The Holiday Itch

Between Thanksgiving Break and Winter Break is one of the more challenging times for teachers. Over the past few weeks I have felt as if my students might explode, but the same goes for me. This Friday is our halfway celebration for Teach For America and I can't quite believe that much time has gone by. I am, admittedly, quite ready for a break!

My roommate and I threw a holiday party for all of our friends this weekend. Our apartment is completely decorated including my first self-purchased live tree! Since Charlotte is a completely new city for me far away from where most of my college and high school friends live all of my friends here are teachers. When we get together we swap a lot of amusing stories! As I said over Thanksgiving break my goal again will be to tell mostly the good stories (even though the bad ones are sometimes the most amusing). So whether you see me during break or we talk on the phone, remember to ask for the success stories, because as I am itching to have more time to sleep, think, and breathe I am also itching to share about the growth that my students are already making.

Teaching with Technology

Thank you to my sister for sharing another wonderful TED talk with me:

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education | Video on TED.com

Every Sunday I sit down to plan for the week ahead with a bevy of challenges in front of me. I start my plans guided by the upcoming assessment and standards from the North Carolina course of study that we are studying that week, and then from there I have a few big decisions to make: what part of the novel will we cover? How will we read this week; reading groups, read-aloud, color reading, etc.? How will I incorporate lessons on grammar? How will I incorporate writing, speaking, and listening as well as reading? How will I use data to drive my instruction for individual students? How will I differentiate for all of my different levels of learners? How will I use SIOP strategies, to make the information comprehensible to my English Language Learners? And finally, How will I use technology?

On our teacher evaluations, one of the standards we are evaluated on is preparing our students for the 21st century. I think about this a lot when I consider the state of America's schools, and I think that Mr. Mitra's talk is particularly interesting. I wonder if I could group my students in front of a computer and then allow them to take ownership of their learning. Although my students have access to a lot more technology then the students in this video, I do not think that this has made them any better prepared for the 21st century. My students can use google earth, wiki sites, email, etc. but whenever allowed time on a computer on their own they use it for social networking. I tried to channel this towards education through a great wiki site called www.edmodo.com, and it somewhat worked but they still are writing messages to each other on it in incomplete sentences that resemble text messages that I send when I am in a rush (and these are far from academic). I would like to find away to channel all of those challenges that I face every Sunday under the umbrella of technology so that my students are truly engaged with technology and learning at exactly the level they need to be taught at, but I wonder how to do this. Maybe I should ask for 30 Ipads for christmas...this may get the job done.

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.

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.