Teaching to Change the World

what to do with myself

2007-06-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

Even though for months teaching has crowded out most other things that I enjoy doing--or the daily things like laundry and returning emails properly that I relate to as things that I should do (not nonviolent communication there, I know)--I found myself last night done with shool and yet really being disoriented about how to spend my evening. I felt writing in my journal would be a good thing, but I was too tired to do that justice; I sure have a ton of papers around that need sorting--though that will take weeks to do properly and I wasn't in the mood to just stack papers in a neat pile; I was too tired for yoga, not feeling all that social, and didn't have the energy to start applying for jobs. I ended up looking online for a cabin to rent for a couple days to get out of town, though I couldn't find anything not too far away that was in my price range. (I'll keep looking.)

Anyway, I'm heading off to school in a few minutes for what is the final day of school, though most of the kids don't actually show up and there are not real classes. If my kids show up, I'll give them their papers back, ask them about their summer plans, invite them to a picnic this weekend, and give them a big hug.

As for me and where my life goes from here, I'm feeling out of sorts. I'm excited about the possibilities and feel really good about the way this school year went, but I'm feeling like I need to rest before I can really make any decisions about moving forward in terms of my plans for the summer and the fall, moving, and what to do with myself now that there are no papers to grade, no lessons to plan, and no classes to attend. I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Wow.

2007-06-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

In my 9th grade class, just as I was about to let them go--after I got all teary in thanking them and saying goodbye--my "mean master teacher" (who had been in the room during the half-class where the kids filled out evaluations that I gave them of me) interjected and announced that she and the class had a present for me. They (I'm sure she) got me a journal--which is so nice since I bought them all journals at the beginning of the semester and always encourage them to write in journals--and they had each written a note to me in the journal thanking me for my hard work! Later on it occurred to me how much must have gone into that in terms of her being able to have them each sign the journal without me knowing anything about it. So sweet.

Then, the "mean master teacher" asked each student to share a thank you or compliment to me about the semester, and they all went in a circle and thanked and complimented me on the class. I hardly even remember what any of them said since I had so many emotions going on, but I do remember a few. One girl told me she really didn't like me in the beginning of the semester( I interjected by saying that I knew that! This was the class that started really badly, with this teacher observing me everyday and giving me a hard time), but eventually she really started to like me and this class a lot and that she learned a lot. Another student "complimented" me by saying that this was his only class that he didn't hate! Another really quiet student thanked me for always calling on different people and setting up the class in a circle and so everyone felt more comfortable participating, and he said that in made him much more comfortable and confident in participating and that he participated more in my class than he ever had before. Another student thanked me because he said he finally understood the idea of a thesis and how to write an essay. And the last one I remember was a student who thanked me for making them learn everyone's names. She said that she was really nervous in the beginning of the semester because she hardly knew anyone in the class, but that after I quizzed them on their names and had them work in groups a lot, she felt really comfortable in the class.

It was so touching.

I thanked this teacher and--tearing up again in doing so--told the class that she had been behind the scenes pulling all the strings throughout the semester.

The notes the kids wrote in this journal were so cute--especially congratulations on becoming a teacher and saying how they know I will become a good teacher (even though they just complimented me on being a good teacher).

Meanwhile, it was a good thing this wasn't a regular school day since we totally went over into the next class period, which made kids late, although most teachers didn't actually even take attendance today, so it wasn't a big deal.

In my 10th grade class, I gave each student an individualized note as well as a letter I wrote to the class, and I got a few more really sweet letters from them.

I also let them all know that I'm going to plan a picnic in the park next weekend that they're all invited to (as are you, dear reader), and I left a signup sheet for kids to give their emails if I don't already have them. (I have most of them.) Half a dozen of them signed up, which was nice, and I'm hoping to have a decent turnout and a nice day probably next Sunday.

What a special day.

Meanwhile, I came home and didn't feel like grading but didn't really know what to do with myself. I started to go to the park with my dog but it got cloudy and thought about going to yoga but eventually just took a nap, which was much needed after 3-1/2 hours of sleep last night.

I'm looking forward to reflecting more on this really amazing semester as my schedule opens up. I'm actually wondering what on earth I'm going to do with myself when that happens. Of course I have lots of fun ideas--plus plenty of things that I've neglected these past few months, plus trying to move and maybe make some big changes--but it's crazy to think about having zero school-related obligations....

Have more to say about other things in a bit....

Ridiculous cuteness

2007-06-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

OMG!
These kids are so cute.
We had our final today, which I know I made really hard, but I am actually really happy with and even proud of my test since I think it really challenged them to think and to apply their knowledge of the play (The Merchant of Venice) and what we talked about in class in order to excel on the test. They said that it was hard but fair, which is all I care about.

After that, I had them fill out evaluations of me that I spent a long time creating. I promised them that I would not look at them till after their grades are done since I totally know all their handwriting. I was actually a little nervous about the evaluations for this class because I feel like there were a few things that didn't go exactly as I would have liked, but in the end I still feel really good about the class. I am eager to read them but am definitely keeping my word.

In our last few minutes, I gave them kind of an inspirational talk about writing, and how all the authors we read used writing as a way to address social issues, and that they can do the same. I handed back an assignment they did at least a month ago in which I had them write a list of 3 "grievances" they have with the world, which is something Maxine Hong Kingston did in The Woman Warrior. In the assignment they also had to make a list of types of writing they could do to express those grievances. When I assigned that, I had visions of assigning them to actually do that, but I (thankfully) decided not to because of lack of time and because of struggles I had with figuring out how to grade such an assignment. (Still need to work on differentiated grading. Uch. I don't think my school believes in such a thing anyway, but that's another story.) I showed them some anthologies of writing by high school students and reminded them of the journal I gave them each on the first day of school.

I did something I was afraid to do but am so glad I did. I gave them homework due on Friday. We have an abbreviated class on Friday, which is going to be a party and where we'll do some other cool things. It's understood, though, that most students skip school that day, so for me to assign homework received some groans. They seemed ok when I told them the assignment, though. They have to write me a letter reflecting on this semester. They can write anything they want--about class or not--and they can email me if they won't be in class Friday.

The cuteness came as time was almost up for the extra-long class. I acknowledged that I knew I might not see some of them on Friday and I started to say some unrehearesed or planned something about how wonderful they were, and I just had to stop because I was totally losing it. I was really touched--and am right now--thinking about how much I'm going to miss this class--and my other one too. I paused for a few seconds and finally got out a thank you and that I really enjoyed this class and am going to miss them. I was shocked by what happened next. There was this huge line of kids waiting to give me a hug. I asked each of them if I would see them Friday, and they all said yes (though we'll see).

I just checked my email and have already gotten a few emails from tem. A couple just talked about school being a lot of work and being happy it's summer, but there were two that I really appreciated and am posting here for posterity. Oh the cuteness.....

This is from a student who hardly ever participated in class:

I got really into writing this letter! It may get a little emotional! hahahahaha.

Dear Ms. K.,

Wow, this semester seriously flew by so fast for me. It was actually a pretty good semester. I got all the classes I wanted, and I was in a good place in life. I don’t know why this semester stood out from all the rest. I guess it’s because I felt more mature and started to feel like an upperclassman. But, I must say, your English class was one of the few English classes I ever enjoyed going to. You made all the discussions lively and you made reading fun for me. I admit, at times the amount of writing you gave was pretty ridiculous [Editor's Note: LOL!], but they really got me to think about everything and made me reanalyze what I was reading. And I also give you props for actually making me be able to enjoy reading Shakespeare this semester. Usually, I would absolutely hate reading Shakespeare, but this semester, you made it really fun to read and easier to understand. Honestly, you are probably the teacher that I learned the most from. You actually took the time to explain the material to us and you taught things so clearly and in a way that made us look at things from a different perspective. Everyday, I would always love coming to your class because I always learned something new everyday. You seriously made my English experience that much more interesting and fun for me. This semester was seriously really good for me and having you as a teacher was so much fun. I wish you could come back next year! But I’m pretty sure you’re going to come and visit us in the future. But anyways, that is generally how I felt all semester. I learned so much and I can’t believe it’s already over. I’m going to be a junior already! It seems like only yesterday that I was at freshman orientation, not knowing anyone in my class. But now I feel so much different. I’ve met so many people, even some that have changed my life all together. This semester, I realize that sometimes in life, you have to go for what you want and achieve for the greatest. Thank you so much for everything, Ms. K. I’ve probably done most of my best writing with you and you’ve inspired me to keep writing and to keep a journal of my own to express my thoughts in. Thank you for making me the best writer I know I can be. You never made me not want to write. Thanks for teaching me everything I need to know and everything I needed review in. Please come and visit us in the future! I’m going to miss you Ms. K! Good luck with everything and please consider teaching at L.!

Always,
J.

Cute letter #2:

Hi, Ms. K.!

I remember that last year in the arena, I was so happy to get the final spot in Ms. I's class. The word around school was that she taught well and I was very excited. I didn't even know what the Ms. K. in the parentheses meant when I was picking out which English class to take. On the first day of school, I was very surprised when you announced that you were not the teacher I set my sights on. I was a bit hesitant as I wondered what the semester was going to be like. After the first week, I realized that you wanted everyone in the class to get to know each other, just like in the first week of 2nd grade. It was a little strange at first, but I really liked it in the end because I knew the names of the people I was taking to. I enjoyed this and a lot of other things about your class. Throughout the semester, it seemed like you didn't want a day to go to waste. You always had us writing, analyzing, or discussing. I really appreciated this because it made me feel as though I was going through the same emotions and experiences of the characters. All the analyzing made them come alive. Your standards took a while getting used to because many of the English teachers I've had in the past went easy on me. I also wasn't used to having so many essays, but your comments were so helpful that I think my writing has improved significantly. You pushed us hard, but I'll be mature enough to say that is was worth it . I really hope that you teach 11th grade English next year or even AP English.

I'll see you in the hallways,
V.

I swear I didn't write these myself.

This is really nice validation, especially after all the grief I've gotten from my master teachers and the complete lack of interest and total indifference shown to me as far as offering me a job next year. (It's like it never occurred to anyone that I might be worth consideration for a job.)

Anyway, I promised them I would have their esays back for them by Friday, so off to do more grading. Still, the cuteness is pretty overwhelming.

To be observed or not to be observed; that is the question

2007-06-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

The assistant principal of curriculum offered to observe my class at some point to write me a reference and said I should let her know if I would like her to and when would be a good time. She asked me that over a month ago, and ever since then I have thought about it but have been too nervous to invite her to a particular class because I feel like I would want to be ultra-prepared (or at least not stressing 5 minutes before class to get prepared) and confident for a class she's observing, and I never really feel that way. I actually felt pretty secure in my plans for class on Friday, and I had asked her earlier in the week if she would observe. She asked me to email her the days and times and room numbers, but she never wrote back to me. I was shocked to find myself too nervous to go back to her office and remind her or ask her if she was available or planning on coming to observe. I passively was (again) just completely ambivalent--part of me hoping she'd come to class and be blown away by what an amazing teacher I am, part of me hoping she wouldn't come and find out what a crappy teacher I am. Ugh.

She didn't come. During class I felt a bit relieved about that at times, but after class (which went very well, as it just about always does), I felt really disappointed in myself for being so timid about the whole thing. So I just emailed her again and invited her to my classes tomorrow, both of which I feel confident about. There's really not much to lose by her observing and a lot to gain. It's interesting, though, that I feel really good about the job I have done and very confident about the job I do each day, yet at the thought of being observed and evaluated potentially for a job I feel like I'm going to be exposed as a fraud or something. I suppose this is a somewhat typical experience, but it is too petty for me to give my energy to these days. I have earned more than that and don't want to sell myself short.

Overcome by Ambivalence

2007-06-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

As I approach my final day of classes tomorrow, I have been feeling so overcome with emotion this weekend and these last few weeks. On the one hand, I'm completely exhausted. I'm feeling somewhat burnt out and totally ready for a break. Whereas I had envisioned my life totally freeing up and devoting hours and hours to preparing for class and catching up on grading once our portfolio was due and classes at State were over, that has not happened at all. In fact, I've been fighting this battle in my head between (a) wanting to get caught up and do a whole bunch of work as soon as I get done with teaching each day to (b) wanting to take a nap as soon as I get home from school and hang out with friends and lounge with my dog at the park and watch the NBA playoffs (not to mention the pathetic Yankees) and take care of stuff (like plans for the summer, housing situations, bills, laundry, actually trying to get a job next year), which I have badly neglected all semester. Let's just say schoolwork has not been winning this battle in my head. In fact, I have been shockingly last minute in my preperation, and yet I feel like I am in a position of being experienced enough now to be this last minute. I actually feel good about just about everything I've done in my classes since this wave of slackerness has come upon me, which I find impressive and just short of miraculous. I suppose it takes me much less time to prepare, and I've been preparing accordingly.

