Mississippi Teacher Corps

Blog: Ten Months = Ten Haikus

bguest — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:18:26 +0000

Blog post from one of our first-year teachers…

August

The walls are falling

In around me I can’t

Handle this stress. Help

September

Slow and steady wins

The race is getter softer

Oh, hello there, LIFE

October

It is still blurry

Hazy memories of slogg-

ing through this unknown

November

Hey! A week off soon!

Thanks for a student who smiles.

And it’s my birthday

December

We watch movies, right?

Trying to work is futile.

But it’s short and sweet.

January

No longer new and

Terrifying but old and

So Exhausting

February

The sun sets at 4.

Parallel Structure saves me.

It’s easy (I think?)

March

Winter was short and

We’re starting to gel, (denial?)

Students…aren’t THAT bad

April

The state test is near

HOLD THE PHONE, this is all we

care about now. Sigh.

May

In May, failing schools

Show their true colors, chaos.

Is that a color?

Blog: Where I’m From…

bguest — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:02:45 +0000

Poem written by one of the second-years…

“Where I’m From”

Catherine Gray

I’m from Holly Springs, Mississippi

A dying town where we began our marriage

I’m from the rotting porch at Cedar Avenue

Clumsy dogs trailing bugs in the yard

Cats slinkin’ in and stridin’ out

I’m from shrimp etouffee at Michael’s

Chicken, yams, and greens on Sundays at Annie’s

I’m from English 11/12

A grotesque spectacle of human interactions

A land mine next to every desk

I’m from the most vulnerable parts of me blasted to pieces,

Splattered onto the laughing faces of–are these kids?

I’m the center of gladiatorial hilarity

I’m from, “M’Schmidt, why can’t you get some order in here?”

“Are y’all real teachers?”

“I don’t appreciate the way you been lookin’ at me all summer. You lookin’ at me like you don’t like me.”

“Smell my shoes.”

“You teachin’ today?”

I’m from my parking lot classroom next to the dumpster

Kids throwing backpacks on the roof

Hiding from the teacher behind cars

I’m from planning a lesson for two hours

Not being able to teach it because of senseless stupidity

I’m from sore feet and exhausted decisions

I’m from yelling at kids

A place of hatred and rage

I’m from meeting the end of my rope

Then holding on tight as it burns my hand for four more hours

I’m from $5000 in medical bills

Racing hearts and a stomach ache that will cut you in half

I’m from afternoons in bed staring at a screen

I’m from mornings when the sun does not exist

Groaning my way out of bed

Picking over nauseous eggs

Crying out the door

I’m from, “You mixed, you chinese, or you mexican?

Cuz if you mixed, you all nigga”

I’m from, “Ms. Gray is a bitch and she can suck my dick,”

I’m from “Do you believe in a black Jesus?”

“Leggo my eggo,”

“Stay on her good side or prepare to be destroyed”

I’m from hating kids

I’m from Willie Hunt’s curly, perfectly printed name

Rodney White’s word jumbles saying “Girl is food”

Dekeyshion asking for help to control his anger

I’m from Takerra, the embodiment of the word “No”

I’m from Saulsberrys, Davises, Richmonds, and Caradines

I’m from “The second year will be better”

Kitchen conversations with housemates on Stafford Ave.

Friday night margaritas at El Nopalito

Whiskey concoctions prepared by Maya

Evening walks up and down the hills of Hillcrest Cemetery

I’m from mornings when the sun still does not exist

I’m from counting down the days

Dreams of May 2012

I’m from The Mighty Groan and One Second Parties

Singing Beyonce with my students

I’m from Jonterious’s voluntary poems he wants critiqued

Kaitlyn’s curiousity and insightful questions about grammar

Kamiyah’s letters to the characters in her library books

The times when a whole row gets a problem right

“Oh yeah!”

I’m from, “Another one in the bag!”

“Cien dolares”

“Gray likes the M-O-N-E-Y”

“Team and Family, today the scholar will…”

I’m from the Mississippi Teacher Corps

My MTC Experience… The Violet Sippy Cup

bguest — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:04:55 +0000

One of the second-years writes about her MTC experience…

Chapter 1. Anger.

I cannot figure out why I am so angry. There is something squeezing my heart and my lungs stop breathing like a father with phantom labor pains. Absurd.

