school house rock star

What I'm up to Now

2011-10-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

Hi there. All the posts below this one chronicle the painfully slow process by which a first year teacher completed the 2005-2006 school year.

I am she, and I survived that year. In my second year of teaching, things got much easier. By my third, I was actually pretty good. After my fourth, I was ready for a change.

So I moved across the country to go to graduate school in California. Now, I work at a middle school in Oakland, where I launched a new site for the fantastic youth development program Citizen Schools. For more about me now, look here.

The rest of this blog is just as I left it in June of 2006. It is certainly a commentary on my own privilege that I can say this:

My first year of teaching remains the hardest year of my life.

I was not good at it. I got better because I had good coaches, healthy doses of both shame and stubbornness, and because I came back for a second year. It's a bit hard for me to read some of this now. I've left it in the hope that other first year teachers will feel, as I did, the need to do whatever it takes to improve their practice, and to do this work as well as possible for as long as possible. Our students' lives depend on it.

Thanks for reading,

Macy Parker

Things I Learned by Accident

2006-06-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

The school year finally sputtered to a halt yesterday afternoon. My kids, who had been out of the building taking a self-assigned break or on 8th grade senior trips, all showed up to collect their report cards. My seventh graders were cute, as they have been almost all year, and were sad to say goodbye. My eighth graders were ready to move on to high school, as they have been almost all year, and were nearly as terrible as on the first day. I don't blame them. One kid, with whom I've had a running battle over gum-chewing, stuffed ten pieces of Trident in his mouth in front of me and then shouted, "Now I can chew as much gum as I want! School's out!" And it was.

And now that I know I can survive a whole ten months of this work, next year doesn't look nearly so scary. (Though it is, blessedly, two months away.) As best anyone can tell me, I'll only be teaching seventh grade next year, so I'll only have to prepare one lesson plan a day and only have to teach the new, scared, pliable 12 year olds rather than the newly hormonal and rebellious 13 year olds - a much more palatable proposition. I was offered a chance to move up with my kids and teach them again in an eighth grade honors seminar, but I turned it down for a chance to re-invent myself for new students as the teacher I have spent the past year learning how to be. So next year, when the first day of school rolls around, I'll know where my bathroom passes are and how to get people quiet. Actually, I've learned quite a bit.

Mistakes I now know not to make:

Don't single a kid out by name in front of the whole class - that just causes a whole conflict that you don't want to deal with.

Put your bulletin boards up on time even if you think bulletin boards are stupid.

Don't say you're going to call home if you know you probably won't feel like it. In fact, don't say you'll do anything that you're not 100% sure you can do that day.

Don't assume that kids know the difference between Civil Rights and the Civil War, between the East River and the ocean, or between North and South. Don't assume anyone has any idea what you're talking about just because they've been sitting quietly and not getting on your nerves. Chances are, the annoying kids at least have some idea what's going on, while the quiet ones are on another planet entirely.

Don't go in thinking that you will be the kind of teacher who makes kids see the "real world" and teaches them how to rock the boat. Their world is much realer than yours has ever been and they are constantly bailing water. They need structure, not your grad school deconstructionism, before they can work the truth out for themselves.

Don't wear purple tights in March or you will still be hearing about it in June.

Don't hold grudges.

Don't forget to check your mailbox for memos.

Don't get sick.

Don't be afraid to take a sick day.

Don't be mean.

Eat a good lunch, or you will be.

Don't show movies that you've never watched yourself, or teach books you've never read.

Don't be afraid to tell people that they are wrong, but do have the means to make them right.

Things I did Right Without Knowing It:

Keep your bad news to yourself. Spread your good news around.

Laugh sometimes.

Tell the class you love them.

Ask for money and sometimes you will get it. The words "Title 1 school in Brownsville" open more doors than you might think.

Listen to people who have been doing this job longer than you have.

Do not argue with anyone who has the power to make your life more difficult.

Don't grade everything.

Learn how to fix the copy machine.

And so, this, I suppose, ends my internet experiment. This page will stay up, but it probably won't change after today. I am ready to get back to writing in private. Many thanks to all who have been following along - your words of support have meant more than you know.

Class dismissed.

Prom and Problems

2006-05-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

The art teacher was absent, to begin with. Plus, there were blocks in the room. What did they think would happen? Unfortunately for my favorite little hooligans, one of the blocks thrown during the commotion hit the unfortunate substitute. So, confessions were made, friends were ratted out, “senior” (8th grade) trips were taken away, and then, the bomb was dropped. Five of my kids can’t go to their big 8th grade prom unless their mothers (or grandmothers, as the case may be) want to come too. For the first time all year, I saw tears from some of my toughest students. So the tension was thick when the accused parties walked back into my class from their meeting with the guidance counselor.

Clearly, the DBQ (Document Based Question – an essay) I had planned wasn’t happening, so I ended up just reading to them to calm them down, and then let them write in their journals about what had happened. Amazingly, many of the angriest kids snatched up their pens and wrote until the end of the period. One girl took up a whole page talking about how she hates “FONY people – and that’s what all the people at this school are – FONY!!!” It’s nice for them to know that writing can be an outlet for their frustration.

Today I felt like a real teacher for a while as we finished the DBQ from yesterday and continued reading Warriors Don’t Cry – an excellent memoir written by one of the Little Rock Nine. My kids can’t stop gasping as worse and worse things happen to the protagonist. In yesterday’s chapter, a white segregationist tried to hit her with a stick of dynamite. Today, girls tossed flaming toilet paper into her hair while holding her prisoner in a bathroom stall, and then a boy threw acid into her eyes. Maybe not as tough as losing your prom privileges, but it gets my kids’ attention.

I can’t seem to stop teaching Brown vs. The Board of Ed. Ever since one of my students, who was doing her project on it, erroneously wrote that the decision was the reason she couldn’t go to school with white kids, I’ve been trying to make the point that after all that people have done to fight for integration, I’m still the only white kid in our classroom. “Look around,” I keep telling them, “Does this look like an integrated classroom to you?” Well, yes, they say, we’re all from different cultures – some Guyanese, some West Indian, some born right down the street in Brookdale Hospital. We have light skinned and dark skinned black people here.

I find myself talking to them about re-segregation almost as if I think that they can fix the system. It’s not that I necessarily want them to want to go to school with other people. “But it’s sort of a shame,” I find myself saying. “Here we are in the most diverse city in the world…”
I don’t know really know what else to say.

The Game

2006-05-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting with the guidance counselor facing six young troublemakers and I realize that I have now become the great oppressor. I'm threatening kids with the prom.

"School is a game just like anything else," I'm telling them, "and at this point in the year, you know the rules. Do you know the rules? Yes, you do. Well, now it's play or get played, kids. So if you don't want to go to your 8th grade prom, then, please, keep acting like fools and sit back and watch us play you."

I almost quit my job today. For the first time all year, the thought crossed my mind that I could just walk out of my classroom (driven to near bedlam by my request that they read a "whack" book about the civil rights movement) and never come back again.

But I didn't. Instead, I taught 7th grade in the afternoon, and gave a big speech about why it's important to learn grammar. And - miracle - one usually diffident kid was nodding when I told them that my allowing them to go to 8th grade without knowing proper grammar would be like a basketball coach sending them out to play without ever having taught them the rules of the game. You could be a great athlete and still fail under those circumstances.

"Would that make me a good coach? No, it wouldn't. And if I didn't teach you the rules of writing, I wouldn't be a good teacher either. So, do this worksheet on nouns."

Tomorrow is another day.

See? Stereotyping can lead to violence.

2006-03-30T16:26:00.000-08:00

Here’s a great plan: let’s organize a whole-day rollerskating field trip and invite an entire middle school. Twelve-year-olds on wheels. Just what my nerves, recently frayed by weeks of Math test prep, need.

Though I predicted ten kids in tears within the first twenty minutes of this trip, it went far better than I had anticipated. (Granted, anyone with any discipline “points” had to stay back at school in uniform, while those who had never gotten in trouble or who had worked off their points by helping teachers got to skate in style.) Turns out, I’m better at rollerskating than most of my kids. I spent an entertaining hour with the dangerous skaters assigned to “time-out” at the edge of the rink. We took bets on how many kids would fall in the next five minute increment – the average was around seven.

Back at school, things were dragging. “We already took the test! Why do we still gotta do all this work?” This is what happens when you present a standardized exam as the be all and end all of education. Kids think school is over after they fill in the last bubble. In a way, they’re right – it’s been made pretty clear to me at the beginning of the year that my job consisted of getting them past those testing deadlines. Yes, there's a Social Studies test at year-end, but everybody (kids included) knows it doesn't count for anything. We're doing individual research projects (a region requirement for getting out of 8th grade) but that's our last big deadline.

So I was half-relieved when another teacher arrived at my door during first period to announce that the Assistant Principal had forgotten that some Gang Unit Police Officers were in the school today to talk to the kids about why they should stay out of the Bloods, Crips, Rollin 60s, Rollin 30s, the ACLU, etc. etc. Ok, kids – change of plans today – and I chalk up “presentation” on my blackboard agenda and take a seat.

The main presenting cop was a tall black man in a pinstripe suit. His partner, a portly white guy, hung back by the door for most of the two periods they spent with my 8th graders.

The presenter started by informing my kids that he was here from the D.O.E. and that he worked for the Chancellor’s office.

“Who’s the Chancellor?” a kid in the back wanted to know.

“He’s the boss of all the Principals of all the New York City schools.” For many kids, this guy was the highest authority figure they’d ever met.

