Megalopolis

In my reading class, I get a lot of freedom. We are reading Ramona Quimby, Age 8 as our first book, and I have two books to help me set up individual assignments and a cumulative type thing. One of the activities is to write get well cards to other people in the class. I told them to make them silly, to have fun with them! here’s what we got:

Dear Ms. D, I sorry you look like francinstin when you got your 2 stitches in your head.

Dear K, I’m sorry you got swolled by a shark. I miss you. Come back! I hope you enjoyed getting swolled then getting throwed up by a shark.

(on the front) hope you ain’t injured bad. (inside) Dear Ms. O, I’m sorry you fell off the Tower in Paris. Hope you feel better in 7 weeks. I know you feel bad.

(on the front) please get well (inside) Dear Ms. D, I’m sorry you got bit in the behind. I hope yo behind feel better.

(front of card is covered in flowers) Dear V, School is a dump without you man. I’m bored without you. I wish you never got sick at all! Get well soon or I’ll die little bit. I’m sorry you didn’t know you were allergic to flowers.

Dear H. Sorry you got trampled by a giraffe. School is boring without you because you are the greatest friend ever. Sorry you also go ate by a whale. I’ll see you in the sea in 20 days.

That, my friends, is why I teach for america.

The little twinge you feel when you wake up and, on your way to school, the urge to stop and buy a good cup of coffee is overwhelmed by the realization that my options are: the gas station, McDonalds, or the other gas station. 98% of my mornings at Syracuse went like this: walk through the snow/rain to campus, buy coffee at one of 4 phenomenal locations, trudge to class. This morning, McDonald’s was closed, and this is the 3rd time that has happened. How do you close?! A man came out of the employee door and said, “sorry, there’s been an accident. We’ll be open in 1/2 an hour.” Well sir, I have to teach in 1/2 an hour, and that’s going to go really poorly if I don’t have some sort of caffeine intake before 7:30. I just sort of assumed these places were open and functioning 24 hours a day. I guess the billions served don’t live in Arkansas…

This afternoon, after waking up from my nap, a single thought crossed my mind- leonardo da veggie. For those of you who are not familiar with Brueggers bagels, that is only the most delicious bagel/sandwich combo ever invented. Oh, how I am currently yearning to bite into the tough outside of a good east coast bagel and reach the warm avacado/lettuce/cheese/tomato/pepper concoction waiting for me in the middle. Today I explained what a bagel was to one of my students, I think that’s what started this whole fantasy. If anyone knows of a good East coast bagel place that ships, PLEASE help me out. I could use a bagel more than I could use some school supplies right now.

Anyway, I think these yearnings for places and things outside of LV are coming about because teaching is getting harder and I’m reaching for external factors at which to direct my anger. That is not to say that I don’t direct plenty of anger towards my students; while I recognize that they are babies and a lot of what they do is without malicious intent, they still drive me bonkers. It seems this week their main objective was: SWBAT (students will be able to) drive Ms. D to the point of insanity, then start crying. I got a note from timothy, hidden within his homework. He was supposed to have a mind map, starting with his topic of his personal narrative and branch off into details. His main topic bubble said the following:

I like Ms. D. She is a nice teacher. She will respect you if you respect her. It takes a lot to make her mad.

Very true, child. Hence why, the day before, when I asked you what was wrong and all you did was cry and shake your head, I talked to you about respect. I’m glad something stuck, because today you certainly didn’t understand my prime and composite numbers lesson!

Overall, I’m trying really hard to not get frustrated, but it is obvious that I am. I get that “I’m worried about you and your performance” glance/email/comment, and my whole day is shot into a whirlwind of insecurity, which probably makes me that much more irritable when my kids are off-task. If TFA repeated one thing, it was “No one is teaching if no one is learning.” I think this could be better stated as- “If your kids are off task, its your responsibility to fix that and force knowledge into their brains.” So far, not so great. I have a volume scale in my room of 1-5, and if I was to have a knowledge scale, I think we’d need to go into negative numbers…I am definitely ‘not teaching’ according to TFA. See: post I had earlier about internalizing failures…

In other news, my kids definitely respect me and are building relationships with me. They feel comfortable telling me (for the most part) when things are wrong that frustrate them, and I’m getting really good at making them smile on an individual level. I know that’s not teaching, but it’s still connecting, which I think is sort of a stopgap until I learn how to actually educate.

While this blogging was cathartic, I could still really use a good cup of coffee and a bagel.

