Last week we had 4 days as Labor Day kept us home. Headed into week three – which is our first full week of classes, and it promises to be an exhausting one with back to school night on Tuesday and the Coastal BTSN at Totem Middle School.
Prepping to send out the newsletter – which is not very content heavy yet – I shared it first with Pete and Harrison (principal and AP) because I want to include this video: https://youtu.be/dlXTHuDB15c?si=bdHHXTGINjyImb1I
As it contains the faces of students, I want to make sure it is okay to share.
Back to the little lessons. I must remember that parents are pretty awesome. I am intentionally reaching out to parents this year…and I need to systematically call parents whose kids are winning. Lessons learned this week include:
parents are pretty ok
I can suffer the pain of ingrown toenails as long as I see an end in sight…but while that end happened on Sunday, I feel I may be developing an infection in my right toe so I will stop by the doctor’s office on the way home from school today to get it checked.
Leaving campus with tomorrow in mind and physically set up is the only way to go.
Plans for drinks need to be firmed up. I don’t mind drinks…I mind spills.
Bathroom passes are a huge source of irritation to me and yet I feel I can’t fix it.
Writing this blog on Sundays as planned will make them much better.
Moving forward, I will strive to take more video of activities in order to archive our happenings in class.
Merging my love for making spinning playlists and materials development, I made this video for developing the muscle memory: https://youtu.be/Tw8ceBIP__c
I will test it out to see if it works for engagement. signing off with hopes of returning before the end of the week.
Before we look down the road at the 2024/2025 school year, we look out the window. Kurt’s (father in law) stained glass window caught the early morning sunshine with my shower mist in the air. A lovely way to start Sunday. Chuck is out walking the dogs at the beach, and I look forward to fixing my toenail problem so I’m not hobbled at home. Hobbled at home sounds like a good segue to a Sunday morning blog post.
What’s in a name?
I got my email changed to reflect my preferred name and I see Chuck’s everywhere at Marysville PilCHUCK HS.
Reflections
It was a good first week with a steep learning curve. Three days of staff training and two days with students. I just don’t know how teachers can stick to their contract hours and get all the things done, but I’m way exceeding my contract hours so I can get all the things in. I don’t mind. What I do mind is not actually knowing how much I am getting paid… I am down to $95.00 in my bank account and that is money I shifted over from my shouldering credit card. The move and the lack of income has lead me to dire straights this month. The end of September seems an awful long way away.
But…money is not what I want to reflect on. I feel like I am standing in the presence of some really good people and one person took the time to say that since our principal came on board he has hired/engaged a number of great people as we try to lift MPHS and MSD25 out of the muck and mire of its financial woes. I am determined to try to stay out of conversations about it, but it is in the news almost nightly and it is felt in the lack of funding for office staff, paras, drivers, etc etc.
We had the all day training at Getchell, which was okay, but a lot. It felt a little like checking the boxes for SEL and cultural sensitivity. These are both areas I would truly like to grow in, and am making plans to do it. As I have an advisory period, I will do something with them every time I see them. I apparently have the same kids from 9th – 12th…so that is pretty awesome. I strongly do not want it to be a study hall, so I will strive to connect with them and set our sites high.
I have some pretty big classes and some pretty small classes. My ASL 2 class is huge. I am still tamping down the narrative about the last teacher…may she move forward in peace. But because it is all I hear about – I am rolling in strict. One student, bless her heart said I sounded “honestly, I’m not gunna lie…a little a-holey” – ha ha, that was great. Exactly the term I was going for. I had one student ask to go to the bathroom and come back with a “rocket” frozen ice pop thing…she proceeded to drip all over our new carpet. Second girl shot her hand up and asked to go to the bathroom too. I said no. She could go after class. Shutting down the chitchat early is hopefully a good investment. To be honest…I was a little surprised there wasn’t more phone challenging, but they seemed to get it.
Moving Forward
As I look toward the next week, I am feeling pretty good. My goal is to publish a weekly newsletter with news, reflections, student input, highlights and ‘what’s coming’ – Sounds ambitious, but if I consider it my Sunday work to both blog and publish the newsletter I might develop a good and consistent habit (the stuff of last week’s posts)
Major steps for this week include
sharing the syllabus
establishing the newsletter
generating interest in the honor society
establishing the “I Can” statements as a means of visible learning
testing ZipGrade to see if it is a good way to take quizes
setting up the Google Drive
setting up the Portfolio
Being mindful to include signing this week as there is a lot to get going on the tech side of things.
