Today marks my 8th day in the classroom as an urban educator! Within the first two weeks, I experienced all of the craziness of schedule mistakes, mis-communication from administration, and new classes beginning on the second week (yes…our schedule was switched and we began a brand new class on the second week of school…), but the most amazing part of the first two weeks was my wonderful students. So far, we have had insightful discussions about the goodness of life, whether or not certain wrongs are unforgivable, and whether or not hate speech should be regulated. I’ve been amazed by how much students enjoy sharing their opinions on topics such as philosophy and politics. Not only do they enjoy sharing their opinions, they have very good opinions to share!

However, I’ve also been amazed by how low skilled some of my students are. In reading their reflections and grading their pre-year assessments, I’ve recognized a huge gap in my students’ skills and knowledge. On their practice ACT exam, the average score for my seniors was a 13. I definitely have my work cut out for me this year.

As a teacher, I have become a person of influence in my students’ lives. They want to know my opinion about everything from movies to religion. Furthermore, my opinion about who they are matters to how they see themselves. Today, the class was participating in a Socratic seminar about The Kite Runner. All of the students had written a reflection and I was walking around the room, monitoring who was contributing to the conversation and who was zoned out. One of my students, M, has a lot of behavior problems and is constantly distracting other students. I walked around to his desk, asked to read his reflection, and whispered to him, “You know, this is a really good reflection. You should share this with the class!” Less than a minute later, M raised his hand to contribute his opinion with the class.

Later in the discussion, I walked to another student, S, and asked to read his reflection. S is always quiet during class, and I know that a lot of the time he checks out of the discussion, even though he’s very smart. I read S’s reflection and said, “S, that’s an awesome opinion. I know that everyone else would like to hear it too.” Once again, a couple minutes later, S raised his hand and contributed his opinion to the class–which everyone clapped and cheered for, because it was really good.

Lastly, during a debate we were having in class, one of my lowest students, R, was having a hard time grasping the argument of the reading, so I read it with him and the rest of his group. I asked R to paraphrase the paragraph that he read and then asked him to pull out the argument. With just a little bit of prodding, he articulated a well-crafted argument. In many classes, R would have not contributed his opinion, but today he chose to stand up three times during the debate and argue his case.

I’m learning that everything I do in class has an effect on my students–everything. I have to choose to be intentionally positive with my students, vocalizing their strengths and when they do things well. From what I’ve seen, students respond so well to positive praise, even the kids that are the hardest to reach. If these kids can start to see their self-worth in the first two weeks, imagine where they’ll be in the first two months!

I had my very first crash and burn moment as a teacher last week.

And, technically, I’m not even a teacher yet.

I’ve taken the last week to reflect and ponder about my utter failure in the classroom.

Last Wednesday I was reviewing morning work with 75 6th grade students. Most of the problems were multiple-step math equations, so the constructivist in me instructed students to explain how they arrived at their answers. The very last question for the students was a proportions equation that asked students to estimate how many inches, meters, or yards a given length in feet would be. The question had four very complex answers, so I asked the students to practice eliminating the incorrect answers. Students were pretty confused, so I figured that clearly the best thing to do would be to have one of them try to answer it on the board in front of the rest of the group. Needless to say, the student was thoroughly confused, which also confused me, causing me to forget how to answer the question. After babbling for a good minute, I ducked out and asked the regular teacher to show the students how to answer the question.

Sigh.

What happened to me?

I’ve taught before.

Quite a bit, in fact.

I feel confident in front of students.

I normally recover quickly when I make mistakes in front of the kids.

I’m fun, for heaven’s sake!

So what did I do wrong?

Reflecting back on this experience in the classroom, when I found myself in a complete rut, I completely panicked. My nerves overtook me and I couldn’t find my words. Partially, I was nervous teaching for the first time in front of a group of teachers who already knew what they were doing. Partially, I was nervous teaching in front of my MTR colleagues who I assumed expected me to be good. Partially, I was surprised by not catching my mistake quickly and fixing my error, and the element of surprise threw off my ability to recover.

After I humbly walked back to my seat at the side of the room, my thoughts were racing. I’m never going to be good at this. I’m so stupid. Why didn’t I do it right? What if the students walk away from my class less smart than they came in? Can I really do this job?

As I was reflecting on my initial panicked thoughts, I realized that this was the first time in the classroom that I utterly failed. While working at Breakthrough and at MESA, I had made mistakes before and said wrong things that I had to later correct, but this was actually the first time that teaching was really hard for me.

