I Never Thought I'd Say This, But...

...it's time to go back to school. I am actually almost running out of things to do with my time, besides plan for school, because there is always more to do when it comes to that. But still. I kinda miss my kiddos, and having some semblance of a normal schedule in my life. Not to mention that too much money has been spent on going out, food and wine, and such in order to fill the time void. Let's hope Monday night's snow does NOT force the SDP to close the district again.

Snowpacalypse!

In case you've been living under a rock and never see or hear the weather report, we had a snow day today because Philadelphia got buried under almost 30 inches of snow this weekend:

Our backyard from my 3rd floor window
Somewhere under there is our walkway around the back of the house

Some kids (or adults) even made a very realistic looking igloo in the backyard of the apartment building down the street. Basically, for a snow-lover, it was an awesome weekend, and it is even awesomer because I got today off.

Snow days as a teacher are way more awesome than they ever were as a kid, especially when you find out the night before that you don't have school the next day. I know I was excited as a kid to not have school but as a teacher, snow days are like a gift from the heavens. Don't get me wrong, it definitely messes up my planning and its a day that my kids aren't learning, and that makes me frustrated, BUT they're awesome because they're a day that I didn't plan to have off, and therefore actually feel like I can use to take some time to myself. Over the course of the week, I prioritize my work so that I know what has to be done on the weeknights because it is immediately necessary for school, and I plan to do things like grade major papers and lesson plan on the weekends. I planned for enough things to do in 2 days this weekend, so having an extra third day off means that this is about as close as I can ever get to unadulterated free time. Plus it means I get to play in the snow (snow angels, anyone?), which is especially fun with roommates from the south who never did this as a kid, and this time we actually got to enjoy the Superbowl.

Of course, it is back to school tomorrow, but a four-day week doesn't look so bad- and we have a three-day weekend next week :)

A Whoa Moment, A follow up

The same student from my last post spent this morning in homeroom, when he was supposed to be doing his silent sustained reading, debating the existence and purpose of religion. His argument was that religion only existed to give scared people something to hang onto because they don't understand what's going on in the world, and that sometimes people in power take advantage of religion to get people to do what they want, but that he doesn't think there's actually some kind of higher power. Religious debate aside, I feel as though I may be teaching Karl Marx reincarnated. Seriously though, wherever this student came from, I want more of him.

A "Whoa" Moment

This past week, I was observed by my Teach For America program director. I always dread seeing the email from him in my inbox saying its time to sign up for observations, because I hate, hate, hate being observed. I love getting feedback to make my practice better, but if I could somehow be observed without ever having to know I was getting observed, it would probably be a whole lot better. I hate having someone else in my room watching me- which is odd, I suppose, for someone who did a ton of theater when she was in middle, high school, and college, but that's just the way it is.

Anyway, I asked my PD to come into one of my classes that behaviorally can go either way- some days they are angels and some days they are devils (oh 7th grade boys!)- but more importantly, they had hit an academic plateau from which I seemed unable to raise them, and I needed help figuring out what to do next. It was good to have my PD in my room, because he helped me with some strategies for that, but that's not really what I was so happy about. What I did get psyched about was when we had our debriefing meeting, and he mentioned that he had talked to one of my students to ask a few questions about what we were learning (it was a lesson on Egyptian mythology and the afterlife), and then he asked the BIG question: Why are you learning this? Why is this important?

There are times when I dread this question from my students, because sometimes the best answer I can give is: It's in my curriculum, so I'm supposed to. Obviously, I come up with something else, and if I really believe in my objective, there really IS a reason they are learning it. However, my students rarely see things this way-there is always someone who complains about how irrelevant the Egyptian god Osiris is to their lives today. Now, I happen to love mythology, and could go on forever about why this is important culturally, but this is sometimes (read: almost always...) lost on 7th graders.

However, my student blew my PD (and me, when I heard about it later) away with his answer to this question. He said that we still have a concept of the afterlife today, and although its different from the Egyptian concept of the afterlife, there are a lot of similarities and it's important to know this so we can see where I beliefs came from...