This anger, it suits me not. I am haunted by the words “I want my two years back.” Words spoken fifty times in February. Fifty lies. Like any ghost, the words are untrue, but by some mystery they linger. Even as I see through them clearly, know they’re not real, the persistence of the shape of that thought drives me to doubt. What is it that keeps them here? and why am I so angry?

Anger is not natural for me. I look back on the last two years and see an abundance of love, sorrow, numbness but not a lot of anger. Now it consumes me. I snapped at a student last tuesday. I felt rage. It was a first. I turned to the wall confused. What is happening? This fog, I have felt it before. It does not lead to good places.

_________________

Chapter 2. Memory.

I have exactly three memories from all of September, October and November of last year. I remember when I first realized something was wrong. I was in my car, parked in the drive way screaming and I didn’t know why. Then I couldn’t breathe and still I screamed silently. Days later I remember lying on the couch staring out the back windows. I think I lay there for a full 8 hours. I think my roommate tried to get me up and I couldn’t figure out why he was worried. I remember returning from work and walking straight, past my mother who was sitting the living room, getting in to bed promising that everything would turn to fog. I don’t remember her arrival or departure after a week’s visit. I don’t remember meeting with the psychiatrist for the first time. I don’t remember leaving my job on health leave or returning two weeks later to the love of my students.

I know that at thanksgiving that year I gave thanks for my job, not just for the paycheck but for the work itself. I know that before I was sick I had fallen madly in love with the classroom and the kids. I know from reading my blogs and from my friends accounts of our conversations. I know because their names patch the holes in my stupid bleeding heart. Lorenzia. Ju’Daryll. Curtwan. Jameika. Brittany. Cordarius. Jonathan. Je’terrica. Carlisa. Diondre. Brashala. I know that I had thoughts and feelings because just two months ago when the juvenile court system dissolved my last illusions of substance in high school education I promised myself that I still wouldn’t give up on teaching without first trying a different place.

I don’t know why those aren’t the things that I write about now… this experience has been so rich with people and love and desperate improvement. But somehow those stories elude me.

_________________

Chapter 3. Voicelessness.

My anger silences me. I have come to understand that my depression had roots that stretched back farther than MTC even if the triggers were here. I also now see that my memory lapse, the fog and numbness were my mind’s protective instinct and that they helped me get by just as much as my music, playfulness and apathy do now. I have made my peace with that aspect of the experience, made my disgusted peace with the mediocrity of first and second year teaching. I have no desire to make peace with the violence of how this school system distorts our humanity. What does anger achieve?

_________________

Chapter 4. Introspection.

With my memory so inadequately able to answer I turn inwards for an explanation. I was first aware of this present anger when I read the portfolio rubric. It seemed to demand a redemption that I am not prepared to offer. How have you grown? Painfully. Nonsensically. Purposelessly. Enormously. Alone. How has this experience informed your view of education? View of what? How will you use what you have learned in the future? I am still too much in the middle of this to acknowledge a future that is distinct from my present anger.

We americans are obsessed with our journeys and our soul-searching. Even our acts of selflessness are narcissistic. We ask ourselves what they reflect about our character. What have we learned? Is such introspection human nature or the self-indulgent by-product of the great American Illusion? In spite of such doubts, I worry that my students have less awareness of self. It is so hard to get them to acknowledge an independent thought even as they brim with life and individuality. Then again so much is lost in communication, who am I to say?

___________________

Chapter 5. Green Lights.

I think I can finally explain why I came to Mississippi. I came sit on the dock and stare across the bay at a receding green light. Gatsby was a fool and Daisy was unquestionably not worth it; yet there is something utterly alive about his adamant longing for a long since shattered dream. Even when he realizes the futility and shallowness of his pursuit he still stands on the beach gazing across the waters, bit in his teeth facing down Wilson’s gun. Langston Hughes asked about a dream deferred. Yes, of course they shrivel in the sun and yes they explode. Mississippi is as much a testament to that as Harlem must have been. Is it paradoxical then that I see rich white West Egg here too? I have felt that terrible stubborn longing, even if I can’t explain what I long for or why… and I suspect it will never leave me now.

_________________

Chapter 6. Necessity.

