wholeheartedly believed that my school was a place where everyone was focused on learning. My administration supported me and teachers were empowered to do what was needed to do their jobs well. My colleagues were my best friends. The students spoke about being a family and we were. At times dysfunctional, but what family isn't? If nothing else, we had love and it was apparent in everything we did. Teachers loved working there, kids loved going to school there and I truly felt like I was making a positive difference in the lives of children who needed it most. I couldn't have imagined a better place to be.
Certainly the first year was not without incident. I learned very quickly that race and, to a greater extent, class are still huge barriers to academic success in our country. I discovered the very real power of learned helplessness. It seemed like every student in the school had personal experience with violence, drug abuse, gangs, sexual assault, and the death of a young friend or family member and these traumas would manifest in the classroom from time to time. It was shocking and gut-wrenching and depressing and it filled me with rage every single day but I knew that's why I needed to be there.
I wasn't exactly the miracle worker that I thought I would be. For all my prior knowledge about teaching, I still had no idea how to plan a curriculum or how to develop a meaningful end of year goal to strive for. We had no texts or planning resources and so everything we did was created by yours truly. I had so many ideas but no systems to implement them. I think my saving grace was that it was the first year that the students were offered Spanish and they were just as excited as I was to be there. It was a challenge every day but at least I felt like we were all learning, myself more than anyone.
To be fair, I don't think I had a very typical Teach For America experience. You hear these horror stories of people feeling completely underprepared and they get eaten alive on the first day of school. The children can smell fresh blood and they know exactly how to draw some more if you aren't ready to deal with them from the get go.
Thanks to my teaching degree and a really great content specialist at the TFA summer institute, I was a few steps ahead of the 80 other corps members that joined along with me. I already knew how to lesson plan, I had some classroom management strategies, I knew several instructional methods to get kids engaged and, most of all, I knew my content inside and out. I got some practice during my student teaching and at institute, so I knew what teaching Spanish was supposed to look like.
The next big challenge I was told to expect was a disengaged staff at my placement school. Incompetent administrators, ornery old teachers who forgot long ago why they ever went into teaching and were now simply collecting a paycheck, secretaries who wouldn't help you unless you bribed them... I was steeling my nerves for the worst, but my colleagues turned out to be amazing. Young, passionate, talented individuals who were eager to get their hands chalky and several seasoned veterans that still had the love of teaching in their hearts. I was very lucky. Sure, there were a few folks that I didn't agree with, but I knew I still had a lot to learn so I shut my mouth and opened my ears.
It was hard not to fall in love with my school. The halls were bright and inviting, with gold-yellow walls and burgundy lockers, the school colors. Since it was still a new high school, we only had grades 9, 10 and 11 my first year, and total enrollment was around 200. Class sizes were fairly small for a city school; no more than 25 students in each class and usually a lot less than that.
The biggest difference between my school and most other schools in Baltimore was that we were modeled after another successful charter school network in Chicago. We had a very strict code of conduct that outlined consequences for positive and negative behavior, the dress code, and the emphasis on the culture of achievement above all else.
In that first year, I wholeheartedly believed that my school was a place where everyone was focused on learning. My administration supported me and teachers were empowered to do what was needed to do their jobs well. My colleagues were my best friends. The students spoke about being a family and we were. At times dysfunctional, but what family isn't? If nothing else, we had love and it was apparent in everything we did. Teachers loved working there, kids loved going to school there and I truly felt like I was making a positive difference in the lives of children who needed it most. I couldn't have imagined a better place to be.
Certainly the first year was not without incident. I learned very quickly that race and, to a greater extent, class are still huge barriers to academic success in our country. I discovered the very real power of learned helplessness. It seemed like every student in the school had personal experience with violence, drug abuse, gangs, sexual assault, and the death of a young friend or family member and these traumas would manifest in the classroom from time to time. It was shocking and gut-wrenching and depressing and it filled me with rage every single day but I knew that's why I needed to be there.
I wasn't exactly the miracle worker that I thought I would be. For all my prior knowledge about teaching, I still had no idea how to plan a curriculum or how to develop a meaningful end of year goal to strive for. We had no texts or planning resources and so everything we did was created by yours truly. I had so many ideas but no systems to implement them. I think my saving grace was that it was the first year that the students were offered Spanish and they were just as excited as I was to be there. It was a challenge every day but at least I felt like we were all learning, myself more than anyone.
 |
| Teaching Dream Team |
Monday, May 5, 2014
Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 1
In the spirit of Teacher Appreciation Week, I'd like to share my story of teaching in Baltimore. It spanned five years and covered pretty much the gamut of human emotion, so instead of making it one insanely long post, I have broken it into five chapters. I hope you'll join me in my trip down memory lane...
