We are Aoûtiens - Part 1

Having always been a teacher, I already know the joys of summers off but it's quite a different experience when all of your friends have super long vacations, too. As I have mentioned before, full-time French employees are guaranteed 5 weeks of paid vacation every year and most seem to save up their time and blow it all during the months of July (les juillettistes) or August (les aoûtiens).

We are decidedly aoûtiens.

After a hectic June and a mad scramble to catch up on everything in our lives in July, we were in pretty desperate need of a real holiday. Our old pals from Baltimore Pat and Soraya joined us for the first weekend of August and then we were off like a prom dress for the rest of the month. Here's a brief recap of our grand adventures, in four installments.

August 5-13: England and Wales with Rick

Even after meeting him just once, I knew Rick and I were going to be good friends. This summer, things got really serious when we decided to travel to his native land, meet his friends and family and roadtrip across his beautiful country. We flew into Bristol and we were immediately met by a bit of skepticism from the border police when we explained what our plans were for the next 8 days: A 750-mile tour around the UK, starting with a 2.5 hour drive straight to the Brecon Beacons in Wales. Anything longer than 45 minutes is quite far by British standards but where we come from in 'Murica, anything less than 6 hours is basically right down the road. Let's do this.

First stop: The Usk Inn. We could not have asked for a more authentic introduction to the UK. A cozy little pub in the middle of nowhere, an accent so thick I wondered if it was still English and the heartiest stews you've ever had in your life. And beer! Real beer! None of this Belgian bullshit that tastes like fruit and makes you want to die the next day. Real, honest-to-goodness ales. It was glorious.

We drove back down to Cardiff the next morning and spent the day running around the castle and drinking more beers in pubs that are older than my country.

That night, we made our way up to Rick's hometown of Preston, which is not far from Liverpool. We were welcomed by Rick's wonderful parents, Dave and Margaret, who promptly mocked Rick for the way his his lovely British accent has been tainted by our grimey American drawl. What can I say? This is what happens when you spend time with treasonous hillbillies.

We did a few little day trips to various places near Preston, including Blackpool, which some locals refer to as "The Las Vegas of England" despite it having literally nothing in common with Vegas except for maybe that twinge of shame and regret you feel after having visited. Perhaps not the prettiest city in the UK but there was a beach and an amusement park and some real good people watching.

We also spent a day walking around in the Lake District, a massive national park in the northwest corner of England. I have never been more glad to not know how to drive standard in all my life because the roads were really only meant for half a car and the number of times I thought we were going to plummet over a cliff to our deaths or get in a head on collision with another car was far too high to count. Rick navigated the winding Wrynose Pass like a champ and Jason and I needed a change of pants once we got back to Preston.

After a wild night out in Preston, we were off to Newcastle, which was probably my favorite part of the trip, other than meeting Rick's family. We joined up with some of Rick's friends from college and took full advantage of all the great pubs in the city. Unlike the relatively low-key Bordelais, everyone in Newcastle seemed like they were ready to party at any moment. Those Geordies sure do love to get dressed up and get crazy.

Partying hard in Preston

On the drive to Newcastle

Proper fish n chips in Tynemouth

After a getting a bit wild in Preston and Newcastle, we were ready for the quiet of the country. Rick's parents have a cute little caravan in the woods in the Yorkshire area and we spent two nights out there enjoying all that the countryside has to offer: The Black Sheep Brewery, llamas and SkyTV.

Traffic jam in the country

Llama trekking with Jack and Guss

We also had the chance to visit York, one of England's oldest and historically rich cities. It really is a cool place and the abundance of pubs certainly adds to its charm.

On the final leg of the trip, we stopped for tea back at Rick's place before heading down the road to our final destination. Home of the Beatles and people who talk like the Beatles, Liverpool is an interesting blend of history, modernity and pure grit. While some would say it's a bit rough around the edges, I would say that roughness adds to its charm. It reminded me a bit of Baltimore. We spent the evening with a few local Liverpudlians resulting in some pretty serious hangovers the next morning. Nothing that some greasy diner food and a walk around town can't fix!