He wanted to open with a few words about education. He said it was very important, and that the black community was failing at educating their kids. “It’s a sad state of affairs,” he said, “when I would tell my daughter that if she has trouble in her calculus class, she should find an Asian or Indian kid and ask that kid for help.”

At my desk, I bit my tongue in shock. My A.P., standing against the wall, said nothing.

“And why would I tell my daughter to ask an Asian child?” he asked my children.

“Because Asian people take school more seriously than we do.”

“Because Asian people are better at math.”

Holy shit, I thought, silently – still behind my desk. When my team leader came into the room, I called her over and whispered, "This presentation is all about how Asian people are smarter than Black people. What do I do?" Apparently, nothing.

The guy went on to make the points that he would rather be treated by Black doctors than by the Indian and Pakistani doctors at Kings County Hospital (“We shouldn’t hate them – they’ve had the same opportunities that we have – but everybody prefers their own – it’s not racist to say that.”)

Now, I’ve always thought that any comment that needs to be preceded by “I’m not racist but…” is circumspect, to say the least, but I also always thought that I’d react to direct racism when I saw it.

Instead, I just hid behind my desk while he told my kids that Koreans only hire other Koreans, Mexicans are hard workers, and that Haitians take education seriously. At this, my Haitian Assistant Principal smiled and volunteered, “I’m Haitian.” Jesus Christ.

When finally, as if in answer to my – still silent – prayers, the conversation actually turned to gangs, the guy was able to make some points about the history of the Crips and Bloods that surprised my wannabe gangsters. They were engaged, things seemed to have taken a turn for the better, and I relaxed a bit.

Then, the worst: “I can look around this classroom and tell who is going to end up in the penitentiary.” And -- now he’s looking at one (most improved!!) kid in particular, “They’re going to put pink lipstick and a wig on you when you get to Riker’s Island.”

WHAT?

As I – yes, still silently – watched so much of what I’d done with these kids seem to unravel, I tried to figure out why I wasn’t saying anything.

Was it because I thought it wasn’t actually that big of a deal?
Was I afraid to confront this man with a badge?
Was it because – except for the other cop in the room – I was the only white person?

I spent the afternoon talking to other teachers about what I should have done. Some – more experienced than I – said they would have confronted the guy in front of the class. Many said they might have been as shocked and confused as I was – especially if they were first year teachers with an administrator in the room. Still, I was kicking myself all weekend.

So this Monday we took a break from Anne Frank to talk about what boys say about girls and what girls say about boys. The different genders got to write big lists of assumptions on chart paper and then the opposing side got to cross out the things they disagreed with.

Then we got into small groups and rotated chart paper with labels at the top “White People,” “Black People,” “Arabs,” “Jamaicans,” (the kids chose the groups they wanted to discuss.) And the stereotypes flew:

People think that all Black people sell drugs.
People think that all White people are afraid to be fat and love plastic surgery.
People think that all Jamaican people smoke weed.
People think that all Arabic people work at corner stores.

“Now,” I tell them, “I wanted to talk about stereotypes today because we’re learning about what has happened throughout history when people judge other groups of people.” We review what groups were stereotyped by the Nazis and what happened during the Holocuast.

“But I also wanted to do this with you guys today because I thought that there were a lot of stereotypes being thrown around here on Friday.”

As soon as I said it, everything came out:

“Yeah – he said that only Asian people were good at math!”

“He looked at me when he said that he could tell who was going to jail!”

and,
“He said they were going to put pink lipstick on me! That’s messed up.”

“You’re right.” I said, “That was messed up.” It was good to talk about it.

My kids wrote about times when they had witnessed or experienced bias or stereotyping. A couple of them wrote about the cop’s visit.

“He said you should ask an Asian kid for help. But really, I’m the top math student in the class, so you should ask me.”

One girl wrote about a visit to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens during which a tour guide had pointed out a cotton plant to her and said, “See that? That’s what your people used to pick.”

Another talked about how her mother had punched a white lady on the street who had called the girl’s little brother a racial epithet. “See?” she said, “Stereotyping can lead to violence.” It’s true.

They went home with an assignment to look for bias in the TV shows, commercials, movies, and music videos they watched over the next week. I left feeling a bit better.

After a meeting with my A. P., it’s been decided that she and I will meet with these officers before they present at our school again. If, after we observe their next presentation, we still see a problem (or really, if I still see a problem and she’s forced to accept it,) they won’t be back. And that makes me feel a little bit better too.

I still wish I had said something at the time, because it doesn't make me feel good enough to say – like I keep saying about everything that goes not-quite-right – "maybe next year."

Art?

2006-03-01T18:35:00.000-08:00

Over February break, I organized a trip for my students so that they wouldn't have to sit home and watch TV all day or go with their grandma to work and be really quiet while she does accupuncture.

We went to MoMA in midtown Manhattan. This meant taking the train over the Manhattan Bridge, which I love. The kids hated it.

"What if Osama Bin Laden comes?"

"What's that water down there? Is that the ocean?"

"Miss, I heard that the beach is where the ocean begins. Is that true? It is? I'm never going there again!"

The biggest hit of the day was the food - KFC before the museum and fruit shakes from a street vendor afterwards. In between, there was much debate as to what constituted "art" and why certain "whack" pieces had made it into the collection. "I could do that!" "Why is that art?"

We learned to read the information cards on the wall and not to touch the paintings. Or anything else. No, not that either.

My biggest eighth grader, 13 and 6 feet tall (and just got a basketball scholarship to a good private high school) took pictures with his cell phone of every naked body in the museum. As we rolled back across the bridge, he scrolled through all of them so he wouldn't have to look down.

We Real Cool.

2006-03-01T18:19:00.000-08:00

It's poetry week in my eighth grade class and today we read Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool." Which, if it's been a while, goes like:

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

"The poeple in this poem are gangsters because they dropped out of school and aren't afraid to die." "My brother is like this because he thinks it's cool to die but I don't think so." "I think this is about African-American kids because a lot of us drop out of school." "I think these people must be old because they drink gin. That's an old people drink."

We talk about what makes a poem a poem, and how words have to be carefully chosen. One girl, with whom I got into an argument yesterday about whether poetry has to rhyme, liked the word "lurk" especially. I saw her later in the day waiting around the corner so that her science teacher wouldn't see her as the class filed in. I said, "Why are you hiding back here?" and she said, "I'm not hiding, I'm lurking."

Taking Stock

2006-02-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

In Social Studies, the stock market is about to crash. As soon as we get back from next week's break, we're rushing headlong into the great depression.

Yesterday, we learned what stocks were. Today, we played the market.

I told my class that each person had one share of stock in the class. That share was worth the same amount as the class's section sheet score (1 to 5 -- but for our purposes, it could keep going up and up if they were good.)

That share could also be "sold" for as many candies as its value. We started out at five. A few people, thinking either of their class's history of bad behavior or their hunger, sold out immediately.

We went as high as eight, and a few of the smartest or luckiest sold then. A few even invested half of their winnings back into the market, betting that the class would get more quiet after S. and A. were pulled out for math help.

At the beginning of third period, I warned them, like a good broker, that the class's behavior usually got worse and worse as lunch approached, and, though we were only at a five, it might be best to cut their losses and sell now. Those who held on until the end were not pleased to receive only four candies. That's investing, I suppose.

Grad. School Homework

2006-02-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

My mostly worthless four hour long education class requires weekly lesson plans and reflections. Here's what my seventh graders did yesterday, and what I rambled on about it:

701

January 14, 2006

Aim: How does war affect families?

Do Now: Have you ever been accused of doing something that you didn’t really do? Explain what happened.

Read Aloud: beginning of Ch. 12

Reading Workshop: Students read the rest of Chapter 12 and complete guided reading questions.

WW: sitting with your groups, begin to plan your short story books. First, you should plan each page and write or draw in pencil – then, have someone check your work and give you suggestions, then go back and complete your book in pen – adding illustrations, pictures, or whatever else you’d like to use.

HW: Write sentences with vocabulary words.

Reflection:

My seventh grade class does not get my best work. I see them for two periods after they have just eaten lunch, and I have usually not. The heat in our room is always on full blast and the temperature is usually around 80 degrees. Requests to go get water are constant and understandable. I could open the window or turn on the air-conditioner, and I do, while we’re reading, but while I am talking or reading or while the class is discussing our work, this makes the classroom too noisy. So we usually sweat it out.

This is an advanced class, and they think that parts of our new novel, My Brother Sam is Dead , are interesting, but mostly, it’s just “whack.” Still, we are all relieved not to be doing test-prep anymore.

Sadly, because I can count on this class to be relatively on task if they are assigned to read the book on their own for thirty minutes or so, I regularly ask them to do this. The problem with a school culture that frowns on students taking books home (with lost and/or unread books to back up this frowning) means that we have to read the whole book during class time. When I was a student I remember reading at home and discussing in class, but maybe I am remembering high school. (In seventh grade, I actually do remember reading Where the Red Fern Grows in class, because I know a friend of mine cried when the dogs died.)

At any rate, this lesson went relatively well. The kids are excited to have written short stories and to be putting them into blank books (a school-wide contest of some sort that has been mandated from on high but never fully explained to me,) and they are always excited to work with art supplies.

I got a few complaints that the book was “whack” during reading time, and the usual five minutes were taken out to explore my budding (in their heads) relationship with the new math teacher – speculation about my personal life is constant and creative – but for the most part, students were willing to take the time necessary to read the book and answer the guided reading questions.

