Sleeping through the Apocalypse

    If I could describe my first-year of teaching in one phrase it would be “long strange trip”.  Despite the summer training, advice from first years, and repeated delta-autumn readings, there was no way I could anticipate what lay ahead of me in the upcoming year.   I learned a great deal about myself, mostly through the comedy of errors that was my teaching experience.  Ultimately, I feel as though I gained a great deal  of knowledge about myself, not only as a teacher, but as a man. 

    The tools I gained through my first summer in Teacher Corp as well as my fall methods class were reasonably useful.  I picked up teaching strategies that I definitely applied in my classroom  from Dr. Monroe’s class.  Veteran teachers from my building pulled me aside and gave me useful tricks of the trade.  Some of the Professional Development meetings I attended were even useful.  Mostly, though, things were learned from trial and error.  I tried things that I thought would work wonderfully and saw them fail miserably.  I spent all night working on activities that  seemed to have boundless potential only to face blank stares and bored students.  

I tried to maintain high hopes.  I would attempt different classroom management strategies.  I tried to come up with creative teaching techniques.  I got involved with extra curriculars.  The one thing I realized is that energy was a difficult thing to maintain.  Teaching is tiring.  I often thought, what if I only had a couple more hours.  Especially when work bled into your personal life and you could never successfully recharge after a the weeks started stringing together.

I set high goals, but I can't say I successfully achieve any of these goals.  Not only because I'm a bad person who isn't very good at setting and achieving goals, but, much like the idea of teaching, these things are a progress and not set destination points .   You think you are making progress in your classroom management, and the quiet kid who never says anything explodes into a firestorm.  The kid who is always goofing off and never on task, displays a remarkable knack for pneumonic devices and its up finishing incredibly well.  Kids fluctuate. They respond to external stimulus, both positive and negative, and need you to model consistency.  This, for me, was the hardest part of teaching.  In many ways, you get thrust head first into adulthood.  Its not only that feeling of all your time going to teaching that makes your first-year brutal.  Its the additional feeling that you're becoming your father (or whatever older figure that you don't want to become just yet).  You start doing old people stuff, start railing ag.ainst the music they listen to or they're faux rebellious style they comport themselves with.  As the teacher, you end up on the wrong side of the cool spectrum; because all your time is dedicated to the profession, you feel the worse for the wear as a result.

Overall, however, I enjoyed my first year.  I learned a great deal and got to take part in the lives of some very unique young people.  To some degree, I feel as though I am working towards a larger goal, towards a larger purpose.  Being a semi-useful vessel for this purpose is not always clear or confidence-inspiring, but it does give some direction and sense of meaning.  I know that I have done good work and, hopefully, can make strides on improving in the upcoming year.

My experience coaching the first year social studies teachers has been mostly rewarding so far.  The group of individuals in our classroom are all intelligent, hard-working, and open to criticism.  They all have their flaws, and struggle with certain elements in their classroom performance, but, in my opinion, they will all go on to become successful teachers.  As a coach, however, I get to play a crucial role in the formative development of their teacher personas--Scary!

I guess the most important thing for coaching is having an open ear.  Before I start ticking off my observations, I always ask, "how do you think your lesson went?"  Generally, there's one or two things that the first-year is really stuck on and really wants to talk about.  Whether or not those are the most important things that went on the lesson is often irrelevant.  Since we are both unknown entities, it is important that you build a conversation based on trust; to do this, you have to care about what they think; you also have to see where they're coming from.  Giving the first year a chance to vent a little bit about what they saw gives you a little bit of perspective on what they saw in the classroom and gives you (the coach) a chance to taper your approach a little bit to give them the most beneficial feedback.

My actual coaching sessions are pretty laid-back.  I try to address the positive elements I saw first and gradually work into criticism later in the observation.  So far, no one has made any major errors, so the sessions have remained a relatively upbeat note.  The first-years are rather self-critical so they've already beaten themselves pretty well before the coaching sessions have already started.

Reflecting back on the coaching experience that I had as a first-year, I can see the additional benefits of having multiple coaches.  While I got great feedback from my 2nd year teacher, that criticism, inherently, could only come from 1 perspective.  If there are always 2 other teachers in the room, in addition to the formal evaluators, the first years get a chance to get quality feed back from multiple viewpoints on any given lesson that they have just taught.
I believe that the addition of other teachers is critical step in improving the coaching method and giving the first years the valuable criticism they need to become better teachers.