I would like to think I taught him this and he will now go on to deeply love history and the social studies as a way of learning about why we are who we are today and whatnot. However, I fear that may not be the case: when I asked this student what he said after I noticed them talking, he said "Oh, he asked me some really random question, but don't worry, I BSed some kind of answer and made you look good." Small steps, I suppose :)

One Week Down...

We are back at school this week, and what a week it has been. Nothing was harder than getting up at 5:45 on Monday morning after not having had to do that for several weeks. However, I was excited to go back to school in many ways, because I made several resolutions that I am hoping are going to help me become a better teacher. Sticking to them, though, has been less than easy.

More than anything, I am trying to be a more engaging teacher. I have heard from various sources lately that, while my lessons are solid and I set the bar high for my students, I am not good at adding the fun into learning. I am surprised at how difficult I am finding this to do- I guess as a student who always wanted to learn, I didn't need to have teachers that used "gimmicks" to get our attention- but with my students I really do need to. This week, I added music- Revolution songs- to my lesson on the first battles of the Revolutionary War, and it went over with mixed results. Some of my students still thought it was boring, even though I was excited for it. I guess the bottom line is, I really need to start going out on a limb to get my students engaged and excited for work in class.

Bring History To Life For My Students!

Bring History To Life For My Students!

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Maintaining that Work/Life Balance

I always thought that after I graduated college and didn't have constant reading to do anymore, I would have so much more free time.

I was wrong. Probably took the wrong kind of job if I want free time.

To be honest, this normally is not a huge issue for me. I'm not unhappy with spending a good amount of time planning for my job, as long as I feel like I'm being productive. However, over the past few nights, after my roommate and I have planned to go to the gym together 2 or 3 times and due to a conflict in her schedule or mine, we have not gone any of those times, its starting to get to me. I really like teaching ( I almost typed that I love it, but then I realized I don't know if our relationship is that strong yet...), but I don't understand how people do this and have spouses, kids, pets, time to go out on weeknights (like several of my 30ish colleagues still do).

Maybe I procrastinate more than others. Maybe its that I don't really love my textbooks so I create and find a lot of supplemental materials. Maybe its that I have 3 different classes I'm planning for, or maybe I'm just really bad at time management. Anyway, I'm not sure if this post truly has a point, except to say that I don't understand quite how other people do it. I really hope I figure that out sometime soon.

How do you teach someone to think?

It's that time of year again...yes, the holidays, but also, the end of the first marking period of the year. While it might be the most wonderful time of the year on the radio, it is definitely not for a lot of students in my class. Report card time is always interesting to me for several reasons. First, in my second year of teaching I am still struggling to understand how a student who has turned in very little homework, failed to complete a major project, and refused to answer half the questions on the tests I give because they aren't multiple choice and therefore don't seem to be as easy could be shocked when the grade on their report is not an A, B, or C. I guess in part its a failure on the part of the teachers to demonstrate that cause and effect relationship effectively, but still, it always amazes me.

Second, though, I find it interesting to try and answer many of the kids questions about why they got the grade they did. It's easy with some kids: the ones with A's and B's don't ask why, they're just happy they got the grade, and the ones who never turned in work- well, clearly that's why. What is tough, though, are the kids who did turn in a lot of the work and thought they were genuinely making a serious effort and who still ended up with D's based off test, quiz, and major classwork and project grades. Despite my efforts to offset some of this with mini-quizzes, quiz retakes, and daily points for participation and effort, there is always a batch of kids who fall in the low C or D range who are truly upset they got this score, and I can understand why- they thought they were putting in adequate effort, and have suddenly realized they have fallen short of their goal in my class. After this, I almost always hear, "But I'm doing so much better in my other classes! Why not in your class?" This always leads to me to go back and wonder: am I being unfair to students? However, I don't think so, and here's why.