Unfortunately, Sam needs to die before mid-winter break so that we can move on with our lives afterwards, which means that many of my students will be encountering his execution today, while I’m out at a doctor’s appointment. I was loathe to leave them alone with this tragic turn of events and a substitute to boot, but we’ll just have to discuss the horrors of war when I return.

Skill of the Week: Making Predictions

2006-01-24T18:37:00.000-08:00

Despite claims from a few students that they planned to be “wiling out” after the standardized test, the first few days of actual instruction have gone relatively well. I could have sung and danced when, on Monday, my class begged to do independent reading and then flipped pages in total silence until I forced them, thirty minutes later, to move on to writing.

Granted, the only books they want to read are about graphic sex and violence – a fact we discussed two weeks ago when we read a New York Times editorial about the ghetto-ization (in every sense) of African American Literature. But if my kids reading books like True to the Game and Homo-Thug mean that my classroom is silent and people are begging for reading time, then I’m willing to use that to build them up to bigger and better reading choices.

This week, we are reading – gasp – novels! My eighth graders are reading the book Speak. It’s about a high school outcast who finds her voice. I felt like a real Humanities teacher today when I tied the main character’s isolation into our Isolationism vs. Imperialism debate in Social Studies. This is what English/Social Studies/Getting Ready for High School class is supposed to be like.

My seventh graders are reading My Brother Sam is Dead and talking about the Revolutionary War – a more explicitly interdisciplinary choice that will tie directly into their Social Studies curriculum. They are making predictions about what will happen next. Most of them are pretty sure that Sam is going to die.

My Prediction: Math Test Prep!
Always another test around the corner. Two days next week are devoted to Math practice tests, and I’ll start helping out in a Math afterschool test-prep class next Tuesday. Always something to look forward to.

Today's News

2006-01-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

Good News, Broadly:

My children take their &#$*@# standardized tests next week and then I am free to teach them – gasp – books and poetry. I am excited, but a bit scared to leave the safe confines of multiple choice lesson planning. Also, proctoring tests makes me nervous, so I have that to look forward to.

If you are so inclined, think nice thoughts about my brilliant young things next Tuesday and Wednesday mornings (Jan. 17th and 18th,) and hope that they don’t forget every single thing I’ve taught them so far.

Bad News, Specifically:

On the depressing stories front, one of my eighth graders, a beautiful girl who is struggling with her sudden popularity among the older males at our school, was nearly date raped by her ninth grade boyfriend. Her mother called the cops, and the kid spent a night in jail. Naturally, all of his friends now want to beat her up (violence comes quickly to these kids – the depth of their conflict resolution abilities is much shallower here than in other places.) Her parents kept her out of school for three days and are now having to pick her up right when classes let out. She is shaken, but seems to be O.K.

The Most Depressing Part: My assistant principal told me today, in no uncertain terms, that the incident was “just as much her fault as it was his” because they were skipping after school tutoring when it happened. Humph.

But Back to Good News:

Did I mention that my kids are about to take their tests? On top of that – a three day weekend, a field trip, and a spelling bee are all coming up next week as well. So much to look forward to...

Bits and pieces

2006-01-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

Nothing real to update here in winter break, but a few spare ideas and details that don’t really fit anywhere else:

Number one reason why, no, you can’t be in the middle school talent show: You called me a “dumb slut” and then walked out of class.

Silliest threat I have received: “I will destroy your car and if you get a new one I will destroy that one too.” (I don’t own a car.)

Best Christmas present I received: hat and scarf from my new favorite suck-up

Best comment made during a standardized test: “Um, you didn’t teach us this, but I guess it’s too late now.”

Most disturbing monologue overheard in the library:
“That’s why I hate these teachers. They spit in my face and I spit in theirs. I have a lot of hatred in my blood. That’s why I like the color red. Your whole wardrobe should be red. Your teeth should be red. Your glasses should be red. Your brain should be red. I’m going to let all of my hatred out until I feel good.”

Best compliment I have received: “You make social studies fun. Our teacher last year just taught us out of the book.”

Second best: “I told my friends I only had one cool teacher and that’s you.”

Best comment on my announcement that I am going to read The Brothers Karamazov: “You wilin’, Miss. Did you see how big that book is?”

Best idea proffered during “fact and opinion” week: “Fifty-Cent is a gangsta and that’s a fact!”

Small act of rebellion: the fact that my bulletin board was empty for nearly three weeks (had anyone figured out that it was mine, I probably could have been seriously disciplined)

Biggest difficulty in teaching the Civil War as a play: Abraham Lincoln was suspended for bringing a knife to school

Biggest success before that: the Lincoln-Douglas debate raging across the classroom

Best (or Worst) made up name for an immigrant (we took on immigrant identities and wrote from their perspective:) “Dang-a-lang Duck Shit Shabazz” (which was later – after much debate – changed to “Dang-a-lang Duck Poo Shabazz” )

Best comment made in response to my announcement that the President had potentially spied on U.S. citizens: “Oh that happened to me! I was talking to my friend and I heard the phone clicking. It was the President listening!”

Most unlikely turn of events: I am now the number one supporter of our high school basketball team (9 and 1 kids, 9 and 1 – you can’t argue with those numbers) despite the fact that I do not particularly enjoy basketball. I just enjoy arguing with twelve year olds who say the team is “garbage” simply because they aren’t allowed to try out yet. The fact that I enjoy debates of this nature is perhaps the only reason I stay sane.

New favorite thing to do when I am being strict (after the one day that I admitted to not having had enough caffeine): hand me my coffee cup with the instructions to “take this to the head”

Most disheartening standardized test reality: all but three kids in our whole seventh grade got zeros on a portion of the practice test that requires them to edit a paragraph.

Silver lining: all three were in my class

New Year’s Resolutions:

Read something every day that has nothing to do with school
Write something every day that has nothing to do with school
Be kinder when it is most difficult
Settle “lay/lie” issue
Keep up with my book report sticker chart (I get one tomorrow for having finished Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man – one of the four copies that residents of my apartment received for Christmas)
Dishes (do more of them)

Apparently most first year teachers experience a “rejuvenation phase” following winter break. Do I feel it coming on? Maybe.

Diversifiying my classroom

2005-12-04T18:54:00.000-08:00

Usually, I am the only "diverse" element in my classroom. As a white person, it is interesting to be seen as just that - and to be called upon to explain the various silly or sinister predispositions of all those who share my comparative lack of skin color. I have never been called upon so often to explain "white folks," and the experience is like catching a glimpse of yourself reflected in a window - seeing yourself through strange eyes.

But yesterday, at Saturday School, which yes, I also teach, my white principal sent his 7th grade daughter and her friend to my Kaplan class to get some extra test-prep (like we don't all get enough of this during the week.)

So now there appeared in my normally monochromatic classroom two little white girls swinging their legs and scribbling away in their workbooks - but sitting at their own table.

"Miss, did they come with you?" a girl at the back of the class asked in a whisper. And, once one of them shared her extremely well written short response answer, as well as the fact that she was a vegan - a predeliction incomprehensible to most of my students - one particularly observant child (named after a major fashion designer) called me over to ask, "Are you sure that they're in seventh grade too? They seem more like eighth grade to me."

Our next unit in eighth grade Social Studies is on Immigration, and we are forcing diversity upon ourselves. So now, instead of African Americans with a few black Guyanese or Dominican immigrants plus White me, we will be Irish, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Latin American - all coming to America - the Great Melting Pot that somehow left Brownsville out of its recipe.

It will be interesting to discuss the view of America as a land of opportunity to students who seem to see so little of it. I wonder especially about my kids who are immigrants - the ones who do provide what little diversity we have. Is this what their parents came to America to find?

and the winner is...

2005-11-30T13:17:00.000-08:00

The group who won today's haiku-off (the prize: cookies!) submitted the following:

I hate seventh grade.
Seventh grade is like a fish;
it goes by real fast.

(Semicolon mine.)

Day in the Life

2005-11-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

Hello, everyone who has gotten my name from someone else and emailed me to ask what it is like to be a teacher. (And Hello anyone else reading this as well.) Thought I’d fill you in as to what it is exactly that I do all day long.

I haven’t lived out tomorrow (Monday) yet, but I’m pretty sure it will go something like this.

5:30AM – Wake up. Shower, breakfast, print out lesson plans for the day.

6:45AM – Leave for the train.

7:15AM – Walk into school. Take off my coat because it is approximately 100 degrees. Clock in. Learn that the copy machine is broken. Kindly ask elderly teacher to step aside so that I can put more paper in the copy machine. Say good morning to office assistants. Perhaps learn that I will be covering the class of another teacher who is out.

7:45AM – Write “Do Now” “Aim” and “Homework” on the board. Prepare classroom.

8:00AM – Learn that someone is out and needs me to cover their homeroom.

8:15AM – Students begin arriving. I can hear them coming up the stairs and then they’re shrieking in my ear – “How Ya Doin?” “What’s Good Miss?” The day has begun.

8:20AM – Half-hearted attempt to get kids who are not my own students to quiet down for the morning announcements and stand up for the pledge of allegiance. Kids put their jackets in their lockers. People who aren’t in uniform take a moment to fix this. Gum is spit out for the first of 45 times throughout the day.

8:30AM – 10:50AM – 8th Grade English and Social Studies.

Next week’s test taking skill of the week is “analyzing figurative language” – this is a boon, because it will be way more fun than say, “drawing conclusions and making inferences,” or the woefully vague, “finding facts and details.” I have been told point blank that “the skill of the week trumps everything else,” so I know that as long as my kids can analyze figurative language by this Friday, I will have done what is expected of me.

