I answer to M'dole and M'dur

I decided to stop teaching Geometry on April 4th.  Starting April 5th, my students did review worksheets, watched movies, worked on projects (supposed to be learning experiences), or took meaningless, repetitive notes.  The first question in my mind while planning for periods 5-7 became “How am I going to keep them quiet and away from me?” instead of “What should they learn?” or “How can I most effectively teach this?”  I became the babysitter teacher.

Here’s a journal entry (copied, pasted, and bleeped) from April 4th about my Geometry students.  FYI, my district policy is a mandatory 80% pass rate on tests, and my Geometry classes had 28+ students in each:

They don’t work.  They don’t care.  They copy other people’s work.  They don’t study.  If I force them to do their own work, they don’t think on their own so I get driven completely f**king nuts doing and explaining everything.  If I let them work in groups, no one works; no one does anything except the really motivated people, and everyone else just copies.  They don’t learn anything, then the test scores are bad.  If tests are too bad, I have to retest.  They’ll all fail on Monday because they won’t study the study guide. Or maybe they will.

F**k this.  I’m tired.  I’m mad at myself for not teaching them today.  For saying f**k you to them.  I’m just too tired to teach Geometry anymore. I explain it on the notes and then have to explain it again and again and again.  I hate it.  There are too many kids.  There are too many kids.  There are too many.  Too many.  If my classes were half this size, I might enjoy it, but I’m just burnt out now.  I’m so f**king tired of teaching them.  I’m not going to teach them anymore.  I don’t like doing it.

I needed a vacation.  My students needed an invested teacher. I didn’t quit the position, but I did quit caring about their learning.  That is certainly failing as a teacher, and I consider it my biggest classroom failure.  But is disinvestment a sign of failing/failure under the conditions at HSHS?

I don’t think so. Even though I stopped designing stellar lessons, I still gave the students who cared the opportunity to learn.  Even though I reached my breaking point, I didn’t break.  If I had pushed myself any harder, I would’ve left HSHS altogether by April 9th.  Giving up class lessons was the only way for me to remain in the classroom and keep trying to teach someone something.  It was definitely not an ideal solution, but HSHS has never had an ideal solution for anything.

Despite everything, I’m sorry.

     It's strange to write a blog evaluating my teaching.   It's kind of like writing a blog analyzing my walking or my speaking, I can't be purely objective.  Plus I have too much information about it to summarize neatly-- trends, exceptions, reactions under a variety of circumstances, etc.  But, I'll give it a go.

    My most successful lesson/objective was what I called "Really Really Long Equations."  Basically it was just equations in one variable, no powers, that involved combining like terms and then solving a two-step equation: 3x +5 -29x +56 +2+2x -100=54, solve for x.  It's not exactly in the frameworks, but I wanted my students to be comfortable solving intimidating equations.  I figured these would help build my students' confidence.  My students responded pretty well!  They were proud when they solved the equations, they actually tried a lot harder than during my other lessons, and they voluntarily tutored each other!  I think this was met with success because it is a very routine procedure.  I think the intimidation factor helped a lot because getting the right answer to a mega-equation feels like more of an accomplishment than solving something with two pieces.  So, it was an easy procedure with a big payoff.  Nothing like rote processes!

    My least successful lesson/objective was proofs in geometry. Definitely.  Hands down, say it again.  Proofs.  It was so bad I just quit and moved on.  I know, the only useful thing that comes out of geometry is the ability to do proofs, but it had to go.  I made the biiiig mistake of trying that in October, when I still had 30-36 kids in every geometry class.  That was mistake #1: trying to teach critical thinking to big classes.  And, it was before I had my classroom management tightened down, so my kids were giving me "feedback" about the lessons in disrespectful and draining ways.  And I had no materials (not enough texts and no supplemental materials) or administrative support, and my class basically went into revolt if I ever tried to teach them to think.  If I had to do it again, I would've held off until the spring and then taught it veeeerry slooooowly.  I think it could've been taught to my classes, but only after my classroom was managed and I had the common sense to introduce critical thinking very slowly.  I'm still not convinced it would've worked. The top 40% would've gotten it just fine, but at least 50% of my students have been programmed to respond with hostility, anger, or disinterest whenever they are required to think.  I'm not exaggerating-- half of my students purposely disengaging the minute they sense that a task will not be strictly procedural.  I've tried to combat this all year, but I stand by my mantra: students in our schools will not learn when they are sharing the teacher with 28 other (unruly) students.