When it was time to head back to Bordeaux that evening, we were all tired but truly amazed by the beauty and diversity of such a tiny little country, not to mention the wonderful, friendly people we met while we were there. And the food was way better than the French would have you believe. We'll see you again soon, UK!

Long Distance Relationships

There have been many wonderful people that have come and gone in my life and the number one cause of loss of friendship has always been distance. You move away and start a different life that no longer includes the ones you left behind. Your new inside jokes leave old friends on the outside. Your existence revolves around a completely different set of events and locations, with completely different combinations of people playing completely different roles in the scenes of your daily life. It's not that you forget your old friends. It's simply that they no longer occupy the same physical and/or mental space that they did before.

Of course we make a concerted effort to stay close to those we love the most, regardless of how many miles and time zones separate us. Even with all the modern convenience of social networks, video chat and email, though, sometimes it's just not enough. Friendships fade and this is the way of things.

Living abroad has taught me a lot about long distance relationships and the most noteworthy lesson has to be about my relationship with my dad.

I was always a bit of a daddy's girl. I liked sports and dirt and I was not interested in sitting in the house all day while my brothers were outside having adventures. My dad never made me feel like I couldn't or shouldn't do something just because I was a girl. I had the exact same opportunities my brothers had, not because my dad was ultra-progressive but because it never crossed his mind to treat us any differently. My dad was my hero and the coolest guy I knew for a long time.

Somewhere around the time when I started noticing that other guys were pretty cool, too, things started to unravel. I was a typical teenage girl and my dad was not fully equipped with the emotional skills needed to deal with it. (But then again, who really is??) Even though we lived under the same roof and ate dinner together every day, the mental space between us was growing steadily and showed no sign of stopping.

When I left for college, the rift got even bigger. I was so busy making new friends that I didn't have time to nurture our already fragile relationship. My mom was pretty tech savvy and we emailed often but I hardly talked to me dad unless I was home, which wasn't very frequently. When I turned 21 and could go out to bars with him, things improved slightly, but again, I was so caught up in myself and my new life as an "adult" that I wasn't too concerned with what was going on in his life.

Baltimore brought even more challenges. Visits were less frequent, phone calls were always cut short and limited to small talk, as if I had some word quota to fill but substance didn't count. My dad and I have never had super deep talks but in those days, conversations were limited to the weather and baseball. We didn't know each other anymore and it didn't seem like either of us was particularly motivated to do anything about it. Not for any reason in particular. It was just the way of things. He had become that guy I knew when I was a kid but outgrew years ago.

I expected more of the same as Jason and I moved across an ocean to start a new life as a married couple. It seemed like my dad and I would be the equivalent of passing acquaintances forever. Yet somehow, it has been exactly the opposite. I have had more real conversations with my father since moving to Bordeaux than we had in the previous 10 years combined. We talk about sports and beer Carlos and the future. We talk about his job, and his parents, and what it's like to be a grandfather and how his life is different now that all of his children are grown up and really on their own. We just talk. Distance, the thing that is normally such a relationship killer, has ironically been the very thing that has brought my dad and I back together. For the first time in years, I feel like we get each other and there's no greater feeling in the world.

My dad is my hero and he's the coolest guy I know.

Happy birthday, Dad.

The Power of Words

Living in France has taught me many lessons and the big one recently has been self-confidence. Anyone who knows me might find that statement a bit surprising. "Nicole, you're always so outgoing, the center of attention. You seem like you're totally confident all the time!" That's awfully nice of you to say so, fictional friend, but just like every other person in the world, I find myself stricken with insecurity all the time. Am I doing this right? What do I do now? How are other people reacting? Is it enough? What if I'm wrong? I don't know what I'm doing.

When you uproot your entire life and move to another country where they do not speak your native language, you are faced with these fears on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis. I am extremely self-conscious and hyper aware of other people's reactions to my actions. Chalk it up to years of being the mediating middle child. While this makes me very compassionate, empathetic, and eager to please, (and so modest!) it also makes me susceptible to being taken advantage of and I often find myself wantonly sacrificing my needs in the name of simplicity. I'd rather suck it up and take the misery myself than rock the boat too much. 