This past school year I gave a mix of self-made and district made assessments.  For US history, the district wanted teachers to either give a test-created from a JPS provided database that provided key subject area questions, or, create common tests that all the teachers in the building shared (many times we had to do both).  To supplement, these tests, I often created my own multiple choice tests that included some short answer and essay questions.  Additionally, I often used document based questions, which require students to synthesize several primary source documents together in the form of a 5 paragraph essay.

The advantage of using a district made test is pretty self-evident--less input, easier output.  Where you might spend hours creating a rigorous assessment on your own, a district made test--or access to a database where you can pull acceptable test questions--more time is freed to focus on analyzing the output data and designing remediation strategies.  With a self-made test, however, you can control and align the objectives you teach in the classroom more closely with the assessment.  I prefer giving the students my own tests, but I do understand the difficulty with limited time and district mandates that make this a more difficult endeavor.

In terms of short term or daily assessments, I learned over the course of the year that group work and teacher made worksheets were often the best way to check knowledge on a lesson by lesson basis.  At the beginning, I definitely used to many short term classroom assessments to --ineffectively-- monitor classroom management and check on a large number of objectives.  In the future, I want to reduce the amount of paper that I give the students, and the amount of paper I have to grade, and slowly put the onus on the students to complete more comprehensive, in-depth assessments that can be easily checked and graded.

Ultimately, the top way that I can improve my own classroom assessments is creating more effective measures to evaluate the assignments.  Comprehensive rubrics for essays and writing assignments, peer reviews for quizzes and daily work, and using scantron machines for multiple choice tests would all reduce the amount of time spent grading and free more creative energy to assess the assessments and remediate material adequately.

Classroom management was one of my most prominent weaknesses as a first year teacher. I made major strides between my first semester and my second semester. Still, I think that improving this quality will be the number one step in improving my overal teaching ability.

I started out with 3 posted rules, the typical raise your hand, show respect, don't get out of your seat. I think that these three rules worked relatively well as guidelines for the classroom, though I believe that something along the lines of an explicit infraction (come to class prepared, don't chew gum, etc) might be effective, and I am toying with the idea of adding something to this effect. My biggest improvement as a classroom manager will have to come, however, at meting out consequences. I believe that consequences do give the rules teeth, and without them, you stand without a real chance of making them work.

The most difficult part, however, is enforcing your rules consistently. This requires strength more than anything else. When you see something wrong, you have to call someone on it.

When someone breaks a rule, you have to put them in check. From the beginning of the bell to the end you have to be observant and you have to be consistent. And, most importantly, you have to be fair. There's nothing worse than the "you're showing favoritism" plea/gripe that comes when you target the typical troublemaker who believes everyone else is getting a free pass.

In my mind, coming into the new school year with a radically new classroom plan is idealistic, but is also somewhat naive and short-sighted. Its not so much radically revamping the rules. The actual rules need minor tweaks and edits. Its the consequence section of the plan that needs to be enforced that will make all the difference.

Using more rewards too. I definitely need to show the kids a little love. They deserve it. sometimes.

Curriculum mapping was never a major issue in my time in Jackson. I remember being somewhat nervous at the beginning of the year, when I was trying to figure out how to navigate my way through my 4 preps. But, I was quickly informed that the district had predesigned curriculum maps. I was expected to follow the district mandates. All lesson plans had to be aligned to these plans was the only caveat.

What I quickly realized was that there is a major difference between a good curriculum map, a mediocre curriculum map, and a horrendous curriculum map. The outline I got for US History was decent. It was neatly alligned with the objectives and followed the course of the textbook. We were simply expected to travel along this well-worn path, and be led to the fountain SATP greatness. The biggest dilemma for my class in this situation was that the map did not at all align with the International Baccaulaureate standards that also applied to my course. This was a dilemma that my administrators were not able to give me much advice on. It seemed that they also were not overly concerned that the objectives and goals of the two diferring maps directly contracted each other.

Economics was my most challenging class to map out. The course framework according to JPS was bare bones at best. The other teachers did not provide much advice on the direction on this course. In addition, it did not have real textbooks, just a district issued workbook that was over 10 years old.