**** Tomorrow’s 8th Grade ELA/SS lesson plan goes a little something like this (my notes in italics):

Aim: How can we interpret figurative language? (Aims must always use the word “we.”)

Do Now: “Joseph was a beanpole: legs like pencils, fingers like twigs – he looked like he could fit through a drinking straw.” -- What image does this sentence bring to your mind? (During this time I say, “Almost everyone is doing the right thing right now. Thank you to all the people who are writing. You darling – spit out your gum. You darling – take off your jacket. Class has started and we are working.”)

Mini Lesson: Shared reading of Skill of the Week poster – students should add to their notes.

- Students complete Figurative language worksheet.

Read Aloud: Henry Ford’s Biography passage –
Students should take notes using the “Who/What” format. Share out notes and review teacher’s notes. – Then, students complete the Short Response.
(Ahem – Blatant Test Preparation – but this will tie in to what we’ll learn in Social Studies later on.)

Reading Workshop: Poetry Unit p. 187 – 196 – Students should begin the unit by re-reading and answering questions for “Mother to Son” and “Advice to the Young.”
(This is here because I planned this lesson for all the 8th grade English teachers to use. My kids do the 802 lesson.)
Then students should do independent reading with Figurative Language worksheet.
802 - Teacher works with three students on figurative language worksheet while other students read. (I work with three kids and spend most of the time saying “Almost everyone is reading. Thank you. I see a few people off task and they need to get back on. Don’t forget to fill out your worksheet because I am taking them up for a grade.”)
HW - Read and do 3 Ars (Active reading responses. I don’t check these often enough, so most people don’t do them regularly.)

Social Studies:
Review rules for group work. (The kids made these up and they include such winners as "No Fighting" and "Mind your own business.")
Say – “At the point in history we’re learning about, factories were starting to become an important means of production. Few people worked in factories before this time, but suddenly, factories were springing up all over the place. Today we’re going to pretend that this classroom is a factory – three factories, actually. Each row of students will be its own factory. The factory that produces the most products at the end of twenty minutes will reap the rewards of success (candy.)”

Pass out Origami project and paper to each row of students. Students have twenty minutes to complete as many products as possible. Students should experiment with different techniques to make as many as possible without getting out of their seats.
(I have a distinct feeling that this is going to be total bedlam, because by this point we will have been staring at one another for two hours.)

Then – discuss the assembly line and the advent of industrialization.

Essential questions for Industry / Industrialization on overhead – (802 – Worksheet?)

10:50AM – 11: 30AM -- This is my professional assignment period. Tomorrow I have a meeting with all of the other 8th grade teachers where we will likely find out that we will be the ones grading all of the practice tests that our students will be taking Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. This isn’t technically my lunch period, but I have to eat now or I will faint.

11:40AM - 1:13PM – 7th grade English

I collect my children from the cafeteria and send one particularly ambitious girl up to write my “Do Now” on the board because I teach in a different classroom than the one I was in this morning and I’ve been in a meeting during the time when I could have written it myself.

***** 7th grade lesson plan for tomorrow goes a little something like this:

Aim: How can we interpret figurative language?

Do Now: “Joseph was a beanpole: legs like pencils, fingers like twigs – he looked like he could fit through a drinking straw.” -- What image does this sentence bring to your mind?

Collect Region Mandated Homework Assignment

Mini Lesson: Shared reading of Skill of the Week poster – students should add to their notes.

- Students identify similes and metaphors in Langston Hughes’ Poems “A Dream Deferred” and “Hold Fast to Dreams.”

Read Aloud: Langston Hughes’s Biography passage –
Students should take notes using the “Who/What” format. (Kaplan made up this format and it sucks.) Share out notes and review teacher’s notes.

Groups: (Twenty minute rotations for each.)
Starting at Editing/Writing – Ruby Group (Test Prep and more test prep)
Starting at IR – Sapphire Group (Independent Reading – everyone’s favorite group.)
Starting at Multiple Choice – Emerald Group (Test Prep with me.)

HW: Write a poem about a dream that you have. Use figurative language to describe your dream and how you plan to achieve it. Your poem should be at least five lines long. It does not have to rhyme, but it can if you like. (Hooray for figurative language week!)

1:14PM – 2:50PM : debrief, deflate, eat junk food. This is my official lunch period followed by my prep. period so I have the rest of the day to make copies, grade papers, or sit in the library and stare off into space. Tomorrow I’ll probably be working on Grad. School homework or my homework for:

2:50PM – 3:50PM: Professional Development
Every Monday, I sit for an hour and learn skills and strategies for achieving student potential. Much of this information would be quite helpful if I wasn’t also being told to teach a straight test-prep curriculum. Sometimes this means I get a bad attitude, like last week, when we were learning about how some children are audial learners, some visual, some musical, some kinesthetic, some artistic, etc., and I raised my hand to ask if my artistic learner got to draw a picture on the standardized test. I got a teacher look from a teacher for that one.

4:00PM – 6:20PM – Take the train to Brooklyn College, eat something for dinner, and prepare frantically for:

6:20PM – 8:00PM – Structuralism and Semiotics class – during which I am supposed to present on my paper for 10 minutes. I’ve done a bit of research, but not enough, so this should be interesting. Many other kids in the class are just regular grad. students who show up in sweats and spend all day in the library, so I always feel a bit guilty for not putting in my best effort. Sigh.

8:30PM – 10:00PM – Take the train home and do prep work for Tuesday – most of my planning is already done, but I usually have to whip up a couple worksheets and finalize lesson plans, maybe grade a couple papers, etc.

10:00PM or earlier: Sleep.

5:00AM: Repeat!

The Test Prep. Blues

2005-11-27T10:42:00.000-08:00

[So. I haven't been quite the intrepid reporter one might have wished, largely because during the time when I'm not working, I enjoy sleeping. But I have been directing a number of people interested in teaching to this site, so I figured it was probably time for an update. Another is on the way.]

“Miss, when are we going to write poems?”

-- “Maybe after the test.”

“Miss, are we going to read a whole book?”

-- “Maybe after the test.”

“Miss, when are you going to teach a lesson that doesn’t make all of us want to pull our hair out?”

I teach test prep. Not just the hour after school on Tuesdays specifically set aside for 8th grade Kaplan-scripted lessons, or the two and a half hours every Saturday set aside for 7th grade Kaplan-scripted lessons, but every week, every day, every lesson I teach. Test prep. The high stakes tests (coming soon, in January) that my kids have to pass to prove that they are learning something useful in school and that I am Leaving No Child Behind, basically ensure that my students learn very little that is legitimately useful to them from August through December.

My major struggle of late has been to find a way to teach something as soul-suckingly dry, “corny,” “whack,” and “boring,” as multiple choice skills while still being the kind of teacher I want to be – the kind of teacher who is invested in her material. How can I be the kind of teacher who opens young minds to new ideas when I’m only allowed to read short non-fiction passages that are similar to the ones my kids will encounter on the test? How can I teach good writing skills through the tiny funnel of awful, repetitive five paragraph essays? Why am I forced to waste time teaching kids bad note-taking skills, bad paragraph writing skills, and bad paper writing skills that they’ll just have to un-learn as soon as they get to college (or even high school?)

The problem is that this is the reality of my job: as long as my kids have to pass the test, I have no choice but to teach to it. Things are made all the more difficult by the fact that my school had exceptional test scores last year, and the law requires us to show a significant amount of improvement each year – so this year, we have to do even better. And the pressure is on in a big way.

A few weeks ago, almost all of my seventh graders failed their first practice test. I got a firm talking to, they got a firm talking to, and nobody was happy. Then I found out that they hadn’t actually failed, but rather, somebody had graded all of their tests wrong. They hadn’t done exceptionally well, but they had done alright. The pressure was off me for a while, but I was told not to tell the kids that they hadn’t failed. “Keep them a little scared.” Right. So they are still quite unhappy and frightened that they might end up in summer school (which they will, if they don’t pass the test.)

To say more would be to belabor the point or – heaven forbid – to bore the reader as much as I am forced to bore my gifted twelve-year olds when I teach the finer points of bubble filling. How I am going to carry these forty young souls across the Scantron finish line remains to be seen. But I suppose my major point is this: that when we vote for accountability in schools, we should be very careful what we are wishing for. Having high standards is not a bad thing, but it will take more than announcing that those children who don’t pass one test are failures to improve the public schools. We might be better served by finding a more holistic and fair way to assess children’s learning so that they can actually spend their time in class doing just that.

Words and Weapons

2005-11-09T11:06:00.000-08:00

I love the kid, I really do. But there are no two ways about it: bringing a knife to school was a bad idea.

My class runs a lot more smoothly now that my honorary King of Disruption has been suspended (who can say for how long.) But I am sad.

This is the same child who told me not to wear my keys around my neck on a chain, because he had been "jumped" on the way home from school and his chain had been ripped off his neck. Apparently, his walk home was often scary. Apparently, the knife was for protection. Apparently, he won't be going to a decent high school and may even face juvenile detention.

The following is the document I had to submit for his suspension hearing. Obviously, all names have been changed:

To: Ms. Dean of the Middle School
From: Ms. Star
Re: Dequon Jones Superintendent Suspension Hearing Documents

Test Scores: Dequon does quite well on essays in my class. He is one of the few students who regularly receives scores of 4 on essays, and he hands in most of his work (though not always with all necessary steps.) He has even had a few essays posted on the bulletin board. He is a talented writer but does not spend enough time polishing and revising his writing.

