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."
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| CRYING |
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