On a final side note – I got my covid shot on Friday Aug 30…and will get my flu shot at the end of sept or early October. – the pharmacist said the flu season begins to peak around October and that the shot takes about 2 weeks – plus only has a 4 – 6 month efficacy. Just trying to get and stay healthy. On Friday the 6th, I will have my hangnails fixed so I can re-up my gym membership and begin to seek a more healthful and balanced lifestyle. I meet my new “forever doctor” (ha ha) on Sept 24th…and I will get all the things done….shit’s gettin’ real now.
Just about 4 years ago (September 2020 – yep…the ol’ “just get ’em through the year year) I wrote a blog post I called THE INDISPUTABLE JOY OF PREPARING which is a theme I seem to keep cycling back to.
Do I ever get to where I’m going?
This time…maybe yes!
My intention this year is to blog once per week – Sunday because of my role model, Michele Reid – the Superintendent of Fairfax county Public Schools. She writes an awesome community news letter and reflection every Sunday – truly without fail. I can do that. Her audience is a very large audience. My audience is just me…and maybe you. Mind you, I’ve had this intention before, but life…fatigue…work… has repeatedly gotten in the way.
But, I want to clarify my intention this year. I want to write this (again!) for me, as a journal of what I learn in the classroom. Maybe a little bit about what I teach, but more what I learn…observe…feel…experience…create…witness… I know there is something simmering inside of me to personally and professionally grow from my classroom experience and perhaps share it more broadly.
Before I dive in – some pictures! My new classroom is NB-5&6 (NB means North Building, although my understanding is that it is no longer the northest building on campus.) The principal indicated he’d like to rename the buildings with braille & language accessibility, but the first proposal came in at $40,000. That’s a bit much for a financially bankrupt school, I suppose. But anyway – I’m in NB6.
Getting the classroom ready:
The wall at my desk – cheerful, personal. I have a small microwave oven (like just enough for soup or coffee reheat small) and although not pictured, my desk is one that rises to into a standing desk. Yay! I didn’t even ask for that – I’ve tested that it can lift up without knocking things off the wall or pulling plugged in things off. We’re all set, in my corner of the room.
This is the preparing that I love as mentioned in that previous blog. I love the set up.
So other things I’ve prepped for this school year include routines. (side note – I SUCK at routines. I don’t know why. I subscribe…I truly do…really. I concede that routines are great! They make things efficient and predictable and I am going to spend the year arguing that they contribute to the tensile strength of a teacher and a program. This is the stuff of the next blog, but suffice it to say in an era of overused and perhaps misused notions of “resilience” and “grit” – I want to explore tensile strength; understanding it, improving it, cultivating it in others.
So, yah, routines (to improve tensile strength), including my personal classroom routines, routines I co-create with my students to optimize the use of instructional time, my home routine to just keep my shit together and my gym routine to regain my sense of health and well-being. I will journal it all along the way.
While this blog is my archive for lessons learned along the way, PlanBook and my Curricular Pacing guide are the tools I use to help me take next steps. I’ll share more about them in coming blogs. Routines and tools are the key.…
…the key to what, you ask?
Having the right routines and tools in place will help me stay efficient, on track and not in that constant sense of scrambling for the next step, or what has already been covered.
In addition to a 360 look at what tensile strength in teachers and programs might be – what it might look like – I want to look at do-overs.
Do-overs occurred to me when I was proofreading something the other day that I was going to share with someone and in a flash I had the debate in my head….I could backspace and correct, or I could hit the “un-do” or “back” button and re type. Weird, I know. But it made me think about giving feedback, and correction and giving grades. I’ve been mulling over the tidbits I’ve picked up along the way about teaching best practices and how learning works and it all feels so sterile – so not-applicable. Like the trial in the movie Sully, theory doesn’t really take into account what is actually happening in front of you…in the moment, on the fly. And school work and tests are so not helpful unless a student can make their way to the competency…the skill, and in my case, the fluency.
