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.

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.