The Wheels of our Community

For the first few months of the year, our school had a lot of problems coordinating the bussing between our two campuses and making sure that each student was on the right bus. At one point in November, one of the school’s office assistants frantically ran into the classroom a few minutes early and boomed, “Everyone on Mr. G Willie’s bus please stand up and head downstairs to your bus. You need to hurry or else the bus is going to leave with out you.” What happened next was pure pandemonium. All 30 of my 3^rd grade students sprinted to the closets to grab their jackets and clear their mailboxes. As I tried to calm them down and restore some sort of order in the midst of the confusion, it quickly became apparent that no one knew whether they were on Mr. Willie’s bus or not. In fact, no one in my entire class knew who their bus driver was.

The next day in class, I asked my students: “Does anyone know the name of their bus driver?” As I stared at the rows of blank stares, I realized that this was one of the first times that not a single hand was raised. Later during lunch I discussed this phenomenon with another teacher, and we both realized that neither of us remembered the name of our childhood bus drivers either. And I think I can say with a fair amount of confidence that today in schools across the U.S. very few students know anything about the people who are charged with the safety of their transportation.  It strikes me as incredibly disheartening that such critical members of our school communities too often go unnoticed and unappreciated. 

This month at VOICE our 3^rd grade is learning about the eight bus drivers who drop them off at school and take them back home each day. They are interviewing their bus drivers and making “all about” posters for each bus driver. Our students are also creating pamphlets on bus safety to distribute to the rest of the school. The project is ending with a lunch event our students are organizing where they will present their posters, sing a few songs centered on school community and eat lunch with the bus drivers.

Through this class project our students are learning that Mr. Marc has been driving school buses for over 20 years, that Mr. Anthony’s favorite type of food is Cuban food and that Mr. G Willie has had this very same funny nickname since 3^rd grade. More importantly, they are learning to look beyond the classroom and recognize the community around them. In the process they are building a sincere appreciation for the army of support that provides them with a healthy and safe learning environment. 

A VOICE in our Community

During class meeting a few months ago, I asked my thirty 3rd grade students a very open ended question, "What does community mean to you?" Wriggling with excitement, some of them immediately responded by saying "it's where I live" or "my classroom at VOICE charter school."  Others pointed to their parents, policemen and soccer coaches as members of their community. But then Deliah, thoughtful and reflective as always, raised a quiet hand and said, "It's the nursing home my grandma lives in. I go there after school some days to visit her." Pausing for a second, I let that sink in---both for my students and for myself.

Traveling back home on the subway that day, I couldn't help but gravitate back to that moment in class meeting. What Deliah said made me realize that I had yet to fully understand what community really means. The truth is that the word embodies such a complex idea, containing so much meaning. This fall I decided that teaching my students how to become engaged members of their communities was a top priority. Strengthening ties with those in our community can only benefit our student's educational experience. Through this process, I am continually finding new meaning to the word.

We began the year with a strong focus on serving those in need. Our 1st grade students wrote letters to troops overseas and our 2nd grade decorated a local shelter for the holiday season. In December, our 3rd grade class performed some of their Winter Holiday concert program at the Midway Nursing Home in Flushing and our 4th graders caroled at The Center for Rehab in Astoria. We also just organized a school-wide book drive for Hour Children---an organization next door that provides supportive services to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and their families.

In December, we began reaching out to parents in our school community with workshops on how to best support their children. We held workshops in Reading, Writing and Math across all grade levels. We also provided our parents with education on healthy snacks. Finally, we just started the VOICE Youth Service Council with the goal of empowering students to be active community contributors. Members of the Youth Service Council are organizing different projects to show their appreciation of various individuals in our school community who often go unnoticed but are important parts of our community. For example, our 3rd graders are creating posters entitled "Getting to know our bus drivers" and creating pamphlets on bus safety to distribute around the school.  

Through these projects our students, despite being no more than seven or eight years old, are exploring what community means to them. They are making a lasting impact in their communities and building relationships with the people they are connected to. Most importantly, through their efforts, our school is becoming a stronger community.

Meet Malasia M.

            Malasia: “Who me?” (loudly, with a puzzled expression on her face).

Me: “Yes you Malasia. The sucking sounds you are making with your teeth are very distracting for the rest of the students and inappropriate for the classroom. Please take a seat in the focus zone until you are ready to be dismissed for snack.”

