That’s how another first year teacher put it today, and I think it sounds right.

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As a student teacher I lucked out. Not only did I have two supportive cooperating teachers, I had two departments of teachers who wanted me to succeed and repeatedly told me I was headed in the right direction. At the end, I received lots of advice and heard many first year stories. The one I keep holding on to is that it may feel like they’re not learning anything, but it’s not true. Learning is happening. Maybe more learning will happen later, but learning is happening.

I hope learning happened this year. I keep seeing all the things I want to do better for them next year, but I think some learning happened.

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The best entry in my yearbook: “Magistra, You’re a cool teacher! I can’t believe I’m going to say this…this is hard for me, but…you made me like math class! I hope I see you next year! Thank you!”

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Tomorrow, I join a group of teachers on a wine tour. I don’t think there are better post-school plans than that.

I was asked today if I was interested in being Math Dept. chair next year. Our department chair was out this week and we were supposed to meet. For sending two emails, taking notes, and loosely facilitating a meeting, I made myself look like department chair material. (Which, along with the fact that five of us were hired this year, points to the state of Denmark.)

It makes me want to laugh that a first year teacher truly could become department chair in her second year. I do love that our school has a very young staff (I refer not only to age but more importantly to teaching experience), so there’s no “you must wait 5 years and then we’ll give you the good classes” kind of thing happening. I’d by lying if I said I wasn’t interested. I have the organization and people skills to be good at this. I just think I’d be better with a little more familiarity with the school. So I think I’m going to try to deflect. But the flattery feels good. :-)

We’re quadraticing in Algebra and it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe I just had such low expectations (honestly, I thought it was going to be a return to the black hole of 2nd quarter) that anything seems like success. I’m not saying we have a deep conceptual understanding or are independently fluent with solving quadratics, but we’re graphing and we’re factoring. We’ve gone from using the physical manipulative (algebra tiles) to an abstract note-organizer (introduced to me as a “diamond” although it looks more like an “x”). The students who are moving with me are doing okay. And that group includes a couple occasional participants, so I’m feeling good. Next step: completing the square.

And, if there’s an Algebra teacher out there, you have to play catch. They get the two solutions, they get the shape of the curve, they get that there are different curves, and they get why we pay attention to the x-axis. And I didn’t even do the lesson that well. “Here, take this koosh ball. Play catch. Come up with three different curves.” (It was almost that bad.) I’m tempted to do it again when we talk more about the vertex and the discriminant. I also hear “walking the line” gets the job done for the vertex.

Where do you send students who can’t be in class at that moment? You know, the ones who refuse to stop talking, or won’t put their cell away, or whatever.

We’ve got a detention room on campus, and I’ve certainly used it. But when I tell a student that in order to remain in class x, y, or z needs to stop, I hate hearing, “Just send me to [detention room]. I want to go to [detention room].” There is something wrong if students are asking to be sent out of class.

I’ve got an understanding with some of the teachers around me and sometimes we send students to each other. Other times, I ask the student to step outside and briefly conference with me before coming back. My new focus has been on getting them to identify what the problem is and why, from my perspective, it is a problem. But the reality is these problems arise in my two classes when I am least likely to feel like I have the time to talk to an individual. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my two “toughest” classes are my two biggest – 34 students each)

The big picture is to do all those things (greet them at the door, demonstrate consistency, be respectful while being firm, etc.) that help avoid these situations. Big picture, I know I need to keep working on “student engagement” and on continuing to break concepts down into attainable pieces. (I don’t agree with everything Kohn says, but his basic point that curriculum is classroom management makes sense to me.) But right now I want a better small picture.

Two weeks to CST’s…

You know the problem with Spring Break? It got me totally out of shape. I am exhausted this week. It’s hard to get up in the morning, my feet are hurting like they haven’t hurt since August (really should have gone for the not-as-cute-but-much-more-comfortable shoes on Monday), my throat feels like sandpaper, it takes 10 minutes to decide what to wear every night (when it should take 30 seconds max), and I’m getting that quitin’ time feeling at 3:30.

Today we started *Darth Vader theme music* quadratics in Algebra. Naturally, we played catch. I was a little too unstructured in my directions, but walking around, most students could answer my questions without prompting.

• How can you change the curve? “Throw it higher.” “Throw it harder/longer.”
• How can you change the starting value? “Throw it overhand [instead of underhand].” “Stand on the stairs.”
• Can we change the end value? “Don’t catch it.”

The original plan was to do this behind the cafeteria, there being no students in the cafeteria to distract. Only the maintenance guy was out, blowing the cut grass somewhere. Frankly, I think quadratics take precedence over yard waste, but what really got me was that he didn’t talk to me. He told my students to tell me we had to go somewhere else. But that’s not a fight I’m going to pick with 32 9th graders holding projectile objects. So we moved to the fire lane behind our row of portables. I only caught two girls trying to talk through the window to a friend, and every teacher says it wasn’t a problem when I went by later to apologize (frankly, I think this says more about my colleagues than our conduct).

My freshman father (who, unfortunately, has bigger things to deal with than “just” being a father) said today wasn’t boring and maybe even a little fun. I doubt he’s going to pull out credit from this semester (although his attendance is up, so we’ve got a fighting chance), but I’m glad he had fun. I don’t think there’s a lot of time in his life spent on innocent fun like playing catch.

