Feeling Appreciated

A few months ago I decided to call the local art museum in Charlotte (http://www.mintmuseum.org/mint-museum-uptown.html) and see if they would donate tickets so that I could take some of my best students to the museum as a reward for good behavior and hard work. I requested 5-10 tickets and they gave me 20 student tickets and 5 adult tickets for free! The power of just asking was astounding to me in this situation. I could not be more grateful for their generosity.

Yesterday was the big day. I brought two other teachers and my TFA program director to help me out, and the students were all dropped off on a Saturday morning at the museum. The day went flawlessly. The students were so engrossed in the tour, answering really high-level thinking questions, and asking questions. Their appreciation seeped through the whole museum. For many of the students this was their first trip to an art museum, and for some of them their first trip to a museum in general!

Sometimes teaching is a thankless job, student progress towards objectives and mastery does not happen as fast as I would hope, and many days the comedy show that is my job ensues. Yesterday the students thanked me in so many ways, by being engaged, behaving appropriately, and being appreciative.

I believe that there are many reasons for the achievement gap, but one reason that I frequently come back to is the gap in cultural capital. Yesterday as I watched my students engage in such deep thinking simply motivated by a piece of artwork my conclusions about this factor in the achievement gap came to fruition. My other belief is that the culture of a student's surroundings teaches them how to act. KIPP schools (http://www.kipp.org/) pride themselves on having a culture of achievement and discipline, and the result of this is that students behave and achieve at high levels. At the art museum people were quietly milling around the art work, appreciating its beauty, and respecting the individuals around them, my students did the same.

America's schools have a lot of growth to make, especially our lowest income and lowest performing schools. I think yesterday I found a place to start, simply exposing students to what high income students are exposed to: a culture of discipline and achievement, and different types of cultural capital (art, music, dance, etc.). The students appreciate it.

Kids Will Be Kids

The life of a first year teacher is constantly exciting. At this point, I feel like I have enough humorous stories to host my own comedy show. My life as a teacher recently has been pretty crazy, but after some of the silly things that happened in my classroom this week I could not help but share.

1. Early this week as I was lecturing my students on creating introductory paragraphs I noticed that there was a very crumpled note being passed around my classroom. I quickly grabbed the note, much to the students' dismay. A bunch of my students' eyes were really wide as I was going to open it, but I didn't really think twice about it because this has happened before. As my students got started on their group work, I opened the note. Only to find that one of my students had drawn a pretty detailed naked picture. I almost guiltily looked up at my students, now my eyes were as wide as theirs.

2. Yesterday close to the end of the day my students were again working in groups, and I was walking around the classroom to check in on their progress. I noticed that one of my students had something very odd in his pencil case: powdered vagisil. Hesitant to interrupt their work I did not investigate further. About ten minutes later I pulled up a chair to work with a different group, accidentally turning my back to some of the students in the classroom. Chaos erupted behind me. Next thing I knew students had powder all over them and my classroom was a dust bowl of vagisil. Students with asthma had to leave the room. It was disgusting, chaotic, and absolutely hilarious. I could not do anything but laugh. None of them have any idea what vagisil is and I think that this was the best part!

Over winter break my sisters suggested that I write a partner blog to this blog called "Happy Hour with the Teacher," after this week I am seriously considering it.

Stay tuned!

Thank You John Legend!

Maybe this blog post should be titled "The Power of Celebrity Endorsements," but I think it will be even more powerful to publicly post my thank you letter to John Legend for joining Teach For America's Board of Directors and performing last night at the TFA 20th Anniversary summit with KIPP NYC's orchestra in front of 11,000 people. So here it goes...

Dear John Legend,

Your performance last night brought tears to many peoples eyes, and it was not solely because you are an amazing artist, or because the music you were singing was so powerful. Instead I believe that it was because you truly took time to understand the movement that is TFA and the impact that the organization has the potential to have. For this, I thank you. In order to make long term change in America's public schools every single person in America must feel the same understanding that you showed last night. You powerfully addressed the notion that we are doing an injustice to our children by offering so few opportunities to children in poverty. I think that Waiting For Superman was a small foot in the door in introducing this national issue to the public, but with endorsements and understandings like yours from yourself and other celebrities we could really begin to make transformational change. Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA, speaks about the importance of Transformational Leadership. People who are transformational leaders, not only lead people in a direction towards positive change, they mobilize people, they are innovative and they start the ripple of change simply by being an empowered leader. The story you have to tell about your own education, and journey towards stardom is a powerful one, and I believe that with your support great changes can be made. The conference yesterday consisted of 11,000 people who are all working towards a common goal, or who at least believe in that goal. Some of them, however, have been working towards this goal for 20 years! With your help, and the help of national figures in spreading the importance of the movement, we CAN make a difference with a greater sense of urgency. So thank you John Legend, from the bottom of my heart, for helping a cause that I think is one of the most important of our time.