So, THAT’S what it feels like! The feeling of overwhelming insecurity. The feeling that you’ll never be able to do your job right. The feeling that your students are on the tipping point of overtaking you.

That’s it.

Despite the fact that I made a huge blunder in front of my fellow residents, professional teachers, and a myriad of 12 year olds, my confidence was only temporarily shaken. I know that I have so much to learn before I am an excellent teacher for every student in my classes.  I’ll probably continue to fail in certain ways, but I am confident that those failures will only make me stronger and wiser.

Being humbled really hurts. But being humbled also causes you to grow.

T-Minus 12 days until my first official class!

by Janessa Jordan

For the past three days, I (and my other 26 classmates) have been an active fly on the wall at the KIPP DIAMOND Academy new student orientation. All of the KIPP students attend school for two weeks in the summer, and the new KIPPsters, ranging from grade 5-8, have two extra days of orientation before the returners start summer school. On our first day of KIPP orientation, the air conditioning was broken, so 200 students, roughly 50 adults, and all of the admin staff was sitting in a hot, sticky, auditorium for four hours.  KIPP focuses heavily on structure, community, and consistency. For the first two days, all of the new students were directed to sit on the floor, in rows, SLANTing (Sit up, Listen, Ask and Answer questions, Nod, and Track the speaker), while practicing math, reading, social studies, and science problems with the teachers. All of the KIPP students are expected to come to school with their homework completed, with the heading written perfectly. If students come to school with incomplete homework or with incorrect heading, the students’ parents are contacted by the teachers and the students sit separately at lunch to finish their work–a “working lunch.” Students are even expected to line up silently and uniformly to the bathroom, waiting for the rest of their classmates to use the restroom, all while standing quiet and still, hands at their sides, looking ahead until the other 100 or so students finish their restroom break.

One of my personal teaching goals is to deconstruct the classroom, so as to let students become the beacons of their own learning, rather than solely regurgitating information from the authority figure (the teacher). I believe that students need to be taught to be self-disciplined, creative, and assertive, which I believe isn’t being taught in urban classrooms today. Furthermore, I believe that knowledge is a fluid entity that isn’t a mere nugget given from the teacher to the student, but rather an ongoing process of construction and transformation that combines experience with information–tension is the real root of learning. Thus, all of the structure and uniformity made me uncomfortable throughout the first two days. Why was it so important that the students sit on the floor without talking? Why were the students subject to long hours of sitting and engaging, SLANTing and working, all while being still? What were the students really learning from this experience other than to do something simply because an authority figure told them to?

Today was our third observational day. This was the first day that all of the returning KIPPsters came to school to join their classmates in summer school. As soon as I walked in, I was greeted by two smiling 8th grade KIPP students who welcomed me into their building. Their building. Later, the students all stood the chant the school’s mantra. I don’t remember the whole cheer, but the last part of it was a call and response where the teacher yelled, “Today is who’s day?” to which the students replied, “Our day!” “Who’s day?”

Our Day!

The students broke up into smaller learning academies for their academic classes and I was assigned to the sixth graders. Their writing assignment was to read the Memphis City School statistics regarding rates of graduation and college readiness.

67% graduate high school

24% enroll in college

6% of students are college-ready

Students were asked to respond to these statistics, choosing one, and responding as to why they believed these statistics were true. Then, students were asked to write about ways that they would make sure that all 100% of KIPPsters would graduate from high school, college ready, prepared to change the world.

6th graders.

These students are truly learning to own their school, their educations, and work to change their peace of the world. Although I haven’t given up my  deconstructionist philosophy, I’m looking forward to learning all the KIPP has to teach me about running a school of high expectations and high student achievement.

It’s official. I’ve been KIPP-notized.

by guest blogger, Nancy Wang. Nancy just finished her first year with the UCLA Graduate Teacher’s Program. She taught AP Language and English Comp at a high school in Compton, Los Angeles.

Having just finished one school year in a teaching program that strongly emphasizes reflection, I have spent many long commutes thinking about my identity and my goals as an aspiring urban educator.  After five months of planning lessons, grading papers, and pushing, challenging, demanding, coaxing, cajoling students to work and to learn, I am no master teacher, but I think I have at least gained some insight into the novice teacher experience.

One aspect of teaching that I have spent some time in reflection is the issue of teacher motivation.  I am not talking about the goals and philosophies that, as aspiring teachers, we articulated for our various applications and interviews, but the inner desires that drive our day-by-day teaching decisions.

