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.
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