Round 2, ding ding!

It's time for round 2...of teaching, that is!

My second year of teaching is about to start, almost 3 weeks until school starts! It doesn't even feel like I have been living in St. Louis for that long! How could this possibly be my last year in TFA?? I've met so many of our 2009 corps members arriving from all over the U.S. It's great to see how energetic and enthusiastic they are.

I'm approaching this year with a mix of excitement and hesitation. I'm excited to see my students and being involved with school activities again, basketball, track, flag football, etc. I'm looking forward to trying a new classroom set-up, changing things up a bit. However, I'm nervous to see if I can take what I learned and make this year better. I learned a lot last year about what it means to have a "teacher persona" that is separate from my every day "Amy" self. I definitely need to step up my game, take what I've learned, and allow myself to grow as a teacher.

I'm going to have a readers' workshop format in my class where all my kids are reading independently at least 30 minutes a day. I've been doing some research to figure out all that a readers' workshop entails, but like anything with teaching, a lot of it is going to come down to trial and error. That's definitely one thing I learned last year, how to be flexible and take things as they come. 99% of the time, things don't go as planned. Anyways, with my kids doing a lot of reading in school and at home, they'll be able to boost their reading to make up for how far they are behind.

* * * * * * *

In other news, it's been one doozy of a summer off from teaching! My grandma passed away from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in early June, which is enough to put a rough start to anything. It also put a lot of things in perspective for me, like how I spend my time, and the energy I put into my relationships with friends and family. It's really amazing how a person can take so many things for granted. I had a chance to read some of my grandma's journals and she really inspires me with how much she wished she could have experienced the world for herself. I'm so glad that I'm able to do the things that I'm doing, knowing that I completely have my grandma's blessing.

I'm lucky that I had the rest of the summer to visit friends, go to Summerfest, see Def Leppard, celebrate my cousin's high school graduation (she'll be going to UW in the fall!), walk the dog, and spend time with the family. It was the first time I had a birthday with my family in almost three years--that's the thing about having a summer birthday, there's always so much going on! My brother took me for a couple flights that day, since he flew down to visit for the day. I got to fly, eat sushi, and have homemade carrot cake (thanks mom) on my birthday. FANTASTIC.

On top of everything, I had to find some time to squeeze in nine credits of online summer classes (thanks to my masters' degree), plus a GRE prep course, so it's been hectic to say the least. I take my GRE on August 22, so wish me luck! I'll be relieved when it's over, because if there's one thing I can take away from this entrance exam is that I know there's a reason I am not a math teacher!

Oh, and one last thing, I do want to advertise that **St. Louis** is ONLY a 6.5 hour drive from Wisconsin or a 50 minute flight from Madison or Milwaukee. If anyone is looking for a fun place to visit (or if you're just passing through town), definitely let me know. I love to play host and show everyone a good time in the 'Lou.

Come visit!! :)

My first published article!

This article I wrote will be published in the spring edition of the National Association for Gifted Children's (NAGC) Curriculum Studies newsletter! How exciting!