In many of my students other classes, I think (I don't know, since I'm not in those classes) that students get graded on how much stuff they hand in, regardless of how much it seems like they have learned. In my class, on the other hand, I am attempting to really grade my students on how much they have learned and how much thinking they have done that marking period. It is relatively easy in a social studies class to memorize basic facts and spit them back out (What is cuneiform? Who was Aristotle? What are latitude and longitude?). It is more important to me, however, that my students learn how to really analyze these things- why does it matter that Mesopotamians used cuneiform, or that we still study Aristotle today? And this is a stumbling block. My students do not like to do this kind of thinking because they have never been taught to- when you can get an A for copying poems offline that have examples of simile and metaphor in them, why ever bother to think about the purpose of those similes and metaphors? Therefore, I come off looking like this incredibly difficult teacher who expects too much of my students because I ask so much more of them- but let's be honest, this is what the kids in the suburbs of Philadelphia are doing every day-thinking.


By no means am I even close to being that good at this-if I was, perhaps it wouldn't be such a battle in my classroom every day. I have not yet gotten the hang of asking just the right guiding question to get my students to draw a conclusion from the material in front of them. So, it's my goal for this semester to see many more A's and B's- but not because I've gotten any easier as a teacher, but because I've challenged my students (and myself!) to be better and finally started to win this battle against not wanting to think and analyze with my students. Anything else is shortchanging them and allowing them to fall short of their true potential.

We Are the Champions!

Today my middle school ladies won the city-wide volleyball championship! I managed to make it to some of the game, and it was awesome to see them all working together at something and supporting each other. Definitely a great way to end the season and to head off for Thanksgiving!

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

My students like to play matchmaker since they know that I do not have a boyfriend (my bad on being honest when they asked that question) and this always leads to hilariously awkward moments. Last year's worst was when they dragged the assistant basketball coach up to my room because all the girls on the team thought he was cute and they wanted him to meet me. He was definitely not my type, but actually did try to call me- and I still hear about it. Today was another of those fun little moments. As I was leaving, I was talking to some of my 8th grade girls who were still outside the building after volleyball practice, when out walked a twenty-something guy. There are always people from the school district or one of Philly's universities trying to do research or have meetings or do mentoring or any other of a plethora of things in the school, so I've kind of learned to ignore the people walking in and out. Today, however, one of my girls says loudly as the guy passes by, "Hey, Ms. D, he looks pretty nice, " and winks at me. I'm going to hope that the random guy just didn't hear that one. I guess it's nice of them to care that much?

On another note, our girls' volleyball team, despite being more concerned with matchmaking and fashion than schoolwork, is playing in the city championship tomorrow! Here's good luck to the Duckrey girls!

Thank Goodness for Veterans

Thank goodness we had today off. Yesterday I had an observation with my Teach For America advisor, and the class he saw was much worse than it usually is. Maybe because it was the last period before a day off, I don't know. Anyway, I've certainly been feeling a bit down about the fact that I got observed on one of my worst days- I would love to have someone see my class on a good day but it seems like people never come in on those days.

On the plus side, the students did seem to pull out the important parts of the lesson when they summarized the lesson on the exit slips I give after every class. There was one funny one though- the lesson had been about Mesopotamian agriculture and students discussed where their food comes from. When asked to tell what the most important thing she learned today was, one student told me that the most important thing she learned was where canned tuna fish comes from because she never realized it was a fish before. I'm glad I could teach her something...

A Great Moment

Just in case I don't have enough to do teaching a new subject to three different grades, effectively meaning I am teaching 3 new subjects, I decided to sign on to do my school's Power Hour, which is certainly nothing like what that term meant in college. It is an hour and a half after school 4 days a week when kids who are below grade level on reading and math skills get extra, small group instruction. I am doing the literacy power hour 2 days a week (Mondays and Wednesdays) because I am basically a bleeding heart- neither of the 2 English teachers at my school wanted to do it, and I felt like it was important enough to take it on.

