so over this week.

Last week I had my first observation by my field advisor from the Fellows. He told me in our debriefing that had he entered my classroom not knowing who I was, he wouldn't have known I was a first year teacher. In response, I joked with him that he caught me and my kids on a good day - there are other days when he'd definitely know I'm new at this.

Today was one of those days. I had two almost-fights in different classes. One was a a shouting match I had to step in between before it got totally out of control. Luckily, one of the guys involved is normally very level-headed, and he's someone I've gotten to know pretty well. Ultimately, it was he who backed down after he finally saw me trying to intervene. The other incident involved an emotionally disturbed student repeatedly calling a girl a "bird." I was thankful then that my fellows advisor over the summer gave us a lesson on city slang, because otherwise I wouldn't have understood why the girl got so up-in-arms over the comment, which means "slut." That fight got a little more out of hand than that other one, and ended when the girl stormed out of the room right as an administrator was walking down the hallway. I stepped into my doorway and explained what was happening, and thankfully he escorted the male student out of my class as well. A benefit of being at a tiny school is that all I had to do was tell the administrator who the offending student was, and he already understood the situation based on this kid's history of similar behavior.

I'm drained, as you can probably tell from the quality of my writing, and it's only Tuesday. My first parent-teacher conferences are on Thursday and Friday. Friday our kids are getting released at lunch, and since it's Halloween most teachers are planning fun activities and parties in lieu of lessons. I'm looking for ideas for my classes, but may end up settling on feeding them and letting them watch a horror movie on my projection system.

Back to planning. Is it winter break yet?

on my good list.

"They should give report cards to teachers; then I could give you an A."

Obviously, that was the highlight of my day. And probably my year so far. I also enjoyed a sidebar conversation I had with two students today in which they fired off (often talking over each other) every science question they've ever had that no one's answered. Things like: so that black stuff that comes out of a car's tailpipe, that's carbon, right? But why is it carbon? I heard carbon is everywhere - is that true? Why can't I see it? Where did carbon come from, anyway? The Earth?And hey, why is the Earth the only planet that has life on it? What's up with that? Keep in mind my kids are all about 18. It was delightful to see they can still have the curiosity of a five year old.

The lowlight of my day was when a student came to discuss his grade before class this morning. He's failing, largely due to spotty attendance and the snowball effect that creates with missed work. We're halfway through the first term, so I tried to be encouraging and told him if he came to class every day, and did his work, he could still pass. He told me he needs to pass every class this year so he can graduate this year - he's almost 18, already has a kid, and needs to get out of school and get a full time job as soon as he can. Despite my encouragements, he left my room on the verge of tears, and didn't show up to class today. What do you do when a kid loses hope?

you know you're at an urban school when..

One of the candidates for student council president opens her speech by saying, "Yo, I'ma hold it down for y'all, aight?" amid whispers in the audience of various students encouraging each other to "pull a Kanye."

The only other noteworthy thing about today was that one of my students, who previously had been having difficulty with the concepts in my chemistry class and often got frustrated, is suddenly understanding the material. Something clicked with him in the past few days, and he's been very vocal about it. He's the first to answer questions in his class, and he explains problems to anyone around him who needs help, whether they ask for it or not. Today he sat back towards the end of class and said, "You know, I'm finally understanding chemistry."

I don't think I got a lot right this week. In fact, I know I got a lot wrong. It wasn't really a good week in general, but at least one kid got something out of it.

such is life.

On the topic of quick blog posts:

For some reason I couldn't sleep last night, and I'm so tired today my legs are aching (why is it always my legs?). I skipped lunch again to get some last-minute planning done even though I've already lost enough weight that I'm skinnier than I've been since I was in college, and I'm on the verge of having to buy new pants because nothing fits anymore. I've been working on atomic orbitals and electron configurations with my chem classes now for almost a week and they're still really struggling with it. My grades are due Friday and I'll probably be up half the night Thursday night to finish. But then today I got back my formal, written evaluation from my presentation last week, and my principal ended the letter by saying that she was lucky to have found me, and that I'm off to a great start in my teaching career. Which makes it a little easier to pop some ibuprofen, carb-load and work on into the night.

I might just start living on protein smoothies and caffeine.

an update from the trenches.

Once the school year got underway, I sort of dropped this blog and didn't look back. When I first started this months ago, I imagined it to be a place where I could make short, frequent updates, akin to Dave Roche's On Subbing. What ended up happening is that I have so much to say I rarely have time to write anything that even hits the surface of what I really want to convey.

Tomorrow marks one month of teaching, and I've learned so much in that time that it's kind of mind-blowing. With the school year being 1/9th finished, I can say that it's going okay. Not great, not as well as I'd like, but decently. I have terrible days and days that are so good by comparison that by the time I leave school I feel like a new person.

I've gotten close enough to several students that my room has become their hideout during breaks in the day, and every day I look forward to seeing those kids and getting to know them better. They're the kind of kids I would have been friends with when I was in high school - the ones who listen to japanese rock and talk about comic books. One student, Elijah, comes into my room 45 minutes early every morning and keeps me company as I organize papers and eat breakfast at my desk. In our morning chats I've learned about his elderly mother whom he takes care of, the multiple jobs he works in addition to school, his two hour commutes to and from his house in the Bronx, and how he failed out of his old school from sheer boredom. Yesterday we walked to the train together after school, and as I said goodbye he gave me a hug. It's been a really hard week for me, so a hug was exactly what I needed.