Nine weeks to go. Three weeks ’til CST’s, then one week of testing. Take away another week for Finals, and that leaves 4 weeks of time to do something. I’m looking forward to that, especially in Geometry. We can design a garden and, if this grant money really is there, actually help construct it. We can create tessellations and put a mural on the outside of my classroom. We can design a bomb shelter and build a model to scale (I’m pretty sure they’ll be doing WWII in World Civ). We can write and illustrate our own English/Spanish Geometry glossaries. We can design and play our own board games and puzzles. We can build bridges with triangles and sqaures and arches and test them to see which is the strongest. There’s got be a great extension of proofs too that I’m just not seeing right now.

In Algebra, I think I’ll dust off my polling background and refine a project I did last year. In English, students will be working on persuasive essays, so my next door neighbor (their English teacher) and I are going to try to make what we do in Algebra relevant to what their English topic is. It’d be a whole lot easier if we truly were small learning communities with 100% the same students, but we’re not. Such is life. Actually, to hoot my own horn, I think we’ve gotten pretty good at designing stand alone activities that are relevant for all students and more enriching for our common students. Not bad for two first year teachers.

And I only have three weeks to get through before, for better or worse, the testing monkey is off my back.

Last week I had another induction program seminar to go to (where once again, this program reminded us how much better it is than all the others – nothing says “superior” like dissing the other teams). Most of the video clips they show are of elementary classrooms. After such a clip when we are given some prompt to discuss, a moment arises where the high school teachers start complaining about how our students aren’t like that. They aren’t enthusiastic, they aren’t curious, they don’t listen. This time the focus was on hand-raising.

Now, I too complain about students. I have rough periods, I get frustrated when something I put a lot of time into is received with scorn or apathy, and I get tired of being on the receiving end of verbal abuse. My next door teacher, who has many of the same students I do, hears most of my venting (my mother also gets more than her share). I don’t think you will ever convince me venting does not have its place.

Granted, I don’t really know the people at these seminars (which is why they do not hear me vent). Maybe they’re using these seminars the same way I use my next door neighbor. But the cumulative effect of all these complaints makes me wonder, do they really not know why students don’t raise their hands?

There are times when I too would like my students to raise their hands. But I know why they don’t – my actions tell them not to. I don’t insist on it. I often react to what people shout out or mumble. I respond to comments called out. I even appreciate and praise unsolicited comments. I have absolutely no consistency about hand-raising. So, yeah, I wish my students would wait patiently sometimes, but I am under no illusion that they can’t do that or that they wouldn’t do that. I’m the one who can’t wait. And I know there are whole groups of students who aren’t effectively served by this, and working on establishing when it is okay to have an informal dialogue and when it’s better to have a formal exchange is on my personal list of “areas for growth.” But I cannot imagine the day I start complaining about a procedure to a group I know only through a professional association. It’s like they showed me their scarlet letters.

The third quarter ends tomorrow. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had one conversation bouncing around in my head, sometimes at the front, demanding my full attention, other times quieter in the back, whispering at me. I was talking to G (the initial having no relationship to his actual name). G has previously made comments about how the last time he learned any math was in third grade and that starting in fourth grade he stopped getting it. Turns out, I’m the first math teacher G has ever had. Think about that for a second. He’s in 9th grade and he’s never had a “real” math teacher.

When G was talking, he automatically overlooked his elementary teachers. There’s a good discussion to be had there, but I’m more interested in G’s perspective than a adult’s explanation of why that’s an incorrect assumption. After all, even if you leave out K-6, there’s still grades 7 and 8. Seventh grade he never had a “real” teacher. G’s definition of “real” is someone who isn’t a substitute (long-term or otherwise). 7th grade math was a series of substitutes. 8th grade math started out with a “real” (meaning full time, presumably credentialed) teacher, but she “freaked out” after a couple of months. She broke down in the classroom, yelling and crying, and was gone the next day. Now G’s got me, a first year teacher.

The other thing that’s been in my head, is that no student has asked me if I’m leaving this quarter. I first got asked the question towards the end of 1st quarter. At the time I basically dismissed it. It’s September, the year is barely starting, how can you think I’m leaving? When we came back after Thanksgiving (when the students had the whole week off), I overheard a group of students saying they were surprised I was there. At least I understood it then. Second quarter, in particular one student who has since been transferred, was not easy. Before winter break, students asked me if I would be there in January.

We’ll, it’s March now, and they’re still stuck with me. If nothing else, I have demonstrated consistency. I have been reliable. I have been the most consistent, the most reliable, and the only “real” math teacher G has ever had. I’m in my first year and if you made a highlight reel of G’s math education, I’d be in it. Hell, I’d star in it.

I want to be filled with righteous indignation for G, for my other students with the same story. But I’m tired. I’m tired of trying to teach Algebra and reinforce number sense, and maybe encourage problem-solving, and strengthen vocabulary acquisition. In the classroom, I see the bar I want them to meet, and I expect them to work towards it, every day. But after they leave, and I remember this conversation with G, and the other questions about will she still be there?, the bar seems monumentally unreachable, and possibly irrelevant.

Yet tomorrow morning they’ll be back and so will I. They’re stuck with me.

Bomb threats are old. We’ve had multiple (all false) this year. It’s a waste of time, a waste of resources, a waste of just about everything. Every time, they find the students responsible. This time, they pulled them out while we were still evacuated. This time, it’s a couple of my students involved. (Or is it allegedly involved? Either way, I don’t think I’ll be seeing them for a while.)

To completely change subjects, my small learning community (SLC) rocks. I was randomly put in the right place and I’m loving it. Teachers talking about students, teachers planning overlapping or complimentary assignments, students starting to notice we want their best inside and outside any particular classroom – it’s great. The school has its problems, but my SLC has completely spoiled me. I can’t imagine ever wanting to return to a traditional comprehensive high school.