Another component of my ambivalence is the battle in my head between wanting school to be over and wanting it to continue. There are two things at work here. First, the less charming side: I have SO much grading to do in the next 8 days, it is actually really exhausting to even think about. I would love to not feel so rushed, though I suppose it's nice to have that extrnal deadline to cut things off. The more romantic and sweet and interesting and meaningful aspect of the ambivalence is that I'm really going to miss teaching these classses and being with these students five days a week. As much work as it has been, I really have had a great time. I can honestly say that I've had fun teaching virtually every class this semester. (Most of the exceptions were at the beginning, where the "mean master teacher," as she became known, was observing me in all my ineptitude.)

Kids in both my classes asked me this week if I was going to be teaching there next year and I said probably not (though there is really no reason for the "probably" except that I suppose anything is possible; as far as I can gather, they are not hiring in the department and nobody has spoken to me about next year). It was very sweet to see that the kids appeared to be disappointed about this. One of my 9th graders said we should have a party for me. Another student said, "Yeah, we were your first students, right?" They're so cute.

I'm going to miss my 9th graders putting the chairs in a circle everyday before class and putting them back to their boring, traditional arrangement at the end. I'm going to miss two of my 10th graders arguing over which of them I like better. I'm going to miss the adorable and excited ways some of my kids say hi to me in the hallways and when they get to class. I'm going to miss my own poking fun at myself when I screw up now in class. I'm going to miss coming up with cool assignments that they are actually excited to do, and making them laugh by finding creative ways to teach things. (When teaching the definition of a malapropism (a misused word), I gave them the example that "I have a great infection [instead of affection] for them." (That still cracks me up!)) I'm going to miss the absolute shock and relief I feel at the end of class each day when I realize that there has been no major catastrophe. I'm even going to miss the shell-shocked looks on the kids' faces whenever I assign an essay, the BS stories a couple of my kids regularly give me about not having their homework, the same kids always coming in late and apologizing for it in new and different ways each time, calling kids out for their inattention in ways that I find amusing (yet respectful), and the sorrowful and even ashamed way students have about them when asked about not having done their work.

I look forward to finishing my grading so I can start recording these things more thoroughly. Or do I not look forward to it?

Actually teaching to change the world

2007-05-23T00:47:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that I'm awake right now let alone that I'm starting a blog entry. I should have been asleep an hour ago--and prepping for my classes tomorrow if anything.

The past two days have been really great for so many reasons. The main two are that I did not have class after teaching (both today and yesterday I went to GG Park and did work and snoozed in the sun) and that I am actually teaching to change the world in a concrete, direct way in my 9th grade class these days.

We're reading Animal Farm, which is such a pleasure--and such a great thing from an activist perspective that that book is on so many school book lists. Today I had them do a free write about a quote from Britney Spears (I didn't tell them it was her until the end) that said something like, "I think we should just support the president and whatever he does because he's our president." Given the unquestioning acceptance of tyrany and corrupt leadership in Animal Farm, this was a fortuitous opportunity to challenge this belief. Their responses were great. We got into talking about why people might want to support leaders blindly like this, and that was a really great discussion. They talked about how dangerous it can be to just accept what a leader does without challenging it. We got to talking a little bit about Iraq, but more important to me was for them to get this idea--that it is important to question authority. (As an example, I asked them what they would do if I wrote on the agenda that their homework for tomorrow was to read chapter 8, and when they came into class tomorrow I announced that there was a test on chapters 8, 9, and 10. I added 9 and 10 to the 9 in the HW box, revising history the way Napoleon and his posse do. They totally got into this.)

Tomorrow we're going to be talking about propaganda, and I'm bringing in a copy of a video I have that challenges the mythical "happy cow" commercials by showing actual footage of dairy cows in California...wading through knee-deep piles of shit, udders hanging practically to the ground, limping, collapsed, being hauled with a crane to slaughter--not so happy. I am working a bit to make this exactly relevant, but, hey, it was pointed out to me by Melissa from our program that--now that our credential program is over--we are not actually teaching for course credit, and we're sure not teaching for $. We're volunteers. And the animals need my volunteer time at least as much as these students do. I know these students will be really into it. I've def talked about animal stuff before, and they ask a lot of questions. These kids are so great.

I need to do a blog about my 9th grade class in general. This is the class I was struggling with so much at the beginning of the semester. They absolutely looked at me like they thought I was some imposter doing a poor job impersonating a teacher. It's amazing what has happened. We have such chemistry now. I am joking around throughout the class, they poke fun at me and feel comfortable and safe and yet are totally respectful. Meanwhile, they totally do their work and are amazingly alert and on task in class. (Part of this success is that there are only 16 kids in the class. That changes everything. (There are 31 is my 10th grade class.)) Anyway, details on that class another time. I'm starting to get really sad that my time with them is ending....

Making a student cry

2007-05-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I made my first student cry. Well, other factors were involved, I suppose, but before me: no crying; during me: crying.

So this student had given me the runaround 2 different times during the first marking period, when she told me--about 2 different papers--that she had turned her paper in to me when I collected everyone's and that she has no explanation for why I don't have her paper. Somehow I had everyone else's paper but not hers--twice--by some magival twist of fate or something. Each time after realizing I didn't have her paper, I had asked her to email it to me that night, and each time she was absent the next day and had a story about her email and printer not working the following day. Eventually I met with her and my master teacher and talked with her about everything, and she seemed to understand the importance of handing stuff in on time--especially at my school site, where it is just understood that everyone does their work and hands it in on time, especially for big assignments.

(By the way note to other new teachers: I benefited from a tip from one of my master teachers to count up and keep track of all of the papers and tests you receive *right away*. This way, if you need to talk to a student about not having their paper, you're not having that conversation 2 weeks later when you're getting around to grading their papers.)

Last marking period she was good, and it seemed like everything was under control. Until last week. Last Friday, the class had a paper due that she did not turn in. The class was suppoed to turn in a hard copy as well as email me a copy since I'm going to be putting the files online. She did neither. Monday she was absent. Tuesday I asked her about it and she said she emailed it to me on Saturday. (I had gotten every single other person in the class's email but not hers?) She said she would send it to me again that night. The next day, she was absent again. Thursday, I asked her for her paper, and she asked me if she could meet me to talk to me about it during her free period. This was a crazy busy time for me in terms of working on the iCAP (portfolio), yet I agreed to wait around for her for an hour so she could come talk to me, and I actually really appreciated this mature approach--asking to meet with me to talk about it. Well, I waited till that period and she never frikkin showed up. Grrr....

Yesterday she got to class right as we were starting and left before I could catch her. I knew, though, that she has gym right after my class, and I always see her leaving the locker room to go play whatever as I leave class, so I waited outside to talk to her. Finally she came out and was probably not thrilled to see me. There was no way I was going to wait another hour to try to meet with her during another period, so I decided I was just going to talk with her then. (Nobody was around to hear.)

I told her I'd waited at school for an hour in order to meet with her at a time that was convenient for her and that I was really disappointed she didn't show up. She shyly apologized and said that she'd hurt her hand in gym yesterday and was at the nurse. She's like the boy who cried wolf--not sure if that was true or not, but the nurse's office is very near the English office, so I feel like she should have still come by. I mean, she had all of her fingers! (There was no noticeable damage to her hand.) Ultimately, I could check to see if she did actually go to the nurse but it doesn't even matter at this point. I asked her if her hand was ok. Yes.

Then I asked her what she wanted to talk to me about re: her paper. We were standing outside and she was in her gym clothes, not prepared for the conversation, but I was sick of getting the runaround from her. She told me she was having problems with her printer and her email. "So your paper is done?" I asked. "Yes." She had said a couple days before that she'd had problems printing and I had told her to email it to herself and print it at school, but now her email isn't working, supposedly. I asked her if she had a disk that she could save the paper on. No, she doesn't have a disk.

At this point I was just annoyed. I feel like at other schools this stuff might happen more, but at my school it is very rare.

The tears started when I recapped the situation. I said that I felt like we'd had a really good conference about this during the first marking period, and that she'd really improved, but this paper was due a week ago. I said something like, "It is your responsibility to make sure that you get your work in on time--whether that means emailing it to yourself and printing at school, buying a disk, doing your work at the library or whatever it takes--and that if there's a problem in handing something in on time, it is up to you to communicate with your teachers about that in a direct way--and to keep your appointments or be in communication about cancelling them."
That was when the tears started welling up, though it never got to the point where it was blatanly obvious or uncomfortable that she was crying.

I should mention that this student is a 9th grader, Chinese American, super quiet and shy. She was born here but her parents don't speak much English. She is a good writer and the work she turns in is quite good. I feel like she is a perfectioninst and can't bring herself to hand something in that's not perfect. I told her that her wrinting is very good, and that I'm confident her paper will be really good, but that it won't get the grade that it deserves because it's so late. I also told her some of the papers that people turned in actually weren't that good, and that I knew that if they had an extra week then they'd be much better, but that she needs to get her work in on time or else talk to me about it right away. I told her it's not fair to herself since she is getting grades that are below what the work she has put on paper deserves.

In the end, I asked her if she would have the paper for me by Monday. She said she would try. I patted her on the arm (trying to mitigate my badguy-ness) and wished her a good weekend.

I don't feel any guilt or regret about the conversation, really, because I feel like it needed to be said, but I'm curious what will develop from it--though obviously it made an impression on me since I'm spending my Saturday writing about it.....

Using technology, feeling happily irrelevant

2007-05-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

Today I did a webquest with my students, with thanks to Robyn for making it happen. We went ot the computer lab and the students were totally engaged in the webquest--much more so, I think, than if they all went to google and were just searching random sites from there. The way that site is set up -- http://robynmoller.googlepages.com/animalfarmwebquest -- where the students know which sites to go to for which questions, and where students can feel confident that the inforamtion can be found on those sites, was really helpful.

It was interesting to be in the computer lab and to have the students all doing their own thing on their computers. At first, I was all prepared to walk around to help and answer questions or ... something, but pretty soon it became clear that I was irrelevant except to dismiss the students at the end of class and tell them to finish the section they were on for homework if they didn't already finish it.

Given that I said something totally stupid and messed something up in my first class today, it was nice to feel totally irrelevant and know my kids were just fine without me.

One of the very annoyingnesses of assessment

2007-05-08T07:25:00.000-07:00

Well, clearly the first most annoyingest thing about assessment is having to actually spend the time assessing (grading), but before that come other annoying aspects as well, such as figuring out how you will be assessing (hopefully that comes before the assessment but--I've heard for some people, though I myself wouldn't know--sometimes it comes after). The annoying aspect of assessment I'm struggling with right now and have been struggling with for about 2 weeks is what should ideally be the middle step before the two above: explaining to students how you will be assessing them. These days that is done with a rubric--a term and concept I had never heard of when I was in school.

I'm specifically struggling with the final paper I am going to assign my 10th graders. I was going to assign them the same research paper about a social issue that I assigned to my 9th graders, destined for publication on studentschangingtheworld .com. The problem is I have very little time in class to work with them on it, though I will have time to conference with them the last couple weeks of school after the iCAP (portfolio) is due 5/18. I'm not sure why I haven't assigned that paper yet already; I feel like they could do it outside of school, and each day I don't assign it the less time they have. Plus, I already have a rubric I feel good about as well as a good sample paper I wrote for them.

I set them up for this by asking them to write "a list of grievances" like Maxine does in The Woman Warrior, and then they had to choose 3 from that list for homework and to write forms of writing they could use to express those grievances. Their grievances included racism, global warming, getting too much homework, school starting too early, and specific things about their parents (the student mentioned in the previous post wrote a very long response about her mom). I had thought about giving them freedom to construct their writing in whatever format they chose--creative, research-based, formal/informal--to express this grievance. The problem is how to assess this. I have not found a rubric I feel good about or that I feel comfortable showing to my master teacher, who would prefer that I give a multiple choice cumulative final exam. Blech.

How do you even grade creative writing? I've looked in Bridging English (our book from last semester) and don't feel comfortable with any rubric in there. Meanwhile, while it was actually pretty easy for me to create a rubric for the paper I assigned to my 9th graders that I may assign to these 10th graders as well, this is really challenging and frustrating me. For that paper, I just knew really clearly what I want. For a creative piece where they have way more freedom, does a great poem = a great research paper? won't they all choose something that takes much less work?

I guess the question is, ultimately, what is my purpose for this assignment and what would accomplish it? My purpose is for students so see that they can use their writing to address issues that they care about in a way that makes a difference for them as well as for their readers. On the one hand, I want them to see that different issues would be best expressed in different ways, and that it's up to them to decide what's most appropriate, though on the other hand I feel they need more practice writing formal papers. Plus, even though those would be much longer to read, they are SO much easier for me to grade.

Tomas has been helping me so much to work this through, which has been so wonderful, but I'm at a point where I really need to assign this soon and yet don't feel settled about it. And now, having just spent the time I was going to spend working on a TPE, I need to get ready for school.