Some of my thoughts come from having to allow students with a “D” to move up to the next level – they didn’t outright fail, but they are not ready for the next level. What is the point of the letter grade if it doesn’t make you stop and take action??? Isn’t the point of learning a skill to get better at it? Arg…so many blog posts wrapped up in this.
Honestly, if I could give a “C” for competent and a “NY” for Not yet, I’d feel like a better teacher.
NY – Not Yet…is a grade I’d like to see offered. (I mean it could stand for “next year” in the case of actually failing. But as this is not the goal, and learning is, NY seems to serve a purpose I’d like to explore.)
This is admittedly a horrifically overwhelming approach.
Essentially it says, I’ll keep grading as much work as you turn in until you’re satisfied with your grade. My teacher friends are banging their heads on their desk right now, I’m sure.
So – this is my big QUEST for this year. Can I figure out how to have my routines/planning/prepping SOOOOOO efficient that I have the headspace to focus on giving my students quality feedback that they can use to improve? I’m thinking this is going to involve tensile strength in me…in my students…and my program.
Can we stay strong under pressure?
Don’t call it resilience or grit, please…we’re going in a different direction. Do you see a difference in the two terms? My buddy ChatGPT gave this first iteration – I didn’t go back for more:
I dunno – I just want more and I’m looking at specifically building in the things that lend themselves to grit and resilience in education (teachers and students, admin and programs, etc) – specifically, intentionally built with tensile strength.
As per usual – I have no idea if I’m even following the instructions correctly, but this is a timeline I made as I thought through my experience in teacher training vs teacher development. While the two concepts feel crystal clear, what garbles them is when I think about my own experience as a student, which definitely informs my teacher development and when I’ve been a trainer of trainers. They all sort of move in and out of step with each other across my long and winding career path.
At the end of February 2020, I got a sore throat…then a fever…then a raspy cough that left me feeling like I had broken ribs…but…the show must go on. (By the way, while this was mere weeks before the Pandemic shut our school (and our nation) down, I tested and discovered that what I had was not Covid-19…which is only just a little disappointing. I would have known where I contracted it – that was at the height of a heated argument about collecting phones from students, as per the policy, even though some of them are teen parents. I hated this policy, rarely complied and if I ever took a phone from a student, I could feel Flu and Cold germs jumping on me, ha ha. The pandemic took this to a new height making me wonder if the phone-collection policy will remain when we go back to campus.)
When my supervisor visited, I was very sick, it was very cold and I was very exhausted from teaching both day time high school and night time adult ed. I toyed with canceling the visit, but felt that if I delayed, I would just grow to dread it, and besides…way better to be mentored as a newbie than supervised as a more experienced teacher. I was counting on the kindness I got, if for no other reason, than maybe pity.
As an older career shifter working in the most challenging of class settings, the best I can say is I consistently went back. When I mentioned that that was the strongest thing I could say about my teaching, she reminded me that we might be teaching and the students might be learning, but what is being taught is not always what is being learned and vice versa. I know she is right, but it feels like a cop out.
Just days after she left a student was organizing his binder and asked me what class I was teaching. I had had this student for a month and he was unable to identify the subject (U.S. Government) that I was teaching. I can admit that now, but that afternoon I went to the gym and worked out harder than ever until I broke down crying in front of my personal trainer. I was just so upset by my total lack of teaching clarity that the student didn’t even know what I was teaching. I mentioned this in my follow up memo and my supervisor came back with a plausible explanation: Maybe he just didn’t know how to spell the word “Government.” Upon reflection, he asked me to write it out for him – so maybe she was right.
Wasted tears, but a damn good workout.
I am starting a new position and have met some of my colleagues and they’re all so kind and generous. One is a teacher coach – and they all wear that hat occasionally with each other, so when the coach asked me if I wanted to be mentored I jumped at the chance. The depth of connection I felt to my SIT supervisor during what I consider a very raw and painful memory of having someone observe me in the class leads me to believe that not only will my next experience as a teacher go better, but my next experience being mentored will lift me even more.
Before heading off to Namibia for my 2.5 year stint in the Peace Corps, my mom and I sat and chuckled over life’s funny little things. I don’t know the origin, but it was at about that time that we heard the saying “Some day, you’re gonna wake up dead!” From that one conversation evolved her sage advice that has carried me through my adult journey (so far) :
“All you have to do is wake up with a pulse, and you’ll be okay.”
