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.