See if any of these teaching “goals” resonate with you:

• Be every student’s favorite teacher
• Be seen as a “cool” teacher
• Have every student tell you how much you changed their lives
• Gain the ardent admiration of your fellow teachers and the administration
• Lose the ardent admiration of your fellow teachers and the administration because they fear your brilliance and passion
• Work yourself half to death, only to come back and have all of your students score ridiculously high on some standardized test, regaining everyone’s ardent admiration
• Then, of course, have a movie made about you

As silly as these goals might sound when explicitly stated, I think many novice teachers, myself included, implicitly and instinctively gravitate towards them as the benchmarks of urban schooling success.  After a semester of student teaching, I have realized how frequently I fall into the trap of the above pattern of thinking, guiding my teaching decisions by popularity rather than principles.

For example, my own inconsistency lies at the root of any difficulties with classroom management.  While part of the cause of being “too soft” on students comes from a desire to be kind, if I am completely honest with myself, the deeper reason is that I do not want their resentment.  However, if I truly cared for them and sought their best, I would firmly hold them accountable for their actions, even if they misunderstand and resent me.  Another example of how we can neglect principle for popularity is the issue of trust.  Sure, we all want our students to trust us, but what are we more concerned about, that we have our students’ trust, or that we are trustworthy?

Last summer, The Washington Post published an insightful Op-Ed piece entitled, “Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can’t Stay.” (August 9, 2009).  In this column, the author admits that she went into teaching because, like many others, she had “fallen in love with the idea of the job.”  She writes, “Urban classrooms struck me as seductively gritty.”  Four years after she began teaching, she was ready to leave the profession.  In her astute analysis of why teacher turnover is so high, especially for young, eager recruits, she writes:

“…[S]ociologists Neil Howe and William Strauss characterize the members of my generation as “engaged,” “upbeat” and “achievement-oriented.” This is why we become teachers. We seek to challenge ourselves, and we excel at pursuing our goals. Howe and Strauss go so far as to call us a “hero generation.” Our engagement also explains why we are leaving the classroom. We are not used to feeling consistently defeated and systemically undervalued.” (emphasis added)

This quote is a sobering reminder of the danger of those unspoken aspirations, where the end goal is my own glory and not my students’ good.  So as I anticipate my first year of full-time teaching (that is, once California starts hiring teachers again), I will enter the profession with this conviction—to be guided by principles, not popularity, to teach not for societal accolades, but for the One who will ultimately say to me, “Well done.”

by Janessa Jordan

This morning, I was awakened by a new text message from one of my former Breakthrough students, J. “Ms. Jordan–I asked my mom if I could stay in Miami this summer! I’m going to Breakthrough! Are you going to be teaching?” This text message warmed my heart and demonstrated the importance of forming relationships with students.

J was one of my first students at Breakthrough in my 7th grade Biology class. Looking back at that summer teaching, I had no idea what I was doing! I was lucky that I was a creative, friendly person, which was helpful to create engaging activities for my students (slam poetry about DNA!), however the actual material that the students learned was utter rubbish. At that time, I had very little teaching experience and even less science experience, so J and his classmates had to endure my relatively horrid instructional practice. I let one of my students read Twilight in class because she always answered her questions correctly. I had a student with a learning disability and was inconsistent about modifying lessons to adapt to her needs. And here’s the best story: one time, a student asked me, “Miss  J, what’s a protein?” I panicked and answered, “Well, um…it’s a little message that your body sends itself to do things….” Sigh. Those poor children!

Even though my classroom instruction was less than spectacular, I dedicated a tremendous amount of energy and heart getting to know my students–specifically, my students’ “literacies.” By “literacies,” I mean the knowledge that my students came to class already experts on. These literacies ranged from freestyle rapping to chess to slang words. Each one of these literacies demonstrated competencies that my students taught me throughout the summer. By learning these literacies, I was able to form connections with students and be their student.

J and I connected over music. He was learning how to play the drums (from another Breakthrough teacher) and would drum in the background of my guitar-playing. During lunch or after class, I would ask him to show me how to do some of his drum riffs, and supported him during the end of the summer performance when he and the rest of his class performed. This past summer, he started playing guitar too!

When I think about my value-added that summer, it didn’t come from excellent instruction or leaps in student progress, but by working extremely hard at forming interpersonal relationships with my kids. Tight enough bonds that those students still feel comfortable contacting me today and talking to me about their lives, two years after my initial teaching them.

J’s text showed me three things today: a) J is excited about learning, b) he wants to communicate that to me and c) being his student helped create an important bond that still lasts today.  I’ll continue searching for ways to be taught literacy by my kids.