In that hovering time between my job at the now closed Austine School for the Deaf in Brattleboro, Vermont and my departure for Africa, I did a lot of preparing. Who wudda thunk that this was the beginning of a long life of preparing…prepping…planning for…for places unknown, things unknown, people unknown.
And so, I find myself here (alllll day lonnnnng) preparing…prepping…planning for the start of a new school year and the unknowns are just too numerous to list – but it’s okay – I’m good at this. Check out this thing I just made for students I have yet to meet:
A teacher shared her massive archive of these bitmoji classrooms, which I’ve been silently snarking at as a soul-sucking waste of time to cutsie up school, where maybe time might be better spent doing the hard work of education. (okay…something just possessed me…I didn’t just say that. But as another teacher friend of mine wondered…when do we stop being teachers and start banking on our gaming abilities?) Maybe this is the stuff of a different blog post.
This thing – this classroom on a slide – is document that each of my students can have and personalize. I will make a tutorial on how to insert clickable links (don’t bother…this is just a screen shot) in each of the places – so in one location (this slide…or this bitmoji classroom) they can find their first period google classroom (where materials/assignments) are located and the link to the platform where they’ll meet their teacher and classmates. They just have to click on either the google classroom logo or the orange desk/chair to get to their synchronous class. A different set of links for each period. Also we can add in other links they might need, like the social worker, counselor, dean, nurse or anyone else they might have contact with.
On the white board is their schedule with the ability to make them clickable links – “click on your teacher’s email address and your gmail pulls up, ready to write and send. (Lazy cheat or efficient strategy? – the stuff of another blog post, perhaps) There is a calendar and journal….and if there are other things that the student (or parent) wants in one place it can be inserted – harbored on this slide…that looks like a classroom.
H O W C O O L I S T H A T ?
Will I need it? Will they use it? I have no idea – but here is what is cool…something that I noticed. WHO CARES ABOUT THE BITMOJI CLASSROOM? I was preparing, prepping, planning, as I manipulated this slide and I learned tons! This is the point behind probably much of what we do this first month together: learning organizing skills, feeling creative and discovering tech-gems along the way
…and *this* is where things get really good. I have a curriculum and a general sense of what the students need to grasp across the coming months – nothing set in stone or that would directly contradict the idea of student-centered learning…this the stuff of school, right? …the content of the class, right? or is it? What if, in this weird pandemic thing we’re all wading through (and maybe even in the bigger picture of education) the content of our teaching is secondary to things worth understanding. I mean, a student might be able to get a sentence right because they draw from cognates, or they memorize a grammar rule, or they google on the sly. Knowing and getting something right doesn’t seem to be the best outcome of education to me. Understanding seems more important – and figuring out how to convey the skills of the content I’m teaching in such a way so that there is carry over into other realms of learning suddenly feels urgently important.
So, say I’m teaching the English language, or any language…or math for that matter (stop laughing…), what I’m teaching is important sure, but making sure that the students are getting learning skills is even more important. I consider creativity a learning skill.
“Show me, in any way that you want…in any way that you can…that you have mastered (or have an understanding for) this content, and I’m good with that.”
Creativity, Collaboration, Critical Thinking – these are things that they can take from my class to their other classes and beyond the walls (or screens) of their education.
(I know my teacher friends are rolling their eyes…”duh!” – but let me enjoy this – I live for preparing, prepping and planning) 🙂
And so on, and on, and on I go, preparing, prepping, planning, for students I don’t know yet, and my head is spinning from all of the PDs (Professional Development training modules) and meetings with my new colleagues, and designing the tools I want my students to have access to as we co-create our year together…and I can’t *WAIT* to meet my students. That is if my head doesn’t explode first.
Okay – I’ve maxed out my screen time today, and the real test (according to mom, anyway) comes tomorrow when I see if I wake up with a pulse – then I’ll know, I’ll be okay.
A few after thoughts.
One email reminded us today:
Classroom management is not about having the right rules.