            Malasia: “Ugh. Why you’se always sending me to that old chair?” (throwing her hands in the air, slowly rolling her way over to the “focus zone” and collapsing into the chair with a huge sigh)

            Me: “Thank you to those of you who are ignoring the distractions that sometimes come into our classroom” (trying hard not to look at Malasia as she begins to lick and gnaw away at the desk with her teeth)

            ----3 minutes go by, the class is dismissed for snack, Malasia joins----

Malasia: “Burp! Mr. Millah, can I drink this soda thingy?” (innocently holding up a 24 oz. bottle of Mountain Dew.

Malasia is one of those students who can infuriate teachers at times with her demanding questions, interesting sounds and uncoordinated movement. Yet at the end of the day I often can’t help but laugh at her personality and expressions. Malasia is probably the biggest girl in the class and can often put on a very tough front. I have a feeling that she may have been a bully in previous grades, but she has become more friendly and kind since entering my 3^rd grade classroom. Overall, she is making progress academically—particularly in Writing. 

            Yet today I want to talk more about the sounds that come out of her—the sounds that children make are perhaps one of the most laughable aspects of the profession of teaching. Malasia, sucks her teeth every mini-lesson, throws her hands up and down making loud smacking sounds every time she wants to answer a question, has a very loud “Huh?” when she doesn’t understand something and has somehow manages to make me (and the rest of the class) acutely aware that she has digestive problems during snack, all the way from across the room. 

           At the same time, Malasia can be incredibly kind and sweet. She often asks me questions in the most gentle and kind way possible—many times just a few minutes after being chastised for something else. She can be very kind to students whom others bully or whom she shares her snack with. Yet the barbaric sounds continue to be a problem. In Room 206, we are working with Malasia to help her control her impulses. We ask her to think before she acts, create a checklist of questions to answer before she says or does anything and have even created simple hand signals to warn her that her volume is getting to high. Improvement is slow, but I am optimistic that with more time and maturity she will be better able to control herself and the sounds that she produces. But for now, we try to find (and even show her) the humor in the noise she makes. 

Parent Teacher Conferences

This Tuesday at VOICE Charter School, we will be having our first set of parent-teacher conferences. When I first found out about the parent teacher conferences, I just assumed that they would somehow jus naturally come together and that this would simply be another minor (informal) time commitment that would supplement the work that I am already doing on a daily basis in the classroom. This notion couldn’t have been further than the truth; there is so much more to parent-teacher conferences than what might at first meet the eye.

The central component to the conferences are the report cards. My co-teacher and I spent several hours this week after school ended working through the 30 report cards we had to complete. This entailed inputting both behavioral and academic grades, filling out performance indicators, adding detailed comments and revising to make sure that our comments were specific, measurable and in-line with the grades we gave. I had to really keep my writing focused to avoid writing too much (although the temptation to just write everything on my mind was ever present.)

Having finished report cards, we then moved on to scheduling the actual conferences. The conferences will all occur on Tuesday from 1-8pm with a two hour break in the middle. Each conference is to last 10 minutes. The tricky part during scheduling was making sure the conferences were convenient for the 12 or so families in our class with siblings in lower grades. This prompted a high volume of emails exchanged between my co-teacher and I and the other teachers in the school, as we all tried to coordinate the meetings to make everything convenient for parents. We were able to resolve most of the conflicts after much work on this and several notes home to parents requesting their flexibility.

The last step was the actual preparation for the meetings. We collected writing samples, exam booklets, behavior notes and created talking points for each conference. Doing so required hours of planning and preparation. My hope is that each parent will have a solid idea of where his or her child stands in comparison with 3^rd grade benchmarks, where they can grow/improve and how the parent can best support their children. Yet, even with all this preparation, I still feel somewhat unprepared. I wonder how parents will respond to these meetings. I’m also interested to see how many parents will show up, what kind of questions they will have and how they will react to constructive feedback of their children. In a few days I will hopefully be able to report back on how these conferences go.

Meet Jorgelys Q.

           Almost everyday, one of my students says or does something that completely catches me off guard. When Jorgelys Q. walked into Room 206 in early September with her goofy grin, round face and slightly playful skip, I knew almost immediately that there would always be something to smile about with her in the class.