Reflecting on my past experience and anticipating the upcoming year, I believe that taking a proactive approach to curriculum mapping, especially in cases where a poor curriculum map is already provided, would be beneficial. It will require more foresight and a lot of revision work, but I think that have a more meticulously imagined classrom strategywould be well worth the extra effort.

My year at Jim Hill was at times long, and at times, very difficult.  I stepped into the building with a challenging task:  prepare for three different classes every week, teach different 150 students from various walks of life with various individual needs in the classroom, maintain a professional relationship and fulfill my non-classroom duties (Parperwork!) in manner that pleased my administration, help coach a middle school basketball team, and, probably, first and foremost, transition into a responsible adult.

I can't say I succesfully achieve any of these goals.  Not only because I'm a bad person who isn't very good at setting and achieving goals, but, much like the idea of teaching, these things are a progress and not set destination points (I got cliches for days).   You think you are making progress in your classroom management, and the quiet kid who never says anything explodes into a firestorm.  The kid who is always goofing off and never on task, displays a remarkable knack for pneumonic devices and its up finishing incredibly well.  Kids fluctuate. They respond to external stimulus, both positive and negative, and need you to model consistency.  This, for me, was the hardest part of teaching.  In many ways, you get thrust head first into adulthood.  Its not only that feeling of all your time going to teaching that makes your first-year brutal.  Its the additional feeling that you're becoming your father (or whatever older figure that you don't want to become just yet).  You start doing old people stuff, start railing ag.ainst the music they listen to or they're faux rebellious style they comport themselves with.  As the teacher, you end up on the wrong side of the cool spectrum; because all your time is dedicated to the profession, you feel the worse for the wear as a result.

Not that I am complaining.  I did feel as though I made a difference to some of the kids.  I stayed after and tutored.  Stayed up late to plan great lessons.  Saw my team win the city championship.  Saw my Juniors finish the state test.  Saw my Seniors graduate.

A lot of little moments that are bit hazy but still have a warm recollection of that I want to put down to paper (or blog later)

It has been a long strange trip.

It's parent-teacher conference time.  It has been a long day and you are ready to go home.  The next parent who approaches your table is Ms. Smith.  Ms. Smith's daughter had given you some discipline problems the first semester, but after calling her, the classroom behavior issues have gone away.  Ms. Smith is a good parent; a parent that cares.  Your conversation goes something like this,

Hello, Ms. Smith
so you're Mr. Bland.  You don't sound like you're from here.
Well actually I'm not.  I'm originally from Virginia...
I could tell.  You sound white.
(awkwardly laughs off the statement)Well that's not the first time I've heard that comment.
Not that that's a bad thing.  Do you have any family in Mississippi?
No, not really.
I see.  How's my daughter doing in your class?
Well, behavior wise she is doing much better this semester.  She did fail her last test and is not doing as well as she should be doing academically.
She failed her last test!  Why didn't you tell me!  I'm gonna straighten this out when I get home.
I think your daughter has a lot of potential but sometimes...
What color are your eyes?
excuse me?
You're eyes look kind of funny.  I can't tell if they're brown or green.
I don't really know what that...
Do you go out much?
Huh?
You look like you don't get out much.
....
A young man like yourself in a new city should be going out more.
...
You know what we should do?  We should go out for coffee sometime.
...
Not like a date or anything?  but so that we can get to know each other better and so that you can get out more.
...

It's the beginning of the bell.  You are in front of your door to greet students and stand on hall duty.  The hall is welcome respite to your room, which is incredibly hot and muggy.  Despite it being the beginning of April, your building has not had the air-conditioning system on.  As the students begin to trickle in for your third bell, you notice one of your more quiet students walks in with a pained look on her face.  She says she is not feeling well and her mom is on the way to pick her up.  She goes into the classroom to take her seat and you go back to stand on hall duty.  The bell rings, and when you go back into the classroom you notice a crowd of students around the sick student's desk.  She has crumpled over her desk and is crying in pain.  She suffers from asthma and the stuffy room is only compounding the problem.  You try to get her out of the room but she collapses on to the floor.  You buzz the office, but after 3-4 minutes, no one has come.  The school does not have a nurse's office so there is one in the school who could provide immediate medical aid.  The student has also forgotten to bring her inhaler to school today.  She is on the floor, crying, and struggling to breath:  What do you do?

Photo 21

"Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Project Windows (Original Version) (feat. Ronald Isley)

-Broken Windows by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling