The First Week of Summer School

Thought of the Day

Tuesday July 5th I walked into Room 414 of M.S. 336 at 7:05am and looked around at the walls filled with colorful posters, desks arranged in neat rows and bookshelves filled with supplies. After months of the TFA application process, weeks of paperwork and surveys, days of training sessions and hours of classroom decorating I was finally "ready" to teach. And yet, somehow, I had no idea what I was doing nor what to expect when I went downstairs to pick up my students from the school cafeteria.

That was almost one week ago. As you may have guessed from my failure to post more recent updates, its been an incredibly intense and time consuming week. That first day of summer school is something I won't easily forget. Although I have obviously been through middle school and had the invaluable experience of interning with TFA last summer, somehow I had forgotten what it was like to be in middle school. The first day all the students had to take assessments so that we could gauge where they were and how to best prepare them for 9th grade. As you can imagine they were not thrilled to be doing this. My students averaged a 26% on their assessments. And yet, when I saw these results, I wasn't the least bit surprised. During the assessments, the students were constantly talking, asking to go to the bathroom, falling a sleep and showing a general apathy towards the tests. During one of the later assessments, two students even engaged in a rowdy shoving contest before it was broken up by one of my co-teachers.

The next day I returned to school with my work cut-out for me. And yet I approached that day with a zero-tolerance, no-messing-around attitude. I was determined to divide and conquer - to get my students focused and back on track to make it to 9th grade. I came in with a well thought out management plan and was ready to be stern and serious, only loosening up if my students demonstrated that they were going to stay focused and approach learning more enthusiastically. For the next two days, the class behaved better. I was excited by the improvement in behavior, especially amongst the more rambunctious individuals. Yet when I returned to school this morning - it was as though my students had forgotten how to behave over the weekend. We were back to the first day of school where talking out of turn, swearing, bickering and sleeping in class was acceptable. And while I was able to keep the class moving, I know that not everyone was on track. Bottom line, more than one student was left behind today.

Tomorrow, I hope to heighten my energy level and bring a strong management tone back to the classroom to keep everyone on track. With students, especially 8th graders, you can not afford to let your guard down. As a teacher sometimes the classroom is a battlefield. The key is to show them that you are on their side. You are there to help them conquer the academic challenges between them and high school. Learning can be fun and it can be rewarding. I want to instill this mindset into my students because I want every single one of my students to graduate and move on to high school. Hopefully tomorrow I can take a step closer to that goal.


Daily Round Up: Highs and Lows

• Low: 6 lesson plans due on one day. That's right, between my summer school lesson plans and an interview, I had six lesson plans due last Thursday.
• High: My Corp Member Adviser, Amber Shepherd, was incredibly willing to work with me and give me a small extension on some of these lesson plans
• Low: Monday Morning Misbehavior. I don't know what happens over the weekend, but my students were not focused this morning. Here's to hoping Tuesday is better.
• High: Working with a team of incredibly hard-working and intelligent people. In particular, my Collaborative (Rebeca Egler, Travis Price and Michelle Benjamin) as well as the other 8th grade ELA teachers at M.S. 331 (Carly Chittim, Jeff Tamburri, Analeise Pigg). These guys have been doing amazing things in such little time. Can't wait to see what they accomplish in 2 years. 

Teaching the Huck Finn Way

Thought of the Day

Anyone who has ever been a bit of a rebel as a youth seems to know Mark Twain's famous adage "don't ever let school get in the way of your education." From a young age this saying has always conjured images in my mind of Mark Twain's young protagonist, Huckleberry Finn, ditching the civilized life of school to explore the great outdoors while learning invaluable lessons from his good friend and run-away slave, Jim. This to me is American education at its finest - natural, untamed and free. Yet as insightful as this saying may be, I believe its inverse to be even more powerful. For teachers, it is often just as important to make sure that our education doesn't get in the way of school.

Here's what I mean by this. At TFA we are trained to approach teaching in a very focused, achievement-oriented way. This past week we spent hours discussing ways in which to invest our students in what they are learning, manage our classrooms effectively and track student progress in a data-oriented way. The approach, which is often summarized with the phrase "Teaching as Leadership (TAL)," is scientific, interdisciplinary and thorough. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the TAL method and know that there is much to be learned and internalized from what TFA has taught us this past week. I am incredibly fortunate to be receiving this training.

Yet, in a sense, I feel that there is so much more to teaching than the brief training and crash-course in terminology and methods that we are receiving here. This weekend I spent some time exploring the city with some of my fellow soon-to-be teachers (I'm including a few pictures of our adventure below). We took a stroll through Central Park, walked around Rockefeller center and made our way down to The Village where we had some great falafel and shwarma. But by far the coolest part of the trip was when we accidentally bumped into a rag-tag group of musicians at Washington Square - who were out there on a Saturday evening just playing and singing for fun. These guys were absolutely incredible. The impersonations of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder along with several tap dancing routines left the audience applauding for more.

That got me thinking about my role as a teacher in the lives of my students - about how I wanted to empower my students to grow academically and succeed. But at the same time, I realized that I don't want to get so lost in all the acronyms, toolkits and growth goals that I lose sight of what it truly means to be a teacher. Being in New York, I want my kids to experience the Harlem Renaissance in Harlem. I want them to learn about 9/11 at Ground Zero. And I want them to know that musicians aren't always famous people you see on T.V., sometimes they're normal people that perform for a small group of people in a park. In short, I don't want my training to get in the way of their learning. Rather, I hope to always remember that there is a strong human component to teaching.


Daily Round Up: Highs and Lows

• High: Setting up my first classroom - Room 414 at M.S. 331 in the Bronx. Doing that was surreal.

• Low: Taking the school bus home from the Bronx to St. Johns. And I thought traffic in Los Angeles was bad.

• High: Exploring NYC. I could live here for years and barely tap into what this city has to offer. 

• Low: "The Plans." Investment plans, management plans, procedural plans, etc., I never thought that teachers would have to create so many plans.

• High: 4th of July. Even though we have to work in the morning as the first day of classes is the 5th, I can't wait to celebrate being American. 

Central Park

Stevie Wonder look-a-like at Washington Square

Restaurants at "The Village"