Now that you know what my challenges were coming back into the classroom at my high school and a basic understanding of why I stayed, let's look at what I am doing differently.
As I have said numerous times, things had to change for me to make a difference for my students. As we opened this school year, I asked all of my colleagues on all of the campuses to join us for a professional book club. The response was not overwhelming, but a strong core of individuals have joined us to read and discuss books that will hopefully help us find new ways of doing what we do and helping our students and our district move forward.
The first book we are reading is called Multipliers:How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman and Greg Mckeown. I was introduced to this book at the Annual Convention of Learning Forward in Annaheim, CA last December. Liz Wiseman was one of the keynote speakers. As she spoke to the crowd at lunch, what she said spoke to something in me that knew I was being a diminisher instead of a multiplier.
As we are reading this book I am having flashes of how I can use the concepts in my classroom, but the biggest flash came today as I was reading Chapter 4. I am currently reading The Crucible, the play by Arthur Miller in my English 11 American Literature class. I have been trying out a bunch of different processes for reading and acting out the acts, but I am still acting as main director of the play. Instead of letting my students figure out the meaning and the actions of they play for themselves, I am doing it for, or to, them. I want them to get it, so I am getting it for them. I keep trying to take myself out of the equation, but I keep failing miserably. Some of that is the director in me. In the chapter there is a story about a leader who knows all of the answers, he only asks questions he knows the answers to, and when he doesn't know the answer he asks "stalling" questions in order to find the answers. He forces his workers to do unnecessary work that he deems necessary rather than asking them for their expertise. It struck me that we do this to our students from kindergarten through graduation and then get frustrated with them when they don't know how to solve problems or answer questions for themselves. Actually, standardized tests are the epitome of this because it doesn't matter how the students themselves have interpreted the answers to the questions, it only matters that they can find the "right" answer, but I digress.
So as I was reading this chapter I realized that I need to put the challenge of interpretation to my students. Is this going to take longer, yes. Is it going to produce better results, it should. I want then to think for themselves and to visualize and explain their interpretation of what they are reading.
How am I going to do this? I am going to put the challenge on their shoulders. On Tuesday, we are going to do the study guide for Act II to review what we know already. I am going to ask them to summarize what has happened in the play so far. Then I am going to present an overview of what is coming in Act III, the book actually does this for me. Then I am going to present to them the parts of the act and have them form teams around specific sections with how many characters are in that section. Their challenge will be to determine who in their groups are best suited to which parts, not just which parts have the fewest lines. Then they need to read the section, determine the props they will need by making a prop list, and then design the set as they see it. They will then have to figure out how to use the furniture in the classroom to create the stage in the front of the room and block the play. They have to transcribe all of their lines onto paper or note cards. No one can take the book to the front of the room. They then have to practice the play. I will give them the rubric for the acting portion on Wednesday, after they have had a chance to look over their section and run through it at least once. They will act out their part on Friday.
The key here is that I am giving them basic directions. I am not telling them how to do any of it. We have read enough of the play and acted out portions of the first two acts that at this point they should be able to figure out what they need to do. I have to believe that my students are smart enough and have learned how to read subtext and clues in the text to know how to act out the play. Miller is a master playwright who ingeniously incorporated an allegory of the Red Scare into a play about the Salem Witch Trials that was very accurate to history. I have to trust that the background and the discussions we have had up until now will inform them to do the work.
I will, of course, monitor and answer questions, but I am going to remove myself as much as possible from the process, asking questions to clear up misconceptions instead of telling them the misconceptions and addressing them. Asking the whole class only when necessary.
The results I believe I will see is a deeper understanding of the play and Miller's message as well as interpretations that differ from how I see the play. In other words, I expect to see their thinking.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
As I was preparing to return to school this year I knew that I had to do something different in my classroom and with my students. I felt that they needed to know both that I thought about not returning, and ultimately what caused me to return. I work with juniors and seniors and felt that they are more than old enough to know the truth about the hard decisions that we make as adults. Many of them are on the verge of being forced into that role as final decision maker in their lives. I felt that I could model my process for them, the good, the bad and the ugly of it.