    Overall, I think I did the best I could given my inexperience and lack of administrative support.  I explained things carefully and tailored my worksheets, activities, and tests to each lesson. Next year, I want to teach the critical thinking processes.  I stuck to procedural stuff this year because of the reasons above, but I want to try that next year.  I want to have the courage to force my students to think, and the control to make them.  I will have that for next year, so I'm excited for the changes in my teaching.

I'm a repetitive coach.  I give the same piece of advice four or five times within the same 15 minute coaching session.  It might be a habit I developed from teaching 9th graders; it's probably just the way I give advice.  Honestly, I try not to repeat myself, but I'm convinced I'm coming at my advice from a more exciting angle each time it comes out.  I'm not.

I'm also a very positive and excitable coach.  I like to give my first years a lot of props, and I celebrate with them when they make significant progress.  I try to be an adaptable coach-- to work with them to find their own styles-- but I'm not as good at that.

I'm especially not good at waiting to hear what my first-years think of their own lessons.  It's been difficult for me to hold back my "your set was awesome!!" long enough to ask what parts of the lesson they felt were particularly strong or weak.  I've been trying to catch myself in this, but I've only had about 50% success. 

My coaching started as me just talking talking talking-- bestowing a whole year's worth of wisdom-- and is finally developing into (I hope) talking listening.  It should probably be listening talking listening, but I'll get there.  I've tried to focus on two or three main things each coaching session (silence is okay, you are in control, etc etc), and I think that helps to give my first years just a few things to think about for their next lessons.  I don't really have any techniques.  I try to be open, positive, and relaxed.  I try to give them opportunities to ask questions and process the lesson, but I have to take my own advice and be okay with initial silence in the coaching session for my first years to process.

I think coaching has made me more confident as a teacher.  Ms Dole 07 was exactly like her first years and had the same exact questions and insecurities.  I see now how much I've grown and that I actually did learn something this year.  Coaching has also reminded me to put the work on the students!!  I did way way too much talking and helping in the classroom this year, and advising other teachers to make the students work reminds me of how much better I could be doing.  I understand better how the temptation arises to do everything in the classroom, whether it comes to a first or second year teacher.

I started my year this year off with a complicated, DOK 3, completely useless preassessment.  I didn’t have the experience or common sense to realize that students entering Transitional Algebra would not know how to solve and graph multi-step equations, so asking them to do so was wasting both their and my time.  But they weren’t upset: they’re used to it.

Every day, I would be constantly informally assessing their progress—checking their work over their shoulder, cold calling students, collecting Warm Ups, etc—so I eventually developed a pretty good feel for who knew what and which students were catching on quickly.  Nevertheless, my students flat out failed my “now apply your knowledge in a new way” tests.  Before the 3rd 9-weeks, I realized that I needed to test with exactly the same types of questions I taught and practiced with (a major duh now).  Test scores grew, frustration shrank, feelings of inadequacy somewhat shrank, but I still feel like I sold out.  Like I never taught my kids to think, just to mimic.  But, that’s all they’ve really known to do in math before me and I did work my tush off so I’ll give myself the benefit of the doubt.  Anyway.

The format of my assessments began as open-ended (to really know my kids), changed to multiple choice (to save time), and returned to opened-ended (to make the cheaters fail).  All tests were paper, silent, closed book tests except for one oral quiz I gave because cheating got so bad in my packed geometry classes.  I would allow for retests and extra credit, but that’s really the only adaptations I made.  I guess I naturally adapted by only writing the material I was confident about into the test… I made all tests the day or two days before giving them (sometimes morning of).