I am slowly starting to see that this is neither helpful nor fair and above all, it's not sustainable. What I find most is surprising is the catalyst of this shift: I think a lot of this change was spurred by language. 

As a language teacher and lover of languages/culture in general, I have always been fascinated by the idea of linguistic relativity: that our language affects the way we think, act, and perceive the world around us. Take the Chinese word "guanxi" for example. It's usually translated to "network" or "connection" but it's more so the concept of the dynamics of relationships between people and how your behavior can build or destroy them. Linguistic relativism suggests that part of the reason the Chinese are a collectivist culture is because they have words like this that focus on the work of maintaining many relationships. Not surprisingly, we don't have this type of word in Western languages, where cultures are much more individualistic. We can have a chicken or the egg conversation about this all day, but the idea of linguistic relativity states that the word happened first and the actions followed.

I have an interesting example of how this came about in my own life recently: I just finished my first year with Kedge/CEL and we had to validate our final paystubs before everyone went on summer vacation. I noticed that I still had not been paid for a few jobs I did in the last couple of months. I had written several very polite emails about the problem, in my loveliest French, and everyone assured me that it would be addressed tout de suite. Two months later, nothing was fixed and I was annoyed.

One afternoon, the coordinator, Georgina, called me into her office to see if we could get this matter resolved. She prefers to speak Spanish with me, probably because it's her native language and she knows that I speak it and she doesn't speak English. She started showing me her records of when I worked and what I had been paid for and I noticed right away that she had not written down all of the dates I had told her about. My Spanish is rusty to say the least so I was forced to speak in somewhat simple, direct and clipped sentences. Faltan dos días aquí. Con las otras fechas, son 8 horas en total. I also noticed that they hadn't included my hours for these language dossiers that I had corrected. Every three dossiers was equivalent to an hour of work. Tengo también 10 dossiers, entonces tres horas a pagar. She tried to come at me with this, "Are you sure it wasn't four for an hour?" madness and I quickly replied with, No. Tres. Estoy segura. At the end of the conversation, she had confirmed the 11 hours I was missing and sent a corrected version of my payslip to the administrators.

Never in my life have I stood up for myself like that. Normally, there is a lot of "Well, I'm not really sure" and "Could we take a look at that again?" and "I could be wrong" and "I'm sorry to be such a hassle!" but there was none of that this time. I was calm, clear and I cut right to the chase. I have no doubt that some of my previous hang-ups were compounded by socialization (women who stand up for themselves are bitchy and demanding while men are go-getters) and maybe a bit of feeling too young to be taken seriously, but I find this language factor to be really interesting: If you don't have enough words to mince, you have to get right to the point.

You often hear polyglots say that they are different people depending on the language they're speaking. I suppose I always believed that to be at least somewhat true but this incident has convinced me. Could this conversation have played out the same way if we had had it in French? In English? Maybe. But my gut says that my brain was working so hard on making the right words come out in Spanish that I didn't have any mental energy left to be (excessively?) polite and accommodating like I normally am. On top of that, Spanish is a significantly less... verbose... language than, say, French. It is inherently more direct. Is this another reason why it was so easy for me to get right down to it while speaking in Spanish? Possibly...

Moral of the story: being multilingual has surprising, and in some cases, life-changing side effects. You simply can't underestimate the power of words.

Bayer Bookings, Bed & Breakfast

Most people in France take their holiday time in July or August. As we learned this year, most Americans do it in June. This is the story of how we ended up running a tour service/bed and breakfast out of our apartment for a solid month.

Starting in January, we were getting requests from people who wanted to come visit. As far as I knew at the time, I was not going to be working after May, so when everyone said they were interested in June, I was thrilled. It's a great time to be in Bordeaux: lots to do, great weather, and the English-speaking staff at restaurants will be on duty.