I have students who come to me when they're having bad days, too. One student dropped by my room earlier this week while Elijah and I were talking. She walked up to my desk with tears in her eyes and didn't say a word. I asked her what was wrong, and she shook her head. I asked her if she was having a bad day, and if she wanted to talk about it. Yes, and no. Then I asked her if she just wanted to hide in my room for a little while. She nodded her head and folded herself into a chair nearby until the time came for her to go to class. Another student had an emotional breakdown in class a few days ago; I had to enlist several of her friends to help her to her counselor's office.

That was probably the hardest day of the week for me - my lessons bombed, I was even more tired than usual, and right when I was feeling completely incompetent my kids all seemed to be having a hard time, too. Today was completely different - my lessons worked, I got one of my rowdiest classes to do structured groupwork and stay focused all period, and I got to have fun with the same students who had cried in my classroom several days before. I also had my first evaluation of sorts, in the form of a lesson plan and student work review with my principal and half our staff. I got some good constructive criticism, and overall the reviews were positive.

It's hard being at the beginning level of something so immense. A severe discomfort with being bad at something has always motivated me to get better at whatever that thing is. I'm hard on myself, I know that. It's hard knowing it will take me years to actually be a good teacher, and that before I get there I'll have to continue on the road of failure, misfires and seemingly accidental successes until I figure out how to manufacture successes, again and again. One day, I'll be a mediocre teacher and after that, I'll be a good reacher. One day, I hope, I can be as great as the other teachers at my school, who are really the best mentors and role models I could ask for as someone just getting my feet wet in this profession.

After my lesson plan review session today, I was walking out of the room with my assigned mentor who commented, "See? that wasn't so bad, was it?" I replied no, it wasn't. Before the meeting I'd told her I was worried my lesson was going to be ripped apart. It was a work in progress, not something time-tested and polished as the other teachers with more experience were able to present. Really, she had said then, no one's expecting a masterpiece from a first-year teacher. She added that to be honest, no one was really expecting competency. It's just not realistic. After the meeting, I'd told her that even though the meeting went well, I still feel like I suck as a teacher. It was a moment of self-loathing whininess, for sure. She looked me in the eye and said bluntly, "You could be sucking a lot worse."

I'll take that as a compliment, because at the moment any praise will do.

trials and triumphs.

Today was my second day of teaching, and man... what a roller coaster! I don't have time for a proper telling, as I'm kind of scrambling to get together my lessons for tomorrow. Tomorrow I've got an evening appointment with my bed, my cats, some takeout Thai food from down the street, and possibly the fetal position.

For now, though, the high and low points so far. The low point was this afternoon, when my forensics class got out of hand. I have a student who has self-control issues (though he is medicated for an ED condition, he doesn't have an IEP), and in my last class of the day I had no control over him. His behavorial problems are an issue with other teachers as well, so at least I know it's not just me.

The high might sound kind of weird. Today I gave a math assessment, which went over better than I thought it would, in that most students complied and took it (our population is a willfull bunch, so compliance is always a good sign). I was very open about the fact that I was grading it on effort and not on accuracy, and repeatedly told them, "try all of them, do as well as you can. but it's no stress." One pair of particularly macho students blanched when I introduced the assessment. They exchanged nervous glances, so I went over to explain again why I wanted them to complete it, and why they should also not freak out about it. One of the guys, a large, tattooed hispanic guy, looked up at me with the eyes of a frightened child. I bent down to him so that I could hear him whisper, "Miss... I'm really bad at math." I whispered back, that's ok. I want to know that so that I can help. Just try your best, and you'll be okay. "But Miss..." he whispered again, staring down at the test, "I've always cheated on my math tests." Well, I said, that's the past. Show me what you can do right now, and we'll go from there. I asked him if that would work for him, and he nodded and got to work. He didn't do so well on it, but he tried most of the questions.

After school other teachers have been coming by to check on me; their support has made this all bearable, really. I told this story to an English teacher who dropped by, and he replied, "Wow, a breakthrough on the second day... good job."

the countdown.

It's just after ten in the morning, and I'm sitting on my bed building chemical models out of a kit I've had since college that was handed down to me from my older sister. It's a simple, plastic ball-and-stick kit, but for now it'll do. I figure I'll decorate an empty shelf or two with some base pairs and ligands, if only because they're big and complicated-looking.

As the last days of summer count down, I'm getting really excited about decorating my room. My room has two computers along one wall, which I'm dubbing the Simulation Center (a recent development, stemming from some great simulations I found online last night) and the walls of which I'll eventually decorate with printed snapshots from students' work. Up near the front of the room I'm going to have a Feelings Barometer, which is something I learned about at a seminar last week. It's a chart where the kids plot how they're feeling that day, on a scale of -5 to +5, as they enter the room. It'll allow me to judge the mood of the class that day as well as be clued into any issues I might need to address. I'm also leaving room for concept maps and two different word walls, one for chemistry vocabulary and one for greek and latin roots/prefixes/suffixes that we encounter throughout the course. In the next week I'm going to be shopping for posters and models as well.

It turns out I'm only teaching four periods of chemistry, which is an enormous weight off my shoulders, and why I'm able to concentrate on making my room subject-specific. As a new teacher, I feel really lucky that I have my own room, a fully equipped lab, and the ability to focus on one course. I think the catch will be the discipline issues at my school, but I'm putting a lot of thought into how I'm going to conduct my class in the first few days to try to head off a lot of preventable issues. I have a lot of planning to do, but also lots of energy with which to do it. We'll see how it goes! The countdown begins: 9 days.