Am I angry like a spurned lover? I had come unassuming but wholly willing. I would have given more than my two years and 20 pounds, more than my relationship and assumptions… just for some scrap of meaning. But circumstance has made that physically impossible and utterly laughable. Nobody wants my competence here. They will say good riddance to my naiveté but then they know even less than I what we all long for.

I shared my portfolio with a dear friend who has been teaching kindergarten English in Japan for the past three years. She was struck by the commonalities between our experiences however disparate the environments and wrote:

“…another similar conclusion I’ve come to is the extreme dysfunction of English education in Japan [... ... ] the system is set up so that students succeed despite the system and not because of it. If they learn anything substantial about English at all it’s only because, for some reason or another, people care. The students care because, at least I have found, it’s in the nature of children to care. The teachers care because that’s why they’re teachers…or perhaps because the dynamic between students and teachers here are more familial so it’s hard not to care. And I care because….as bad as this sounds…I feel miserable when I’m doing something I don’t care about so I care. Not because I actually have any personal or vested interest in language education or even, to be honest, my students. They just happen to be consequences of having to care. But whatever the reasons for caring, the caring ends up being the same, does it not? ”

Am I angry because I am leaving or do I have to be angry so that I can leave? Yes, I think in the end our emotions, if genuine, eclipse their own necessity. You care, and I am angry.

_____________

Chapter 7. The Violet Sippy Cup.

It is my last time blogging on the second floor patio at Square Books. A white SUV just drove by with the windows open. A child in the back seat stretched her arms to dangle a violet sippy cup out the window. I knew immediately what was coming. I knew, not just because it was inevitable but because I distinctly felt the child’s reckless yearning from my bench above her. She held the cup there as the car paused for traffic and then pulled in to the rotunda. She held the cup there as the car accelerated to the end of the block and until I could no longer see her through the window. Then, just before it disappeared around the bend, the cup dropped. It bounced twice and then settled on its side in the middle of the road. A few minutes later the beleaguered parent walked back around the bend and stepped into traffic to retrieve the fallen item, but by then I had lost interest. I am that child. I am that child and nobody is going to pick up my sippy cup.

Blog: Success

bguest — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:02:37 +0000

One of the first-years writes about the factors needed for successful teaching…

First and first most a supportive, well organized administration is pivotal to a teacher’s success. The administration sets the tone in terms of the atmosphere and the discipline of the school. Having talked to all of my MTC peers, it always seems that those of us with the best principals are the happiest with our individual schools. I’ve been lucky enough to end up in a school with a supportive administration and it makes my job in the classroom so much easier. There are no unexpected, non-productive assemblies. When I decide to write someone up, I know that something is going to be done about.

Aside from external factors that can’t be controlled, there are personal qualities that are extremely important in determining a teacher’s success. One of those is flexibility. Even if you have a good principal, working in a critical needs school is still going to be crazy. Sometimes you have to be able to role with the punches. There is so much that is beyond my control, some much that is beyond the principals control that absolute rigidity just would not make sense. I have to be flexible and work within the system in order to get everything done that I need to get done.

However, while being flexible is important that does not mean one should come to school everyday flying by the seat of their pants. For me personally, extreme organization has been the foundation of any and all of the successes I have experienced this year. My classroom atmosphere is so highly procedurized from the second my students cross the thresh hold of the door until the second that they leave that I have greatly reduced my classroom management problems. In addition the room is neat and orderly and bright and colorful and designed to give students the maximum amount of space between desks possible. Judging my the number of times I’ve had students comment on how clean and neat or bright and organized my class room is, I think that has also impacted their willingness to behave. When the space looks like it is taken care of it makes you happier to be in it and less likely to disrupt it. Then, as I have gotten better and faster at planning, I have started to accrue more free time to use for myself and thus have become a happier person.

Blog: Delusion

bguest — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:55:26 +0000

One of the first-years writes about the three factors needed for successful teaching…

Delusion is a huge part of my life. If it weren’t for delusion, I wouldn’t have become a comedian. At all. Because, particularly starting out there’s so much failure, and amidst that failure you have to tell yourself, “It’s going quite nicely.” Because if you didn’t, you’d never get onstage again, you’d just be like, “I guess human beings don’t like me.”

