Whatever it takes... become legendary

My students needed a little motivation this week to focus back in on their school work so I showed this awesome video. All I did was play this video and 3 others from the "become legendary campaign," and then asked them to write for 5 minutes about why I showed these videos. One of my amazing students wrote the following (I copied her spelling, and grammar to keep it authentic):

Become Legendary

Ms. (my name) is showing us this video because she wants us to see how other people worked hard so they can become legendary.

When I grow up I will become legendary. I will not let anything or any one keep me down. I have the power to be brave and strong.

I will an am going to be the first girl in my family (mom, dad, sister, brother) to finish school and start collage. I will acheive all of my goals because Ms. (my name) and everyone else cares about me and my education.

Once I get my grade or report cards I will see 40ty years from now and see what difference i made with me and my life.

I can, i am, and i will become legendary.

My teachers are giving me the tools to work hard, I cannot just stay their and do nothing. They gave me the tools for a reason, that reason is for something in the future, so I will need to caryy those tools every where I go, and those tools will help me get to my destiny.

I believe in me myself and i to become legendary. and set my goals

Waiting For...

This Friday Waiting for Superman opened in Charlotte. It was playing in a small art house movie theater in a swanky neighborhood. Teach For America got us tickets to go and see it with the rest of our peers. When I first saw the previews for the movie this past spring it brought tears to my eyes. My heart swelled with joy at the prospect of a movie that could really ignite national change in the education system. My expectation was that it would expose people to alarming realities that they were previously unaware of, and that suddenly American society would be united in a movement to end educational inequity.

To say the least I was underwhelmed. I was hoping to have the same feeling when I left the movie theater as I had when I watched Michael Moore's Sicko, the feeling of outrage at the state of our nation. In Teach For America there is a term "transformational leadership," and this is a term that I frequently share with other people because it is something that I feel is very important. I look to this term to help me describe what this movie was not, because I believe it was informational not transformational.

I listened to an NPR review of the movie this morning, and they had a lot of the same sentiments as me. One of the things they pointed out is that the only solution that the movie really came to was charter schools. While I believe that charter schools are an amazing development in the educational movement I know that charter schools are not a reality for all of our students as we saw in the movie. The ultimate message was that much of education is left up to chance for children. Although this is greatly upsetting, for some reason the way this was delivered did not leave me with the combined feeling of outrage and inspiration that I was hoping to leave with. I shared this with a colleague and she said, "well at least it starts a conversation," and all I could think to myself was well does it? I don't know that it does. After you watched it did you feel charged to join the movement to end educational inequity? I think that this movie had a ton of potential to shine light on the injustice that many of our children face in public schools, but instead it tip toed around the heaviest issues, interviewed some politicians, and brought charter schools to the forefront of everyone's mind. So all I felt when I left this was that I was waiting for something too, and that is some public image of the achievement gap that will transform Americans' thinking about the education system in our country.

Please share your thoughts on the movie! I would love to hear other perspectives.

Look Out For Student Emails!

To those of my readers who are mentors, my plan is that students will email you during class tomorrow! So please look out for their emails and make sure to respond. I've matched everyone up. Some people have two students, just let me know if you don't think you can handle two. Can't wait for you to virtually meet you mentees! Enjoy.

Educating and Education

Thank you to my wonderful sister who sent me this:

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

As I embark on my path to becoming a professional and leave school far behind I am realizing that in order to really be the best teacher that I can be I need to continue educating myself. I do not just mean that I need to go to grad school to get my teaching license and complete an MAT, but I also need to explore articles, books, podcasts, blogs, NPR pieces, etc. that are related to what is happening to me right now. In school I studied the sociology of education to some degree, and I was fascinated by the evolution and degeneration of the American school systems. So fascinated that I decided this is my cause, or this is my calling. It is my calling to work relentlessly to close the achievement gap in America's schools, and to work to truly offer an equal education to all students. I exclaim to my students at least on a weekly basis that it is not fair that they are far behind their high-income peers in their academics and that I am here because I believe this is an injustice and I care about helping them learn. This is something that gets me fired up, something that puts tears in my eyes, and something that motivates me on a daily basis, and something that just generally gives me chill bumps. So why would I ever let this passion and drive be consumed by the daily tasks that come with teaching and overwhelm me on a daily basis? Well teaching is overwhelming, I make tons of important decisions everyday, I appear (or at least attempt to appear) composed and motivating towards my students every minute I interact with them, I plan, preplan and lead a professional learning community. What I am trying to say is that a teacher does not just teach. So what, you might be thinking, so why in the world did you post this TED talk and why are you talking about the responsibilities of a teacher?