            I don’t think I have yet to meet a student so happy and full of joy as Jorgelys. It’s amazing—she is just always happy. It doesn’t matter whether she is taking a Math test, getting chastised by the assistant principal for singing in the bathroom or walking in a silent, single-file line to class. She comes to school everyday with a slightly goofy smile and a joyful sparkle in her eye. 

             

Early this past week, we had a really rough day where the class as a whole was off-task, incessantly chattering, squirming on the rug during mini-lessons and, generally, behaving disrespectfully towards each other and towards the teachers. It got so bad, that at one point in the day I nearly lost it and raised my voice well above where it ought to be to quiet the 30 rambunctious little bodies in the room. It was very clear to the entire class that I was not happy.

 Yet, even in the midst of my stern chastisement, Jorgelys maintained her goofy smile. I think the grin may have even widened a little. Infuriated by her apparent insolence, I demanded that she let me know what she thought was so funny. She simply shrugged her shoulders and grinned at me. “I don’t know Mr. Miller? I’m just so happy and excited. For some reason I’m so happy today—I can’t even control it.” She then wobbled over to her seat and began to hum “Yankee Doodle” in the most nonchalant and innocent way. She was completely unaware that I had just spent 2 minutes asking the class to bring the noise level down to “Level 0.”    

   

In the midst of that heated moment, I couldn’t help but be amused by her innocent and joyful attitude towards life. Here was a little girl who wouldn’t let anything, even the stern, scary teacher bring her down. Learning for her is, and I hope always will be, a joyful, fun process.

Meet Karma M.

I find myself often-telling friends and family members about the more challenging students in my class. These students are continually at the forefront of my mind simply because they require more attention and energy. But today I’d like to talk about one of the students in my class who is perhaps one of the best-behaved students in Room 206. And yet, even so, Karma W. presents we with a different but, nonetheless, challenging problem. Karma does not talk to any adult at VOICE charter school.

The first week of school Karma came in to the classroom a shy little girl. As we went through the attendance that day, every student said, “here” when his or her name was called. When I got to Karma, however, I almost marked her absent because she said nothing. She didn’t even raise her hand that day. It was only because another student spoke for her informing me that she was in fact present that I marked her present that day. Of course, that day I made nothing of it and moved on to the next student.

But over the course of the last month, it has become increasingly clear that there is more than just shyness here. Karma is selectively mute around adults. For the first 2 weeks I never once heard Karma’s voice. She remained respectful and clearly was engaged in the class. Her reading and writing was at grade-level and her math was excellent. But anytime an adult was near her or focused their gaze on her she would close her mouth and refuse to speak. Interestingly enough she grew increasingly talkative with her peers. I even managed to get close enough on occasion to hear her giggling with a friend and chatter with her partner during reading pair-share. Recently I have even been able to communicate via “yes” or “no” head nods or thumb signals.

 I did some research by talking to Karma’s previous teachers. Apparently, she spoke to teachers until she got halfway through 1^st grade. But then she just stopped and has not spoken to adults since then. That is all the information I could really gather to help piece together this mystery, which is far from resolved. I am concerned that Karma’s inability to communicate with teachers will hinder her academic and social progress in the years to come. This week, I’m going to try a new strategy—writing notes back and forth with Karma. I feel like she is starting to build a certain level of comfort in the classroom and I would really like to harness this momentum to slowly start building a relationship with her. We’ll see how she responds this week, but I remain optimistic.

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. 

The Achievement Gap as a Literacy Gap

Thought of the Day

At one of today's instructional sessions, my school team (comprised of 7th and 8th grade English and Social Studies teachers at M.S. 331 in the Bronx) walked into a giant lecture hall with a rather grandiose atmosphere. At the front of the hall was a large screen with the following words glued in large font: "So strong is the link between literacy and being a useful member of society that some states use grade-level reading statistics as a factor in projecting prison construction."

One of the things that Teach For America has been emphasizing repeatedly throughout the session this week is that the Achievement Gap is a literacy gap. In other words at the root of the inequity in educational levels across the nation is an inability to read and write. As one could imagine illiteracy not only affects the traditional core areas of reading comprehension and fluency, but also hinders the ability to conceptualize and understand topics ranging from science to social studies. The literacy gap begins in primary school and only magnifies in adolescence.