-Mike Birbiglia

I recently listened to the show this came from—one-man play, rather—and I noticed some interesting similarities between myself as a teacher and Mike Birbiglia as a…human? (I’m working on that one). In this same story, Birbiglia describes his reaction to going onstage for his first paid gig (stick with me here. I promise this has a point):

They open the door and say, “Mike, you’re on.” And I turn around and I throw up on the sidewalk. ‘Cause my body couldn’t think of another plan. It was just like, “What do we do?! Let’s get rid of some food!”

Now, as some of you may recall, I have been plagued with some anxiety-induced puking. Unlike Mike here, this did not happen before my first day of school, although I was anxious. Rather, this has happened not once, not twice, but four or five times after longer breaks or even particularly restful weekends where I have relaxed and returned to my “normal” personality and my comfort zone. I like Mike’s description, because that is exactly what it feels like my body is doing. I wake up, discover that I still, in fact, have to go back to teach, and my body panics. For lack of a better plan, it empties my stomach in a rather forceful manner. Unlike having the flu or resulting from…ahem, over-indulging, this puking is almost benign. It happens, I generally feel a bit better, eat a little bit, and continue on my way. That low-level anxiety is always there, but sometimes it builds to that point where my body has no other plan.

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to blog numero dos: what three factors are most important to a teacher being successful? Are you ready? There are a plethora, but here are the three I’ve got for you today. Sure you’re ready? Here goes:

Consistency: Students can (and will!) talk about anything and everything you do. From whether you wore those pants yesterday to what you told someone about how you graded something to who you have given consequences to. This is possibly the hardest one for me to master. I constantly have a million and one things going through my mind and therefore miss lots of things that happen in my classroom. For instance, the student’s phone that vibrated in the library on Thursday that I physically reacted to (looked in that direction), but since I was in the middle of helping a student phrase a particularly tricky sentence in her research paper, it didn’t register that it had been someone’s phone until about ten minutes later. (And the student I was helping mentioned it to me).

Tenacity: The ability to not let the important things go. Teachers must have the zen-like ability to ignore many things said and done to them (students walking past and loudly declaring “We sho’ do need a new English teacher, ‘cause this one just ain’t cutting it.” I feel I should add that this same student had asked the day before if I was coming back next year, and was glad because she needed my help learning how to write a research paper). While simultaneously letting the little things go, teachers must not let certain things go. If a student does not go into the hallway right away, you must repeat over and over again, “Step in the hallway. Step in the hallway. Step in the hallway” until the student either goes or does something stupid enough to warrant a referral and/or a call to the office. Tenacity means puking the morning before school, gathering yourself, and continuing on anyway. I believe my background in distance and I.M. swimming gave me tenacity in spades.

And last, but not least:

Delusion: the ability to continue convincing yourself to keep doing something when all signs point to “abandon ship!”. (see also: Insanity: the act of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Not quite the same asDelusion, but close enough to cause some concern). Delusion and Tenacity are closely related as well.

As Mike Birbiglia said in that quote at the top, amidst all this failure—failure to plan adequately, failure to remain consistent, failure to reach all of your students, failure to take care of your mental and physical health, failure to turn in blogs, failure to turn in assignments written to your undergraduate standards, failure to reach out for help when you need it, failure to keep your composure when your students piss you off—amidst all this, you have to, on some level, tell yourself: “This is going quite nicely”. Otherwise you wouldn’t get through the day. You have to convince yourself time and time again that it does not matter what these students think of me, all that matters is that they learn. You have to be deluded enough to trust that, though it may not show now, you are making a difference to someone. You have to convince yourself to keep driving to school even when a deer runs out of the woods and hits the back end of your car. You have to convince yourself that letting a student back into your class after a 3-day suspension for shoving you is a fine idea because there is nowhere else for her to go. You have to convince yourself that standing between two of your male students as one climbs across the lunch table to try and fight the other is a good idea. And even after the one behind you gently moves you out of the way because he is afraid the other is going to throw a punch and hit you, you have to be deluded enough to move back in front of him. Just let that punk try and hit you when he’s interrupted your lunch for a shouting contest.

Yeah. Delusion is something I seem to have no shortage of.