I have prepared as thoroughly as I can for the upcoming week. I have lesson plans written for every day, every subject. I have ideas planned for my downtime. I have books planned out that I need to somehow locate, and I have stories printed off. I have fun-FUN-activities planned for if-IF-my students behave. I’m talking gallery walks, small group work, peer conferencing, and rapping. I wrote a rap. I’ll post it if we actually perform it. If it fails, I’ll probably delete it from my computer and tear down the poster, but we shall see. Hope springs eternal…

Speaking of hope, this week was seemingly devoid of it. For some reason, posting on Thursday and saying that nothing would change on Friday seemed to give my students permission to top off my first week with a fight. I have never been in a fight, I had never really seen a fight except in movies, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do except that I was in charge. Needless to say, now that the information about the two students has been divulged to me (by willing sources), I feel guilty. I recognize, and was prepared by TFA, that these things would happen and that my teaching style cannot change because that only caters to the negativity that poverty seems to perpetuate, but it has stuck with me all weekend. I’m sure I’ll be fine tomorrow, it just makes you take a deep breath in, that’s all. I have the rest of the year to exhale.

It is so incredibly past my bed-time, but I just want the record to show that I have planned and prepared. If this week doesn’t rock the world, I’m not sure what will (week 3? week 31? christmas break?) I bought mats for my reading corner, friends. I’m teaching defensively. I’m not giving them a chance to do anything wrong, I’m filling their days so completely with fun and knowledge and wonderment, these kids aren’t going to know what hit them. Knowledge, thats what hit ‘em. Knowledge and proficiency and a revised behavior management system for test-taking times and most importantly, my counterattack to an overwhelming fear of failure.

I have the potential to be better than my absolute best. I have the potential to do great things. I will settle for nothing less.

My students signed contracts with those exact words, why not hold myself to the same standards?

No, it’s not a new movie starring Drew Barrymore that no one is going to watch! I think its a pretty appropriate title to my (almost) first week of teaching. I was going to hold off until tomorrow night to write my end-of-the-week post, but I don’t think my mood will change that much between now and tomorrow around this time, so whatever. Plus, I want to focus and do work tomorrow night, and thinking about blogging is a distraction.

So, it turns out that I’m pretty successful at being focused and active from 6:00am-10:30pm with breaks from 12:30-1:00, 1:30-2:10, and whenever i choose (if i remember) to eat dinner. It also turns out that teaching is really hard and time consuming, but that is something I realized. Luckily for me, I really really really enjoy going into my classroom. I hope that this feeling only diminishes slightly over time, if it has to do anything other than grow. Each child has their own personality-i can recognize my aspiring nerd, the smart one that pretends to be dumb, and the dumb one that can’t help but be dumb, but tries to cover it up by being funny and make monkey noises in class, which ultimately leads to me calling them out in class. Oh look, you’re nervous about not knowing the answer so you act out. Put you head down and work hard, child.

I feel also like somehow they trust me? I thank Jesus that this happened because I was scared that the connection factor- you know, the ability to relate and talk and just….BE with your students- wouldn’t be there. But it is! Case in point:

Scene- after school, children in my room waiting for their bus to be called. James approaches…
James: Miss, do you want to know who I like?
Me (attempting to think of TFA lit that tells me how to handle this situation): uh….sure.
James (looks around): It’s….Amy.
Me (crap, I still didn’t read any how-to-respond-to-child-crush-confession-lit): Oh.
James runs and gets something, shoving it in my hand as he runs out to catch his bus: give this to her!

It’s a note, that says “Dear Amy, I like you will you be my boyfriend call this number after 4:30″. It was unsigned. The following options then ran through my head…
A)sign it for him, put it in her mailbox, and watch.
B) throw it away
C)call the number myself and tell him he has a future to worry about, not girls.

I, at the urging of my sister, chose option D, wherein I kept it for myself in my cheer-up folder and today told James it wasn’t my place to deal with that and he should handle his own business. However, I love knowing their business.

In addition, I had two boys cry in one day. You might think I am a horrible person, but in fact I did not make them cry, either one! Anthony cried because he was in pain. Thanks, asthma. And Tristen, oh lord, Tristen gave me practice in calming down an angry child. I think I did really well. I probably should have given him a disrepsect pink-slip. Good thing that when I was gone this afternoon for training, my aide wrote pink-slips for my class anyway. Paperwork done, discipline administered, hassle-free! In the mean time, I’ll continue handing out silent lunch like it is candy, and I’ll continue to hand out candy like its contraband. Which it is. Shh.

