Week 3

Last week was the most emotionally draining, eye-opening string of days I have ever been through.

I came into Monday with a plan that I felt good about, even proud of. It laid the foundations for a democratic classroom of invested learners who respect each other and me. That plan did not play itself out. Now, I prepare to go into my second week knowing that two of my students are suspended until their parents and guardians attend a mandatory meeting with the principal and me, and one other has detention for pushing her classmate into a desk.

We had some really great moments: my students wrote great journal entries about people who inspire them, they had fun interviewing each other during a get to know you activities, and in the small opportunities I had to talk to them one-on-one we had some great conversation.

I had to spend a lot of my time though, handling the behaviors of individual students. One of my students has ADHD very severely and didn’t have his medication all last week. He could not focus on anything for more than a minute at a time and if I turned my back to him for a second he would more often than not be on floor rolling around, hitting or yelling at another student, or banging against the walls and cabinets. He is one of the ones who is suspended.

I don’t have the energy right now to record other stories from my week, but there will be plenty more to come.

Week 2

I am feeling a very potent mix of nervousness and excitement about starting the year with my homeroom students on Monday. I am excited to meet my students, to get to know them. I am completely committed to the vision I have for my classroom; I feel like I know what I really want, for maybe the first time ever. It still needs a lot of fleshing out though. The details are not there yet. And that is what makes me nervous. I don't have a strong plan for my first week yet, and I know that a lot of things in these first few days and weeks are going to by a minute-to-minute struggle.

I am so excited to be a part of all of this though. If you talk to me in the next few weeks, just remember to remind me to follow through with every little idea I start in my class, and especially the big ones.

Week 1

The six weeks since the beginning of TFA induction have been among the most dramatic of my life, and things show no sign of letting up.

During my week of induction in Kansas City, I went from a dismal start (getting over lingering stomach problems from South America and lack of sleep) to an elation quite unlike any I had ever felt before (the excitement of things new, great people, and most of all the possibility offered by the incredible things happening in education in Kansas City). Here’s a snippet of something I wrote at the time:

“We had a panel of leaders in the education world of kc today, including most interestingly the president of the school board, Airick Leonard West.  The way I met him shows what a unique and amazing person he is: as I sat down next to one of my friends for lunch, a thirty-something year-old black man sat next to us saying he was a volunteer for kcmsd. We talked for a while about kc, the schools, how he got involved and a little about tfa. He told us he was a big brother and that adopting one of the kids he worked with was w what inspired him to get involved with the schools. and then he walked on stage and they displayed his name on the projector, with the title school board president after it.” – June 20, 2011

That tone was quickly lost for me at institute. Back in LA, I was happy to be home but at the same time anxious to get back to KC and start my new life. My initial excitement got overwhelmed by frustrations within my group of co-teachers and by the sheer quantity of work we had to do and how late I was staying up to do it. What really made it hardest for me was the resistance I had (have?) toward the model of teaching promoted by TFA, especially at institute. I had a really hard time bringing myself to set a serious tone when all was doing (and being encouraged to do) instructionally was lecture and give practice problems on concepts that students already understood. My advisor and teacher leader were eventually able to snap me out of that and I spent the rest of the summer fighting to reset the tone of my class. (the big lesson I learned was that even, and perhaps especially, a democratic classroom needs a strong tone, and that setting that tone is something that must be worked at). My students at Gabriella Charter School are amazing, and in spite of all of my mistakes and the difficult times we occasionally still had, I feel extreme gratitude towards all of them for the things that they taught me (about teaching and about life) and am overall extremely glad I got to know each of them.

In the past week, the first week of the next two plus years of my life it seems, that original high of induction has returned somewhat, now tempered by the sobering reality that I will be responsible for the personal and academic development of real people in a matter of days. I feel as ready as I can given the circumstances. Student Centered Learning, the new education model that is going to be used by my school and nine others in KCMSD, has excited my passions, and fits in infinitely better with my revolutionary aspirations than I could have ever hoped for a year ago. Much more on that to come.