My MTC Experience… Two Years Gone

bguest — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:17:21 +0000

One of the second-years writes about his experience…

Two Years Gone

Part One: Arrival

And you may think to yourself: ‘how did I get here?’ – David Byrne

On April 4, 2011, I return home from school feeling exceptionally tired. It’s been another trying day at school, another day of sisyphean effort. Today I go straight to bed and when I wake up, I am profoundly confused. There are two adults I have never met before in my bedroom: a man and a woman. I do not get upset, though; I feel peaceful and actually sort of happy. I look at them and say “hey.” Ana is there. She smiles at me and tells me to put on my pants, holding some bluejeans out to me. “Those,” I say, “are not my pants.” She furrows her brow momentarily and then unfurrows it to say “well, you can borrow them!” That suits me fine, so I put them on. “Hey,” I say, “they fit.” “Do you know where you are?” the man asks me. I look out the window and see a dogwood tree in full bloom, swaying gently beneath the sky. “I don’t know,” I say, and I smile, not concerned but a bit embarrassed. “What year is it?” he asks. There is a long pause as I look for the answer on the white walls, in Ana’s green eyes, in the palms of my hands. “The New Year?” I hesitantly respond. I know I am…wrong. “OK,” says the man, and nods at the woman. As I cross the threshold to the outdoors, onto a porch, led by these people I do not know, I realize this is my house – this is where I live. I look up into the dogwood again, and beyond it into the soaring blue skies. It is not until I am riding in the ambulance that I realize something is wrong. I begin to panic. The man puts his hand on my shoulder and murmurs gently; he is kind. His name is Mark. Finally, he tells me I that have had a Gran Mal Seizure.

Part Two: True Colors

“I’d thought, in June when I get to the top…and everybody leaves…I will come face to face with God or Tathagata [Buddha] and find out once and for all what is the meaning of all this existence and suffering…but instead I’d come face to face with myself…face to face with ole Hateful Me.” -Jack Kerouac

In May 2010, before I traveled to Mississippi, I believed I was devoid of anger and ill-will, even somewhat noble. I knew that I had my hang-ups, sure, but anger and hate were assuredly not among them. How foolish to think that emotions with that magnitude of energy and power could be so easily sidestepped or defeated. In retrospect, I suppose I could have slunk along for years, even indefinitely, without encountering the impetus that awakes these furies. I could have gone on thinking of myself as only kind and tender. And in a spirit analogous to that of Kerouac’s words above, I expected a consummation of my virtue in Mississippi; I expected to perfect my gentle patience, and to bring my reservoir of compassion to bear on the problems of teaching school. Unfortunately, though, or perhaps fortunately, the analogy with Kerouac goes further. Hear me now: my true colors have been exposed by little children. I am incompetent and cowardly. I am hateful, and I am angry. I have told students to shut up, I have told students they are full of lies, I have called students clowns and I have told them they should be outfitted with diapers. I’m lazy and irresponsible. There are a basic set of tasks that my job requires, and I do not complete these tasks. I am in conflict with myself; I cannot accomplish the things I set out to accomplish with energy and delight. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe I am kind and tender, too. And funny and smart and sexy – and I could go on. My point is that my experience in the classroom has complicated my relationship with myself. It has accentuated my shortcomings, and forced me to begin to face some of my elusive shadowy tendencies.

Part Three: The Vast Swamp of Mediocrity

Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects. – Paulo Freire

Other than the ongoing confrontation with the less savory aspects of my personality, the most disturbing experience I’ve had here has been witnessing the actions (and non-actions) of the adults in the school system. The fetor of failure wafts thickly from the hearts and minds of many of these adults. I have seen a teacher step out of his classroom into a hallway full of students, hold his index finger to his temple, and press his thumb down, mimicking suicide-by-gun. I have watched as a teacher told an eleven year old girl that she “would never get a man with a fat old booty like that,” and another teacher yell into a bathroom “ya’all get outta there before I stab somebody!” I have heard a teacher scream at a student to pick his head off his desk “before he leaves a black mark.” And these are only the nefarious tips of the proverbial icebergs – the things they allow other adults to witness! The apathy, the laziness, the incompetence, the unskillfulness, and the downright stupidity of many adults is at once terrifying and riveting.