The life of a first-year teacher is by no means easy: in fact, the so-called learning curve that I experience feels more like I’m accelerating past 80 miles an hour down a freeway. As I careen through this tumultuous period, I get quick glimpses of veteran teachers on cruise, executing new strategies and managing classrooms with seeming ease. Oh, how I wish I could fast forward 15 years and finally have experience to back me up. I can barely keep my metaphoric “teacher-mobile” in the center of the lane most days! I’m swerving around mountains of paperwork and finding myself battling traffic jams of obstinate students and fatigue. Why is it that everyone else (i.e. veteran teachers, even my fellow first year teachers) seems to have it all together? How can anyone feasibly stay in the classroom for 40 years when I can hardly survive a Monday? When I strap myself in at the start of every week, I grudgingly brace myself for the unexpected. It is difficult for me to stay motivated when everything in my classroom seems to be on the brink of spontaneous combustion!
When I slow to reflect on exactly what has inspired me to keep coming back to the classroom for almost 150 days (and counting), it is by far the incredible support of my fellow teachers. I am fortunate in that I started my first year of teaching with a cohort of other inexperienced young people as a part of Teach for America. This program is a national teaching corps that recruits recent college graduates to commit two years of teaching in urban and rural school districts. After attending a six-week intensive teacher training program in Texas this summer, my fellow corps members and I quickly bonded over the struggles of becoming an effective teacher. We spent many late nights together lesson planning, grading, analyzing student data, and whatnot. When school started in the fall, we all experienced the ups and downs that come with figuring out the ropes of a new school district. I cannot begin to count the number of conversations I had at the start of the year that did not involve some form of frustration or panic. As exhausted as we were, we knew we had each other. Whenever we had a tough day, we knew that literally a hundred-plus other teachers were going through the same thing.
Throughout this school year, we regularly swap stories and laugh, pat each other on the back and add a few words of encouragement. We share in that dreaded “Sunday pit” in our stomachs, brought on by the anticipation of the coming week. Together we celebrate successes we’ve had with our students and puzzle over what brought about recent changes of behavior. We inspire each other! For example, a friend of mine teaches 5th grade and was excited when her students started to experience growth in reading levels. Even though my kids may have had a rough day, I recognized in my friend’s story that kids’ moods change and problems at home amplify; but, as a teacher, I can remain a constant force in my student’s life. I can remain committed to my career in teaching in order to benefit my students. By sharing the ups and downs of teaching, we are helping each other to keep things in perspective. We are here for the kids. We are here to affect lives. No matter how tough things get for me as a teacher, my students come first.
We joined Teach for America to fight against educational inequality; we teach to improve our students’ opportunities in life. Now that it is April, we have all zoomed along the first year teacher’s learning curve. Some of us have started seeing pay-off for all the long hours; others, including myself, wish we could start over knowing what we know now. What keeps me motivated, in spite of all these obvious shortfalls, is that I see and hear success stories from my fellow teachers. I might not have this teaching thing figured out yet, but another teacher knows more than I do. When Sunday morning comes around and the deep pit in my stomach returns at the thought of another week, I need only to seek out my colleagues, my partners in the challenge of educating our future. I am confident that as long as I am teaching there will be teachers who will inspire me, just as they inspired me when I was a student. Inspiration, it seems to me, comes from the camaraderie that we can establish together as professionals in a field that is unlike any other. We create change in the lives of our students, so we can just as easily change each other’s perceptions on any particularly gloomy or grueling day.

In the words of my earlier analogy: no matter how fast things might be coming at us along that endless highway of teacher experience, we can rest assured that another sympathetic soul is riding shotgun.

To Be a Traveler

"To be a traveler you must be willing to give yourself over to the moment and take yourself out of the center of your universe. You must believe totally in the lives of the people and the places where you find yourself, even if it causes you to lose faith in the life you left behind.

You need to share with them, participate with them. Sit at their tables, go to their streets. Struggle with their language. Tell them stories of your life and hear the stories of theirs. Watch how they love each other, how they fight each other. See what they value and what they fear. Feel the spaces they keep in their lives.

Become part of the fabric of their everyday lives and you will get a sense of what it means to live in their world. Give yourself over to them--embrace them rather than judge them--and you will find that the beauty in their lives and their world will become part of yours.

When you move on, you will have grown.

That is why we travel. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

Don’t let yourself become one of these people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveler has to take, but if you take them, you will never regret your choice."

What Teachers Make

Teachers make every other profession.

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?" He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a teacher, Bonnie. Be honest. What do you make?" Bonnie, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You want to know what I make? (She paused for a second, then began...) "Well, I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I make a C+ feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor. I make kids sit through 40 minutes of class time when their parents can't make them sit for 5 minutes without an I Pod, Game Cube or movie rental... You want to know what I make?" (She paused again and looked at each and every person at the table.)

I make kids wonder.

I make them question.

I make them criticize.

I make them apologize and mean it.

I make them have respect and take responsibility for their actions.

I teach them to write and then I make them write.

I make them read, read, read.

I make them show all their work in math.

I make my students from other countries learn everything they need to know in English while preserving their unique cultural identity.

I make my classroom a place where all my students feel safe.

I make my students stand to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, because we live in the United States of America.

Finally, I make them understand that if they use the gifts they were given, work hard, and follow their hearts, they can succeed in life.

(Bonnie paused one last time and then continued.) Then, when people try to judge me by what I make, I can hold my head up high and pay no attention because they are ignorant...

I MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

You can be better than T.I.

You can be better than T.I.

Yes, better than a multi-platinum rapper, songwriter, actor, and producer.

Yes, better than his awards for Favorite Rap/Hip Hop Male Artist and Album in 2007.

Yes, better than his upcoming prison time for felony charges.

Yes, better than the notorious "Rubber band Man" drug-dealer persona of his teenage years.

YOU can be better than T.I.

I only assert these points because T.I. would agree with me 100%. In fact, he said so himself today while visiting my school. Believe it or not, our principal had a community friend who was interested in having T.I. come talk to our kids: first, we expected him to make his surprise visit yesterday. When he didn't show, I almost swore off all things T.I.. Lucky for him, I have a very forgiving nature and decided that his potential appearance today was worth getting excited for.