Learning About Students

2007-05-08T00:14:00.000-07:00

It says so right in TPE 8; we should be learning about our students: "assess prior knowledge and skills, knows students as individuals, interacts with parents, identifies students with special needs, and understands how students' identities influence schooling experience." I definitely got a taste of all of that tonight.

I was on the way home from an abbreviated class at SFSU, planning to go home and work on my dreaded TPEs. On the bus home I saw one of my 10th grade students whom I know has been having some struggles at home. I didn't know the details and a couple weeks ago had offered to talk or email with her if she ever wanted. (I gave her my cell phone number; should I not do that?) She was really appreciative of that offer but never took me up on it, and whenever I would ask her how things were she would just say "O.K. Well, sort of" or something indicating that things weren't so good. I knew she was seeing the school counselor and that the dean was involved, so I didn't pursue it beyond offering a couple more times to talk if she ever wanted to.

So, I ran into her on the bus and started talking with her. I asked her if things were really ok at home or if she wanted to talk with me about what's going on, and we ended up talking for a really long time. I skipped my bus stop and as it turned out she skipped hers because she wanted to keep talking and assumed we hadn't gotten to my stop yet. She lives in the Tenderloin. We walked around aimlessly on Market St. and she revealed a tremendous amount of info to me. She let me know that she's 2 months pregnant, and, after an abortion 6 months ago and a miscarriage of twins a couple months after that, she is planning on keeping this baby. The father is an 18-year-old dropout who's involved with gangs and just got out of juvenile hall and who recenly broke up with her and is now dating someone else. Ugh.

We kept talking and walking until I finally suggested we sit down somewhere, and then, in the middle of the wasteland of Market and 6th-8th Sts., I offered to just walk her home. When we got near her house, I realized she lives just a couple blocks from my favorite restaurant, and I offered to take her to dinner there. She told me that she was actually just about to invite me over for dinner at her house. I certainly couldn't turn this down--damn those TPEs.

Randomly (while procrastinating working on my TPEs, I think) this weekend I reread the letters I had the students write to me the first day of school introducing themselves to me. I totally remembered that in her letter she said that she lives in a studio apartment with her bro and sis in the Tenderloin. I couldn't even picture what that would look like--a studio apartment for 5 people. I actually remember stopping to try to picture it. What I imagined was so ridiculously rosy; it was a very large, bright, clean studio--each person a little squished but at least manageable with each person having a bit of space of their own. When I first moved here, I lived in a beautiful studio near Dolores Park with my boyfriend at the time; yeah, it was small, but it was nice and we managed. It's like my brain wouldn't let myself imagine that they lived in a place as crappy as I realistically could have guessed: a small studio in the heart of the Tenderloin for 5 people.

I can't even properly convey what this place looked like. She lives in a ridiculously tiny studio apartment that she shares with her parents and 18 year old brother and 14 year old sister. They have a bunk bed and a loft for the kids in the studio--a teeny room--and her parents, who don't speak English (they're Chinese) sleep on the floor. Except I really cannot figure out where on the floor they could sleep because there's just not floor space anywhere--I guess right in between the two beds, maybe, barely, but Jesus Christ. I've literally never set foot in the home of a family so poor.

All their clothes and stuff was basically piled up all over the house, literally going up to the ceiling; I guess they don't have a closet, so the clothes that need to be hung up are hanging from the window panes.

I have to say that if that was my house growing up I would never have invited anyone over. I would be so ashamed and embarrassed. I was so impressed that she invited me into her world.

She said she can't concentrate on doing her homework there, so she doesn't start it until everyone's asleep--after 10. Amazingly, she *always* does her homework and has an A in my class.

Her parents speak virtually no English at all except for the basics of "Hello," "Good bye," and "Thank you," so we spoke totally freely about her situation. I SO don't want her to have this baby, which was very difficult for me to hold in. I told her that it's absolutely not for me to advise or try to sway her one way or another, which I feel strongly about but which is also very challenging because I also have a very strong opinion about it. It turns out she's not totally sure. I asked her what her reasons would be for keeping it and she said, simply, "I don't want to kill anything else." Ugh. I asked how she felt about the first abortion, and she said she had thoughts that if she had kept the baby then maybe she could have learned to be more responsible. I said very gently, in a way I knew I could get away with, that maybe the lesson she could have learned following the first preganancy and abortion was to use birth control. "Yeah, I guess that's true," she admitted. I mentioned HIV and asked her about health class and whatnot; she said he'd been tested.

Her parents cooked me up a vegetarian meal, which I ate by myself (everyone else had already eaten) on the ironing board they use for a dining room table. The student and I talked for 2 more hours. She shared that she totally related to so much about the book we just finished, The Woman Warrior, which addresses the culture clash between a Chinese American woman/daughter and her Chinese mother. The student told me things that her mother says to her that made me sick.

During dinner she asked me about the program I'm in and I told her about my schedule and also just more about me. She told me that I'm one of the best teachers she's ever had, and that she has learned a lot in my class, which made me feel really good. She cutely said that she's not just saying that, and that I'm not one of the best out of the new teachers or student teachers but of all her teachers. It was a really gratifying thing to hear, especially since I feel like the class is struggling a lot with Shakespeare, and I'm feeling kind of stressed and bummed about that. We talked a bit about Shakespeare and I got feedback from her on things we've done in class.

Finally, I left at almost 9:00, and her parents insisted that, as a gift, I take two plastic bags worth of food. The dad told me in very broken English that if I ever want Chinese food that he used to be a cook. The two of them walked me downstairs to get a cab, and the father wanted to pay for my cab ride which I refused. When I got home, I opened the bags and found bananas, grafefruits, lettuce, and 2 boxes of granola bars.

Now, how do I go about proving what I have learned about my students in a TPE reflection?

Catching up: Exciting developments!

2007-04-17T21:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been over 2 weeks since I've written. (So much for the freebie grade for Nelson's class for writing each week. It was spring break, though!)

There have been some really fantastic developments the past couple weeks. Maybe the most exciting is the new look of the blog. What do you think? (Luke gave me the good feedback that all the dots in the old template made reading my endlessly long posts harder on the eyes, so I'm trying out this new look.)

First, things have totally shifted in my 9th grade class to the point that there's really no resemblance to the class that it was at the beginning of the semester, when I felt like I was just falling on my face each day and they were just looking at me as if they thought I was an imposter impersonating a teacher.

I think there were a few keys to my success:
1. My master teacher really got off my case. I feel so much less pressure from her there's really no comparison, and in fact she hardly ever observes me anymore. Though we do still have our weekly meetings, I know what she wants for them and feel able to give her what she wants. Our meetings are about her offering me suggestions and me asking her opinions rather than about me justifying my plans or proving that I'm prepared (which was even harder when I wasn't prepared).
2. We shifted to material I actually enjoy. We started the semester with mythology, which is required for this course, but I totally hate mythology and really just wanted to get through that component of the course, whereas when we shifted to To Kill a Mockingbird, which I like, things totally changed and I felt much more comfortable. It made sense to me thematically to start with mythology, but in the future I'm going to start with material I feel passionate about (like Black Boy, which I did with my 10th grade class).
3. I started devoting more energy to this class, which I had actually been dreading and kind of procrastinating for a while because of the poor beginning and issues with my master teacher.
4. I had a great meeting with my master teacher where she helped me construct my TKMB unit based on the final assessment I'd chosen, and that realy helped me see how to plan better. (Doing a unit plan for class before actually teaching was not the same.)

Another really great development relates to me actually moving more clearly in the direction of changing the world, which, as the blog title states, is really my agenda. I gave my students a project where they have to choose a social issue that's important to them or that they're interested in, and they have to write a persuasive essay--we're calling it a persuasive article because they hate the word "essay" :)--where they explain the issue and give suggestions of what people can do to help. To make the assessment authentic and to be able to leverage their work to help others, I recently bought a domain (studentschangingtheworld.com) that we'll put all these "articles" on. The context is that they are writing with other students in mind as their audience, and their goal is to inform other people about the issue and persuade them to care and take action to make a difference. I let them know that by putting their writing on this site that this is something they'll be able to put on their college application or on their resume, and I think they were into that.

I constructed my first rubric on rubistar http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php, and that was a really great experience. I felt really good about explaining the assignment and what Im looking for since I had that rubric. It was also amazingly easy for me to create the rubric--partly because that site is really user-friendly (I really strongly recommend it if only for the formatting aspect (saves time than messing around in Word)) and partly because I actually had a really clear vision of what I was looking for. Today I gave my class a model essay that we went over together. I wrote the model about a topic that is really important to me--factory farming and vegetarianism--and I love that I gave myself a context to address this issue. The students said they were really interested in the topic, too, which was cool to talk about and answered their questions on. The paper I wrote was a really good model, too, and we went over the rubric and talked about what was good about it in terms of organization, sources, etc.

At the same time that we're doing this paper (they're doing all the research outside of class), we're also reading Night, and I feel like that's going really well. I'm having them write a journal response every night and we're doing a lot of checking in about the emotions we're feeling while reading.

We also had a really cool development I want to share before I forget and get in bed and start grading. (I fall asleep on my papers most nights.) The first day after spring break, I made the very spontaneous decision to have us sit in a circle. In my 9th grade class, we only have 16 students, which is so nice. (The 9th grade classes are really small at my school; I have 31 in my 10th grade class.) We were going to be discussing their research on social issues over the break, and I felt like putting us in a circle would work better and just be a nice switch for the day after break. It was amazing to see the students' reactions as they came in and saw the new setup. They were so excited! So, the next day, some of my kids got there early and asked if we could be in a circle again. We were doing the second half of the two-day activity on these issues, so it actually worked really well and I had thought to have us be in a circle again anyway. I asked for them to help with the chairs, and we got into our circle. During class, someone said that we should sit in a circle everyday. I really like the circle, and I said I'd love to but that it's not my classroom, so we'd have to put the chairs in a circle and put them back each day before and after class, thinking that was the end of that. But several students said they didn't mind moving the chairs, and so we took a vote on whether they'd want to sit in a circle each day if it meant moving the chairs before and after class, and almost all of them voted for it, so we've been sitting in a circle each day ever since. It's been so nice and really shifted the mood of the whole class, I feel.

O.K. After writing my "persuasive article" model yesterday and doing a bunch of entering grades, my wrists are a wreck and I need to get to bed and work on grading.

Need to work on my unit for Merchant of Venice tomorrow and write two tests--one for the first half of Night and one for The Woman Warrior--for next week and grade a whole lot of essays this weekend. Thankfully next week is STAR testing, which means we will only have class for three days (one of which is a test in each of my classes), so next week should be pretty chill, which will hopefully give me some time to finish my grading and work on my iCAP, which I have not even begun. Yikes.

Need to update the blog about my 10th grade class (all of the above was about the 9th grade class), which is going ok but not as well as it was or as the 9th grade class is. Oh, and need to update about a student named Allen. Remind me in case I forget.

Things are feeling somewhat under control. I had a moment of epiphany about that on Thursday,too, which I need to relive. Until then...

G'night.

coming through in the clutch

2007-03-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

I totally came through in the clutch today and averted disaster with my "nice" master teacher. I stayed up till 2am last night, which doesn't sound like much except that I would have been asleep by 8 if not for schoolwork, and got up at 7 this morning to bust out my unit objectives, final essay topics, and enduring understandings (which I actually had from Nelson's class last semester and modified slightly). It came together when I decided to have them read story #3 before story #2 since #3 is crazy long, so they can read it over spring break. I feel like these stories could go in either order. I got to school early and typed that up so that I had that on her desk when she got out of her class. I did a good, thorough job on this (though doing it in a few hours the night before is not ideal, obviously). I left her that plus a note requesting that we move our meeting back to later in the day, as I had a meeting with a student and some other prep to do for my other class. I knew that she'd have been upset about that if I hadn't shown her anything at that point--she'd have assumed something absurd, like I was doing it at the last minute or something--but since I'd given her the file with the note, I knew she couldn't say too much.

She was fine with switching the meeting, and I told her straight up that I didn't have for her the level of detail she wanted, and that I felt like in order to have had that I would have had to really stay up all night and sacrifice my classes today, but that I feel like I have more done now than I did at the start of Black Boy, so she couldn't say shit. Well, I left that last part out. She was ok with it.

As for the second part, the daily breakdown of what I'd be teaching, well, I hadn't done that at all yet! I needed my whole prep period to print stuff for my other class, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do about that, but in my other class the students peer-reviewed one another's papers for the whole class, so I did something that I hardly ever do--my own work while students are working on something else. There wasn't anything else for me to do in class anyway, as they were all on their own and working well. So, I busted out my calendar--and I actually did it in the last 10 minutes of class as well as for five minutes or so after class--literally while I was walking to my meeting with her! But it was fine, and she was happy with it, and I have lived to teach another day.

She's observing me tomorrow, and I feel like if that goes well, then she will be off my back. I feel pretty much prepared for tomorrow, so we'll see...