I have been doing Power Hour for about 3 weeks now, and it had definitely added stress to my life- instead of just 3 preps, I now have a 4th for Power Hour. Other teachers who had signed on to do it have already quit, and we have switched math teachers twice, and I wasn't sure it was worth it- until Monday around noon, when I was running to the bathroom because it was finally my prep period. I ran into one of my students coming out of the girls' bathroom, and she stopped me to show me her most recent test in reading: a B. This girl is in learning support for reading and math because she is behind on her skills, so I was obviously super excited for her, but I almost cried when she said, "Actually, I wanted to thank you for helping me." I haven't had a student thank me for helping them before- middle schoolers tend not to think like that- so it was truly an awesome moment. Made even more awesome when I graded her most recent social studies test and she got a 96% :)

Duckrey Happenings

I haven't updated in awhile, and I don't feel like writing anything especially profound today, as I have been trying and failing to fully recover and get back on top of my work after my (extremely fun) weekend trip to visit my sister in Boston, so here is an interesting smattering of happenings going on at school at the moment:

- our principal announced today that he was leaving in December to take an assistant superintendent job in a suburb of Philly. Hopefully this won't be an out of the frying pan and into the fire kind of experience

- a car was on fire outside of school the other day. Kids were running all over the place, especially toward the fire. Sometimes I wonder if the fight/flight instinct is really intact in these kids...

- the middle school has now instituted a mandatory "homework club" for all students who are regularly failing to complete homework (brainchild of yours truly...which of course means I have to run it...). Today was our first "meeting," which consisted of all boys, one of whom was much more interested in whether or not I would bring him some of my cheez-its that I have at home than in finishing his homework...

- I have a new best buddy in the 8th grade. We got a new student on Tuesday of this week- he started out the week VERY badly, swearing at the dean and me when we told him that he was in the wrong class (he followed all the girls to my class instead of going to science with the boys). However, things have turned around since he won candy in his first day in my class for being a winner in our class debate. Now, I frequently find myself being sneak attacked by an oddly huggy 8th grade boy, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

- I have been proposed to twice in the past two days by two different boys: one was a 7th grader in my homeroom who got down on one knee and pretended to give me ring, in an attempt to get out of classwork...and the second was today- one of my 8th grade boys saw my Penn ring and said "Forget that...let me put a ring on that finger." I haven't figured out whether or not this is a step up from my last marriage proposal, which was from this guy in Amsterdam last summer:

And that's all the news (from Duckrey) that's fit to print. The weekend cannot get here fast enough.

Future Justices of the Supreme Court

Today in class we had our first-ever current events day. On Mondays, from now until May, the students have 45 minutes of planned parenthood's health and sex ed classes, which means that instead of their usual hour and a half blocks, they spend 45 minutes in health and 45 minutes with me. Now, I don't know what happened in health class (though one of the 6th graders excited told me that the Planned Parenthood man will answer questions about anything- and I can only imagine what kinds of questions he must get), but in my class it was both crazy and awesome all at the same time.

I now know why I don't see all 6 of my classes every day, like I thought might make sense. It is insane- the time flies by, the kids are crazy, we don't get half of the things done that I had planned for us to do. However, I also discovered today that my kids get really excited about current events. The cover story in this issue was about the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and some of the cases she will be looking at once the court's term begins (the term actually began today, which, when I pointed that out to my classes, elicited reactions from "Wow" to "That's tough"- which means good, for all of you who don't know my kids' lingo). My kids had opinions on every case, and we got to have really awesome unplanned debates on them, especially a case in which a 16 year old was given life without parole for committing armed robbery, burglary, and home invasion twice in a span of 2 years. I was especially excited to see two boys in two different classes who sit in the back and who are never engaged in the lesson excitedly sharing their knowledge about the government, volunteering to read, and offering their opinions on the cases. I think its about time to get some student government going- looks like I have some future justices in the making.