A fun milestone in the school year is 100 days in. My school is starting September 8th and if I’ve counted right that puts us at about Friday, February 12th. The dead of Winter…or the promise of Spring lingers over mid February like indecision over a moot point because for forever, Winter has given way to Spring eventually, give or take a few days.
But 100 days is all I have.
I start this school year as a long term sub, which caps at 100 days for the fact that the state has not yet granted me my teaching license and this is the best the school district can do.
But I won’t dwell.
Well, let me dwell a little. I read one teacher’s post and it kind of took my breath away. She said:
Who among us doesn’t understand her feelings? All of us – we’re all running (willingly running!) into a burning building because we want to teach. I understand her feelings but, truth be told, I do not feel this way.
Me? I want the work and I feel so ready to jump in and be part of the community in which I live, being of service to people I don’t even know yet, so I am trying not to resent the feeling that I will be working hard to teach roughly 125 teens this school year for 1/4 of the money, no benefits and a cap at 100 days. I’m struggling to understand how this is okay and what happens with the kids on day 101. But in the words of one infamous president, “It is what it is.”
𝗢𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝘆, 𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝗲.
If you want to understand this quote better, you can read more about it here but suffice it to say that self sacrifice is heroism in his eyes, and if that is so, every teacher is a hero.
I understand the teacher’s angst. The stakes are high – and I’m in a school district which is promoting self care and collaboration so we don’t feel like we’re all alone in this nutty year of distancing. I am happy to run into the burning building that is education during a pandemic, but I can’t help feeling that I’m not running in so much as bungie jumping in and just before I meet the grounding, and find the traction that surely takes 100 days, my contract will spring me back and leave me swaying and swinging, helpless in a harness I’d prefer not to wear.
She feels resentful. Others feel overwhelmed. Some feel as confused as a chameleon in a bag full of skittles. To be sure, these are confusing days for all. But I’m stepping into this school year without confusion. I have 100 days, a partial school year to dig in, build a learning community strive to slice the bungee cord and shrug off the harness so I can find my footing in education this year and beyond.
Knowing is almost always better than not knowing and I’m about to report a bunch of punches and setback, but I’ll do what I always do best…pivot, side-step, recoil, conjure and get creative to respond to the situation at hand.
I shouldn’t be this hard. It should be this hard, but it shouldn’t be this hard. The thing is…I really don’t want to hustle for work. But here I am…hustling.
20-something is definitely in the realm of adult, legal consent, decision ownership, but I’m seeing that my decision to attend university in Canada has thrown up insurmountable obstacles some three decades later. The Virginia Department of Education does not recognize Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario – CANADA) as an accredited school within this region for acceptable credentials. They are essentially saying my BA-TESL/Sociology doesn’t count, although the US Peace Corps and my Masters program accepted them.
And so, although I am ready, willing and able to take on a teaching position in a time when teachers are flocking the profession, I can’t get my foot in that bolted door.
I made contact with the community college (NOVA) which has a “career shifter” program toward licensure, but as they follow the VDOE guidelines for regionally accredited universities, they also can’t bring me into the program. They also took the time to point out that my MA is from an unaccredited program as well, so that won’t solve any problems for me.
And so, in order to take this job at an FCPS high school, I will be a “long-term sub” until they fill the position or until I get my license, which apparently is not happening. I will take this job for 100 days – and when that maxes out, I will be cut loose or the school will amend my job title, perhaps. This is not ideal
But here is my first “lemonade from lemons” act. My primary focus is on getting through my MA program so I will consider this work experience more than a career foothold. It’s still the same amount of energy and work being sunk into the full-load teaching schedule, but for significantly less compensation. This sucks at many levels -but how lucky is FCPS to have me for so cheap?
In my second act of “lemonade from lemons” – I take the time to consider where I feel best teaching – and that is with older teens and adults. I am trying to ascertain if I need a license to teach in the community college system, but it appears not. Bummer that now teaching in universities and colleges has a fancy word (adjunct) attached to the title, but really it means – gig economy…no benefits. It is not a career level job….it is a job. A job that one hustles for….deep breath.
My third splash of lemonade comes from the recollection that I am in the teacher training track of my MA-TESOL program so I am headed toward teaching adults anyway.
My intention is to keep my blogging short. I have so much to say, though. At the moment – I need to do some listening.
Learning is why. 