Master teacher ridiculousness and crying again at school

2007-03-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

Things are going very well with my "mean" master teacher, but now, for episode 2 where I had to clean myself up from crying before teaching as a result of a meeting with my master teacher, it was an incident with the "nice" master teacher. (I wish I could just give names, as I don't like referring to her that way at this moment.)

Thursday she had asked me to show her a "rough outline" of my plans forthe new book I'm starting in my 10th grade class. This is obviously quite a vague term, and apparently I misunderstood what she meant by this. Thursday what I had for her was a layout on a lesson-planning calendar of when I would be teaching each story in the book, the assessments for the unit, and a brief summary of the focus of each class this week. As far asI could tell, she was fine with what I had for her.

On Friday, after my class, I approached her to let her know that, based on the class that day--our first discussing this book--that I was going to reevaluate my plans for this week, which I felt were too sophisticated since the students had more trouble with the reading than I had anticipated. She had previously mentioned the idea a while back that I might choose to not teach all 5 stories in the book, and I had asked for her feedback on cutting 1 or 2 of the stories. She disagreed with cutting the story that I had been thinking to cut but seemed to be ok with me making that choice myself.

Fast forward to this morning. When I arrived at school, there was a note from her that she wanted to meet me after class today. In our meeting today, she told me how upset she was that I did not have a full unit plan for her on Thursday, and that she now sees what the other master teacher was talking about in the beginning of the semester. She said that based on what I showed her Thursday she wanted to rescind the overall positive evaluation she had sent in the day before, and that the plan I gave her Thurs as well as the conversation I had with her on Friday about cutting certain sections to be able to do a closer analysis of the parts we read gave her the impression that I am not prepared to teach this book. She further said that she didn't want to have to "defend her position" to me about why she thinks certain stories are important to teach, and that she feels that I ask her questions whenever I want but that when she asks me to have things for her, I do not.

I was extremely shocked and blindsided by this conversation as well as so many of the specifics in it. First of all, she had asked for a "rough outline," and then she freaked out (days later) because I didn't give her something more specific. This seems like a very clear misunderstanding of her not being precise with me about what she wanted and me assuming I knew what she wanted. What I gave her was a somewhat rougher outline than what I had shown her for the previous book I taught, but what she told me today that she wants--a full unit plan with daily objectives and the lessons spelled out for every day for the rest of this unit--is way more specific than I ever gave her for the previous book. When I explained this, she argued this point, pointing out a couple things that I gave her about that book, but I absolutely never gave her what she is asking for now, and I feel very confident with the job I did in teaching that book. The implication seemed to be that I am unprepared to teach this book because I don't have what I had for the other book prepared, but that is simply not the case. I feel I am no less prepared for this book than the previous one. Anyway, the fact that I know she feels I did a good job with the last book seemed to be a distant memory or somehow totally irrelevant since I didn't have the fleshed-out unit plan for her on Thursday that I didn'teven *know* she wanted. In addition, she also didn't say anything to me at the time on Thursday or Friday, so I don't understand how this just came up over the weekend. Shouldn't you tell someone at the time that whatthey're giving you is not what you wanted?

I let her know that I have not ever seen a unit plan modeled for me by her or any professional teacher--I just did one for one of my classes, discussed them a little in class--and that all I had seen from her when I had asked to see some of her plans last semester was her calendar layout, which is what I gave to her.

I will give her a beautiful unit plan by Wednesday--and I feel like that is something that I should have ideally had laid out before--but I am just exhausted at this point and really just feel like I want to throw something together to get her off myback, which is SO not the point, I know, but that's how I'm feeling.

The idea of saying she felt like she wanted to undo her positive recommendation of me based on this was offensive to me, not to mention absurd. She's observed me probably 15 times and met with me formally more than that and informally almost everyday, and based on this she has shifted her entire impression of me? Please.

When she said that she feels like I don't have the things that she asks me for I was completely shocked. I asked her what she was referring to, but she had no specifics. She referred back to me not being prepared for my meetings with the ohter master teacher (though she had asked me for something very different for those meetings), but there were *no* meetings that this teacher had asked me for something that I didn't have--well, none that I can remember and none that she said in response to that question. She mentioned that last Thursday I didn'thave a lesson plan for her while she was observing, but I hadn't realized she was observing that day so I hadn't printed anything out for her. And that was her only explanation of her saying something as harsh as that she generally feels I don't have the things she asks me for. It seemed like she was making this broad statement and somehow trying to build a case against me based on this thing on Thursday. I was really shocked and frustrated and angry at that point. Where did this even come from?

I know she and the other teacher meet occasionally, and I saw them meeting this morning. I wonder if they've decided to switch good cop-bad cop roles or something?

It's perfectly legit to ask me for a unit plan--I have no explanation for why I don't have one except that I'm freakin' tired. But do not to ask for a rough outline if you want a unit plan with unit goals and daily objectives tied to those goals.

Finally, I was shocked by her saying that she was bothered by my asking her opinion about which story to potentially leave out. She felt that this showed a lack of preperation on my part, but I had already given this a good amount of thought and wanted her opinion, assuming she wouldn't mind spending the time with me to offer that. I thought she would actually have input--you know, like mentorship?--to offer since she's taught this book 7 or 8 times, and I was curious about her thoughts on it. The idea that she felt she had to "defend her position" was ludicrous to me--I thought the conversation was very clearly me asking her her opinion, my offering ideas about other ways to introduce the ideas that seemed most important, and her offering her opinions about that. I did somewhat argue against her reasoning but in the spirit of two peers discussing a text--not in terms of her having to justify herself to me, as she interpreted it. I apologized to her for giving her the feeling that she needed to defend her opinion and told her that was completely not my intention for that conversation. Meanwhile, I told herthat I had no idea that she would have interpreted this in this way and that, frankly, I no longer would approach her to ask her opinion about such things. I thought when I said this, she would back up and say something like, "Well, feel free to ask my opinion," but she did not. Fine.

I am really furious and upset about this. This is now the second time that I have beenin the position of cleaning myself up right before class after crying witha master teacher. Some of that is me getting emotionally involved, but the blanket statements and generalizations this teacher was making about me in a waythat suggested that everything I'd ever done was undermined by my not having this thing for her on Thursday that I had misunderstood was just so frustrating. She carried herself in a much more professional way with me than the other master teacher did in terms of not yelling, using professional language, giving me a writeup of what she wants for Wednesday, yet I feel terrible about having to work with her at this point. I feel like I no longer trust her and want as little to do with her as possiblefor the rest of the semester. Her using vague language, resulting in me giving her something other than what she wanted, resulted in her losing confidence in me and thinking about me in an entirely different way and speaking to me as if I'm an incompetent slacker is just not right, especially given that she has been seeing me teach all semester and has given me very positive evaluations throughout. I'll give her the things she wants, but I will no longer see her as any kind of resource for me.

I'm just sick of feeling completely unappreciated and getting torn apart for everything I do that could be better and getting virtually no positive reinforcement, compliments, or support from these teachers. I do get lots of positive reinforcement from my students, who I know appreciate me in the way that students appreciate teachers they like, but to feel hassled and stressed and criticized all the time by supervisors is just not the environment I want to be in.

In class tonight, we had a guest speaker: a principal speaking about applying for teaching jobs. He pointed to our recommendations from our master teachers as key. Lovely. Who wants a fucking teaching job after this anyway?

I left class early after the break knowing I couldn't sit still for this discussion any longer. Yanan gave me a long hug when I explained I'd be leaving early and she saw the tears in my eyes.

Just when I feel like things are under control...

2007-03-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

It's kind of a dramatic subject line, but I am shocked by the extent to which taking a day off from work on a weekend or even for a few hours one evening results in backing myself into a corner with a ridiculous amount of work to do in a short time. I have a presentation to do for my class Wed that I have not done the reading for, which I'd be ok with except that it's a presentation with another person who I need to coordinate with and whom I told I would have comments for by today. I have two classes to do a bunch of prep for for tomorrow. I have grading I haven't done yet that I slacked on this weekend since I didn't have a lot of pressure to get them done but that I should really hand back by tomorrow. I have like 8 other things to do for my classes this week, too, that I can barely allow myself to think about. I guess I just feel like it never stops, and that I feel so much stress around it all because each day just brings a whole lot more work.

On the bright side, class today went well. I just want to go to sleep now but I have hours' worth of work to do. Ugh. 8 more school days till spring break.

Using precise language

2007-03-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

Using precise language is critical in good writing as well as in good--well, even just decent--teaching.

I've been thinking recently about my students' writing, and one of the flaws I see is that their language is often not very precise. They'll sometimes write things like, "Richard is always rebellious" when, in fact, he's not *always* rebellious--as they know. Or they'll say "everyone" does such and such when in fact it is just most people who are doing such and such. Even worse, several have written theses such as "Racism led Richard to become a more mature person" when "mature" really does not say what they mean. When pressed, they admit that "mature" just kind of gets at age; they eventually explain verbally the more specific things they mean, such as that he begins to think for himself and make his own decisions, which says so much more than that he is "mature." In another brutal example, I had a couple of students write in their character analysis of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird that he is "fatherly." One student actually wrote that "Atticus is fatherly in situations that involve Scout and Jem"! The fact that he is their father makes this not the biggest insight or revelation. When pressed, they'll say that they define fatherly as loving or wise or respectful or fair--all of which say so much more than "fatherly."

Meanwhile, I shot myself in the foot Friday when using imprecise language myself. In my 10th grade class, they are working on an essay that is due this week. The homework I assigned them was to "revise their essay" and to "work on their essay" (I wrote one thing on the overhead and said the other), but in neither case did I explicitly add "and bring in your revised draft on Monday." OOPS! This sucks because I'd like for us to do more peer review Monday, yet I know some of the students won't have brought their paper simply because I didn't assign them to! They could have done the homework to revise their essay and yet not bring it in. Ugh. So, after deliberating about whether to call all 31 of my students to tell them to bring in their draft, thanks to Tomas, I am going with a Plan B to work on grammar revision and giving them one extra day to work on their essays. They better be good. And I better learn--and teach--the lesson to be precise in saying what we mean.

Counting the days until spring break--but not in a bad way

2007-03-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

Only 9 school days left until spring break!

I remember counting the days like that when I was in high school, but it never would have occurred to me that my teachers almost certainly did the same thing (and not just to plan accordingly).

This weekend has been the first weekend in a very long time--actually, maybe in the 7 weeks that I've been teaching--that I haven't felt stressed to the point that I felt like spending time not doing schoolwork could have crisis-level consequences. I had hardly any grading to do this weekend (just some short stuff, which I haven't actually finished yet) and I did most of the planning I needed to do laying in bed when I woke up at a ridiculously early hour on Saturday morning after going to sleep just 4 hours earlier. Getting very little sleep led to a somewhat lazy weekend, though I did some good leafletting at the peace rally today and did an hour-long interview with someone who is writing a book about AR activism and is interviewing activists for his book, which I'm really excited about. It wasn't much, but I feel really good that I did some activism this weekend now that I had a bit of time free.

I also started getting excited for spring break today! My wonderful friend Faith let me know recently that she is going on a vipassana retreat in Yosemite and offered me her car while she is away, provided that I drive her there and pick her up. At first I didn't think it was workable because the retreat starts in the middle of the week, but I realized today that it's during my spring break and so will work out perfectly! My week and a half off should be a great combination of catch-up time at home for the first half and relaxing and fun and adventurous time for the second half, possibly with Spanky, possibly with Luke. Fun!

In other news, I went to my master teacher's St. Patrick's Day party, which went great. My other master teacher was there, and she and I spent most of the time together talking--some talk about my class and getting her feedback on stuff as well as some more general teacher talk/advice from her and some non-school-related stuff. (I learned that she's totally against the war and Bush & Co., whihc is awesome, but she doesn't ever talk about it in class.) It was so interesting to go to the "mean" master teacher's house and see her boyfriend and her friends and her life in general, which I'm not exposed to at school. She's really a pretty cool person--except for the massive amounts of criticism she dishes out as well as the massive amounts of meat she dishes in; wonder if these are related....?

Ugh. If it's not one master teacher it's another.

2007-03-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

Today my "nice" master teacher observed me, as my evaluation form is due this week (actually it was due yesterday, and I'd procrastinated telling my teachers that because I was hoping to stabilize things with the mean master teacher, which I have, before she filled out my evaluation, and I knew the two of them would talk if I gave one of them the form). I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the form to her yesterday because then she would observe me today, and I hadn't worked out exactly what I was doing today and didn't want her to observe me. She's observed me maybe 10 times so far, and she's been really happy with how those classes have gone.

I spent a long time yesterday thinking through exactly what I wanted to do, and I wanted it to be something good especially bc I was being observed. Really, that's just SO stupid. It totally distracts from the point of teaching--to make a difference for the students--and turns it into trying to impress some teacher based on something or other that doesn't necessarily correlate to what I see as "making a difference for the students."