On a much, much more serious note, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about how TFA makes you think about failure. There is so much pressure to be successful, and Teach For America talks to you as a corps member in a very specific way. During institute, people are NOT allowed to say the word failure. My CMA (advisor), told me this, and at the time I didn’t think anything of the fact that they’re told to say explicitly “areas for growth.” However, now that I’m teaching and seeing people’s reactions to teaching and my own reaction to pressure, it’s interesting that the first thing I feel is failure. When I don’t do well at something, or reach them the way I want to, or engage every student, I think “failure.” I don’t think any other word, I don’t think “area for growth.” I think in many ways, TFA forces me to think this way, because they frame everything in terms of what my successes should look like, and there is not much emphasis on the middle ground. I am a first year teacher, show me what that looks like! It’s so much pressure to look around and, from TFA, see only exemplars. From my school, I see veteran teachers that either a) don’t relate to what I’m doing or b) don’t really care about me being there because they think I’m going to leave. I’m not going to leave, I’m not planning on being overwhelmed by my failures, I just wish there was somebody there to help me think of a different word. This whole thought process came about for a specific reason, and it just felt really nice to get out in words, so I’m sorry if it doesn’t mean much.

All in all, I’m beyond thankful that I am teaching at this time, my class. I like them a lot, as much as James likes Amy. I can only hope that, unlike my copy limit at school, my love for my class does not fade quickly.

Alright, well that’s over with. I am SO happy/relieved/grateful that I made it through my first day without sucking. At least I think I did. To be honest, most of what happened during the 9 hours I was at school was a giant blur, with focused highlights on the following:
- 17 horrified faces looking at my own equally horrified face to start the day. I was missing 5. Thank god. I have no idea if I could have handled anymore (we’ll find out tomorrow…)
- I was told “Miss, are you older than 20? You look….34!”
- “Are you from Europe? You talk weird.”
- School is really big into having word walls, where we post all our vocabulary words. In order to invest them, I asked them how many words they wanted to learn and when they wanted to learn them by. I told them that kindergardeners come into school knowing 6000 words, and I asked how many we should learn. I was told “ten hundred,” which I turned into a teachable moment of “what is the same as ten hundred?” I was greeted with a unanimous vote that we would learn 1,000 new words. We did a math problem (as a class!!!!) to figure out that if we learned 8 words a day, 5 days a week, it’d take us 25 weeks. Everyone, mark your calendars for February 28th. That’s our big goal.
- My LINE! My kids at institute apparently just had it in for me. If these kids can walk in line this well all the time, I’ll be happy.
- Picture a trail of puke from the doorway of my classroom to about 6 feet into the boy’s restroom across the hall as Randy ran out of my class. Then picture three or four pre-k students slipping in the puke as they walked down the hall. Then picture my class shifting back about half a foot so they could look out the door clearly. Apparently I was not explicit enough, in that I did not say “if you’re going to be violently ill, you do not need to raise your hand and ask to leave.”
-After I walked Randy to the nurse, I asked my kids for an example of how we treat our class with respect, a continuation of our pre-puke conversation. The answer I got- “If somebody isn’t feeling good or is embarrassed, you can say something nice to make them feel better.” Good enough!

All in all, I have no idea what happened today, but I am SO ready for tomorrow. Also, does anyone know the trick to standing up for 7 hours at a time, or is it just something to which your feet adjust? If so, crap.

Regardless of how much time and effort I put into it, I will not feel ready for tomorrow.
I am ready to begin.
I put on my tennis shoes, and I’m ready to start. I might not hit the ground running (I could easily fall and hit the ground hard!) but if I can lie and manipulate myself into doing anything, its trying again.

Big goals:
-keep down my breakfast
-don’t write on myself
-talk s.l.o.w.l.y.
-appreciate every single moment. I won’t ever have another first day of teaching in my own classroom.
-recognize that this is a big deal and I’m allowed to be very nervous. Even dad said he got nervous every first day of school, and that’s DAD!.

No matter how much I do, I am not going to feel ready. I am not one of those who can sit back and say, “alright, lets go.” I am going to go make 3 posters and then go to sleep. I still have not completely planned my outfit. For those of you that know me, this is a BIG shift in priorities.

When and if I make it through my first day, I will come here and immediately dumb everything into a post. Prepare yourself.