My school required weekly tests, so I always had a very strong handle on student progress.  Granted, we couldn’t cover much material because we were always testing, but I knew exactly how slow we were going.  Other than that, I would check Warm Ups and homework almost every day.  Homework was barely turned in, so Warm Ups became my main data.

I think the most important time to assess student progress is after the second time of addressing a topic/objective.  The first time we “learn” something, I expect only 30% or less to understand it.  The second time, I expect 60% or more to be with me.  Hopefully 90.  But if someone doesn’t understand after the second time, something’s wrong.  Something didn’t connect and they need tutoring.  I think it’s important to know who to watch out for after that second lesson.

Overall, I haven’t been able to use data from a formal assessment in a useful way.  There are too many numbers to crunch and too many ways to crunch them—I feel overwhelmed.  I love the informal assessment, though.  I feel like I’m seeing my student in vivo.  He/She is not nervous or confused about my instructions. The students is just purely thinking.

Next year, I want to be less involved, actually.  I need to take the work off of me.  I’ll try to use assessments to make differentiated instruction groups which can work together.  Or cooperative learning groups to help each other.  I probably can’t stop myself from watching and analyzing each student, but I can stop myself from being each person’s tutor.  I should also try more projects.  I only did one this year, but I actually had a greater fail rate on that then my normal tests: students just don’t do work outside of class!

I found the following note to myself while I was cleaning out my school things the other day:

Things I learned today 10/29/07
-    our superintendent sells us out, bending over backwards to please the parents
-    6th period doesn’t care at all.  They don’t pay attention, even when I give them the answers.  Today I tried lecture  (they’re bored and talking), example (bored, no attention, talking), individual problems (too hard), answers to #1 and 5 (bored and talking), you do the rest (too hard).
-    I need to call home and keep parents updated (CYA)
-    I broke up a fight in 4th period
-    The best way to handle this job is to have emotional detachment from everything.

I think that’s a pretty fair snapshot of my year.  By January I had given up on trying to win my class over with activities they enjoyed and moved into a more “shut up and sit down, you’ll do what I say” approach to my classroom (which worked a lot better).

Yesterday I met up with a past student of mine who is going to a math summer camp next week (yay!!).  I helped her with matrices and fractals to give her the leg-up on the other students in the program.  Talking about row reduction with her over sweet tea and ice cream reminded me of why I burnt myself out tutoring this year.  After all day of students resisting me, resenting me, or (sometimes preferred, sometimes not) ignoring me,  I needed that individual bond with a student—to watch her/him process the information and, more importantly for me, help her/him to trust me enough to make a mistake.

I don’t think I did the best job of being prepared for my students.  I think I was more frazzled than I needed to be because of my last-minute nature.  One the other hand, I know I couldn’t have done any better in letting my students know that I care about them.  Before school, after school, during my planning period, I was there for them.  During class, I’d check up on every single student, work with each one, encourage each one, smile at them, rub their shoulders or pat their backs.  This took a lot of energy from me, but it was definitely worth it.  I don’t think I would’ve made it through the year if I couldn’t care about my kids.

Next year, I want to be more prepared.  I don’t think I want to get rid of tutoring, but I have to figure out a way not to burn myself out.

    My philosophy of classroom mangement went from cuddly and adaptable to severe and unbending over the course of the year.  I believed initially that students needed to feel safe to open up in the classroom.  I now realize that need to be heard and to hear me before any actual learning can take place.  Thus, my new philosophy is that students at holly high do not know how to conduct themselves, so I must restrict them in inane ways-- No, E, you may not get out of your seat because that will cause a 6 minute distraction of people poking you, tripping you, laughing at you, and ignoring me.  Class did not improve until I seriously restricted talking and movement (Rule 1: No talking.  Rule 2: stay in your seat.  Rule 3: Do what I say)
    The most difficult aspect of classroom management for me was enforcing my policies without seeming like a complete witch.  The harder I pushed, the more they fought back against the white girl *itch.  I didn't like that.  I like to be in positive, affirming atmospheres.  My classrooms (on the days I had to fight tooth and nail) were not.  Eventually I got the hang of this, but not before days and days of rainclouds in my room.
    The major change since my first classroom management plan was in my rules.  They went from being flexible and tolerant to being completely strict.  For me, this was necessary.  A common stat that illustrates my point: 3 classes of 30 students back to back to back with only 28 desks.  At the beginning of the year, it was 30-36-32.  Just having all those bodies in the room requires no tolerance policies, let alone having hormonal teenagers on sugar highs.
    I guess my warning to new teachers would be more like advice.  Decide what you will enforce and what you will not.  Do not make rules you will not enforce, and do put into words and communicate your big pet peeves that you will want to address in the classroom.  You have the make the classroom a place where you feel comfortable teaching as well as a place where students feel comfortable being.  Keep the first in mind first.