The reason I chose to come back, truthfully, was a song that I heard at the end of last school year. A song that pushed me many days to make it through the day. A song that I played most mornings over and over and over again in my classroom while I worked from 6:30-8:00 AM preparing for the day. That song was Jason Mraz's "I Won't Give Up".
I told my students as this school year began, obviously this song is about a relationship, and most of us would assume a romantic relationship, but when I heard this song, I thought of us, of our relationship as teacher and students. Every reason that I came back this year is in this song. This is going to be a our theme song this year and we are going to listen to it a lot. You need to figure out why I came back.
But you all are not in my classroom, so I will go ahead and tell you what I have yet to reveal to my students. When the song opens there are the lines,
When I look into your eyes
It's like watching the night sky
Or a beautiful sunrise
There's so much they hold
And just like them old stars
I see that you've come so far
To be right where you are
How old is your soul?
That's how I feel when I look at my students. I know what their lives look like outside of my classroom. Some of them don't have enough to eat, others don't actually have a floor in their home. Some of them have no place to do homework at home or even space at home to call their own. Some of my students sleep two or three to a bed and there is no such thing as a kitchen table and they have no concept of a family dinner. But when I look into their eyes I see so much potential, so much possibility. They have come so far in the two years that I have known and worked with them. They have overcome so much in their lives and in their education. And just like "them old stars" they have come to a place where they are on the verge of becoming something bigger. So many of them have old souls.
A little further down are the lines:
And when you're needing your space
To do some navigating
I'll be here patiently waiting
To see what you find
Just like all of us, my students need the space to search, find themselves, make mistakes, do stupid things, and learn important lessons. What they need more than the space to do those things is someone waiting for them when they come back. Someone who can help them put it all together and figure it all out. So many of them do not have that person in their lives. So many teenagers today from anywhere do not have that person waiting for them. That person who loves them anyway, despite, and because.
Then Mraz makes the biggest statement, the crux of the matter, "We've got a lot to learn, God knows we're worth it." In the end we all have a lot to learn. It's not just my students who learn something every day, it's me too. I walk in the door every day and start learning something, and that learning helps me to understand, helps me to be there, helps me to do all of the things that I need and that they need me to do. Because "God knows we're worth it" and no one has the right to tell them or me that they aren't. I spend an awful lot of my time defending my school and my students to the people who live in the wider community and sometimes to the community that they live in. My students are AMAZING. They have lived through more stuff than many of the people I know will ever see in their lives and my students are 16, 17, and 18 years old. God knows they ARE worth it.
I "don't wanna be the one who walks away so easily". These kids have had too many people walk away on them and give up on them because it was just 'too hard'. Well here is the thing folks, "even if the skies get rough" those kids deserve more than my back. When you love people, it is hard to watch them fall, watch them fail, watch them when they sometimes don't get back up. If it happens enough you start to wonder if what you are doing matters so very much. It does. When you walk away, you are telling them it's okay not to get up any more. It is not okay to say that to them. They are children, and they are our children. "I'm here to stay and make the difference that I can make". I am not going to just walk away. I can't always understand what is happening in their lives or, sometimes, more importantly, why what is happening in their lives is even happening at all. However, "our differences they do a lot to teach us how to use the tools and gifts we got" and without my experiences at my school, I wouldn't be the person I am today, and I sure wouldn't be the teacher I am today. I fight daily to figure out how to make impossible situations work. "We got a lot at stake." These kids lives, in so many ways, hang in the balance. One word the wrong way and it can tip. I don't just teach English, I teach students how to think, how to analyze, how to judge and determine. I teach students about other people who have faced tough situations and hard times, and I help them to see ways to survive them. We have too much at stake to not try our hardest and do our best.
The last four years have not been easy, but in those years I have found some of the most amazing people I have ever had the privilege to meet. I have to remember that "we didn't break, we didn't burn, We had to learn how to bend without the world caving in". It would have been so much easier to break and walk away, to let my anger with them and our situation burn and char us all. Instead we all had to learn how to bend and accept that some things are changeable and others are unchangeable. We had to accept that there are things we just have to...accept, and not let the world cave in. And we have learned how to do those things. I like to believe that my seniors trust me. I know that I trust them. "I had to learn what I've got, what I'm not, and who I am". Before coming here I had a pretty good picture of all three of those things; once I got here, I knew there was still an infinite amount I had to learn about myself. It has been worth it.
In the end, when it was all said and done, this was the line that drove it all home for me: "God knows I'm tough enough." I have lived through severe depression, I lost my mother when I was 14 to cancer, I fought past being abused by someone I loved, I have moved 2/3 of the way across the country from my entire family, I've lost countless friends to a myriad of stupid things, I've had to start over several times, but in the end I have survived and, more importantly, grown because of it. God knows I am tough enough to stick this out and provide these kids with at least a piece, a picture, an example of the love and strength that my family have given to me.
"I'm giving you all my love. I'm still looking up."
The reason I chose to come back, truthfully, was a song that I heard at the end of last school year. A song that pushed me many days to make it through the day. A song that I played most mornings over and over and over again in my classroom while I worked from 6:30-8:00 AM preparing for the day. That song was Jason Mraz's "I Won't Give Up".
I told my students as this school year began, obviously this song is about a relationship, and most of us would assume a romantic relationship, but when I heard this song, I thought of us, of our relationship as teacher and students. Every reason that I came back this year is in this song. This is going to be a our theme song this year and we are going to listen to it a lot. You need to figure out why I came back.
But you all are not in my classroom, so I will go ahead and tell you what I have yet to reveal to my students. When the song opens there are the lines,
When I look into your eyes
It's like watching the night sky
Or a beautiful sunrise
There's so much they hold
And just like them old stars
I see that you've come so far
To be right where you are
How old is your soul?
That's how I feel when I look at my students. I know what their lives look like outside of my classroom. Some of them don't have enough to eat, others don't actually have a floor in their home. Some of them have no place to do homework at home or even space at home to call their own. Some of my students sleep two or three to a bed and there is no such thing as a kitchen table and they have no concept of a family dinner. But when I look into their eyes I see so much potential, so much possibility. They have come so far in the two years that I have known and worked with them. They have overcome so much in their lives and in their education. And just like "them old stars" they have come to a place where they are on the verge of becoming something bigger. So many of them have old souls.
A little further down are the lines:
And when you're needing your space
To do some navigating
I'll be here patiently waiting
To see what you find
Just like all of us, my students need the space to search, find themselves, make mistakes, do stupid things, and learn important lessons. What they need more than the space to do those things is someone waiting for them when they come back. Someone who can help them put it all together and figure it all out. So many of them do not have that person in their lives. So many teenagers today from anywhere do not have that person waiting for them. That person who loves them anyway, despite, and because.
Then Mraz makes the biggest statement, the crux of the matter, "We've got a lot to learn, God knows we're worth it." In the end we all have a lot to learn. It's not just my students who learn something every day, it's me too. I walk in the door every day and start learning something, and that learning helps me to understand, helps me to be there, helps me to do all of the things that I need and that they need me to do. Because "God knows we're worth it" and no one has the right to tell them or me that they aren't. I spend an awful lot of my time defending my school and my students to the people who live in the wider community and sometimes to the community that they live in. My students are AMAZING. They have lived through more stuff than many of the people I know will ever see in their lives and my students are 16, 17, and 18 years old. God knows they ARE worth it.
I "don't wanna be the one who walks away so easily". These kids have had too many people walk away on them and give up on them because it was just 'too hard'. Well here is the thing folks, "even if the skies get rough" those kids deserve more than my back. When you love people, it is hard to watch them fall, watch them fail, watch them when they sometimes don't get back up. If it happens enough you start to wonder if what you are doing matters so very much. It does. When you walk away, you are telling them it's okay not to get up any more. It is not okay to say that to them. They are children, and they are our children. "I'm here to stay and make the difference that I can make". I am not going to just walk away. I can't always understand what is happening in their lives or, sometimes, more importantly, why what is happening in their lives is even happening at all. However, "our differences they do a lot to teach us how to use the tools and gifts we got" and without my experiences at my school, I wouldn't be the person I am today, and I sure wouldn't be the teacher I am today. I fight daily to figure out how to make impossible situations work. "We got a lot at stake." These kids lives, in so many ways, hang in the balance. One word the wrong way and it can tip. I don't just teach English, I teach students how to think, how to analyze, how to judge and determine. I teach students about other people who have faced tough situations and hard times, and I help them to see ways to survive them. We have too much at stake to not try our hardest and do our best.
The last four years have not been easy, but in those years I have found some of the most amazing people I have ever had the privilege to meet. I have to remember that "we didn't break, we didn't burn, We had to learn how to bend without the world caving in". It would have been so much easier to break and walk away, to let my anger with them and our situation burn and char us all. Instead we all had to learn how to bend and accept that some things are changeable and others are unchangeable. We had to accept that there are things we just have to...accept, and not let the world cave in. And we have learned how to do those things. I like to believe that my seniors trust me. I know that I trust them. "I had to learn what I've got, what I'm not, and who I am". Before coming here I had a pretty good picture of all three of those things; once I got here, I knew there was still an infinite amount I had to learn about myself. It has been worth it.
In the end, when it was all said and done, this was the line that drove it all home for me: "God knows I'm tough enough." I have lived through severe depression, I lost my mother when I was 14 to cancer, I fought past being abused by someone I loved, I have moved 2/3 of the way across the country from my entire family, I've lost countless friends to a myriad of stupid things, I've had to start over several times, but in the end I have survived and, more importantly, grown because of it. God knows I am tough enough to stick this out and provide these kids with at least a piece, a picture, an example of the love and strength that my family have given to me.
"I'm giving you all my love. I'm still looking up."
Monday, September 24, 2012
This past school year, the 2011-2012 school year, was a challenge for me. When the school year ended, I did not know if I could go back into my classroom after the summer was over. I doubt that most people have any idea what it is like being a teacher in today's world, let alone be a teacher in an impoverished "challenge" school. I make no excuses for myself or our school. We have a tough road, no doubt, but we all chose that road one way or another. My question was, "am I going to continue down this road or find a new one?" There had been some significant changes in my family life. My niece was pregnant with her first child, my father is getting older, and I was feeling significant pangs of homesickness as my family all live in Chicagoland. Did I want to continue to live 2/3 of the way across the country? Did I want to miss out on the birth of my grand-nephew? Did I want to continue to travel for nearly 12 hours to see my family? Did I want to go back into that classroom? These questions were exacerbated by my sisters and nieces telling me to move home, offering up teaching job opportunities and connections in schools, and in the end just telling me to pack up and "come home, we'll figure it out." All of this was further complicated by my landlord telling me that they had decided to sell the house I was living in and thereby forcing my decision to move "somewhere."
At the end of the school year another change happened as well. Some structural changes in staffing happened and suddenly an opportunity presented itself for me to teach English 12. To get back my beloved seniors and better yet, get my awesome junior class back again their last year of high school. To get the ultimate opportunity to prepare some absolutely amazing students for college. I could not say no. And that sealed the deal. Ended all questions. Created the road that has led to where I currently sit. I did not walk away or move home, I decided to once and for all make my home here, for better or for worse, for short or for long. I put in an offer on a condo, I am still waiting for closing, and set some goals.
If I was going to stay, and I had decided I was going to stay, some things had to change. Common Core is here, and overall I am excited and enchanted with the new standards, but it means new challenges for my students who already struggle to meet the challenges put before them now. Was I ready to do this? Then I asked myself a bigger, scarier question, if I wasn't ready to do this, who would be? I decided to meet the challenge head on and here are the goals I set for myself: start my graduate program in Instructional Leadership in January (pesky condo pushed it back several months); begin a professional reading club for myself and colleagues interested in reading about, evaluating and enhancing their own professional rigor; read at least one professional and one literary book each quarter to be used in the classroom; start a blog about my classroom experiences, experiments, successes and failures; write reflective pieces to potentially be turned into a research article to be submitted to a professional journal by the end of the school year; and make my classroom student driven and student centered.
How am I going to do all of this? I am going to do it all by listening to a song and remembering, each time I listen to it, why I stayed, why I came here in the first place, and why my students will always be "my kids" no matter how long ago they graduated or how much they aggravated me in the process. That's what being a teacher is. It is sticking it out when it seems the most hopeless. It is finding new ways of doing things older than you are. It is loving all of your students, even when you don't like them very much. It is going to football, volleyball, basketball games when you are dead tired and still have to drive 40 minutes home. It is staying after school from 3-5 three days a week to offer your students a safe place to do homework, meet up with clubs and friends, or just have a place to be. It is spending hundreds of dollars of your own money, and then convincing friends and strangers to spend hundreds of dollars of their own money, on your classroom. This is what teaching is not. It is not a job. It is not even a career. It is not summers off or 8-2:30 or long winter breaks. It is not babysitting. It is not providing the country and parents with a whipping boy. It is not a scapegoat for what you see wrong in the world. It is not laziness or selfishness. It IS a vocation, a calling, selflessness and love.
If you are a teacher and teaching is not that for you, get out, get out now, you are making the rest of us look bad.
What about the song? I will tell that story in the next post.
At the end of the school year another change happened as well. Some structural changes in staffing happened and suddenly an opportunity presented itself for me to teach English 12. To get back my beloved seniors and better yet, get my awesome junior class back again their last year of high school. To get the ultimate opportunity to prepare some absolutely amazing students for college. I could not say no. And that sealed the deal. Ended all questions. Created the road that has led to where I currently sit. I did not walk away or move home, I decided to once and for all make my home here, for better or for worse, for short or for long. I put in an offer on a condo, I am still waiting for closing, and set some goals.
If I was going to stay, and I had decided I was going to stay, some things had to change. Common Core is here, and overall I am excited and enchanted with the new standards, but it means new challenges for my students who already struggle to meet the challenges put before them now. Was I ready to do this? Then I asked myself a bigger, scarier question, if I wasn't ready to do this, who would be? I decided to meet the challenge head on and here are the goals I set for myself: start my graduate program in Instructional Leadership in January (pesky condo pushed it back several months); begin a professional reading club for myself and colleagues interested in reading about, evaluating and enhancing their own professional rigor; read at least one professional and one literary book each quarter to be used in the classroom; start a blog about my classroom experiences, experiments, successes and failures; write reflective pieces to potentially be turned into a research article to be submitted to a professional journal by the end of the school year; and make my classroom student driven and student centered.
How am I going to do all of this? I am going to do it all by listening to a song and remembering, each time I listen to it, why I stayed, why I came here in the first place, and why my students will always be "my kids" no matter how long ago they graduated or how much they aggravated me in the process. That's what being a teacher is. It is sticking it out when it seems the most hopeless. It is finding new ways of doing things older than you are. It is loving all of your students, even when you don't like them very much. It is going to football, volleyball, basketball games when you are dead tired and still have to drive 40 minutes home. It is staying after school from 3-5 three days a week to offer your students a safe place to do homework, meet up with clubs and friends, or just have a place to be. It is spending hundreds of dollars of your own money, and then convincing friends and strangers to spend hundreds of dollars of their own money, on your classroom. This is what teaching is not. It is not a job. It is not even a career. It is not summers off or 8-2:30 or long winter breaks. It is not babysitting. It is not providing the country and parents with a whipping boy. It is not a scapegoat for what you see wrong in the world. It is not laziness or selfishness. It IS a vocation, a calling, selflessness and love.
If you are a teacher and teaching is not that for you, get out, get out now, you are making the rest of us look bad.
What about the song? I will tell that story in the next post.
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