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!