THANK YOU!

Thank you so much to my friends and former teachers for your support! I am almost halfway towards my goal. In less than 48 hours we raised $490. You all inspire me.

$526 to go!

Books for my classroom on Donors Choose!

Hello All!

I found out in the beginning of the year that one of the books I am required to read with my students is Lord of the Flies. This is a super challenging book for 6th graders, but I think if I break the content down for them, and strip away some of the challenging vocabulary it can be done! It cannot be done, however, in the amount of time allotted if my students do not spend some of the time reading the book at home.I am given a class set to work with (roughly 30 copies) and that is all. So in an effort to level the playing field, and give my students a similar experience to their high-income peers I recently submitted a donors choose request for 87 copies of the book. This will cost roughly $1016. Since last night at about 10 p.m. thanks to a few wonderful friends I was able to raise over $250. Now we only have $732 to go! Ideally I will raise all of the money by the end of next week so that the order can go in and the books will come in time. This means I am asking for money with a strong sense of urgency! Your support in the past few months has been wonderful, you all inspire me on a daily basis. Please donate today even if it is only enough to cover the cost of one book ($8.71 with no taxes, shipping costs, etc.)! Thank you again and again.

Here is the link:

http://www.donorschoose.org/zsamuel

Shaanti

At the beginning and end of a yoga class that I took a few weeks ago we chanted: Shaanti, Shaanti, Shaanti, or in translation Peace, Peace, Peace. As a Quaker the word "peace" resonates so strongly with me that I feel like a certain part of me embodies every ideal of peace. Starting a yoga class this way did not quite lead to enlightenment, but it made for a pretty wonderful practice.

Tonight I had the opportunity to go see an amazing speaker, who is also a peace activist. Charlotte Friends School brought Colman McCarthy to speak about Peace and education. If you are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colman_McCarthy

During his speech he asked the audience, "how many of you had a peace studies class in school?" No one raised their hands (well, to be exact I half raised my hand thinking back to Quakerism in middle school). He then asked, "Why do we focus so much time talking about war in school instead of peace? Why not teach classes on peace in school?" So then I questioned my self, "why don't you teach students about peace?"

Mr. McCarthy also quoted Mother Theresa in saying, "We will not all be called on to do great things, but we can still do little things in a great way." (I may have butchered this a little, and I apologize for this.) Here lies my challenge, I will challenge myself to take small steps towards educating my students about peace. In a culture of violence, violent behavior, and constant misbehavior I will challenge myself to infect my students with peace, and non-violent conflict resolution. The reason I will do this is because it is a very important part of myself that I should share with my students. Everyday they share their bright minds with me, and this is part of returning the favor! McCarthy told us, "It's better to build a peaceful child than re-build a violent adult." So it is my civic duty to begin building peaceful children.

Shaanti, Shaanti, Shaanti

Trial and Error

The first year teacher's vision of his/her classroom so vividly captured on the front page of the NYtimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/education/11class.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

On my second snow day this week (Southerners are baffled by the snow) I picked up my NYtimes only to find this article on the front page. Although the students are younger, and the layout of the classroom is quite a bit different than mine, I could not help but feel that the life of a first year teacher was clearly painted out in this article. Just last week I found myself attempting to give directions to a chatty bunch of 6th graders only to start the music (my cue for them to work) and find that they were all still staring at me wondering what it was they should be doing.

This feeling of empathy, however, is not what inspired me to blog today, it was actually the idea of trial and error that the students featured in the article are subjected to on a daily basis. I think that there is a large part of teaching that is about trial and error, because you are constantly trying to figure out what really works for your students. Nevertheless there is also an element of consistency that is crucial to your students' learning. I think that it is really admirable that the people who started this school went out on a limb to give something new a try, but I also feel that it is not fair that the subject of the educational experiments that so often happen today always have to be the students.

In my own classroom there is an element of guilt that comes with my experiments. I worry that while I am still trying to figure out what really works student learning is not actually happening. Luckily, my most recent experiment has been somewhat of a success. My school sent me to a Peak training before break so that I could learn some new methods and bring them back to my classroom. One that seemed the easiest and most effective to implement immediately was the use of music in the classroom. I use music as a "launch pad," so I constantly say "When the music starts" while I am giving directions. The result is actually pretty great, I find that I am happier because there is music instead of screaming children filling the transitions and my students move more quickly from one task to the next.

In my trial and error I adapted something for my classroom that had proven success in classrooms of the same racial and ses make up as my students. In the article, however, their adaptation was from students of a completely different age group, and ses group. I worry that when we proceed with trial and error experiments like the example in the article we are actually harming our students' academic gains, because even if it works out in the end (5 or 6 years later) you still have students who have been part of the experiment and who have not been learning. There needs to be a way for educational reform never to produce any types of disadvantages for the students, even if some students may benefit at the end.