Class Behavior Anecdotal: Dequon has a serious problem controlling his talking. For example, during one class period he had a loud conversation about the Video Music Awards across the classroom while I was teaching. This went on for the entire period and Dequon ignored all of my requests to be quiet. He is often not talking to anyone in particular on occasions like this - just to anyone who will listen. He has also regularly refused to spit out gum, stay in his seat, and, occasionally to do his work. When assigned consequences for his behavior, Dequon often becomes quite angry and refuses to do work for the rest of the day. I have once had to call his house from class because he refused to stop talking, and even then, he did not stop.

Dequon is quite intelligent, and has shown me that he is capable of doing good work in both English and Social Studies classes. However, his behavior is such a constant distraction that is often impossible for me to teach other students while Dequon is in the room. He seems completely unable to control his need to “perform” for other students, and this shows in the way he deals with authority figures. Dequon is quite reasonable when I speak to him one on one, but completely unreasonable when I speak to him during class.

At the parent/teacher meeting for class 802, I gave Dequon’s father a letter stating that I was concerned about Devon’s inability to control his behavior in my class. His father signed this letter and returned it to me. When I spoke with Dequon’s mother at parent/teacher conferences, I emphasized the same point. I also spoke with her by phone on several occasions when I assigned Dequon Friday detention because of his inability to control his behavior.

Dequon was quite upset about being assigned Friday detention. He told me that, if he stayed after school to serve detention, he would not be able to walk home with his friends and would be unsafe because of this. He reported “getting jumped” after school a few times previous to this. Because he wanted to avoid staying late, he told me that his mother was aware that he was staying, even though I had yet to reach her (I had left messages at home, which he later told me he had erased.)

When I spoke to his mother, I noted that most teachers probably said the same thing about Dequon: “He’s so smart, but…” I said that I hoped that soon teachers would be able to say of him: “He’s so smart, and…” I continue to hope this, but it has yet to happen.

Still.

2005-10-25T20:37:00.000-07:00

Imagine a community in which, on a rainy day, forty percent of families decide that their twelve year olds don't really need to brave the wet and wind, and an eighth grade classroom only houses about twelve students.

Imagine a meeting with a mother, a son, and a teacher in which Mom makes the following comment to the child -- looking at his lap -- right in front of the teacher:
"Your brother has Cerebral Palsy - he's legally retarded - and he makes better grades than you do. I don't even know you anymore. I could send you to a group home and my life would go on without you."

Imagine an honors student who, when asked to write about an event that has shaped his life, crafts a lovely five paragraph essay about his brother's death in a drive-by shooting.

Then imagine me, your intrepid reporter - daughter, granddaughter, niece, student, friend - slogging through the rain and wet - going back for more - day after day. Not quite happy yet, but, on many days, content. Still waiting in line for copies. Still busier than one might wish to be, especially at the ripe old age of twenty-three. But supported, instructed and instructing - warm and well in Brooklyn.

Imagine the look on a child's face who can't wait to show her mother the sticker on her homework. Imagine a girl who is so excited to have been named "most improved" that she talks about it for a week straight. Imagine a stack of essays written in steady careful loops and lines - on a topic I've assigned - that are better than last week's.

There are tiny victories and big laughs and work to put up on the bulletin boards - week after week after week. And I am falling in to the rhythm of coffee and laundry and lesson plans.

More word and words to come but for now be assured - I am still waking up and writing my name across the top of the chalkboard - and may be doing so for some time to come.

There is no liminal space in middle school.

2005-09-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

All things are black and white. A boy in my class writes me a poem about life and death, love and hate. I tell him I like the contradictions.

In the mornings I come in tired and already sweating. I wait in line for our one working copy machine and read the note again about how the repairman has been called. I write the date at the top of the blackboard, open all the windows as wide as I'm allowed to (the opening must be smaller than the space you'd need to toss a chair out onto the sidewalk) and wonder how many grandmothers I'll have to call this afternoon.

There are excellent days, when everyone piles in from the hallway, takes out a notebook, and attempts to put pen to paper. There are terrible days, when the whole class is already screaming by the time I get them in their seats. A boy says to me, "You must be so patient." A girl has an asthma attack and EMS has to pick her up out front. Tears well in tiny brown eyes when I say I'm going to call a grandmother. I turn to write on the blackboard and somebody calls me a bitch. A twelve-year-old girl asks me to tie her shoes for her - says she forgot how. Five minutes later she claims to be fourteen - older and wiser than everybody else in the room. Kids I've never met come up to me in the cafeteria, call me by name, and ask to be moved into my class. Kids I know ask the guidance counselor to move them out.

I sing the chorus of the new Young Jeezy song and I am a God for thirty seconds. I make them wait to leave for lunch until everyone is quiet and I am Satan for the rest of the afternoon. We have spelling races on the blackboard and I am their favorite. But the next day my class is boring and we never read anything except this corny bullshit. I am the worst teacher they've ever had. I give them stickers and they love me again, until I tell them to spit out their gum and once again, they hate me. They hate everyone in this stupid school. They love it here and can't wait to go to eighth grade prom. They're not coming back for the rest of the year.

I always. I never. Everything and nothing.

A star student is absent for a week straight because his family goes on vacation during school. One girl shows up three days into the year and then disappears again. Some people never miss a day but spend them all camped out in the back row, mumbling to themselves. They do excellent work and forget to put their names at the top of the paper. They sing. They sleep. They beat on the desks. They have endless energy and can't sit still. They are tired and can't think of anything to write about. They know more than I do about everything. They have no life experiences at all - why do I ask them such stupid questions?

There are days when I get all my copies made early and scribble everything on the chalkboard the afternoon before. There are days when for twenty sweaty minutes I race around from floor to floor looking for lost lesson plans, only to find them right on my desk.

I eat alone, staring out the window. I eat in meetings nodding - copies, I can make the copies.

In the eighth grade we learn about communities and how they fall apart. We read "The Lottery" and the script of a Twilight Zone episode about townspeople turning on one another. We are learning not to shriek in class, making scrapbooks about the neighborhood's history, and prepping for a unit on the Civil War.

In the seventh grade we learn new words - posthumously, loathing, antagonist. "Why you gotta antagonize me like that?" I ask the kid who falls asleep. I pile books on his head. I explain to them that I can't mark on their essays, only make "rubric based comments" on post-it notes and then stick the post-it notes to their essays. "And whose idea is this whole post-it note thing?" I ask, opening my hands to show that everyone can call the answer out - no need to raise hands. "The man," they chant. "Who's the man again?" one kid asks another. "Could the man be a woman?" Contradictions.

Some afternoons, I stare at the map of New Orleans in last week's Time magazine (all of my reading is at least that far behind) and I cry on public transportation. Some afternoons, I smile at all of the crossing guards. But every afternoon, in a few minutes on the 3 train, I do what it takes some people in Brownsville a lifetime to accomplish, what some of them never do: I leave. In the morning I come back again. I hate this job. I love this job.

First Days

2005-09-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

So. It happened. I went in early, made copies, put up posters, and wrote my name and today's date up on the blackboard.
And I did it again the next day.

Here's how my two classes went:

8th Grade

More than one teacher glanced at my eighth grade class roster and said, "Oh." Not in an encouraging way.

And having spent five hours with these kids so far, I can understand why.

I teach these twenty-four twelve and thirteen year olds for two straight hours first thing every morning. I'm the only adult face they see between homeroom and lunch, and I told them on the first day that this means we'll really have to work at getting along. We're going to be seeing more of each other, I said, than we might see of people in our families.

"Can we do that?" one kid called out, "Can we see people in our families? That'd be great."

Wonderful start.

Here's what two or three of them are experts in: pushing buttons.
Here's what the rest of them are experts in: following the lead of the two or three button pushers.
Here's what we've accomplished so far: nothing.

Yesterday, we spent the entire two hour period on one activity, because I had to keep stopping to ask for quiet, to count down from five, or to erase a point from the blackboard. The kids who like to work were bored because we weren't doing any. The kids who like to talk were upset because I kept telling them not to.

Here's a short scene from our morning:

Me: Who's bored? I'm bored. Raise your hand if you're bored.

twenty-four hands go up.

Me: I think we're bored because we're moving so slowly. A few people are really slowing us down. Let's all turn and look at the person who's slowing us down right now.

twenty-three heads turn to look at Julio [not his real name] who is already sitting by himself and already expecting me to call his house this weekend. Of course he just keeps talking because I have, brilliantly, given him exactly what he wanted.

So. I've already got parents and grandparents to call, a stack of half-finished homework assignments to grade, and a sinking feeling that Monday isn't going to be much better. Every teacher who's had this group before, even the best disciplinarian in the school, says it took at least a few months to "break them in." I'm worried that I just don't have the personality or the will to "break" people. I feel like I'm working against myself.

Still. Most of the other teachers I've met are encouraging and supportive. Another eighth grade teacher, who's new to the school but not to teaching, brought me cookies on the first day and stayed after with me on Friday to plan for the next week. I'm hoping to keep the kids a little busier and hopefully, more on task. Two hours is a long time for anyone, and I'm trying to take that into account.

I'm encouraged by the fact that I don't have any mean spirited troublemakers (yet) - just a bunch of socialites. They're working and they want to get it right, even though I can't come by their desk and help them because I'm so overwhelmed with everything else going on around me. And while one kid started our first day by announcing, "I got forty-five discipline points last year and I'm gonna get forty-five again this year" (fighting will only get you fifteen points,) even he is willing to do his homework and work in class, albeit noisily, and even he is still afraid of a phone call home.
So.