Anyway, last night I came up with what I thought was a good idea. For homework last night they had to bring several copies of their essay drafts in for their small group to peer review for homework tonight. For today I wanted to give them practice looking critically at writing and focusing on body paragraphs in an analytical essay, as they are working on essays for Black Boy. (I'm so bummed that we're done with that book, by the way, as it's just been so wonderful to reread and teach. The Woman Warrior, another really good book, is next.)

In our English class at State, we always talk about giving students samples of good writing to model their writing after. I was kicking myself for not making a copy of any of the good essays or writings some of my students did, so I decided to write something myself. I didn't want to write something about the book, as I thought that would be less interesting for them and might just give them a freebie in terms of imitating the content of what I wrote in their essay.

So, I wrote an outline for an analytical essay, as well as one full body paragraph and the conclusion, about Britney Spears. My thesis was that "Britney Spears' celebrity status has led to her emotional breakdown, to her drug use, and to her becoming an unfit mother." I wrote a really well-written analytical paragraph using quotes, using the formal structure of context and commentary, etc., and we went over that today in class. The kids were cracking up laughing and were totally engaged. As I read it aloud to them while they read it on the overhead, we identified topic sentences, context, commentary, etc., and we talked about whether the topic sentences relate to the thesis, whether the paragraph proves the topic sentence, and whether I successfully proved my thesis. I asked them afterwards if they found it helpful, and just about the whole class was emphatic in raising their hands and nodding. One kid said, ""helpful and interesting." Later, I met with a student to help her on her paper, and she mentioned a couple things that she realized about how to restructure her essay based on the Britney example I showed them, which was really gratifying.

Anyway, I spent a really long time preparing for that and thinking it through. The only problem was that it took a little more time than I had figured it would, which meant that I didn't do something else that was in the lesson plan that I gave my master teacher before class. In retrospect, I really just underestimated how long that would take, which is a very common thing for me--in lesson planning and in life, as some of you can attest--and this is something I know I need to work on. I just find it so hard to teach classes that are just 40 minutes; if a discussion goes in an interesting direction or if there are unanticipated questions or if you just think of something you want to take a few minutes to talk about, it totally affects what you've got planned since the class is so short.

O.K. So after classes she observes, my master teacher and I usually meet to debrief in the English office. Today I had a student come to the office with me right after class to ask me for help on her essay. I was working with her and then, after a few minutes, the teacher came over to where the student and I were, and I could see she was waiting. I stopped with the student for a minute and asked the teacher if she wanted to talk to me, and she said in a very annoyed way that we were supposed to have our meeting now. (It's not like we have a formal meeting--or that I was kicking my feet up or sneaking off to (god forbid) eat lunch or something--I was helping a student.) I asked the student to come back, and she did, but the tone the teacher took with me was just so unnecessary.

In our meeting, she talked about timing, and some of the feedback she gave was good, but she didn't give me any compliments about the class, which I felt overall went really well for what we did--whereas she was upset about what we didn't do that was in the lesson plan. I felt like she was so melodramatic about it--like some huge disaster had occurred because the lesson didn't go just as I'd planned it. Ugh. I knew that it didn't go as I'd planned it, and I was a little frustrated about it, but overall it wasn't something I was going to feel bad about until I heard her reaction.

I have to just mention that this teacher, while she's always been very nice, is the most BORING teacher I have observed. Her classes are painful, and when Yanan (my classroom mgmt teacher) observed one day she said the same thing. While I respect her for being organized and hard-working, I'm not sure how much I really want to listen to her advice anyway.

Whatever. This is so stupid. I just have felt crappy all day because of this interaction, which has gotten me to think about whether I'm just too sensitive or taking things too personally or worrying too much about the approval of these teachers. I guess I just feel like I'm working my ass off and keeping my students engaged and working really hard, yet the two people who are in the positions to critique my work don't seem to acknowledge any of that, and in fact my interactions with them too often result in me feeling bad about things.

That just got me to think of something: I have been meaning to tell my 10th graders how amazed I am at how hard they've worked in this class all semester and to acknowledge them for that. I'm going to do that tomorrow.

As Tomas sweetly told me today, this is all great experience and it doesn't have to be perfect--which is a really key point to keep in mind. I guess there's some part of me that aims to please--or at least not to disappoint--and that part of me is feeling a bit frantic and demoralized.

For now, I need to plan out next week's lessons for the meeting with my mean master teacher (the one whose St. Patrick's Day party I'm scheduled to go to on Sunday...depending on how that meeting goes).

I feel like it's like 3 am, but it's not quite 10. That feeling has gotten old.

Beat

2007-03-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

I had a moment today in Nelson's class where I just felt like giving up. He was telling us about our first big project for the course, and I have to say that as focused as I was last semester on doing well in my classes, I really feel somewhat broken and just cannot bring myself to even think about my classes this semester. I have done hardly any reading for any of my classes; I actually hadn't even bought a single book until today. I just feel like my student teaching is way more than a full-time (unpaid) job in and of itself, and I even resent having to go to classes 3 hours a days, 3 daysa week, when I really want to spend that time preparing or recuperating. Nelson's class actually is valuable (unlike the other 2), and I think the project we're doing is valuable too, but my plate is already full and I'm just beat. I stayed up till 4am Sunday night finishing grading (my own fault, I know) and, after 4 hours' sleep that night, slept for 11 hours last night and still woke up feeling exhausted. I managed to go for a 20-minute jog this am, about the first exercise I've done in weeks if you don't count carrying a ridiculously heavy bag to and from MUNI each day. (Today I walked home from Van Ness when I just missed the bus.)

I did do something for my own amusement in class today that I think the kids liked too.

We are working on creating an outline and composing a formal essay, and so I wanted us to come up with an outline in class together. I explained that a thesis is a one-sentence answer to the question posed and, for our sample question, I chose the question, "Characterize your English teacher. Take a stand on whether or not you think she is a good teacher." I told them that, for the sake of my ego, they have decided to take the stand that yes, she is a good teacher. (And, for this assignment, I explained, there's no need to address the counterargument.) I asked them for some reasons they might give to justify their thesis statement that I am a good teacher, and I warned them not to all raise their hands at once. I kind of played it all up, so everyone was laughing--perhaps me hardest of all, though I know how to play it cool. I took two answers to form the topic sentences for our body paragraphs--one was that I explain things well so they understand what I'm saying (who knew?) and the other was that I care about them (sweet! I do and was glad they (or at least one of them) think that.). Anyway, it was fun to choose that as an example, and I know the kids paid attention to it.

Meanwhile, I totally screwed up in handing their papers back at the end of class as I had not put them all in order before class, leaving me fumbling through papers with not enough time left to hand them all back, so class ended on kind of a frantic note and I felt bad about it. I felt like the counterargument was rearing its ugly head, in fact, but whatever. Final grades were due today, and that took me a long time.

Also, I gave 2 students Ds today. Ugh. That sucked. And one student I love got a C+ and I heard him be disappointed about that. I actually graded him a little generously at the end to boost him up a teeny bit to get him to a C+ from a C. (My master teacher showed me how she manipulates grades this way--without any shame or guilt.) He's an ELL student and his writing is pretty bad, but he's really a sweet kid.

O.K. I'm shocked that I'm still awake after 10:00, as I was sure I'd fall asleep as soon as I came home.

I know if I go to sleep now then I will be even more frantic in the morning than I would be otherwise (which is still frantic) because I'm not totally prepared, but I'm going to do it anyway.

g'night, friends....

1/3 of the way done!

2007-03-11T23:08:00.000-07:00

This is amazing, but I realized on Friday, the last day of the marking period, that I'm 1/3 of the way done with this insanity called student teaching--where you work your ass off to just survive and not make a complete fool of yourself while hopefully teaching your kids something or other, take classes (most of which are a complete, excruciating waste of time--Nelson's C&I being the obvious exception, and, perhaps less obviously, I'm not just saying that), try to figure out how to plan lessons and units, create assessments, grade those assessments, not lose any papers or your mind for that matter, make sense of all the feedback you get from all over the place, deal with being observed and hear about all the things you could have done better, and do it all without getting a penny.

Meanwhile, despite all the insanity of this semester, I really have had a great time.

There have been some amazing developments with my master teacher that I have been neglectful about addressing here, but I will soon. (Grades are due tomorrow! Ahhh!) The short version is that we're friends now and that I'm invited to her St. Patrick's Day party on Sunday! This is in part a tribute to my university supervisor and to my nice master teacher, the department head, and another teacher who overheard the inappropriate way my master teacher spoke to me. I have to say that I am proud to take a considerable amount of the credit myself, though, if I really think about it. I feel like I controlled my emotions really well and behaved really professionally and appropriately at times when not doing so might have been the more likely response. I worked really hard and finally just told her straight up how I felt but did it in a way that was really respectful and non-aggressive. (All those nonviolent communication classes may have taught me something.) Anyway, I feel good to have stuck it out.

More updates once grades are done!

Oy vay. Enough with the master teacher drama already.

2007-02-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

WARNING: This is an extra long post! My supervisor wanted a detailed description of what happened this week, and here it is, minus the names.

Friday morning, my master teacher and I had our regularly scheduled meeting. She had the same expectation as always, that I have a detailed lesson plan for each day for the week ahead. I brought the problem on myself by not having that for her. I had a plan for 3 days ahead.

When I gave her the plans, I asked her if we could switch our meetings so that we met for half the time on Friday to discuss the first part of the week and then again for half a period on Monday to discuss the second part of the week. This would allow me to incorporate her changes from the beginning of the week as I plan for the rest of the week, as well as for me to have the weekend to do more planning. (She had actually mentioned last semester when we were discussing having our regular meetings that it might be better for us to meet on Mondays to give me the weekend to do planning, but then we decided that it wouldn’t be enough notice to make changes to the week’s plan if we met the day of the first lesson.)

I felt like that was a very fair request. Am I wrong? Well, at that point, my master teacher freaked out. She said that if I were her student that I would have a D right now since I’d given her just 60% of what she’d asked for. I explained that it was hard for me to plan 5 and 6 days ahead since we are starting a new book (To Kill a Mockingbird) and I haven’t had much opportunity to assess their comprehension of longer texts. (We’ve been doing mythology these past weeks, so we’ve been doing a lot of short myths, which is different than asking students to read 20 or so pages per night, especially for English language learners.) I also told her that I wanted to reread the book (I reread half of it this weekend) but that I hadn’t had time to do that this week. She told me that teaching 5 classes is way more work, and that she doesn’t know what SFSU is having me do that’s taking up so much time that I haven’t had time to do all this. I felt like I needed to defend myself, as it was a very antagonistic conversation, and I know that I have been putting in a tremendous amount of work each day. At the same time, I was committed to behaving professionally and courteously. I hate behaving professionally and courteously.

She said that in the past she’s asked me for things and I haven’t had them for her (although I have for the past 2 weeks), and that in the past the only “consequence” for me not having it was “an unpleasant conversation” but that now there would be a real consequence. She was going to give me the week off.

The conversation took a different turn when she then said “Given our history, I’d think you’d just have what I’m asking you to have,” and I actually thanked her for bringing that up, as that had been in our space for months now but I had never really addressed it with her directly. I told her that our history (her speaking to me in a very confrontational, punitive, and unprofessional manner that made me feel very uncomfortable, and her doing so on several occasions) actually made it much harder for me to produce what she wants. Whereas I enjoy preparing for and teaching the other class—although I don’t have the level of prep done for that class that she wants either—I dread her class, and I feel so much pressure to produce plans that will please her that I find myself feeling uncomfortable and stressed just thinking about the class (not to mention teaching it). I told her I’ve never in my life been spoken to the way she has spoken to me—even as a kid if I did something wrong, my parents never would have spoken to me the way she does. I had tears in my eyes at various points. Ugh. That is so not a presence I want in my life.

She told me that if I want to talk to my supervisor or try to get placed with someone else that I should go and do that, seemingly daring me to do so. I told her very politely that she could give me the week off or try to get rid of me if she wanted but that I’m not a quitter and that I had no intention of giving up on that class. (Sounds like an after-school special: "I'm not a quitter!")

She also kind of threw in my face a criticism of my lesson plans for last week, arguing that they were vague. I was shocked by this since she did not give me this criticism last week when we discussed them. In fact, I felt I did a really good job with those lessons. Last week the students did presentations on creation myths they each researched, which took up Tues, Wed, and Thurs (no class Mon bc of the holiday), and we’d have a review and quiz on Fri. My dilemma with those lessons was that the presentations were to take 3-5 minutes each plus a minute each of possible question time, and there were 5-6 students each day, so there was some uncertainty about how much time there would be each day after the presentations. (3 minutes x 5 = 15 minutes vs. 6 minutes x 6 = 36 minutes; classes at our school are an outrageously short 40 minutes.) So, in prepping for each day and the week ahead, I developed objectives and several possible activities to do in the remaining time. I wrote objectives for the rest of class each day and plans for if there were at least 15 minutes left and had a couple of short things planned for if there was less time so we could use that time wisely. I also had homework contingencies if we didn’t get to things in class. This level of planning was helpful, but most of it went out the window since almost all of the presentations took the entire 5 minutes plus questions, and that took the entire class. Anyway, I felt very prepared for last week, and I felt like it went really well. Meanwhile, this Friday my master teacher criticized these plans for my not having things better planned out. Ugh. I defended myself on this and pointed out on those lesson plans the examples of the objectives and plans for each day, at which point she relented. It seemed like she'd just been trying to gather evidence about me and skewed the facts in her mind to prove her story right.