To place arbitrary authority in the hands of many of these adults is a grave mistake. Most teachers I have seen in action or spoken to at any length actually prevent students from engaging in the process of inquiry, which Paulo Freire suggests is an act of violence. It’s not that students are chomping at the bit to inquire, at least not by the time they reach the sixth grade. It’s true that they generally find school abhorrent and inquiry an odious process; it’s hard to get them to ask questions or to consider anything you say. Indeed, they don’t even know how to ask questions, and knowing how to ask questions is the basis for education. But my suspicion is that most of our students have been brutalized by their teachers and administrators from the beginning. They have been taught that schooling is the same aseducation, which it isn’t. Often teachers conflate the two; often teachers have never realized that there is a difference at all. We teach our students that the purpose of school is to “pass” – to pass a test, to pass the class. Parents, who I suppose have been taught the same thing, are obsessive about their children’s grades but unconcerned about whether their children are learning anything valuable. I have tried, with little success, to champion education over schooling in my classroom. I have attempted this by reading a high volume of insightful, thought-provoking, and even subversive material with my students, and asking them a combination of focused and open-ended questions about the material designed to encourage them to discover meaning for themselves. It’s been a difficult task, and it has had admittedly little effect on many students. I believeI have failed most of my students. I have asked them to employ skills they did not have. I have asked them to read material far more complex than anything they’ve ever seen. I have neglected to keep track of their progress carefully, I have exercised arbitrary authority to force them to sit still and be quiet, and I have wasted many hours filling our time with nonsense because I either didn’t know what else to do or because I was too lazy to do it.

Part Four: The Mississippi Teacher Corps

I see “leaders” as those who understand how to ingratiate themselves to existing power structures, how to work the system and rise, whereas I see “thinkers” as those who are skeptical of the way things are, who are more interested in lobbing rocks at edifices rather than venerating them and climbing them. What kind of person do we want kids to become? What kind of people are in MTC? – Douglas Kenter

At the end of the day, my Mississippi Teacher Corps experience has…had very little to do with the Mississippi Teacher Corps. I am grateful to the Teacher Corps for accepting me into the program, and for obtaining me a position as a teacher. I learned valuable things at summer school, and from Austin Walker and Aaron Johnson. And I made a few friends, which was the greatest gift of the program – more of a side-effect, I suppose. Otherwise, the tasks and assignments of the Teacher Corps have been like so many mosquitos buzzing in my ears and nibbling on my ankles. As many have said before, and many will say after, the Saturdays that the Corps. claims are invariably a waste of inestimably valuable time, and in creating this waste the Corps. handicaps their own teachers. It is well understood that it is necessary to have a class-component, and that one of the main draws for the Corps. is the “free MA degree.” It is a source of constant surprise, though, that a better way has not been created, especially considering that, as mentioned, the criticism I give voice to here has been leveled consistently for many years. An aggravating and insidious element in the MTC experience is the fact that many of participants feel consistently mistreated and/or condescended to by the program manager, and this perception creates (or at the very least substantially enhances) a culture of negativity. I will not be so unreflective to blame the negative culture of MTC entirely on the poor courses and on Ben’s condescension, though. I am also consistently surprised at how many of the MTC teachers are so immediately and completely psycho-emotionally crushed by the challenges of the job. Many of us are all too willing (eager!) to fall into a pattern of cynicism, apathy, and general negativity, which renders us unfit for service. Yes, we are in impossible situations, and the work can be grueling (and I acknowledge that my position is one of if not the easiest any MTC member fills). Nevertheless, we tend to enter into the Vast Swamp with little more than a whimper. Most of us do emerge, at least in fits and bursts, but the self-congratulatory rhetoric of “nobility” and “making a difference” is not only delusional but ultimately insulting to those children we have failed. I’m certainly not saying that we only need to continue doing what we are doing with more alacrity and enthusiasm, although that would be better than continuing in apathy. I’m saying that we need to put our reputations and livelihoods on the line in support of the children rather than attempt to fulfill the expectations of the adults. I basically agree with the Douglas’s quotation at the beginning of this section: rather than ingratiate ourselves into these systems we should be standing outside of them in protest.

Part Five: Children

Luckily, kids go to school, and teachers spend most of their time with them. Thank God.