7th Grade

On the first class behavior report I filled out for my seventh graders, I wrote "Angelic!" and they are. They are terrified, wide-eyed innocents in navy blue uniforms, all of them new to the school and to one another. They're scared of getting lost, of the big kids in the hallway, and even of me. Even better, they can't talk in class because they don't yet know who to talk to.

They walk behind me in single file from the lunchroom to the classroom, and sit in alphabetical order without a hint of complaint. They look at me when I'm talking, and raise their hands to ask what the "Do Now" assignment is if I forget to write it on the board.

One girl, crooked teeth and a jumper, spent her summer volunteering at the library. On the survey she filled out for me, she wrote in the space for "anything else you'd like me to know," that she was valedictorian of her elementary school. She is shy, but willing to read aloud in class, and does so with fluency and grace. She's worried about making friends. I praise her and she looks down - I look at her and see myself.

A beautiful small boy with long dreadlocks is worried that he won't meet anyone here.

One boy hopes he'll get a little taller. A girl wants "people to know who I am."

Another says, "the work doesn't fear me so much."

Yesterday, we read a story by Gary Soto called "Seventh Grade" about a boy who tries to impress a girl by pretending to know French. After they read (in silence!) and answered comprehension questions (in silence!) we had a lovely discussion about who in the story we'd like to be friends with, and why. We talked about the different characters' actions, analyzed their personalities, and practiced speaking up so that everyone could hear us.

Then I let them in on the bad news: that, very soon, over on the other side that line of lockers that's about as tall as I am, there's going to be another class going on. That's right, I told them, another class in our same classroom. Their tiny jaws dropped. I know how they feel.

Still, even after the trauma of two hours with my eighth graders, I ended my seventh grade period feeling like I could be helpful to these kids.

------------------------------

So. Good and bad. I want to cry and I want to smile and I want more time with each kid.

Today I made a notebook with a page for each one of them, both classes, and listed what I know about them so far.

Who are their friends? (I asked them this on their surveys so I'd know who not to group together.) Do they like to read? What kind of books do they like? Do they like English class? (The most popular "favorite class" listing so far is "gym" with "homeroom" and "lunch" tied for second.) Do they like school at all? Do they watch too much TV? Have they already read the books I was going to assign? What are their goals for the year? (Which range from passing to excelling to not talking so much to not getting "kicked up.")

Already, I feel like I know a hundred times more about this job than I did three days ago. Which is good, because Monday morning, I'm going back for more.

Tomorrow...

2005-09-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

is day one. My posters have been cut and pasted, bulletin boards covered, and endless amounts of paperwork slogged through, and now I'm trying to pick out my outfit and figure out how I'm going to make enough copies during my lunch break to get me through to sixth period. I've got a two hour block of eighth graders first thing in the morning, and an hour and a half with seventh graders in the afternoon, and only about nine hours to go until I have to stand up at the blackboard and walk this walk. Pretty wild. Too tired to say too much more about it.

T minus 9

2005-08-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

After a leisurely afternoon spent reading my eighth grade Literature textbook (highly recommended - couldn't put it down - just wait until you see how it ends,) it started to sink in.

It hit a little harder when, this morning, I caught a friend making out a list of classroom rules.

Finally, this afternoon, as I crouched in an empty shell classroom - all blank bulletin boards, bare bookshelves, and expectant desks - there was no more denying it:

Next Thursday is the first day of school.

And I am going to stand in front of a list of rules (yet to be written) and give out some assignment (yet to be developed) and hope against hope that forty-eight young people (whom I've yet to meet) decide to follow me to June.

And that afternoon, some kid is going to go home and sit at his kitchen table and say something off-hand about "my English teacher" and he's going to mean me.

This is scary stuff.

"Sixteen-year-olds don't know what love is."

2005-08-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

I said this. I am not proud of it, but there's nothing I can do about it now. I said this to a fourteen-year-old kid, and I said it as his teacher. (Student teacher, but still.)

And OK, I did say it because he was hitting on me repeatedly and asking if I thought a relationship between a sixteen-year-old and a twenty-four-year-old could work out "if they really really loved each other," and I did say it with a sort of flippant air and a nod that told him to get back to his classwork, but that does not change the fact that I said it.

I've become a blurter. The only good thing to say about it is that it's only happened in the past year or so, so I may still have time to change it. But I am sure that the worst is still ahead. This is the reality of my future as a teacher:

I am going to say terrible things to children.

And they are always listening. (Well, except when you want them to be - then they're trying to text message their friends under the desk, but say something truly awful and they're all ears, trust me.)

The constant scrutiny of young ears and eyes, more than anything else, is what my summer school teaching experience made me remember about my own school days. As a kid, I monitored my teachers like a combination pageant judge and parole officer. To this day, I could sketch from memory the uneven foundation lines, the underarm wattles, or the white flecks of spittle that gathered at the corners of my eighth grade teacher's lips and, when he used a wet fingertip to erase the overhead projector, slowly changed to whatever color of marker he was using that day.

I took careful note of missed belt loops and the signs of tiredness around the eyes. I knew who was dating whom, who smoked cigarettes, and which ROTC instructor said that some people deserved to get bombed. So when my tenth grade English teacher misued the phrase "in which," or let her eyeliner smear, or said she'd rather live in a shack inside our city's swankier belt-line neighborhoods than a shack outside them, you had better believe I was Watching, Listening, and Judging.

I was talking to a colleague last night about how we're all full-timers now; he said this job means he now has to answer, "Sorry, I'm a teacher," every time a kid on the street asks for help buying beer.

There is no punching out.

The Mad Whack Museum

2005-07-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

When you're thirteen, very few things your teacher says are cool. Most things are, in fact, "whack." You might even go so far as to call them "mad whack," which is pretty much as far away from cool as you can get.

Even if, like one of my students, you have read all nine of the new young adult classic Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, you are required to abandon the Beaudelaire orphans and their mishaps at home, wear an oversized jersey to school each day, and regularly declare that the lesson is "mad whack."

These are just the rules of the game. Everybody knows them.

The kids in my classes are sitting out the summer in that strange and inhospitable space between middle and high school. They had just come into their own as eighth graders, but next year, everything will change all over again.

Their struggle to gain a foothold in the complex system of social castes means that a girl who tests through the stratosphere in the first week may suddenly switch her seat from the front row to the back of the classroom, where she will ogle the baddest boy in second period and refuse to do group work.

It means that a kid who declares, "My brother says 'Nerds are sexy!' " at 10am maybe calling me weird for wanting to read by 10:15.

It also means that, when I accompanied the rising 9th grade on a trip to the Brooklyn Museum last week, I was more than ready for the fact that they would declare every aspect of the visit to be "mad whack," even if they liked it. They're just playing by the rules.

Despite their protests that, "That museum is stupid. We go there every year and it's the same thing," most of them managed to show up to catch the train from their school to Eastern Parkway at 8am Friday morning.

And when I stumbled out of the station into the daylight at 9:45, there they all were, slouched around the courtyard and their real teachers, waiting for the guards to open up the doors. A few called my name and waved me over. One notoriously volatile girl (who is also one of my secret favorites) came up and put her arm around me.

From then on, it was one "mad boring" exhibit after another. One young man kept trying to touch the Monet paintings; I had to intercede on his behalf several times to keep the security guards from tossing us all back out onto Eastern Parkway. After we had a long talk about why it's not kosher to reach out and grab anything in a museum, the same kid tried to sit down on an Egyptian sarcophagus that some mad stupid person had forgotten to put glass around. Museums are so whack sometimes.

Still, as always, there were moments of success and flashes of interest. Two particularly shy faces lit up at the sight of the Egyptian jewelry on display, and one young woman went about the place checking off future acquisitions: "I'm going to have one of those in my house, and one of those, and one of those."

And one student, who is consistently angry and dis-engaged, was fascinated by a sculpture of a man wrestling with a minotaur. When I told her that the mythic critter was half-man, half-bull, she declared, "I gotta write that down." And she did. I think it was the only thing she wrote down all day.

cont. below

2005-07-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

And though the museum proper lacked enough bathrooms and gift-shop items to satisfy my finicky charges, the fountain outside was a universal hit.

So my class trooped back down to the 3 train, some of them sopping, most smiling, and I crossed over to the Manhattan side of the platform to make my way to the rest of Friday afternoon.

Before the train pulled away, they spotted me across the tracks and called out in their echoey, just-changed voices, "Good bye Miss!" and I yelled back to them by name. All the people around me glanced over and knew I must be somebody's teacher.

Writing "I am the Grown Up" 100 times on the Board

2005-07-19T22:17:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid, I remember flipping through The New Yorker and deciding that only ancient, horrible people must read a magazine with so many words and so few pictures. It was stifling.

And now, ok, I still don't read the poems, but I get most of the cartoons, and I chuckle - not aloud - but on the inside.

I've also broken myself of the habit of wiping my hands on my clothing - and a good thing too, now that I actually have to wear dress pants every day.

I even capitalize most of my e-mail messages - a dead giveaway.

But my impending adulthood hit me square in the face yesterday when I marched up to a door with a sign on it that read,
"Anyone caught opening this door will be suspended,"
and swung through it without a second thought.

I must be getting old.

My kids proved it to me last week, the first time I got up in front of the class.

"This is boring!"

"Why we gotta read this poem?"

"I hate this. It's stupid."