She said something about having the impression I didn’t even have a skeletal plan for the week, and I argued this point. I told her that I had planned the first three days and that I had a lot of ideas for the book, but that I hadn’t plugged each of them in to a particular day or worked out exactly how they would go. I gave her some examples of my ideas, and I think this may have given her more confidence that I had given this some thought. I told her that I felt a lot of pressure to have things set in stone because she yelled at me when I gave her my plan a couple weeks ago when I had Mon-Wed planned but had three possibilities for Thurs and Fri that I needed to decide between. She said this made her feel I was unprepared.

When the conversation began (we were in the English department office), the room was empty as far as I recall. During the course of the conversation, though, people came in and out. I’m not sure who heard what (I was obviously very focused on our conversation), but I know several teachers and the dept head were in at various points (though they may not have heard the more heated parts of the conversation—I just don’t know). One teacher who I hardly know called me aside on Monday to tell me that she overheard part of the conversation and that she was appalled at the tone of the conversation. She said she almost interrupted but that she doesn’t really know my master teacher (who has only been at this school for 2 years) and decided it wasn’t really her place to do so. She said that I shouldn’t allow her to get to me and that when she was a student teacher and that when she’s had student teachers that it was the master teacher’s job to be supportive, and that she was sorry that that is obviously not my experience. Finally, she said she was going to talk to the department head about it. I don’t know if she did, but the department head approached me today for the first time to check in with me about how things are going. She said that she had a sense that something was wrong based on an intuition and seeing the look on my face a couple of times. My nice master teacher also reported that she could sense that something was not right when I walked into her classroom to teach a few minutes after that "I'd have a D" conversation. When she and I debriefed class that day (which I was shocked went well) she asked me about the meeting and was shocked by what was said. She said she would talk to her.

I don’t know if she did talk to her, but the way my master teacher and I left it that morning was that we would meet again later in the day during a free mod. When we met at that point, it was a completely different conversation. She sort of apologized—not saying sorry for her behavior but for the impact of it (sorry that I got upset)—and spent a good hour with me, giving me some great suggestions for structuring the unit. Finally, some help!! That conversation went great. During that time I also gave her a typed list of activities I had referred to earlier and typed up during my prep. I’ll attach that too. She told me she had changed her mind about the week off. She also gave me a sample of what she called an “acceptable” plan—I guess acceptable meaning that she wouldn’t bite my head off if I gave her a plan at that level. That plan included a goal for the week and a rough layout of the plans for each day, rather than a breakdown of the whole class. That feels much more doable for me!

This weekend I reread half the book and did a bunch of planning, but my priority was not planning out exactly the plan for Thursday and Friday but developing a more general plan for the next 2 weeks, based in good part on the suggestions she gave me. When I got to school on Monday, she was in the English dept office, where she hardly ever is, and asked to see my plans for next week. This was about half an hour before my other class, and I really did not want to have another conversation with her about this, esp before teaching. I also knew I did not have my plan structured out in the way she wanted it (minute by minute), but I gave her a handwritten calendar of the next two weeks and went over it with her, and she gave me helpful feedback on it. I had the sense that she wasn’t happy I didn’t have my full 5 days spelled out for her—I could just sense her getting tense and frustrated, though it may have been my imagination—but she didn’t give me a hard time.

The interesting thing is that I actually agree with her that I should be more prepared, and I would like to be, but that is not as easy for me as she makes it seem. I come home at 8:00 from SFSU 3 nights a week and do grading (I give writing assignments almost every night for HW in my 10th grade class—which I have stopped doing this week to give me more time!) and prepping for the next day (rereading the chapter assigned for HW that night as well as the next day’s). Thursday night I am preparing for my meeting with her—actually, I admit I spend some time procrastinating that because I dread it so much—and over the weekend I do more grading, more reading of the books, and reworking or planning additional lessons with the occasional social activity interspersed in. It’s not like I’m off partying every night or something! I wish! I’m working really hard but feel the stress of working with her, which I know is having an impact on my teaching that class. The stress of her observing me each day in the beginning of the semester, and my feeling nervous with her doing so, really affected my performance in the classroom. There were a lot of little things that didn’t go well bc of my nervousness (as well as my being new) that, I think, led the students to doubt my level of professionalism, esp given that she was in the room each day taking notes. While there have been little things that didn’t go well in my 10th grade class, I never have felt like that has affected my students’ confidence in me, my own confidence in myself, or in the overall feel of the class, which I feel has been going really great. On the other hand, I do feel like that has had a huge impact in my 9th grade class.

I’m not sure where I even want to go from here. Part of me would love to just not work with that teacher anymore. Well, actually, all of me would love that! But I don’t feel good about switching classes in the middle of the semester. How would that even work? And maybe it’s just a matter of me doing more planning ahead, at which point my master teacher wouldn’t even be an issue anymore?

The whole thing with my master teacher has taken up way too much of my time and energy that I should be putting into getting better prepared as well as to recharging my own batteries—getting enough rest, having some non-work time, etc., which is very frustrating. I'm committed to focusing on my class, though, and having the confidence and mind control to not allow myself to get sidetracked by her anymore.

Hence, off to do prep! This is a thorough update, though, for the scrapbook. How ridiculous this will all seem soon enough....

What a week...

2007-02-28T19:50:00.000-08:00

So many ups and downs since my last posting that I don't know where to start, nor do I feel I should allocate the time given my workload at the moment. So, for now I'll just give a very quick update on my classes and then in a separate posting paste an email (minus names) to my advisor detailing the master teacher situation. Ugh. (Well, that's the intention--it will likely be comical how long it ends up taking for me to give this quick update: Quiet, Bobby!)

So the 10th grade class is still SO great. I actually have so much fun in that class, and I know that at least most of the kids are into it--and today one kid who typically seems disengaged was so excited about what we did today and was bummed that he's not going to be in class tomorrow bc of a field trip he's taking for another class.

I attribute my success in the 10th grade class to a few things. the first and foremost is definitely the book we're reading. Black Boy is *such* a wonderful book and just a joy for an English teacher to teach. There are so many things to talk about, it's amazing. There are all of the social and interpersonal issues on the micro and macro level (bc the characters are very influenced in complex ways by the racism that was rampant), and there is just brilliant writing. Text-tapping galore--which I actually haven't done at all on the sentence or paragraph level, but I totally want to. In fact, the book basically begs for it.

Other factors for my success in that class: the kids are awesome, I felt good from the start working with that teacher and being in that classroom, and the kids are awesome. And Black Boy is just basically foolproof. I feel so comfortable and confident in that class--such a difference from my other class! :(

Today in the 10th grade class, they were in small groups and had to answer study questions I created about half an hour before class. To take a little bit of credit, the questions I came up with were really good, and--it was so dorky of me--I actually reread them about 20 times (proudly walking with a smile and a skip in my step) after class. I also had a last-minute idea to have 2 groups do a macro-level text-tapping activity. (By the way, I find it frustrating that (as far as I understand) the term text-tapping is applied to two very different things and there is no distinction in name (which is why I say micro and macro level). For the uninitiated, micro-level is students imitating sentence- or paragraph-level writing of expert writers. Macro-level text tapping is filling in gaps missing from the text, which is what we did today. In the reading last night, Richard gives a speech as the valedictorian of his middle school. His principal tried to blackmail him into reading a speech he wrote, but Richard proudly refuses and insists on reading his own speech. Meanwhile, he doesn't include the speech in the book! So I had two of the small groups (these groups volunteered when they heard the option) write the speech they think Richard would have given. That's what that student got excited about.

The homework for the 10th grade class tonight is SO great! (It's ridiculous how excite dI am about it.) We've been talking about internalized racism and defining an Uncle Tom (Richard has an Uncle Tom in the book who just happens to exhibit characteristics of an "Uncle Tom") the past couple days, and tonight their reading deals with Richard trying to figure out how he should behave with white people and whether he should "be an Uncle Tom." Their homework is to read the chapter and then write at least one "thoughtful paragraph" (we discussed what that means) responding to Coretta Scott King's statement from an essay we read of hers that "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." FUN!!
Tomorrow's homework is so cool, too. They are going to do a values assessment of Richard. This activity is taken out of the Kahn book we read last semester (p. 30) and is such a great activity, I think.

Love this quick update! It's obvious how much I'm enjoying that class, though.

Update on my 9th grade class: It's going better.

See next posting for master teacher drama.

Back for more: My first call home and redeeming myself following a boring class

2007-02-21T23:18:00.000-08:00

So, I just finished tomorrow's lesson plan, which I'm actually really happy with, and now I get to write more!

I made my first phone call home to a parent this evening, and I feel kind of awkward about it. Poor kid. So, in my 9th grade class, the students are doing presentations on creation myths they researched. Today, one of the students scheduled to present was absent. I asked my (mean) master teacher what she thought I should do about this, and she felt very strongly that I should be very tough about this. She suggested that I dock her grade by 2 letter grades, so if she gives an A presentation tomorrow, she'll earn a C, and if she gives a C she gets an F. OUCH! I asked her what if the student has a readmit form (a legitimation of an absence) saying she was really sick or someone died or something. She said that if someone died, yes, but that people need to learn that they can't just blow something off because they're not feeling well. She even asked me, "Have you ever come to school even though you were sick?" knowing full well that I had, and I of course answered yes. "Students need to learn that that's what you do in life: you honor your responsibilities even if you're not feeling well."

I suppose that's legitimate in terms of a lesson for a 14-year-old to learn, but it's so punitive that I really don't feel comfortable coming down that harshly. Anyway, so I asked my nice master teacher. She suggested that I call home to find out what happened. Great idea. Except that it was actually scary for me to do that! I don't know why. I procrastinated for a good 15 minutes thinking through what I would say if the student answered, if a parent answered (I looked up on her info sheet to see that English and Cantonese are spoken at home, and I envisioned an awkwardness if the parent who might answer did not speak English well), if I got a machine, if an alien answered the phone, etc. I decided that I would potentially lower her grade by one letter grade, meaning she'll start at a B, unless there was a really good excuse (meaning something really bad happened). I wanted to be prepared to let her know of this punishment if it came down to it.

The mom answered and spoke perfect English and said the student had been in school today(!). So she cut. She then put the student on the phone for me to talk to (after I overheard a painful conversation between mom and daughter trying to get her to come to the phone--it was agonizing to listen to, really). I told her I was calling because I was worried about her since she wasn't in class today, and I was wondering if she's ok. Yes, she's ok. Were you in school today? Yes. How come you weren't in class? I wasn't feeling well, so I went to the Wellness Center. Do you have any concerns about your project? No. Do you want to talk at all about your project now over the phone? No. Will you be in class tomorrow? Yes. Will you be ready to present? Yes.

God, quotation marks are so overrated.

So I explained to her that I'd lower her grade by one letter grade, as I felt that was only fair for the other students who presented on time. She said ok, and I said I'd see her tomorrow, and that was that.

As soon as I got off the phone, though, I imagined all kinds of terrible things. Is mom yelling at daughter for cutting class and getting in trouble (if that's what she might consider what just happened)? Is this student, who is very shy, agonizing over having to make this presentation? Is this/am I causing some major trauma? Ugh.

In other news, my 10th grade class today was really boring. It's the only class I can say that about so far. I didn't do enough prep for it, so that was entirely predictable. I basically figured we'd do a mellow whole class discussion since their essays were due today, and we'd just kind of get back into the book, but it basically ended up with me pulling teeth and with lots of really bored faces staring at me. It was brutal. At the end of class, I acknowledged how bored they all looked today, and that that's something I'll be thinking about until tomorrow and take responsibility for.

I knew my master teacher would be observing me tomorrow, and I also knew I wanted to stem the tide of today's really low-energy class, so I have come up with an active and interactive class for tomorrow that I feel good about. We'll start with a written reflection on a dense one-setence quotation from the reading. That quote is an example of a sarcastic tone that the author takes. When we discuss the reflection, we will define tone and characterize what tone we think it is. (It's sarcastic, I tell you.) Then they will get into groups of 3 and look for examples from the text of the author taking a sarcastic tone. They will construct a well-written paragraph (including topic sentence, evidence, context, commentary--gotta love Jane Schaeffer) as a small group using the examples they find. What could be more fun???

Anyway, I think it will be an interactive class where they learn a lot of valuable info (tone, going over paragraph structures, finding evidence), and are active as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners. We'll see how it goes!

Now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I need to bust a move to do some major planning for beginning To Kill a Mockingbird in my 9th grade class next week, as I'll be meeting with my (mean) master teacher Friday morning to show her my (yet unwritten) lesson plans for next week. Thankfully, I don't have class tomorrow night, and next week I don't have class Tuesday or Wednesday!! AND it's a short week, so we're already amazingly at Thursday. Sweet!