I was very skeptical about fitting all of the PreAlgebra objectives into the summer session, but we did it.  I still doubt that we will cover everything when the teaching gets started.  It’s hard to gauge exactly how long teaching/learning different concepts will take.   This year it seemed like no matter how thoroughly I planned or perfected a lesson, something would slow my already “easy” pace (3 + x = 3x, right?), so I’m very nervous to watch a curriculum map speed, or even stroll, through material.  A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, I guess.  So, challenge #1 would have to be anticipating—guessing, really—how much we can compact both the deceivingly trim and the obviously unwieldy objectives.  

Challenge #2 was definitely Heather’s hives.  Lady Tabitha wanted to plan by the pool, Heather’s hives just couldn’t take it.  We were in quite a spot.  But, our time in Northgate worked out just fine.  We even had a little DDR thrown in.

I did use a curriculum map this past school year, and it was a HUGE help for me.  Even though it functioned mainly as a reminder of how far behind we’d fallen, the map gave me manageable goals for each week and helped me not to become overwhelmed by the amount of material we “needed” to cover.  I would say that this second time of making a curriculum map was actually harder.  I had less class time and more teachers—less material and more input.  I love Tabitha and Heather to pieces (seriously, they make me smile), but making decisions generally gets harder as more and more people have input. It was more (and better) opinions to consider.

Today I gave my Transitional Algebra students a river crossing puzzle.  If you've heard it before, I told it with my own spin to get their attention.  Here's the (shortened) story:

A farmer is sitting at home one night when his wife starts complaining that they have no money.  So, the farmer decides that he can sell his goat, some cabbage he raised, and a wolf he just caught.  So, the farmer starts traveling towards the market and comes upon a river.  Oddly enough, there's a boat waiting for him, but it's small so he can only take one thing across the river with him at a time.  He can't leave the goat with the cabbage since the goat will eat the cabbage.  He also can't leave the wolf with the goat since the wolf has been looking pretty hungry lately.  How can the farmer get across and get to the market without anything being eaten? (He needs all the money he can get.)

Instead of brainstorming the different orders to take things across, my kids had the following suggestions:

-make the goat get pregnant, then you have two goats to sell
-Milk the goat and sell the milk
-put a muzzle on the wolf
-put a muzzle on the goat
-put the cabbage in a box, but not a paper box because goats eat paper
-leave the wolf cause I don't like wolves anyway
-make the goat swim
-kill the wolf and just take the meat to the market
-kill the goat and do the same
-put the cabbage under your shirt and take the goat with you

hahahahahah
They may not think like mathematicians, but they sure do think.

At the beginning of the year, I dreaded second period-- dreaded.  I literally had nightmares about it.  Students yelling all the time, chaos, more chaos, and can't-even-hear-me-talk chaos.  Over the months, I figured out that the behavior problems were the result of 15 students with high IQ's and low self-discipline. 