I was trying to teach the concept of "theme," a surprisingly difficult sell, and a much trickier concept to explain than one might think, the night before, when one is contemplating what an excellent instructor one will be - how many lives changed, careers in English jump-started, etc.

My cooperating teacher had to jump in with a rescue and explain that theme is not actually "the main idea," as many of the kids (and, Ok, I) had thought, but is actually something more akin to "the author's message."

At this point, I decided that I would never be a good teacher, and would, in fact, be a total failure, destined to cause irreparable academic and psychological damage to millions of innocent youngsters.

Thankfully, subsequent periods have gone much more smoothly.

In fact, I had just reached a nice plateau with my students - a happy place where everyone knew one anothers' names and favorite baseball teams - a place in which we shared out the New York Times in the morning and read independently from the Sports or Business sections, or from the classroom library, for the first twenty minutes of class.

I had even gotten up in front of the room more than a few times and managed not to totally destroy any young psyches.

Then, yesterday, my principal decided I should move to a math classroom.

How this works

2005-07-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

Choose your own adventure:

To read about the awkward beginnings of my still quite young teaching career,
scroll all the way down;
the most recent post is always at the top.

To jump into the medias res, just start here.

Thanks for reading!

Summerschool 101

2005-07-09T15:44:00.000-07:00

This week in summer school, I learned:

that kids love pigeons,

that if someone knocks on the classroom door, you can't just say,"come in" - you have to say, "COME IN" really loudly,

that, even in 8th grade, the biggest kid in the class might still have the highest voice,

that it's harder to do your homework when there's a blackout in your building, but it's still no excuse,

that sometimes when you ask a kid to read aloud and they say, "No," you have to make them read anyway, and

that sometimes you just move on,

that even teachers punch in and out,

that the janitorial staff makes way more than I do,

and that it's far better to read the sports page than not to read at all.

I've been paired with a high school English teacher who's been stuck into a pre-high school prep program. Ideally, these four periods of kids will be in ninth grade next year. Each class is supposed to have about twenty kids, but attendance usually tops out at around ten or twelve. Sometimes people roll in with only a few minutes left in the class.

Some of the kids are here for enrichment - they already did well on the end of grade test and are getting a jump on high school - while some others are here for remedial instruction because of a bad test score or a failing grade.

Nobody has told us which kids are which.

Still, judging from the writing samples they turned in on day 1, they'll all benefit from a review of (or an introduction to) literary terms like "simile" and "metaphor" and a crash course in Greek mythology.

The teacher - actually, I guess I should say, the other teacher - is great. He keeps the kids busy and interested, which takes care of most discipline problems right off the bat, but he's not afraid to drag a young man's desk across the room - with him in it - if the kid says he doesn't feel like working in groups today.

So far, I've been sitting at the back, participating here and there - nudging some stragglers, reading aloud when called on, and doing the "teacher walk" around the room.

This is a real power trip. I don't have to sit and wonder what the girl next to me wrote her homework journal entry about; I can just walk over to her desk, pick it up, and read it.

I know what everybody got on the test.

On Monday, I'm hoping to start teaching the third period section. I'll sit through two periods of a lesson, and then repeat it. It'll be exciting - and good practice, of course - to be the one at the head of the class.

Let me at 'em.

2005-06-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

After two exciting but grueling weeks with the same thirty future educators in the same stuffy classroom, I'm ready to get out into the public school wilderness and wield all this heady new educational theory I've picked up.

Bring me children, and I will teach them to question their particular realities, but not the rules of my classroom.

All of this sounds fine in the vacuum of our inexperienced discussion groups - no, really, it actually does - but I can't help but feel that classroom discussions among my peers will get a hell of a lot more interesting once we get some actual face time with the students who, after all, were supposed to be the reason we took this job.

So I'm looking forward to Tuesday, when I begin my summer-long stint as a student teacher.

I'll be cutting my teeth at a small public academy in the troubled East New York neighborhood. This isn't the school where I'll teach next fall, but it is the place where kids from that school go for the summer if they fail their classes or their end of grade tests.

From what I've heard so far, summer school is tough on everybody: the students who have to give up half a day of cartoon time, the teachers who are faced with an entire classroom of kids who have just been told that they are failures, and the district who (Please, God) has to pay to keep the air-conditioning running through July.

But in a way, I'm glad I'll be thrown into a difficult situation from the beginning. Some of these kids may show up in my class on September 8th, so I'm going to pretend that they all will, and try to start being the teacher I've said I want to be right away. I'm looking at this as a bonus month of orientation.

After all, it wouldn't hurt if, on the first day of my class, a kid who'd known me all July leaned over to her neighbor and said, "Oooh, I had her in summer school. She was hard."

District 23, a brief history

2005-06-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

We had a sudden T-storm (fun to say aloud) in the city today, and all the skinny black girls on Flatbush Avenue and the rich old white ladies on 5th Avenue were ducking around with grocery bags on their heads - trying to save their hair-dos. In my teacher training, we've been talking a bit about reconciling cultural differences; maybe these women are already doing this, whether they know it or not.

I have now been the property of the New York Department of Education for about three days, and I'm feeling surprisingly content. My F.A. proved much more likable on the second day of class, and my education professor, who will teach me from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon for the next two weeks, is pretty much a godsend.

The man is a bottomless well of useful information. He knows everything from what to do if a kid throws a baseball at your head (as Mr. Sydney Poitier did in the clip from "Blackboard Jungle" that we watched in class today) to the entire history of the New York public school system - from its formation in the 1840's to today's new Regents requirements.

Turns out, my Professor was a first year teacher in Brooklyn once too, only he started in 1968, the year that the city gave the primarily minority Brownsville neighborhood autonomous control of its schools - the neighborhood board had the power to spend money and to hire and fire teachers as the community saw fit. This power was promptly taken away when the community tried to transfer out a few white teachers who had been very vocal in their disagreement with the new power structure.

The result was a massive standoff between the United Federation of Teachers (the union to which I now belong,) who wanted the white teachers back in the school, and the community leaders, who wanted their children to learn from teachers who supported the community's right to control its own places of learning.

After the standoff ended in a stalemate - the communities were given almost all the power, except the power of the purse and the power to hire or fire teachers, which meant the situation was almost worse than before - thousands of people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to demonstrate at City Hall in support of community-run schools.

All this happened in District 23, and this district, where children once had to cross picket lines to get to school, and where my Professor once taught in a Freedom School, also happens to be where I'll be teaching come September.

So it is invaluable to have this man's background knowledge and his practical optimism. He knows every subway stop in the borough, and manages to make "You're not teaching English, you're teaching Children," sound totally new, and I am grateful for that.

Boot Camp, Day One

2005-06-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

I and 1799 other new teachers gathered this afternoon in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center to see the usual symphony orchestra replaced by third graders with violins, high schoolers with steel drums and stilts, and a parade of the city's education officials, speeches in hand. The chancellor of Education said that he wanted to kiss all of us, even the guys.

Today I heard several students speak to the question, "What makes a good teacher?" The answer seems to be pizza party related. I also learned that I am now in a Union when a rather angry woman took the stage to demand that I be paid more.

And I caught a glimpse of just how tired I'm going to be this year when, after speaker after speaker after high school step team after speaker had finally left the stage, I was tossed a bag of pretzels and told not to stop for dinner on my way to my first Fellows Advisory (F.A.) meeting.

In the throng of bright eyed do gooders, it was amazing how many faces I recognized. There was the girl with the great suit I'd seen at the placement fair - now wearing the same pants, different shirt. There was a guy who had been in my original interview group, and who had taught a great lesson on adjectives, and another I recognized because he'd had the interview before me for a high school position.

And, even more amazing, after I had located my F.A. meeting and eaten the whole bag of pretzels (which I happen to hate,) the woman standing in the front of the room was the same one who had originally interviewed me for the fellowship.

On that day last winter, I'd thought she was a little brusque and a little loud and a lot rules-oriented. But I was also nervous and so sort of appreciated the structure and the stopwatch she brought to the interview.

I have to say, though, I was chagrinned to see the stopwatch come out again today, and more than a little put off by the fact that, after forcing us to play exactly six minutes of "Human Bingo" as an ice-breaker, she went down the list of "getting to know you" bingo questions and asked people to raise their hands if something applied to them. Then we were to introduce ourselves and give our name and where and what we were teaching.

First of all, we were all in the same group because we were all teaching English in Brooklyn. Second of all, she yelled at anyone who gave any other information about themselves. It was bizarre.

She'd pick a trait from the bingo card, like "people who are coming to teaching as a second career," but when someone raised her hand and said, "My name is so and so and I am teaching English in Brooklyn and I used to work in P.R." she'd counter with, "See? Now I am getting information that I did not ask for. This is just the type of thing that your students are going to do to you. I'm just trying to prepare you for the fact that your students are not going to follow directions."

The whole thing served to reinforce what I've been hearing for some time now: that students decide within the first minutes of class whether or not they are going to respect the teacher or put forth much effort at all. Five minutes in, and I was doodling "Life Sucking" next to "Human Bingo" on my list of the things we'd be doing during the period.

I was feeling myself slump in my seat and pull away - just like I used to do when I had a teacher whose rules seemed pointless or who seemed more interested in how big the margins of my paper were than in what was written in it.

But I am trying to use that frustration to figure out how I don't want students to react to me. I'm also attempting to remain open-minded. After all, stopwatch or no, this woman has a lot more experience teaching than I do, and she has promised to get me ready for September 8th.