Chapter 1: It Was All A Dream
Teaching is the only thing I ever wanted to do. While other kids were playing House or Barbies or GI Joes, I was playing Teacher. In 7th grade, we got to start learning a foreign language and I chose Spanish. It was love at first sound. The gently rolled Rs, the rhyming melodies of adjective agreement, the softness and purity of the vowels... In an otherwise cloudy and confusing time, 12-year-old me had found clarity.
From that moment on, everything I did was to become a Spanish teacher. I spent the summer before I turned 17 at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain so I could really start improving my language skills. I only looked into colleges that offered teaching certification programs in Spanish. I did my semester abroad in Seville. My student teaching and all my classroom observation hours were with other Spanish teachers. When I was approached by Teach For America about applying to the program, and I learned that they placed Spanish teachers, I knew this was my great opportunity to make my dreams a reality.
I am often asked why I opted for Teach For America as opposed to a "normal" teaching job if I already had the training and the certification to work at a "good" school. I like to say something really romanticized like, "I wanted to make the most significant impact" or "Because I knew that fate would find me a place where I was truly needed." It's bullshit. In all honesty, it was because I was scared to go out and hunt for a job on my own. I had never failed at anything in my life and I was terrified of putting myself out there, only to be rejected. At the same time, I had this completely unfounded confidence that I could go anywhere in the country and be awesome, right from the start. I had received some fairly positive feedback from my collaborating teachers and my professors so I naturally thought I was God's gift to the teaching profession. Oh, and remember, I had never failed at anything in my life so of course I was going to be great at this. Throw me to the wolves! I will tame the wild beasts with nothing but passion and sass!
Ah, to be young and naïve.
I was placed in Baltimore, I place I only knew from watching the first episode of The Wire and that one time we stopped at the Inner Harbor for lunch on our way to Annapolis for a band competition in 12th grade. People in Baltimore have boats. How bad could it be?
I packed the few worldly possessions I had amassed throughout college, loaded them into Jenna's Honda Civic and we were on the road to my new future. Sure, I was nervous but I felt ready. I felt like I could take on the world. I was 22, I had my first real job and I was going to change the world. I just knew it...
Chapter 1: It Was All A Dream
Teaching is the only thing I ever wanted to do. While other kids were playing House or Barbies or GI Joes, I was playing Teacher. In 7th grade, we got to start learning a foreign language and I chose Spanish. It was love at first sound. The gently rolled Rs, the rhyming melodies of adjective agreement, the softness and purity of the vowels... In an otherwise cloudy and confusing time, 12-year-old me had found clarity.
From that moment on, everything I did was to become a Spanish teacher. I spent the summer before I turned 17 at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain so I could really start improving my language skills. I only looked into colleges that offered teaching certification programs in Spanish. I did my semester abroad in Seville. My student teaching and all my classroom observation hours were with other Spanish teachers. When I was approached by Teach For America about applying to the program, and I learned that they placed Spanish teachers, I knew this was my great opportunity to make my dreams a reality.
I am often asked why I opted for Teach For America as opposed to a "normal" teaching job if I already had the training and the certification to work at a "good" school. I like to say something really romanticized like, "I wanted to make the most significant impact" or "Because I knew that fate would find me a place where I was truly needed." It's bullshit. In all honesty, it was because I was scared to go out and hunt for a job on my own. I had never failed at anything in my life and I was terrified of putting myself out there, only to be rejected. At the same time, I had this completely unfounded confidence that I could go anywhere in the country and be awesome, right from the start. I had received some fairly positive feedback from my collaborating teachers and my professors so I naturally thought I was God's gift to the teaching profession. Oh, and remember, I had never failed at anything in my life so of course I was going to be great at this. Throw me to the wolves! I will tame the wild beasts with nothing but passion and sass!
Ah, to be young and naïve.
I was placed in Baltimore, I place I only knew from watching the first episode of The Wire and that one time we stopped at the Inner Harbor for lunch on our way to Annapolis for a band competition in 12th grade. People in Baltimore have boats. How bad could it be?
I packed the few worldly possessions I had amassed throughout college, loaded them into Jenna's Honda Civic and we were on the road to my new future. Sure, I was nervous but I felt ready. I felt like I could take on the world. I was 22, I had my first real job and I was going to change the world. I just knew it...
Thursday, May 1, 2014
It's Gonna Be May
 |
| I couldn't resist |
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, somehow it is already May. What have I been doing with my life these last two months, you ask? Here's the Top 10 highlight reel, because this is the internet and people love lists!