Today most of the students are out for prom.  I had 12 students in my second period, and here are some of the things that happened in 50 minutes:

1) Students begged me not to work.  "Nobody else is working today!"  I had to hall conference with JK and DM before class even began because they came in yelling and jumping about not doin nuthin today.
2) I explained to the class that they are extraordinarily smart, and that we will do ACT problems instead of nothing so they can rock the test when they take it.
3) GJ, "When we finish, can we play Mastermind? I got to beat J"  (Mastermind is code-matching puzzle to strengthen their deductive reasoning-- they love it! and I love watching them play.  Any brain exercise is awesome in my book)
4) They worked!  Quietly!
5) I trusted them enough to go across the hall to drop off papers at the principal's office.
6) I came back to find one student teaching the class how to solve an absolute value problem, and everyone else was listening.  KD added to me, "M'dole!  He think he can run the class!"  haha I told them I loved it.
7) Students helped each other and stayed on task.  I didn't even have to prod.
8) We checked answers together after they exhausted each other.  They listened attentively (!!!!?!?!?!) and volunteered their own explanations.
9) I told my students how smart they are, how successful they'll be if they keep up the hard work, and how very proud they make me.
10) GJ begged, "okay, okay, can we play Mastermind now??" and KD said, "Get me that traffic jams puzzle while you're over there."

I have pictures of today which I will upload after school. Today is the first day I've cried at school because I am so happy and so proud.  All I've done for them is recognize their potential and then push them.  They've run with everything.  I can't even describe how good it feels.  If this is teaching, I want to teach.

To know
You are prepared to teach, but you will not feel that way and that's okay.  You will feel completely unprepared for most things for almost your entire first semester in your own classroom (maybe longer), and everyone else feels that way, too.  It's okay.

Remember that you are doing a good job, even if you are 100% certain you aren't.  You are, trust me.  You care, you are trying, and you are smart.  You're doing a good job.

I went to a workshop on classroom management with Crystal (and Molly in spirit), and the instructor gave us these stages that a teacher goes through.  This is the "Impact on Teachers of Students with Atypical Behavior."  I've experienced a mixture of these feelings all year, so I'd guess that you'll experience your own concoction, too.  Again, this is regarding your problem students-- the lower 40% of your classes:

1) Bewilderment: Teachers feel they have tried everything and nothing seems to work.
2) Exhaustion: Teachers go home exhausted.  They are just trying to maintain and get through each day.
3) Anger: Teachers say the student is just not trying and will often become frustrated with the student.
4) Revenge: Teachers say the student is just not trying and will often become frustrated with the student.
5) Guilt: Teachers often feel sorry for the student, will lower their expectations, and accepts failure.
6) Inadequate: Teachers take on the blame for the student's failure; they may question their own skills, resign, move or retire.

No matter what you experience regarding your classroom-- fear, excitement, embarrassment, pride, inadequacy, over-qualification-- you are not alone.  Reach out if you need to, take time for yourself if you need to, take care of yourself.

I don't mean to scare you.  You will have good days, too, but those are easy to handle.  Write to yourself about the good days and hold on to the nice things students write or say to you.

To do
Practice saying, "Good Job!" "Awesome!" "Perfect!" "Nice!" "Great!" because your students should hear that about 4,000x a day

Get your life in order.  Organize yourself so when the year starts your life doesn't feel so chaotic (because your job will).  Find a bank, open a checking account, understand your finances/loans/etc,  register your car, clean your house, settle in to your town, etc.  You'll want life's things to run smoothly when the year begins.

Get a hobby and a workout routine.  You'll need to have escapes from work that are easy to fall back on when you are stressed. If you walk, find a walking path in your town that you like.  If you swim, find a pool.  If you lift, find a gym, etc.

And, very important, gather some fun things for your classroom!!  (Horde whatever may come in handy in the classroom.  Buy things on sale-- posterboard, markers, stickers, expo markers.)  Gather books, puzzles, brainteasers, posters, magazines, individual games, group games, free stuff.  I hate my kids being idle in the classroom, so I have a closet of block puzzles, brainteasers, books, and other random stuff.  When they finish a test or an activity early, I slip them something.  And you know what, my students aren't used to brain-teaser games at home, so they love playing with them at school!  Kids ask me all the time for my block puzzles, and one kid tried to steal them...  anyway.  Have things ready to stimulate the smart kids who finish early or the ADD kids who can't stay focused on one thing for too long.