At about 2:00, the all-call was made for an "emergency assembly" that every student needed to attend. The rumor had already leaked that T.I. was coming, so the kids were buzzing with anticipation. We had to wait a good ten minutes or so before anyone showed up. The news teams had their cameras staked out; we teachers tried to contain the students to their seats. When our principal finally welcomed him, the gym went absolutely nuts.

Imagine hundreds of adolescent girls screaming at the top of their lungs. Add in a few deep bass voices of our mature male 8th graders. Toss in a few squeaks and multiple by 10. You'll then have a rough estimate of how insane our gym was at the exact moment T.I. made his grand entrance. I was cool enough to be right in his path as he climbed onto the stage--so cool, that I had to step out of his way.

(If you visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's website--
http://videos.stltoday.com/p/video?id=3199390--you'll see what I mean)

T.I. spent a good chunk of time enlightening our students to the value of education. He drew several parallels between school and the real world. For example, T.I. doesn't enjoy waking up at 5:30 AM to get his work done much like our students don't enjoy getting up and coming to school. However, as T.I. reminded us, if we want to make something of ourselves, we're going to have to make sacrifices. There are always going to be things that we don't like to do, but to make ourselves successful, we have to do it anyway. T.I. brought up the case of the bum. The bum does whatever he wants, day in and day out. The bum has no responsiblity. He just stands on the side of the road, with his little cardboard sign and cup, without having to listen to anybody. Yet, T.I. asked, that bum was once in 7th grade. Did the then-7th grade bum ever say to himself, "Yes, I want to grow up and be a bum?"

Enter in echoes of adolescent laughter.

Of course, T.I. remarked, nobody truly wants to be a bum, but that's what you'll get if you don't make sacrifices and take advantage of your education. Teachers work hard to give you what you need in the real world and they don't get any benefit from giving you knowledge. Nobody comes back in twenty years and gives their teacher half of the salary they have been earning. As much as a person needs to sacrifice and get an education, no one can force you to do anything. Not even T.I. In fact, he's just saying this because he's experienced more than you have and he wants you to learn from his past. T.I. won't mention his impending yearlong prison term for federal weapon charges or his teenage drug-dealing years. But, anyway, that's besides the point.

The point is that the choice is yours. Whether or not you want to drop out of school at 16. Whether you want to play around in class. Whether you bring your attitude to class or leave it at home. Whether you stay in and study for a test, or go out with your friends to a party. Listen to what T.I. says, because education is the best thing you can give yourself. The choice is yours. T.I., of all people, brought his talk to a crescendo by having all the kids yell out together: "I CAN BE BETTER THAN T.I." He encouraged them to make that choice to sacrifice and to get an education--anything to put them on the path to becoming better than him.

All while T.I. speak, and for quite awhile after, I thought a lot about what he was saying and how the students were receiving it. I don't think I could have asked for anyone better to speak to my kids about being successful and working hard. Many of my students were attentive, eager to ask questions and to say that T.I. spoke with them. As I expected, I felt like I could say those same things as many times as I want as a teacher, but there's something different about a superstar on a soapbox. T.I.'s power as a celebrity goes far beyond the power I have in my classroom and it was great to see him using it towards positive ends. I can only hope that his message reached half of my students and that what he said will be something they remember.

I hope that, for once, a person's words can mean more than their actions. I want my kids to seriously consider what T.I. said. And, when they hear about him going to prison in the news, I want them to recognize what it means for themselves. If from no one else, I hope that they learn from his example and take the steps they need to get an education, avoid prison, and truly make something of themselves.

Even if it is a multi-platinum, award-winning rapper, songwriter, actor, and producer.

The Power of a Teacher

My favorite quote for teachers...how true it is!

I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It's my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.

-Haim Ginott

The Blueberry Story

A reflection on our nation's public schools from a keynote speaker, Jamie Vollmer, courtesy of my dad:

"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!"

I stood before an auditorium filled with indignant teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute.

I represented a Business Roundtable dedicated to improving public schools. I said that public schools were antiquated and that teachers and administrators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by a monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! Continuous improvement! TQM!

As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant--she was, in fact, a razor-edged, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."

I smugly replied, "People's Magazine chose our blueberry as 'The Best Ice Cream in America,' ma'am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"
"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.
"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.
"Superpremium! Nothing but AAA." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of the room, I could hear the trap snap. I knew I was dead, but I wasn't going to lie.

"I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's a school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"

And so my long transformation began.

I have learned that, unlike business, schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups, and they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But these changes occur only with the understanding, trust, permission, and active support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs, and the health of the communities they serve, and therefore improving public education means more than changing our schoools, it means changing America.