10. I have been working a lot. March was a lot of 30-hour weeks. I know that seems silly to say after my 60+ hour work weeks in Baltimore, but it's different. I get paid hourly so those are actual classroom teaching hours. This doesn't count planning, commuting, grading, or the excessively long breaks that I am required to take. (I only teach 6 hours but I am on campus for 9.) I was teaching six different courses (not sections, not groups... COURSES) at the same time and giving private "lessons" (conversations) and it was intense. I forgot just how much work goes into establishing a curriculum and adjusting to a new system, all while pretending to have it all together. It is difficult to not be an expert in something after being the go-to person for all problems in my recent past. I am learning. Even though my relationship with my students is very different here, it was still hard to say goodbye to my three groups who finished up in April. They were my first groups and I had them all year so they definitely have a special place in my heart.
9. I am still drinking the TFA Koolaid. In addition to my normal job, I was also interviewing Teach For America hopefuls over the phone. It sounds kind of lame but it was surprisingly awesome. I got to talk with really passionate people who are just looking for a chance to change the world and that was really exciting. I went from teaching some of my country's most disadvantaged youth to teaching at a private business school in one of the bougiest cities in France so sometimes, it is difficult to feel like I am making the difference that I set out to make in the world. By doing these interviews, I felt like I was still part of the mission to give all children in America access to a quality education by choosing the teachers that were going to give it to them. That's pretty powerful. I also learned a lot about myself by doing the interviews. I think back to what I must have said in my own interview back in the day and I am SHOCKED I was admitted into the corps. I wasn't particularly special at 22 years old and I am incredibly grateful that someone saw my potential and gave me the opportunity to get out there and do good things for people.
8. I am still drinking a lot of wine. It's hard not to feel like a snob when you have a favorite Bordeaux appellation, even more so when you have a favorite château and vintage year but I don't even care. Château Les Haldes de Luchey (AOC Pessac Léognan 2009), you are delicious and I love you. And sometimes you drink a bottle of wine on the couch by yourself but realize that if your friend 4000 miles away is doing the same, you're not really drinking alone. I miss you so much, Erica.
7. We went to Sarlat. France loves medieval towns and with good reason. They are everywhere and they are all adorable. The Périgueux region would be even nicer with transportation to go see the prehistoric caves and 14th century castles along the river. We'll be back, next time, with canoes.
6. I miss having girlfriends. Our monthly PACT chats are really wonderful but they serve as a constant reminder that I don't really have any lady friends here. I have a few girls that I get coffee/wine with from time to time but we all have such different lifestyles/interests/schedules/responsibilities that it's hard to have a relationship beyond occasionally meeting for beverages. I don't know if that's a Bordeaux thing or just an adult thing.
5. I miss having friends that are not my husband. Don't get me wrong. Jason is my closest friend and I love spending time with him, but I know that it is also important to maintain a sense of individuality in a relationship and I don't think either of us are doing a very good job of that right now. We do everything together, yes, because we get along so well and we like to hang out with each other but also for lack of another option. We don't know a lot of people here and we're not really involved in anything outside our jobs which is a big adjustment from back in Baltimore. It wasn't so bad at first when we were still getting settled and didn't have time to think about doing anything but our jobs but now we have found a bit of a groove and I just don't want it to become a rut.
4. We had visitors! Janice, Jon, Ethan, Andrew and Julie were in town for four days and it was delightful. Rugby game, strolling around Bordeaux, Cap Ferret, Dune du Pyla, St. Emilion... We did it all. It was a bit stressful trying to make sure five other people were happy and fed and having a good time but I think we pulled it off pretty well. It was Julie's first time in Europe and she just had that star-struck look on her face everywhere we went. That in itself was worth all the planning and preparation that went into their visit. It was also good practice for June when THE ENTIRE WORLD is coming to see us.
3. We did spring break in the Rhône-Alpes/Savoie. We spent a couple of nights in Annecy, which I LOVED and even drove up to Chamonix for a day. I wish we could have had better weather and seen the mountains (Mont Blanc, in particular) but it was still pretty spectacular nonetheless. We did get to go into a glacial cave, after all. We also spent a night in Lyon, which was not my favorite place that we have visited so far but I am glad we got to go. Jason does a really great job of making sure that we get out and see this beautiful country we're calling home for the moment.
2. I partied like it's 1999. Jason works with this girl named Olivia and she was having a big 30th birthday party for her and her fraternal twin sister Victoire, at their family's giant beach house in Royan. Jason has a big presentation coming up and he had a lot of work to do on it so he wasn't able to go but I was sent as his representative (?) along with our friends Rick, Guillaume and Alexia. We had tons of food and tons of wine and danced for literally 8 hours straight. By 5:30am, I had to call it a night, not so much because I was really drunk but because my legs were going to fall off. All of their friends were really fun and I got to speak a boatload of French and also 8 HOURS OF DANCING so it was a lovely time in my opinion.
1. We're so official. We got our new cartes de séjour so we can stay in the country for another year. I suppose if we must be subjected to another year in Bordeaux, we'll try to make the most of it. It has been nothing but misery so far, as you can see, but somehow I think we'll make it through. More wine will help.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)