I believe that Ken Robinson is right. I think that schools have the potential to kill student creativity. I couldn't help but think of all of my ADHD students when he was describing the dancer. I couldn't help but think about how testing for some of them is only a source of frustration rather than a mark of success. But Ken Robinson, let me ask you this? How do I teach a classroom that is full of dancers who cannot progress through school if all they do is dance? So here's my challenge of the week (well really for the year): My challenge is to promote learning for my dancers, my singers, my artists, my talk show hosts, my doctors, my lawyers, my veterinarians, my athletes, without stifling their creativity, and I must do this while simultaneously teaching them state objectives, and ultimately testing their mastery.

At Cornell I frequently questioned my professors who could effortlessly theorize about educational issues, without ever having stepped foot in a title 1 classroom or any classroom at all, and today I continue to question them. It is all well and good to sit up on the top of the hill that is the Ithaca campus and look down on the world as if it is all a game, but the reason that no person has been able to solve the civil rights issue of education in America is because the theories, and the practice do not connect. So my goal is to educate myself everyday through different outlets in order to save the children's education. If you ever want to share articles, podcasts, etc. please send them my way, and help me resolve the civil rights issue of our time.

Goodbye Keys

So Wednesday I left my apartment around 6:40, went to my car, and realized I forgot my water bottle. I locked everything in my car, headed back into my apt, grabbed my water bottle, and locked my door....and locked my keys in my apt. As I stood in front of my locked door with just my water bottle, dorky CMS lanyard, and four flash drives I realized that I royally screwed myself. If I had locked myself in a desert I would be ok, because I had my water bottle, but nothing else! Panic set in very quickly. I had no phone, and only a water bottle. How in the world was I going to get to school!?

My first thought was that my PD lives in an apt below me, so despite the early morning I would go bang on her door...after banging on it for about 5 minutes I realized that a. she really probably couldn't help me and more importantly b. she was away at a conference! Panic struck again... I ran downstairs to the callbox and tried to call my roommate from it, and her phone was off.

So now for my last resort (well I tried a few more things before this, but they really aren't that interesting): I needed to find someone to help me. I decided at some point after running after the sounds of closing apt doors, that I would just wait in the parking garage, because if anyone was exiting the building it was most likely in a car. I was able to flag down a man in a big SUV and through tears explain to him what was going on. He immediately parked his car, and told me that we could try to break in (in retrospect this was probably a terrible idea, but I was in crisis mode). Well breaking in did not work (thank god) so then I borrowed his cell phone to call building services. They redirected me to a locksmith, and did you know that in an EMERGENCY you have to leave a message for a locksmith! Absolutely ridiculous! At this point I knew I was probably making this poor young man late for work, so I just looked up at him and asked, "what in the world should I do?" He offered to give me money for a cab and called a cab to the apt. building. I couldn't believe that this stranger was so willing to help me. I somehow made it to school 30 minutes early with two students at my door waiting for tutoring!

The moral of this story is that random acts of kindness still exist! My students loved hearing this story, and making fun of me about this for the rest of the week.

A Failure and A Success

Today my lesson was a failure. Sometimes we have to admit our failures, and I am learning to accept that. This is not to say that my day was a failure...just my lesson. I wanted students to have time to set up their blogs, so I broke students into three groups, they would be at the computers for 15 minutes each, and then they would switch. While students were at computers all other students were reading in pairs filling out a graphic organizer together... this did not work. It was chaos, mayhem, and my newest favorite expression: complete bananas. I accept this all and now it is time to charge head on towards tomorrow in order to overcome this chaotic day. Tomorrow students will not be in groups and they will have to be seated for much of the class time, we just need to regain some momentum in terms of our behavior. We are also going to do some positive fun activities in order to get our morale back on track.

Now for my success. At the end of today, I felt pretty under appreciated. I think that this was a result of my own low self esteem from being a new teacher and also from a chaotic day. As I was telling a friend about my day on the phone and strategizing for the next I found the note above. One of my students left that note somewhere on my desk under a binder instead of in the usual mail box. On the front it says "to: Miss Samuel from: u will never know..." and then on the inside there are all sorts of small words of encouragement. Every negative feeling that I had about today was erased because of that note. That note reminded me why I am here and why I am a teacher. I am here for the students.