In other news, I learned a new slang term that all the cool kids are using today: in my bag. Apparently it means to get angry or annoyed or have a bad day, as in "If you don't stop talking, i'm gonna get in my bag." Do not ask me where it comes from; I have no idea, as with most of my students' slang terms. What I do know is that I used it today when my 7th grade boys wouldn't shut up and line up, as in "I'm about to get in my bag if you all don't line up and get quiet right now!" Needless to say, the kids completely lost it-I thought a couple of them might actually pee their pants. Nothing like a good "I'm not as old and uncool as you think" moment to make the day end well ;)

Christmas in October

Today, in the middle of my lesson on the colonies with the 8th grade boys, one of the NTA's (non-teaching assistants) at my school came in with a whole box of copy paper (most months I get a ream, or two if I'm lucky). I looked at him and said, "If that's all for me, this is better than Christmas." My students gave me the weirdest looks...if only they knew. Gotta love the joys of teaching in an urban school.

Also making me happy- my donor's choose magazines came today! My kids can finally learn about current events in our classroom...granted, its the September 7th issue, but hey- that's still better than any current events they've done before...

And We'll Have Fun Fun Fun...

When my principal first switched me to social studies at my school, I was not especially happy with him. I had spent a whole year struggling to get a handle on how to teach reading and writing to middle schoolers, and now he wanted me to throw that all away ?!?!?! Not to mention the fact that I had to study for and take another Praxis test.

But now I'm starting to think this is the best thing EVER. Teaching social studies is (more or less) awesome. My kids aren't tested, but I wish they were, since they're so enthusiastic about stuff in my room. Not necessarily the parts of class where we take notes, of course, but I get to plan so much fun stuff for social studies. Today, I had more kids engaged in latitude and longitude game than I ever have before- we were racing in teams to track Carmen Sandiego (complete with some Rockapella background music...) across the globe, and kids were literally falling over each other to give me the correct answers and be the winning team. Talk about awesome! Well, maybe not the falling- we had to put a stop to that pretty quickly. We were supposed to have an assembly during class this afternoon- and the kids were actually glad that it got canceled because they wanted to finish the activity! Seriously, this is awesome. This is what teaching is supposed to be like.

And next week, my 8th graders are going to put the colonies on trial to see if they allowed as much religious freedom as we would expect they would based on their reasons for their founding. I am super-excited to get to that lesson next week- which makes me excited to go to school- which makes me happier all around.

Obviously, not every day gets to be this awesome, but its so nice to have the ones that are :) My kids can definitely get excited about education- you just have to find a way to make it worth their while.

First Week Down!

Well, we've officially made it through our first week of school for year two of TFA. Let me tell you, if you had come up to me on September 12 of last year and said that this is where I would be in a year, I would have laughed at you (through the tears, clearly). Last year at this time, my roommates and I were spread out all over the dining room table, frantically trying to figure out what we were going to do the next day to keep our students from killing each other (forget keeping them in their seats). In between panic attacks, I spent a lot of time being really really upset and thinking about finding a new job in the tanking economy.

What a difference a year makes! Today, the first Saturday of the school year, my roommate and I started the day at the coffee shop down the street to get some grading and lesson planning done, came back here, watched this week's episode of Top Chef, had lunch, got the rest of the posters we have hanging around hung up, cleaned the kitchen, and then did a little more planning and relaxing. I'm lesson planned through next Monday, and all I have to do tomorrow is create/modify the worksheets that go with those lessons. Tonight, I'm going out dancing for a friend's birthday. Life seems pretty good right now :)

Of course, that was only week 1. Next week it will be time for the students to test me. But I'll be ready- this year I'm in control of my classroom. Now if I could only get used to waking up at 5:30 instead of at 9...

Day 1: Check

Day 1 of school is down. It's going to be a good year- I feel way more confident than I ever did and I just had an amazing conversation with a parent. I got a text from my TFA program director (kind of like a mentor) this morning wishing me good luck and saying this was my year. I really think he's right :)