Where to begin?

2007-02-21T20:13:00.000-08:00

I feel like that--Where to begin?--sometimes in approaching my work, but in this case I am wondering where to begin in terms of catching up on what I've been up to since my last post, which was, it seems, a very long time ago!

First of all, everyone will be glad to know I had a great long weekend--a perfect mixture of fun and work. (Well, I suppose I might have liked a little less work, but that's for another time.) And, before going on, let me just thank the Lord for George Washington and Abe Lincoln. Amen. So, I spent all day Saturday (in a tank top and shorts getting sunburnt at the park) and Sunday (at home under some covers) grading my 10th graders' short stories, and I decided pretty early on, when recognizing the massive grammar problems that some students have and the contrast between those problems with some of the other students' writing that is really great, that I would create what worked out to be an individualized grammar plan for each of my students. (What a terrible sentence that was, but whateva!)

So, I gave each student 1-2 grammar points to focus on until further notice. I explained each point and included examples from their own writing to show what I meant. I didn't actually grade them on their grammar (just on their proofreading, so if they missed blatant typos I deducted because it showed carelessness, but if they repeatedly made grammatical mistakes it just showed something we need to work on), which I hoped would relieve some stress of getting lots of comments on their grammar. When I handed back their papers yesterday, I explained that some people might be very confused by my comments, and that they shouldn't feel bad if they are.

For homework tonight, they have to write me a note explaining two things: (1) the one-two things they need to work on grammar-wise, according to their own understanding (meaning, if all they got from what I wrote is that they should do something or other with commas but they weren't sure what, they should write that) and (2) to finish the sentece, "When I read your comments, I felt _________ because ______________." I gave examples of what could fill in those blanks: I felt frustrated because I didn't understand what you meant; I felt appreciative because I see you spent a long time thinking about my writing; I felt relieved because now I know what to work on, etc. We'll see how that goes.

Today they had their essay due. Before handing them in, I had them write a short self reflection and evaluation about how they feel they did. I'm so glad I did this, and I plan to do it for every major assignment. The responses were so interesting. Several students said they didn't do their best bc they procrastinated or bc of other outside activities; a couple mentioned things they were confused about related to the assignment (and which they did NOT ask me about, which is frustrating; I practically beg them to ask me questions, but most don't); and some mentioned their own thoughts about their essay-writing ability (weaknesses they know they have) or about things they know are weak in their paper (e.g., a couple people mentioned they knew they should have used more quotes to support their arguments). It's so great to read a paper w/o a lot of quotes, for instance, and know that the student knows they should have used more quotes but just procrasatinated and didn't put in as much time as they know they should've, versus wondering if they don't know that they're supposed to use quotes, if I didn't explain this well enough, etc. It's probably a valuable thing for them to self reflect (we do so much talking about metacognition--thinking about thinking--in our program), but that's a little fuzzy for me, whereas it is clear to me that I benefit from reading their reflecitons.

That's it for now, though I have a lot more I want to write! I'm prioritizing my lesson plan for tomorrow, which my (nice) master teacher will want to see bc she's observing me. I was actually struggling with plans for class tomorrow, and I had a revelation on the bus! There's part of me that would like to have a car to have the convenience of driving to and from school, and there's part of me that would like to bike to and from school for the exercise and awesome feeling of biking, but I get SO much done on the bus each day.

O.K. ttyl

Forgiving myself for mistakes and trying to catch up

2007-02-15T19:38:00.000-08:00

So I had this burst of inspiration in the bathtub two nights ago. It was a romantic tub experience--just me and Bridging English--which I was reading for ideas and inspiration for teaching ideas. I got really excited about this "authentic assessment" I came up with--an assessment that isn't the typical artificial, arbitrary school assignment but that's something adults actually do in real life. Students are to imagine they work for Child Protective Services and are investigating whether Richard (main character of Black Boy) should be removed from his home or allowed to remain with his mother, who is very violent and neglectful with him, but this is in the backdrop of a very violent time period and, in a lot of cases, she's trying to give Richard tough love.

I was really excited about the assignment, which I made the relatively insane decision to give the next morning (yesterday), when I realized that it was the most suitable time to give the assignment because of where we are in the book.

While I did think of a lot of questions they would have, there were some that I hadn't fully thought through, which took a lot of time yesterday that I had hoped to use for other things. Then, today, admittedly I wasn't as prepared as I would like to have been. (Do I really have to trade any kind of social life away to be a good teacher?) I did do two really productive hours of work in the morning before class, when I actually wrote my own rough draft of the essay to think of what problems the students might have.

It occurred to me when I was doing this just how easy this process was for me to write a strong response to this essay and at the same time that it was probably very scary and daunting for some of my students. As a result, I decided to give them a rough outline of what an essay could look like. I went over two outlines (by outline I mean giving the topic sentence or main idea of each of the 4 paragraphs)--one for each stance the students could take (leave Richard with his mom or remove him). This is what I regret. First of all, it took more time than I planned (due to my own wishful thinking, really--in retrospect it's not surprising this all took the amount of time it did), which meant they didn't get peer review time, which I had told them they would. Second of all, I feel like I kind of gave them "the answer" in that they will substitute whatever approach they had for my very formal one. (Well, it actually wasn't *that* formal, relatively speaking, but it was pretty formal.) I guess I was just concerned that some of my kids would have no idea what they hell they were doing, and I thought this would be really helpful. Maybe it was--except the room got very quiet when I did all this outline stuff: not a good sign.

Now I'm concerned because we are supposed to have a debate tomorrow, which will help them with their essay, but we haven't done peer review, which I told them they would do. When I told them we'd do a debate tomorrow, one student called out "That actually sounds really fun," so I am definitely going forward with that, and I don't want to short-change that, but I also want to give them time to do peer review. Thus, I think I'll do the full debate tomorrow and give them an extra day (Wed instead of Tues) to finish their essays, and we'll do peer review Tues (after the holiday Mon; I am so thankful for George Washington and Abe Lincoln). My only concern there is that I want them to move forward with the reading, and yet, if they move forward with the reading but we don't discuss it then we fall behind and don't cover so much of what there is to cover in the book.

I suppose it's a nice problem that there is just so much I want to do with this book. I strongly recommend those of you who teach English to teach Black Boy if you are able to. There's such great text-tapping potential on the big picture level (like with my assignment), as well as on the sentence level.

Part of the intention for the subject of this posting in terms of "trying to catch up" is trying to catch up always with this book, but more is in terms of not falling behind each day so there's a crazy scramble every night or morning to really be prepared. I have yet to have a day with absolutely zero scrambling, where I had done 100% of my prep (including making up all overheads and photocopies made--ugh; I hate the photocopying process) more than an hour or so before class. I think about these things when I go to bed at night (or in the afternoon, like I did for 45 minutes today as soon as I got home), first thing when I wake up, and at every imaginable inappropriate time in between. Ugh. I need to bust a move this long weekend to get ahead of the game.

I actually cannot say anything bad about today!

2007-02-12T21:24:00.001-08:00

I did a shockingly teeny amount of work this weekend, and yet today went really well.

Friday night I stayed up till 3 am drinking wine and playing chess with Bobby, and then walked home tipsy in the ridiculously pouring rain, got in bed, and graded papers! I was actually really excited to read my 10th graders' homework responses from that day!

Saturday I helped Luke move and then went to Berkeley for Faith's birthday, where I ate vegan truffles and got the BEST 5 minute massage, which has been keeping me going ever since!

Sunday was my big day to do work. I started grading the stories the students wrote for their real writing first assignment, and I realized again how hard it is to grade, especially creative writing. I developed a rubric from the form I gave the students about what I was looking for, as on the form I didn't give a point value to each thing (like, is having the story be told in the first person worth the same amount as having sensory details?). That was hard, but I feel like I came up with a decent way to score them. Trouble is it took me about an hour to grade 5, and I have 47 of them! (I'll get quicker, I suppose.) Then I went to an activist-related talk for a couple of hours and had Bobby back over for dinner and chess. I entered my grades and then passed out.

Anyway, I did just a small amount of prep this weekend because I felt fairly lazy--ahem, I mean confident about things at the beginning of the week, although I will need to spend some more time prepping for Black Boy tomorrow or the next day. (I'm too tired tonight.)

Finally, for what you've all been waiting for, my meeting with the "mean" master teacher today went really well. I had given her a full week of lesson plans for this week, which she gave me really helpful feedback on. She also asked me to reflect on what's going well and not going well in the class. She told me that if she has a fully worked out lesson plan for the week ahead then she doesn't feel like she needs to sit in on the class, and that she'd jsut do that once a week or so, and that I could choose when I'd want her to do this, which is great. She wasn't in the class today, and I feel like that freed me up a little and I was definitely more at ease.

The only things I feel like didn't go perfectly today were that we didn't finish all the things I was hoping to in both classes. In the 10th grade class, there was a fire drill, which was really annoying because it delayed for another day finishing talking about something they worked on in groups on Friday. One thing I learned from the fire drill, though, is to make sure to give students the homework at the beginning of class so they can write it down (whereas the fire drill was 5 minutes before the end of class, so some students didn't come back for the HW). Also, in my other class, we didn't finish reading the myth we're going over in class, but we'll do that tomorrow. We did other good things today, like checking in about their creation myth projects.

I am really frustrated that instead of going to sleep right now (~9:30), I have a paper that was due this past Wed that I didn't do that my professor told me to have for her by this weekend, which I did not do, and I want to get that off of my to-do list even though I'm so tired I really don't care about it. I actually fell asleep with my head on the desk during our 15 minute break from class at SFSU. (I was dreaming, though I've already forgotten about what.) My classmate needed to wake me up once class was about to resume. Ugh. I guess my class is something I could say something bad about, but I'll refrain.

Somehow it's Friday already--and good news to report!

2007-02-09T07:59:00.000-08:00

I've been praying for Friday all week, and finally my prayers have been answered! (God works in mysterious ways. He does not like to be rushed.)

I set my alarm for early this morning so I could do a bunch more prep for today, but I'm finding myself tempted to blow that off (somewhat--at least for a few minutes) to write here, even though my wrists are really hurting from revising my lesson plans for next week in preparation for my meeting with the mean master teacher, which she just postponed until Monday because of a migraine. By the way, I love that I just call her "the mean master teacher"--all in the spirit of anonymity of course--and that you all know who I'm talking about. (And, just so you all know who I'm talking about, when I say "you all" I mean those of you in my inner circle who are privy to my daily chronicles. You lucky bastards.

My tone in this blog interests me, if nobody else, as this is different writing than I've ever done.

Anyway, back to the good news--and not just that it's Friday.

I put in A LOT of work the past few days. (Thankfully the evil CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) was this week, which meant that I had a bunch of free time during the day when there was no class, and I used this wisely--well, if you consider it wise to do nothing but work.)

I feel like it paid off. For my 10th grade class, we started reading Black Boy, by Richard Wright, this week--a beautiful book, if you can make time to read it!--and I really hadn't thought through what I was going to have them *do* while they read it. If you think back to high school, you probably never just read a book. You had to make annoying charts and pictures and other stuff, and I needed to think of some of that to have them do. I don't believe in giving students purposeless things to do, so I wanted this to be useful for them in writing their essays at the end and to improve the quality of reading they're doing. So, first I sat down and came up with four possible essay topics that I think I will give them to choose from (nope--I'm not telling! Actually, maybe I will another time.) . Then I thought about the reading strategies that I had seen, and none seemed to really fit with the essays. I thought about what would be useful, and I came up with something I really like. Each night, they're keeping what I called a timeline, which is a chart that looks like this:

Age Incident Significance of the incident Most important quote(s) about incident

This has them looking for things that happen to Richard that have an impact on his life (which is really what this autobiography is about) while analyzing that impact using quotes from the text--which is what you do in an essay. I asked them in class yesterday why they thought I was having them do this, and they had all kinds of great answers, including that it would help them for an essay. I asked them what essay it would most help them write, which was really cool. I would've loved for my English teachers to have done this. (In fact, they may have, but who remembers high school anyway???)

Anyway, yesterday was the first day my nice master teacher observed my class, whihc I knew was important. She hadn't observed my class at all yet, and, because of negative things my other master teacher has said, I think she may have been concerned that the positive things I've been saying about how her class has been going may be less than true. Well, I put in a lot of work Wednesday night to make sure she saw a good class, and it went SO well. It was the first day we really got into talking about the book, and also the first day I've ever really led a discussion analyzing a text (other things I have done have been an intro to a book, a writing activity, analyzing a myth (totally different), and of course lots of classes in my other life on humane and envi ed. So, yesterday was SO fun. I had one student give me an incident from her timeline, and we went over it together as a class. Her "significance" wasn't as much about the importance of the incident but the reason leading up to the incident. When I asked other people for suggestions for the significance, one girl had a great answer and quote to go with it that really had us go deeper in our analysis. It's pretty dorky how exciting that was for me.