My MTC Experience… The Fifteen Most Common Words in My Blog

bguest — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:55:47 +0000

A second-year reflects on her two-year experience…

I present to you the fifteen most common words in all my blogs, revisited:

students
Moments hit you when you realize you’re just a blip in each other’s lives.
The end of my first year was incredibly anti-climactic. There was not one emotional, hugging, nostalgic, cathartic day to say goodbye to my students. A few of them finished exams here and there, so they didn’t have to come the last two days. The rest of them charged the buses on the last day of scheduled exams in a mutual wave of excitement and good riddance. Then a dozen trickled back for make-up exam day, and we sat around cleaning the classroom, putting together puzzles, and watching Kung Fu Panda. Then they ran away toward their summer.
In the middle of the year, they float from school to school, district to district. They come and go in a flash, and yet one student can make or break your day. One day a student could be the biggest disruption in the class, and the next day she brings you a sheet to initial saying that she’s returned all her books and this is her current grade.
On these days, they wander through the halls in jeans and flip flops with a parent you’ve never met or many times all alone. They knock on the door in the middle of your lesson and just hand you the paper. No words. You know what the paper means.
I never know exactly what to say in these interactions. “Have a good rest of the year.” “Good luck.” “I hope you like your new school.” “We’ll miss you.” Sometimes they say, “Thanks” and wander to the next teacher’s door, and sometimes they turn without a word and bounce giddily down the hall.

In my first year, a girl left my room cooly with one of these papers only to return a couple minutes later. Tears in her eyes, she ran up to me and threw her arms around me. “Bye, Mrs. Gray,” she got out. A real goodbye. The only real goodbye I’ve shared with a student.

think
All my thinking energy has gone to situations in the past two years. I spend very little time thinking about why I’m here, if I’m helping, and the future of education. What I used to consider “thinking,” thinking about ideas, is in very short supply these days. My thoughts are related to decisions. I answer so many questions during the day. “Can I go to the bathroom?” “Can I get a book?” “Can you tell me my grade?” “Can you help me?” “Can I call home?” My thinking goes to a million of these tiny decisions and the vast responsibility given to us to decide what is important enough to teach our students every day.
Sometimes I have been so overwhelmed by this type of thinking that the question, “Do you want oatmeal or eggs for breakfast?” is simply unanswerable. I have no more words.

day
Twenty-six days left as a teacher. Days have become a countdown in my teaching life. When I have morning duty in the gym, I have the same interaction with an older teacher every day. He strides through with a smile on his face and proclaims in a raspy voice, “Four days till Friday!” “Three days till Friday!” “Two days till Friday!” “Whew, we made it to Friday! That’s the life of an educator. We live for the weekends.”
I’m tired of living for the weekend. Counting down days cannot be my life.

kids
I work with sixth graders, so it is easy to see them as kids. For that I am thankful. In my first year, I allowed myself to become so angry and frustrated with my students. I would get so worked up that I would yell at them and be a participant in their antics. A particularly annoying and disruptive student stuck his tongue out at me one time, and I actually stuck my tongue out back at him. I may have been kidding and fed up with consequences, but it was a low moment. When I returned for my second year, rage still welled up within me when I saw some of my students from last year. Irrational rage. Sometimes I need to remind myself, “Remember, these are kids. You’re the adult. They need you to set the standard. They should have no emotional power over you in this classroom.”

much
Too much. This job is too much for one human to be expected to do thoroughly and well. How is it possible? Planning the lessons, managing the classroom, documentation, differentiation, calling parents, grading, meaningless paperwork, meetings with consultants, plans for failing students, “covering” the whole curriculum. Too much. How can teachers have any life at home and do their job well?

like
Listening to music with my students. Teaching them French words while we’re in line. Reading the hilarious and priceless stories they write. Hearing them exclaim, “You’re here! We missed you!” after I come back from being sick. Doing activities with them that involve cutting, gluing, and folding. Eating brunch with Mr. Gioia at 9:00 a.m. during our planning period. Seeing my third period class voluntarily bring their work to lunch to finish their assignment.

classroom
A very personal space. I spend several days setting it up at the beginning of the year, carefully arranging the rows and hanging posters on the wall. But it’s just a room until the kids arrive. Then it turns into a living, breathing creature requiring daily maintenance and taking on different moods. Each class gives my room a different personality during the day. My classroom is a peaceful portal to the school day in first period, the giant still asleep. Third period it tosses and turns in a lazy, restless space between activity period and lunch. Post-lunch in fourth period it quickly grows into a hydra, one giant body raging with 25 heads. Fifth period the monster divides and transforms into a den of delirious hyenas. By sixth period we’re an energized chorus devotin’ full time to floatin’ under the sea.