When I first received my summer assignment to be an 8th grade English teacher in the Bronx, I wasn't terribly excited. It wasn't that I was upset or disappointed, I just sort of felt that it would be good training but not something I would pursue in the Fall. While I have always done well in English, I felt that Math or Social Studies would best suit my interests and strengths. Nonetheless, I have realized from sessions like the one described above that every teacher is a literacy teacher. The most important thing I can do as a middle school teacher is to help my students better their reading and writing skills. This realization seems not only to have empowered me to approach my post as an English teacher with more energy but also to view my role as a teacher with a greater sense of urgency. The education time clock is slowly winding down and if my students don't learn how to read at grade level soon, they may never catch up. I will definitely keep this in mind as I make my way to M.S. 331 tomorrow for the first time.

Daily Round Up

• 5:30am wake-ups: These early morning are starting to hurt. The most interesting thing is how hungry you get - by 10:30am you've devoured that sandwich, bag of chips and apple and are thinking about your neighbors granola bar. New strategy: supplement my TFA lunch with some key additions.
• The Purple Monstrosity: I've heard others are lovingly calling the Corps Member Manual "Harold," but I don't have much love for this 830 page beast so far. Here's to hoping.

• Telestrations: Best game ever. Period. Big shout out to all the awesome corps members on my floor who joined me in some evening fun with the game. Though I'm terrible at art, it was tons of fun. Check the game out here.
• Fire Alarm #3: I called it at dinner and sure enough it happened.
• Lessons from Lesson Planning: Just finished my first one ever. Found it to be a fun but time-consuming process. Looking forward to finding some ways to be more efficient.

So its past midnight which means I missed my goal for bed time. So without further adieu, I'm going to bid you farewell till next time. Later days.

New Beginnings

It's interesting how our attitudes towards social media change over time. I often pride myself on being an "early adopter" of technology. Even if I don't own an item (due to my ever-so-humble means as a teacher fresh out of college) I often like to read up on the latest gadgets and gizmos - 2 of my favorite sites include Digg and TechCrunch. It therefore comes as a little bit of a surprise, at least to me, that I haven't ever really experimented with blogging before. Aside from the work I did for Prendismo while a freshman at Cornell, I have never spent much time taking any of the Blogging Web 2.0 toolkits for a spin. But as they say "there's a first for everything." This will be my first time blogging in my first year of teaching during my first year of living in NYC.


Before we get started, first a little bit about myself. I was born in Baltimore and raised in Los Angeles, California. I attended Cornell University where I majored in Economics and Government and minored in Information Science. While at Cornell I was involved with Greek Life as the IFC President, research in Applied Economics and Government, mentor programs with local youth and relations with Cornell's campus in Qatar.  My senior year I was accepted into Teach For America, and I am going to be teaching Special Education while attending Fordham University for a Masters in Teaching. I enjoy surfing, body-boarding, learning about technology, playing basketball and, of course, interacting with kids.

Right now, I am training at TFA's regional site located at St. John's University in Queens. Last week during induction, the entire NYC corp was introduced to TFA at a sort-of broad visionary level. The week was a blur of meeting people, sitting through presentations and discussing the achievement gap via numerous angles and measures. It was sort of similar to freshman year of college with a more professional twist. Though fun and exciting, it was a little on the repetitive end as many of my fellow corp members agreed. I also had the misfortune of having my car towed today which led to a rough start to the week. Nonetheless, I'm excited for the rest of this week and the beginning of classes next Tuesday.

One of the things all the staff and alumni have said is that teachers always have the best stories. Having been here for a week, I can't help but agree with them on that point. In fact, the inspiration for this blog in large part comes from my desire to be able to share stories with anyone who happens to stumble upon this blog whether a teacher like myself or not. These stories will  probably be mostly fun, perhaps revealing at times and maybe, just maybe, occasionally inspiring. Regardless of the outcome, my goal is simply this: to share my story.

So here we go. I hope you can bear with me as I tell the tale of a 1st year teacher in the Big Apple. I don't know when or how often I will blog and I'm not sure if there will be any consistency or theme to my posts. But I would definitely love to hear from anyone out there who has feedback or advice, so definitely leave me a comment or shoot me an email. Later days.

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St. John's University