The SDP should be a scary movie

Forget his reality show; Tony Danza ought to be making a horror film about the Philadelphia School District. Today was the first day of school for teachers, and inevitably all the roommates have arrived home with horror stories about new developments at their schools as of today. My roommate who teaches 9th grade English might have to cover a period of Spanish because there might not be a teacher hired for that position at all this school year. My roommate who teaches Spanish might have to cover a period of corrective reading (or corrective math...who knows which?), for which he has no training. On top of that, in all the high schools, students will be re-rostered after about 2 weeks of school once they have taken tests to determine whether they need to be in a corrective reading or corrective math class (which essentially is the curriculum used in special ed classrooms). My roommate who teaches 7th grade English won't have a curriculum until October, and is expected to just work with week-to-week "themes" until then. I just found out we will be doing gendered classes, meaning I will see all my boys in each grade in one class, and all my girls in each grade the next day, which means that in some classes I will have many more students than I have desks due to disproportionate numbers of girls versus boys. Even my roommate at a relatively awesome charter school is now on a cart in 3 different classrooms at his school.

And the kicker? Because they don't "have the funds" to post to hire a new English teacher at another friend's high school, she now has classes that number 65 (at least) on her rosters. They hope to have the classes down to "normal size" by October- based on massive truancy, I suppose...

Just how do they expect our kids to learn in this logistical mess?? When this is the best the educated, intelligent adults who are supposed to be running things around here can do, what can we hope for for the students who are stuck in this system?

However, not all hope is lost. Almost all of my roommates are currently working through ways to problem solve these new challenges- if we could all approach challenges in teaching, even ones that seem insurmountable, like that, we would eventually make the widespread changes we so desperately need around here. Here's hoping that at some point I'm in a position with enough power to say that and have it mean something.

Can't Stress it Enough: The Importance of Education

This past week, I (finally) finished reading Three Cups of Tea, a book that has been on my t0-read shelf for a long time. It's a non-fiction story about a man named Greg Mortenson, who, after getting lost in Pakistan after a failed attempt to climb K2, is struck by the need in the small mountainous villages of Pakistan for schools. He promises to return to one village to build a school for them after raising the money, but from there a whole enterprise was born. Today, he and the Central Asia Institute founded by Mortenson and his supporters, build schools in small villages all over Pakistan and Afghanistan. I was incredibly moved by this story, and I'm sure if I had not just spent more than I care to admit on supplies for my own classroom, I would have gone online and donated to his cause without hesitation.

However, I was more struck by Mortenson's message in America after 9/11 and the War on Terror began. He suggests, and I agree, that we do not do anything to help our cause or create any more goodwill toward Americans in the Middle East by being involved in conflicts in which we deliberately or as a side-effect destroy whole villages, promising aid to help the people who we may have disrupted, and then never sending the aid. This only opens the way for terrorist organizations with lots of money to fill the void, especially in education, and thus taking advantage of the desire for education of many non-extremist locals. They build schools because the government of Afghanistan has not, and because our promise of aid for schools has not come through, and churn out more young men who have been educated with an extremist curriculum full of western hatred. Mortenson argues that only by making education a priority (albeit a long-term one) can we ever hope to stop this area from being a hotbed for terrorism for good. A NY Times article circulating among people I know on facebook made a similar argument about education, specifically of girls, in the Middle East. Education is the single-best way to improve a region like this, that desperately needs it.

I can't help but think that Mortenson's ideas ring true in our country as well (and if we're going to give money away to other governments for education, I certainly hope we get some here too). While poor schools in America may not breed terrorism, they certainly do not help to improve things such as the high crime rate in urban areas, or help to improve the number of people who are on government aid and thus contributing to the strain on the nation's resources, or any other number of unpleasant statistics. We have just spent time bailing out big industries all over the country, realized that we seriously need to overhaul things like the healthcare system and social security, and more, and I cannot help thinking that by pouring more money into all of these systems, we are only helping (if we are helping at all) in the short term. We need to educate all of the children in this nation if we truly want to make things better, and yet education never seems to be at the top of anyone's priorities. Certainly, it is up there for most politicians, but it rarely makes it into position number 1 on the list of concerns the government must handle-but it should. A good education for all students is really in all of our best interests, just like it would be in the Middle East.

And by the way, I highly recommend Three Cups of Tea. You should absolutely read it if you have the time.