I think one strenth I have is (I think) I always praise students for participating, even if they say something that's not quite right--or totally wrong--and manage to never make anyone feel like they said something dumb. I hope I did that weel with the student who offered up her incident.

I also came up with an idea I love called "Words of Wisdom," which is a list of great things students said in their written homework responses, which I get to read (look at that--I said "get to" instead of "have to"!) but they do not. I think they really liked it--and my master teacher did too.

Other good news is that Luke made me dinner last night (and then forgot it at home--or at work, or in his imagination), and we got delicious Thai takeout that we ate by the fire, as I blew off work for a couple of hours. I'm so CRAZY!

Have more work to do before heading to school in a bit and then can celebrate the Gift that God calls The Weekend.

...and colleagues too

2007-02-05T20:49:00.000-08:00

First of all, in my last post I think I neglected to fully convey just how ridiculously supportive my friends have been, listening to all my stories and pandering to my every neurosis and insecurity about teaching. Bobby, especially, deserves mad props, as he has heard just about all the stories there are to tell--and has been superwonderful. Thank you, Bobby! You're my number one fan! (And I'm not just kissing up because I haven't been practicing guitar as much as I'm supposed to.)

And on to my colleagues. I just got back from class, where I vented a bit about how stressed and unprepared I feel, and I was relieved (a) to hear that others feel similarly, and (b) to get lots of good ideas and suggestions. The one I'm most excited about is the 13 section accordian folding files, which I bought right after class, and which I'm so excited to fill with all the papers I still need to grade, which are now in, like, 8 different manila folders.

Off to do that! And then to grade some. And then to do the reading I assigned my tenth grade class to prep for our lesson and figure out the reading strategy I want them to use for the upcoming chapters. And then to figure out the plans for my 9th grade creation myth project so I can give the librarian the lesson plan for that. (I was hoping *she'd give me* a lesson plan since she did the same presentation last semester!) And then post a response for my class at SFSU (due at midnight--shoot; I should do that next). And then download the readings for my SFSU class tomorrow. And then maybe remember to brush my teeth before collapsing.

Hold on to your friends

2007-02-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

Teaching is so solitary and can be a big hit to your confidence if it doesn't go well in the beginning and if you interpret that to mean something bad about you. This has helped me see the importance of being with and relying on friends to remind myself that I'm more than the harsh way I judged/am still sort of judging myself for my 9th grade class.

(Incidentally, I've been listening to a lot of Morrissey/The Smiths lately (probably my favorite ever--and despite the reputation for being overwhelming depressing and sad he/they actually make me happy). I listened to him/them all the time in college but haven't really in a few years until recently, and I've had the song "Hold on to Your Friends" in my head all week, perhaps for a reason other than that it's a great song.)

So Friday night I had dinner with my great friend Ari and gave him the rundown of my first week. I had had a meeting earlier Friday morning with the mean master teacher to discuss my plans for next week, and that was tough. I had had some question marks in my plans for next week, which were going to depend on talking to the librarian to finalize when we could use the room we'd need to begin the research for their creation myth projects. I told my master teacher my plan for Monday, which is basically set--we're going to start discussing mythology and looking at why esp. Greek mythology is still prominent in our culture today. (e.g., our planets, some corporations, products, even some songs refer to them) We have no class Tuesday (thankfully, because of the exit exam schedule), and I have my plan for Wednesday basically set--to go over the reading from Monday's HW (an intro to world mythology). Thurs and Fri, I told her, we'd either start on reading and interpreting a couple of Greek myths, doing an activity from this book that another teacher had just given me, or go to the library. She was irritated that I hadn't finalized this. "Just put yourself in my position. We can even switch chairs and role play. How would you think I would feel about how sure you are for next week? What would you say if you were me in response to what you said?" she asked. I told her I'd say, "It sounds like you've got some good ideas and have the week mostly worked out and just need to make a couple decisions to finalize the plans." She seemed to not really be able to argue with that, but the whole meeting I felt like she was judging me, like I should be more prepared, like she could at any moment yell at me (like she did a couple months ago) about not having myself together, etc.

When I told Ari this story, he really challenged me in such great ways. I don't remember most of what he said, but I remember what I came away with. First, I realized how much I'm trying to please this teacher--or, if not please than at least appease. It's like I'm motivated in that class by my fear of her. How ridiculous! Ari asked me such a great question: What is your intention in teaching? While there is some practicality involved in terms of the master teacher evaluating me, which could have an impact on getting a job next year, but that's such a conventional concern. My reason for student teaching is not, if I really think about it, to get a job. It's to learn, to grow, to help young people think critically and to be able to express themselves confidently and to empathize and relate to others.

My experience with that teacher has also brought back a lot of memories of a really abusive relationship I've spent the last couple of years getting over: that with an old boss of mine who has made probably half of his employees cry *in the office* at one point or another over the years. My analysis of him has been that his own vision of himself grew/grows as he put/s down and minimized/s the skills and contributions of others, and I have been warned that some master teachers do the same thing in order to preserve their authority as *master* teacher. It's been like 3 years since I left that job, and I have spent the time since then rebuilding my self esteem. I am present to the impact of that boss on the way I'm relating to this master teacher. I'm practically cowering to please her, wanting her acknowledgment and praise, fearing she'll yell at me--as if I'm a puppy still trying to figure out the rules of the house and how my "master" will punish me if I make a mistake. This is just not who I am and not who I want to be. It doesn't help my students and it doesn't help me. I am going to talk to her about this. I want to spend some time to work out exactly how I want to approach her--she's a tough cookie--because I know she could react really harshly and make my life more difficult. Either way, looking at and approaching the class as my own and her as a mentor and resource rather than a boss--or freakin' master, as her title calls her--will begin to shift this dynamic.

A classic sports analogy seems apt (and timely, on Super Bowl Sunday) : play to win rather than play not to lose.

I had some great QT with friends this weekend, which has helped to ground me and remind me how petty and unimportant my concerns are for my class in terms of my own self esteem or anything I should take personally. Now I'm going to go for a walk with two of my closest friends who have always been there for me--my friend Jeannie, who's biking over here as I write this, and my dog, who is napping on her dog bed at the moment but is about to be very excited.

Then I've got to get to work.

I have almost survived the first week

2007-02-01T19:55:00.000-08:00

So, interspersed between an overwhelming sense that I have absolutely no clue how to teach English has been a lot of fun and maybe even some learning, both by me and my students.

Today is only my fourth day, so I am clear that I am taking things way more seriously and personally than would probably be in anyone's best interest, and yet that is so.

Yesterday was a tough one. My first class (10th grade) went great--as it has each day so far. I don't know what it is about that class, exactly, but I feel super comfortable with those kids. They are such sweethearts and really great kids, and (not but) they definitely have lots of energy that could get out of control, but that's just how I like it. My 9th graders are timid and quiet and look at me like I'm a combination between a scary monster--too intimidating to ask a question to in front of the whole class or something--and an incompetent idiot.

So, in my 9th grade class, I hadn't explained something adequately on day 2 (I said it once and thought they got it, plus thought they would know this from previous classes, but they didn't), and nobody asked me any questions about it or indicated they were confused, which meant that on day 3, they didn't really do their homework properly and just gave me blank stares as I tried to put them in small groups to discuss what they'd done for homework (which I had not checked yet). Anyway, I suppose what happened was not a big deal and happens one way or another all the time in school--where a teacher didn't explain something well enough and then needs to backpeddle to explain further--but I feel like I got a little flustered since I really hadn't wanted to spend a long time on this point and felt some self-imposed pressure to move along since we have a lot to cover. I think if my master teacher hadn't been observing me, it wouldn't have been as big a deal to me, although she was actually really helpful. She even raised her hand to ask a question: "Could you give another example and write it on the board?" she asked. That was amazingly helpful. I somehow just don't think to write things down sometimes. But so the class was about to come to an end and I realized that the homework I had told them they'd have at the beginning of the class now wasn't totally appropriate, but I only had a minute to change my mind, and I wasn't thrilled with what I ended up telling them. I also forgot to tell them to bring their textbook with them the next day (today), which we actually wouldn't have gotten to today anyway, but I didn't know that at the time.

Anyway, today went really well. My mean master teacher (as I refer to her to friends) and I resolved the journal issue well yesterday, and I told the students today, and that went well. I told them I changed my mind and wouldn't be checking their journals, but their journals were still theirs to keep and my gift to them. One student asked cutely if they could count for extra credit, but I had to tell him no. I gave them some encouragement to write anyway, though, and told them I'd check in with them at various points about whether they were writing. But that went well. I had been concerned they might see my changing my mind as just another example of me not having my shit together, but I think I explained it well (and did so by not giving any reason whatsoever for why I had changed my mind).

I also knew yesterday that I'd need to bring my best game today to the 9th grade class to wrap up the confusion from yesterday's class and move on quickly, and I think I managed to do that really well.

Today was also great because I had two students come see me for extra help. They are SO cute! One girl, a 9th grader, is from Honduras (just moved here 3 years ago) and wanted me to look at what she'd written so far for her short story, which was about her life in Honduras. What she wrote was so beautiful and touching--reminiscing about her grandmother throwing her surprise parties and big family dinners and vacations on the river. She definitely had lots of grammatical mistakes, especially with tenses, but I offered to meet with her regularly for extra help with this, which, as it happens, is actually a requirement for one of my classes at SFSU.

Also, two students didn't have their homework for me yesterday, and I talked to them both and they both had it for me today, which I was glad to see.

This is a crazy long post that ignores the tendonitis in my wrists, the prep I need to do for tomorrow (finish my assessment sheet for their story and prepare my lesson plans for next week in preparation for my weekly meeting with the mean master teacher tomorrow morning), and how badly I just want to go to sleep, even though it's only 8:30.

I do want to keep this blog current for myself (and all of you fans at home), and I feel like what I wrote above is what there was for me to say.

Lila tov

First day highs and lows

2007-01-30T17:57:00.000-08:00

Oof. In some ways my first day was great. One of the ways is that it was infinitely better than the nightmare I had two nights before, in which I forgot about class, lost track of time until 10 minutes before class was scheduled to start, then tried unsuccessfully to catch a cab to school in the pouring rain while also realizing that I'd forgotten to print out my syllabus or to prepare for the first day. I woke up in a crazy panic and sweat, surprised at my anxiety leading up to the first day.

My first class went great. Nothing super special to report about it except that I felt really good about it. Because my school works on a semester system, I had all new kids, so I explained that I am a student teacher and what that means (since some of them were expecting a different teacher since the class was listed under the master teacher's name). I gave out my syllabus (which I did remember to print out!) and gave out a letter I wrote to the students introducing myself that also served as a model for a Dear Teacher letter they were to write to me for homework. The kids (10th graders) were/are energetic and active though not disruptive and overall a lively and happy group.

I set it up so that my 9th grade class would be doing basically the same things as my 10th grade class for the first week since I knew I'd be a little nervous getting started. Therefore, you'd think the second class that day would be easier--well, certainly not harder--than the first. Not so.

In my first class, my master teacher was out of the room, so I felt a lot more at ease since I wasn't being observed like in the second class. I think there was also a slightly different feeling in the room from the students' perspective as well since the master teacher sitting in the back may have given them the initial impression that I was just a sub or teaching on a trial basis or something. In fact, before I could explain that I'm a student teacher, a student asked, "I thought Ms. Z. was teaching this class," which I felt kind of put me on the defensive. Also, the way that room is set up, there's no desk in the front of the room, so I found myself shuffling around to find all my papers, whereas I was able to lay all my papers out nicely in the other class. Finally, this master teacher, Ms. Z., spoke to me in a very harsh way earlier in the semester--I actually can't remember anyone speaking to me in that way in my entire life--so I feel some anxiety when I'm around her in a position where she could criticize me.

Anyway, all of this added up to me being nervous and not feeling that confident.

One other thing that happened is that I put something in my syllabus that my master teacher had advised me against, and we had a misunderstanding about that. My sense was that she didn't think it was a good idea; her sense was that she was forbidding me from doing it. The issue was me assigning them to write in journals that I bought for them (they were on sale for $.99 each, so I splurged) and telling them that I would check these journals each week to see that they'd written at least 2 pages/week, but that I would not read the journals. (I was just going to check as an incentive for them to write.) I idealistically came up with this after seeing "The Freedom Writers." She felt this could be a liability issue; I felt (but didn't say) that I didn't care about that.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that my master teacher freaked out to my other master teacher, saying that she doesn't think I'm prepared to be a teacher and that she's not sure how she feels about me taking over her class (even though these are new kids--not her class from last semester). This teacher had let me know from the very beginning that she did not want a student teacher, and I know I was kind of forced on her against her will. She also let me know that she is very controlling. Agreed.

Anyway, today--day two--was much better because she was not in school today, so she wasn't observing my class. I felt so much more at ease.

Well, that's it for now.

We'll see how tomorrow goes.