“The future is called “perhaps,” which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you.”- Tennessee Williams

Thanks to several conversations with various friends, I’ve come to realize why I’ve become so purpose-driven and yet so …not peaceful, but at peace… in my (almost) month here in the Delta. One of my most consistent traits has always been my smile and my ability to turn anything into a positive, and this has not diminished. In fact, I’ve found this habit that much easier to support since moving to the Delta. I am one week away from starting school, and in between my freak-out panic attacks about having no idea how to teach, I realize how incredibly at home I feel. Not just in my home, in my town, and in the Delta, but within myself.

Insert hippie music, I know, but it’s something very new to me to feel like I belong and, more importantly, to feel like I have a reason to be where where I am. Throughout college I was constantly waiting for the moment I could move on to something else- a different semester, course, classroom. Since high school I haven’t really known what I wanted to do at all in life, except for help other people. I applied for Americorps before I applied for college, and only backed out due to insecurity and my 17-year-old inability to make decisions. On many levels, I feel like Teach for America is a continuation of my original desire to serve, and college was a sidestep on that path.

The point is, I never fully realized what little purpose I felt I had in college, but recognizing that lack explains a lot of my inability to fully appreciate my college experience. I was always waiting to go do something else, and that something else was TFA. Not quite instantly, and with institute’s cult-like reinforcement, I’ve discovered that I really do want to be here. I feel like I need to be here, and its not that I feel I need to be here for others. Other people do not need me. If I was not here, another corps member would take my place and do a wonderful job. I feel like I need to be here, teaching in the Delta, for me. I don’t know why, and I’m not sure what I’m going to learn from it, but I am SO excited to find out.

All of what I wrote might be selfish, but it’s a realization I think I needed to make. I hope it doesn’t change, and I hope during my next years here I never stop hearing the voice that comes from somewhere, telling me I belong here, right now.

In other news, blues music plays a more important role in my life every day. Not because I’m sad, but because its amazing. What I thought I knew about the blues before I came here has been put to shame by the live music I’ve seen thus far. I am so happy and blessed to be here for two years.

This weekend, two of my roommates and I set out to appreciate our last few days of life before it actually sets in that we are teachers and will be for the next two years. From LVAR to Clarksdale was less than a two hour drive, but it gave me time in which to realize something important about history. Until now, there have been several things in history preached to me in such a way that removes me from them. Something about how I was taught a lot of what I have been taught, even in college, made it very distant. Driving through Mississippi closes that distance, and I find it disconcerting and but at the same time somehow I appreciate it. It was interesting to me that a landscape is the only thing to give me a clear answer so far. Under the growing crops that I’m beginning to recognize (I discovered pecan trees this weekend), there are layers and layers of history and emotion. I know it sounds corny, but the layers on the top are the ones that I had been taught about at a distance, and I can appreciate them so much more fully here. I love the Delta for re-teaching important events.

Clarksdale is like a million beautiful photographs of the past brought to life. Next time I go I’m bringing my camera and some free time that I’m sure I’ll have just lying around. Compared to LVAR, Clarksdale feels like a metropolis. It has a Kroger and a Wal-Mart. I think I feel a connection to it because, even before I left for institute, it was one of the only places I could easily read about online.

On Saturday, after the effects of Clarksdale wore off, we continued up the highway to Memphis, where none of us had been before. In the 104 (felt like 115) heat, we toured the city in a car, taking advantage of the air conditioner. Finally, we got out to explore in what looked like a chic, urban revitalized area, which turned out to be not only amazing, but also the sight of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.. None of us were prepared to see this, and it was stunning to fall into such a historical place. Growing up in Iowa, historical places don’t really just appear.

The National Civil Rights Museum cost money, which was a shame because we could feel the air conditioner whenever someone opened the door. We each bought posters (two of Rosa Parks and one of the Little Rock 9, all for our classrooms!) and then headed south down the highway, as Paul Simon sings, “through the cradle of the Civil War” to Leland for a TFA party. This party, as with the other parties that I’ve attended, was sweaty and loud and full of teachers, overpowering in its extroverted-ness. It was nice and once school starts, I’ll appreciate these parties to distance myself from the impending stress of school.

Speaking of school, I start my first day of two full weeks of professional development tomorrow morning at 7:30. I have my outfit lying on the couch in the corner of my massive bedroom, my double-shot of coffee and energy drink cooling in the second refrigerator downstairs and, at 10:26, I am going to bed.