It was going to be a busy month, for sure, but nothing crazy:

June 4-11: Kelly and Kate (our friends from Baltimore)

June 16-19: Jere and Joyce (Jason's aunt and uncle)

June 23-26: Drew and Kristen (my friends from college)

As time went on, though, I was offered more classes and more things to do at work. They needed people to interview the new students for next year, I had another sequence of my seminar to teach, my evening class ran through July 1. Suddenly, I was no longer as available as I had originally thought. Jason was equally tied up with things to do at work because, you know, he has a full time job. Adding to the madness, we had two more additions to the lineup come in at the end of May/beginning of June:

June 4-11: Kelly and Kate

June 16-19: Jere and Joyce

June 21-23: Alyn (our friend from Baltimore)

June 23-26: Drew and Kristen

June 28-30: Jenna and Ben (my friends from college)

I do not want you to think for one second that it was not AMAZING seeing everyone. It is really cool to share your new life with people from your old life. I find that friendships often exist in a specific place and time, and when you no longer share that space, many of your friendships change or fade away completely. It is truly special when a friendship can 1) last despite the difference in time and space and 2) exist, even in a small way/moment, within a new situation. It's more obvious when the time and space is greater, like moving to another continent and not seeing each other for over a year. Also considering that we don't have a ton of close friends here, it was wonderful to spend time with people that we know well and that know us. Refreshing.

All that being said, I must admit that it was kind of an insane endeavor, now that I have the time to reflect on it a bit. Trying to balance work, touring around, catching up with people and just living was a lot more challenging than we had anticipated. Even more so when you have to do it five times in a row with very little (sometimes no) break in between. Little things like eating and getting places take much more time and energy than normal, and you start to feel like a kindergarten teacher: "Is anyone hungry? Who has to use the bathroom? Did everyone get a chance to see that? Okay, let's keep going. Stay together!" I felt like I didn't talk to Jason for the whole month, partially due to our tag-team work-guest routine, and also because we were so busy talking to everyone else. It was all such a blur and I wish I had had more time to just sit and enjoy the company of our friends instead of running from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything.

But how do you really balance the two? When people are here, maybe for the only time in their lives, it would be a shame not to explore the city and the surroundings. Seeing as I live here, I do know some things about Bordeaux and I was really happy to get to share that knowledge with everyone. There are so many things that I love about this place and it's hard to do them all in two or three days, so you almost feel obligated to run around a bit.

What have we learned from this whole experience? First, that there is no substitute for good friends and family. Even under somewhat stressful conditions, there's love there and that makes it all worth it. Secondly, planning and anticipating are paramount. If you can check it out ahead of time, do it, so when you arrive, the only thing you have to worry about is having a good time. We have also gotten pretty good at knowing how long people are able to walk around before they need a rest, a bite to eat and/or a bathroom break, and you can't count on them to ask for any of those things before it becomes urgent. Lastly, it's okay to not know everything. I know I'm supposed to be the resident expert on all things European but that fact of the matter is that I still have a lot to learn and figuring them out together is not so bad.

Thank you everyone for coming to see us! We love you!!

I didn't have time to take a lot of pictures but there are a few good ones I managed to snap throughout our crazy adventures:

With Kelly and Kate: Cognac-Bordeaux-Biarritz-Pamplona-San Sebastian-Bordeaux. I learned that cognac is delicious and re-learned that Spain is awesome.

At Rémy Martin in Cognac

 

Biarritz

Pamplona

San Sebastian

With Jere and Joyce: They kind of did their own thing so they took their own photos. Thanks for being so independent!

With Alyn: Fête de Musique in Bordeaux and St. Emilion. The best way to do an outdoor concert is to have performances everywhere and to be able to drink in the street.

With Drew and Kristen: Bordeaux and Arcachon (w/ Nicole). Crowded transportation + climbing a giant sand dune + eating your body weight in mussels = epic nap on the beach.

With Jenna and Ben: Bordeaux Wine Festival and St. Emilion (w/ Jason). A diet comprised solely of wine and cheese is a pretty good diet.

This is made completely out of corks

Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 5

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.

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.

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."

CRYING