What Are You Thankful For?

Sometimes I must take a few steps back before I realize what is in front of me.

When you teach it is easy to get caught up in the daily labors of teaching. Over the past few days I have had the opportunity to visit friends in New York City, and friends and family in Philadelphia. As I reconnect with people who I have not seen in a long time, the teacher stories start to flow out. I am thankful for the people who listen to these stories, and the people who read my blog, write me emails, send me texts, call me weekly and help me stay sane in the midst of the daily insanity that is teaching.

As I take a few steps back from my life as a teacher my spirit to help close the achievement gap on the path to ending educational inequity is reignited. I also realize that in some ways I have made great gains with my students. We are reading our second novel now (Lois Lowry's The Giver) and I think 85% of the kids are actually enjoying it! My students responded to a very complicated discussion question on our class wiki about the importance of diversity last week, and this week they made connections between the movie The Truman Show and our book. Amidst all of these fun activities we are achieving mastery of our objectives for the year.

Before I left Charlotte for the holidays someone advised me to "remember to tell some good stories," and after a chaotic week at school I was not exactly clear on what those were, but after a few steps back it is clear that the good definitely outweigh the bad.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and thank you to my friends and family!

On Silence

TFA tells us that October and November is a time of deep hardship for a first year teacher. There is data that says on the continuum of stress for a first year teacher this is the pinnacle of that stress. I admittedly tried very hard to resist this, but I must admit they are right. Since my last post I have worked harder than I ever did before, and I am still working to keep my student's spirits alive.

In order to find some solace this weekend I decided to go back to my roots and attend Quaker meeting in Charlotte. In Quaker meeting silence is very important. As I was sitting in meeting I was reflecting on being silent, and the peace I felt when the only things that I could hear were small movements in the room. I realized that as a teacher I place a high value on silence as well. When I am able to finally get all eyes in my classroom back on me, and mouths shut I feel like I just completed a marathon. So on Sunday I thought to myself, why is this so important to me in class. I can completely justify its importance in my religious life, but in class it's really just about control.

I decided this week to let go of some of this control. We are working in literature cirlces this week and rotating through working on the computers to respond on a wiki site. This means that students are leading each other through reading comprehension, and using their own opinions to talk to me online. We started on Friday and it has been anything but silent in my classroom since then. I think that despite my loss of peaceful silence my students are learning. It is really exciting to see them using the wiki (I am using edmodo.com), and most of the students are doing an excellent job working together to read.

Although October and November are proving to be challenging (just like TFA said they would be) I am learning to find moments in my classroom even when it's noisy that bring me the same joy as sitting in a meeting house in silence. It is my goal to be better about posting, so I should be back to at least once a week very soon!

If you are a mentor, I am sorry that the emails have been infrequent; my students have been busy starting the new book and have not had a lot of computer time. Please look out for some more emails coming really soon. If you never got an email your student is probably struggling with their email so please contact me and I will make sure they send you an email this week.