know
There are endless things I know now that I did not know two years ago: how to craft a lesson, how to get kids in a line, how to write a test, how to balance fun and order in class, how to get my students on my side, how to conserve paper when making handouts, how to blend my own personality with my teacher persona, how to go bed early. Then there are things I used to know that I have lost: how to give my undivided attention to one person, how to appreciate each day, how to be patient with the people I love the most, how to be delighted by silliness, how to feel like a young person.

school
In fourth grade I hated school. I had an elderly teacher who gave us a ream of worksheets at the beginning of the day, and we worked straight through it until the end. I dreaded going to school. I started getting migraines and waking up in the middle of the night. My mom would make me a cup of sleepytime tea, and I would drink it while watching Le Ballon Rouge or a re-run of Baywatch. Each morning was a fight to get to school.
My MTC experience has made me think about my fourth grade year, a miserable anomaly in my schooling. I’ve had that fourth grade feeling many nights and mornings in Teacher Corps. How many of my students have felt this way about school for the majority of their education?

want
Lazy mornings with breakfast in bed, to live in a place with young, educated people, more grocery options than Walmart, to walk my dogs every morning, to go out dancing, to process what just happened these two years, to feel light and spry, to be remembered by my students.

time
When you’re a kid, time seems expansive–at times a thick forest to swing through and explore and other times a vast desert to trudge across until adulthood. When I joined MTC, I saw a forest before me. I didn’t know how to get through it, but it stood before me rich with life, full of discovery and adventure. I trusted that I would find my way to the other side and that by the end, I would be able to identify all the plants, to pull myself up a tree at a moment’s notice, to wield a bow and arrow. I would have skills. I would finish stronger than I started.
In reality, it has been a desert. I’ve been stumbling toward the horizon, trying to prevent overexposure, conserving my energy, constantly in pursuit of that which will sustain me. When I look back on my two years, I can’t tell the difference between memory and hallucination.

feel
We train ourselves to feel less and less. At first you think feeling can be isolated. I’ll feel at home, but I won’t feel at school. Be careful. Not-feeling is a disease that spreads and penetrates every tip of your life. Either you feel everywhere or you feel nowhere. Choose carefully.

teacher
One day we’re magically given power and control. We go from being the passionate, procrastinating students to the all-knowing, line-in-the-sand teachers. We’re terrified but want to appear as if we know how to run a class and that we’ve been teaching adjective and adverb phrases for years.
Look in the mirror and practice saying, “No,” “That’s irrelevant,” “That’s a warning.”We don’t want them to see us flinch. “Can I go to the bathroom?” “No.”
We want to make them believe we don’t have an age. If we could only convince them we don’t have anything that would tie us to human emotion, such as divorced parents, a half-brother, a grandma who died of cancer, or a new husband. I am above human emotion because I am your teacher, and what you say does not affect me.
But guess what? Your students want you to be human. Your students are more likely to respect a human than a robot. Your students are more interested in a human. God bless the day when I was comfortable enough to give up a little bit of control and let them see that their teacher, the person who is supposed to be a role model, is human like they are.

Yes
Yes, I love my students.
Yes, there are days when I drive away from school with the windows down, favorite song playing, a silly grin on my face.
Yes, my classroom can be so comforting after-school, not just a room I sit in to get some work done but a place where I stay, blasting my music and singing to the dark hallways.
Yes, I absolutely love it when my students start to become familiar with one of my songs and sing the wrong words.
Yes, I enjoy making fun of them.
Yes, I am charmed when they show up at my door begging to come back in when they’ve already been to my class that day.
Yes, whenever I hear Gillian Welch I will taste mint juleps and remember my roommates sitting on our porch gazing at majestic magnolias.
Yes.

go
Yes, I will go. All the tears, the $5,000 in medical bills, the “Don’t make me go to school” mornings–those won’t follow me where I’m going. They will stay tucked away at the foot of a magnolia in a corner of Holly Springs or trampled under the football field at Marshall Academy.
All the raucous first-year walks back from lunch, the desks slammed against the walls, the “fuck you” notes found on my floor–those are already dead and festering in the dumpster, nothing more than a foul scent that wafts past my old classroom.
The train will come and go through Byhalia every day, its whistle audible when the windows are open on the sixth grade hall. The bell will continue to ring, ending a teacher’s planning period every hour, and the kids will rush around the corner too soon.
I will go, and I will thrive. After all, I got skills.