All in all, a fruitful day. I am now proud owner of a Teaching Fellows tote bag, a few books on classroom methods, and a spot in a thirty-person support group that has spent exactly four minutes committing ourselves to a "Culture of Excellence."

Tomorrow: grad. school.

Job: check.

2005-06-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

So now I've finally caught up to the present, which is a tiny sublet in Greenwich Village - I'm about ten feet from Washington Square Park - and a new job teaching middle school.

I moved in just a few days ago, and I'm starting to settle back into the rhythms of subway travel and overpriced grocery runs. Every dollar I spend is breaking my budget, but I stopped for a New York Times this morning, early, on my way out to a school in Brooklyn.

The weather forecast: Hot.

The school I was visiting: Un Air Conditioned.

So I had sweat running down my forehead by the time I got up in front of the class I was observing. The teacher decided to let twenty four eager seventh graders - each of whom has about a fifty percent chance of having me as a teacher next year - interview me.

"What grade are you going to teach again?"

"Are you going to be hard?"

"How do you feel about fighting? I mean, if someone is hitting you and beating you up, shouldn't you fight back?"

"Where did you go to college?"

"If my cell phone rings in class, and it's my mom and I really need to get it, will you take it away from me?"

"Can I have it back at the end of the day?"

"Do you like us so far?"

"Have you ever taught before?"

And then, the kicker:

"How old are you?"

I was going to add a couple years, at least, but the real teacher cut me off:

"She's old enough to be your teacher, and that's all you need to know."

So then I got marched down to the principal's office and offered a job, which I gladly accepted. this school has been my first choice throughout the placement process; I get a good feeling from the students and teachers I've met so far. So that's that then.

In about a week, I'll start my grad. school classes and my summer boot camp teacher training sessions. For now, I am taking time off to celebrate the fact that, for a few more days, I have nothing at all to do.

Talking in class.

2005-06-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

I sat in on a ninth grade English class taught by a Fellow - a nervous, balding, bespectacled Fellow - who seemed tired. He had scribbled a writing assignment on the board:

"What do you like and dislike about your neighborhood?"

"How come you never answer these questions?" the girl in front of me asked. Her teacher sighed.

"I like that my neighborhood is close to Central Park, and what I don't like about it is that it's too expensive. Ok?"

And then, among his exasperated "speak up please"-es, the class read their answers.

"I like that, when you're from my neighborhood, you can represent."

"I don't like all the crack-heads and drug dealers in my neighborhood."

"I like that there's a lot to do in my neighborhood, but I don't like that they closed my favorite basketball court."

All the while, I slumped in a back row desk, trying not to feel like a ninth-grader.

The same talkative girl in front of me turned around to whisper,

"Are you gonna work here next year?"

I glanced at the teacher and tried to make it quick,

"Maybe."

"Did you teach high school where you moved from?"

"Yes." (Lie.)

"Where?"

I told her the name of my high school. It just came out.

Then her teacher called her name and she whispered,

"I hope I get you," and turned back around. Trusting kid. Little does she know that I'm not going to allow whispering in class.

Through the metal detector.

2005-06-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Luckily, I had driven to the city, brought an extra pair of interview pants, and was staying with a most accomodating friend, so I could afford to stick around for an extra day. The next morning, I got a call from an eighth grade teacher at another school where the principal had seemed to like me, so now I had two schools to visit.

After wandering the wrong way for a bit through the Cypress Hills neighborhood, I finally found the first school on my list - a high school. Turns out, taking off your shoes when you go through the metal detector is just for airports. The security guard in the school's lobby had to call on her walkie talkie to the guard upstairs to let her know I was coming up to the second floor.

(Back at my high school, I used to be able to wander out of class, pick up orders of Bojangle's chicken and biscuits for all of my friends, and make it back in before the substitute noticed me missing. Guess that kind of stuff doesn't fly in Brooklyn.)

After I had found my way to his office, the school's Vice Principal for English took me on a tour. This involved him unlocking classroom doors at random and barging in on some surprised teachers and students, and then making loud comments like,

"So, this is a tenth grade English class. They seem to be working in groups at the moment. Ms. So and So is one of our better teachers - oh, and she's a Teaching Fellow too! Maybe you can talk to her after class! Ms. So and So, come over here."

He didn't seem to see any problem with this, but it made me pretty uncomfortable to be thrust into the front of twenty-five surprised looking kids and some slightly annoyed teachers.

"Step on in," he kept having to tell me, and I mumbled, "Sorry for the interruption," as I shook the teachers' hands.

A few seemed to welcome the break, but others seemed to think this was some kind of surprise inspection.

In one classroom, students were walking around at random, all talking. When we burst through the door, the harried looking teacher started screaming at them about some assignment they were supposed to be working on. The Vice Principal gave a few kids a look and told them to sit down. They seemed not to have thought of that.

"She's one of our weaker teachers," the VP told me as we left the classroom. "But we're supporting her, and she's getting better." I didn't say that I'd hate to have seen her classroom in September, but it must have been ugly.

Placement

2005-06-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

So now it falls to me to find a school in Region 5 that needs an inexperienced white girl to teach Secondary School English (my assigned subject area.) A few days ago, I trekked up to the city to attend a placement fair at a middle school. Principals or administrators from the three districts in my region had distributed themselves among the classrooms like prizes on a TV game show. Behind door number one, a beleaguered guy from Queens who smirked at my resume and told me about his failed high school.

"The city is shutting it down," he said, "restarting from scratch. And I gotta tell you - you seem like an intellectual, and these kids, well, these are very very needy kids," who are going to eat you alive, his face said. Great.

But by the end of my five minute interview, I'd convinced him, if not myself as well, with the same script I've been giving everyone who asks me why I'm doing this:

Ahem. I want to tackle something really hard - to do something that'll jolt me out of this easy college lifestyle I've developed. That's why I chose this program - I didn't want to teach at some private school - I wanted to challenge myself. I think I'll be able to manage a classroom well because I understand the importance of setting strict boundaries on the first day and sticking to them rather than putting out fires for the rest of the year. (Here I joke that maybe I'll get my hair cut really short, maybe get some fake glasses so I look more teacher-ish. -- Not a joke. Already happened. ) Oh, and I've worked with elementary and middle schoolers before, so high school is something I'm excited to try.

A few more lines about how I went to public school and blah blah blah I believe in the public school system and I've pretty much got principals as pals. Actually, it is dishearteningly easy.

One assistant principal grilled me on what book by an African author I would assign to tenth graders, and was so satisfied with my answer of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (which I'm pretty sure is standard for tenth graders everywhere,) that he invited me to visit his school the very next day.

What you've missed.

2005-06-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

To bring us up to speed, a brief recap:

This past spring, while some of my college friends bemoaned their lack of job options, or work ethic, or both, and some others kicked back, assured of thier spots at top I. Banks or Important Consulting Firms, I was working up a practice lesson and interviewing with principals and programs. The first job I landed was a yearlong, all expenses paid position teaching third graders at a private academy in the Dominican Republic.

Let's pause here an imagine me shepherding well-behaved eight year olds across a white sand beach, enjoying my comp-ed apartment, working on my Spanish and my tan, and question my sanity for what I doubt will be the last time. Go ahead. Question it. But teaching wealthy kids English didn't exactly serve my recent-college-grad idealism, so I said, "Gracias, pero no," to the Dominican school.

I also turned down an offer from Teach for America that would have sent me to a high school in Newark, New Jersey. I nixed this job mostly because I'd already been accepted to the New York City Teaching Fellows program.

I was taking a gamble - hoping that the NYC Fellows would place me in Brooklyn rather than the Bronx, either of which, frankly, seemed preferable to Newark. My bet paid off when I was assigned to Region 5, a large swatch of purple on the educational district map encompassing East Brooklyn and some of Queens - mostly places I'd seen on the subway map but never visited.

People kept telling me that Teach for America was a more prestigious program, or that it offered more support, or that the Dominican was certainly beautiful this time of year, but the restless Southerner in me had her heart set on a first real New York City apartment.

"I can't really explain it," I told a friend, "but I get the feeling that if I'm not living in New York, I'm not really starting my life."

Joan Didion explained this feeling best in her essay Goodbye to All That:

"Was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was."

Introductions

2005-05-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

At the ripe old age of twenty-two and three quarters, I finally have something to blog about. As a newly minted New York City Teaching Fellow (ever after, “Fellow” for short,) I’m about to be thrown into what the city of cities euphemistically dubs a “high-need” school. I’ll be expected to wrestle my way to higher test scores for my students and an incrementally smaller achievement gap for what I can only assume will be a grateful nation.

The education department at the University from which I graduated only weeks ago compares this kind of guerilla education (which will be both mine and my students’) to sending Biology majors to become doctors in small, needy towns. “You’re better than what they’ve got, but that doesn’t make you qualified,” they told me, and advised a slow and steady Master’s degree and a hefty dose of student teaching. After a single class in this department, I decided that their idea of Education - coloring posters, mostly - wasn’t my style, and stuck with my English major. And what does one do with a B.A. in English? Why, one begins a blog about one’s first year as a teacher in Brooklyn.

So stay tuned for real-life drama as No Child is Left Behind and my personal capacity for optimism and hope either expands like a delicate flower or is finally beaten out of me. (Perhaps both in the same day!)

For obvious legal reasons and in the interest of thwarting future google-happy students, my name, the name of my school, and my students’ names will not be included here or will be replaced with pseudonyms. If you know any of the above, please don’t tell. The rest, I assure you, will be better than fiction.