Revival.
13 years ago
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Sharpstown Video!
Here's a short video that some CMAs put together. It's pretty awesome. And M is in it! Watch and listen closely, he speaks really quietly. He's the one who puts his hands above his head and says that class was fun because the teacher "gave a lot of examples." Whoop!
Ms. McGrath's 6th Grade ELA
Welcome to room A220! I’m going to introduce you to my students and share a few of our successes. I had 5 students altogether. They were fantastic individuals and a handful together.
D: passed his TAKS (Texas standardized tests) but slept through sixth grade the first time. He fell asleep and drooled over his diagnostic test the first day of class. I kept waking him up and he would write the first thing that came to his mind - like what he thought he was supposed to be writing about. He was still half-asleep the whole time, however, and so his essay at the end of the period read something like: "A topic of an essay tells the main idea...an author tells the plot of a story...characters do actions...beginning, middle and end." It was a start. But as soon as I was able to get him excited about brainstorming and writing, he had some exciting stories to tell (and quite an imagination!).
R: Adorable. I don't know why he was in summer school - he knew all the answers and was anxious to participate. He was always early to class, so we got to chat about how summer school was going. He had a bizarre obsession with weapons and things, however, and while I can imagine where this might come from, it was a startling contrast to his softer, more childish exterior. For example, when I asked them to choose which animal they would be and describe why, he chose a penguin because he had "fuzzy hair and kind of walked like one." But then, when he finished before everyone else and I asked him to draw the animal, his penguin had a giant, jagged sword in it's little wing. In any case, R moved back to Mexico at the end of summer school, and I'll miss him.
H: The only girl in the class. She was adorable also and, as it turns out, not as much a handful in my class as in other classes I observed. I think that I gave her a little more attention as the only girl in the class (an ally of sorts) and she really ate it up. She participated all the time and I could always count on her to give the answer I needed. She was a little shy about reading aloud, however, because she wasn't very confident in her English skills (she often asked whether she could just answer the written questions in Spanish), but I think we got to the level, about half way through, where she would hesitantly raise her hand to offer to read aloud. She was also a great writer and always wrote about her big family.
F: A sixth grade heartbreaker. He was charming and a jokester. He walked around with a confidence and strut that hid his struggles with basic academic material. It was extremely challenging to get him to sit still for long enough to actually try on his work. Partner work did not help, he would first distract his partner, then take their answers right before time was up. His best friend, M, was also in the class and that absolutely did not help. The could not go for 60 seconds without interacting in a distracting way – I never though boys could giggle as much as they did together (and at times, unfortunately, it was contagious – for me too!). No matter how far away I put them, they would make eye contact somehow and break down into laughter. They would make clicking noises with their mouths during silent, independent exercises. They would call out. At times, they were exasperating. But as I got to know them, some things changed. For F, he started to follow directions. In the last week, he would actually reprimand M and tell him to be quiet when M was misbehaving. He participated more in an academic way. And even though I highly doubted he improved much over the summer, his grade went up 45 points from the diagnostic test (the first day) to the final test (from a 28% to a 73%). Seeing his face when he was so proud of his achievement was really exciting. After the times I tried to sit down one-on-one to reason with him, I think he might have begun to see the correlation between better behavior and better grades. And when I showed up in their last period class on the last day, he ran over excitedly and explained their whole science experiment to me, even offering me some of his homemade ice cream. I had to decline the offer, unfortunately (he thought I was crazy for not eating ice cream), but it was a great ending to a sometimes frustrating summer with F.
M: Oh, what to say about M. I wish I had more time with him, and I think I learned the most working with him. He definitely struggled with the English language, and this was evident in his speaking, reading and writing (although he wrote the most endearing stories about his family and their fishing outings). He was in summer school because he didn’t pass either of his TAKS tests and there was a marked difference between his concentration before the tests (about half way through summer school) and after. The day before his reading TAKS, F wasn’t in class. I asked the four students whether they wanted to play a review game or practice more with the worksheets to prepare for the test. Three wanted to play the jeopardy game but M spent the whole class period reviewing his notes and re-doing the worksheets to make sure he knew the material. I had never seen him work so hard! It was awesome. But after he took his test, he kind of fell apart. I don’t think his test went very well and it discouraged him immensely. I think he was really nervous about being retained and from then on, whenever he got discouraged he said he was going to fail anyways and he put his head down and stopped trying. This is why I wish I had more time with him, because I knew that he was capable of working hard and getting the material, but he was so easily discouraged. I wish I could have figured out how to show him he was successful every single day. He was so awesome and I will miss him a lot.
All five of my students were great writers and, early on, I realized they enjoyed writing enough to sit in their own seats and silently work for an extended period of time. Therefore, we wrote a lot. They also really enjoyed idioms and drew fabulous pictures of pigs flying, cats and dogs falling from the sky, talking someone’s ear off and cats holding onto someone’s tongue. All my students passed onto the 7th grade, which is so exciting! But they all have a whole lot to work on, and I wish we had more than 4 weeks together. I felt like we were making some headway with some things, and by the end we had figured out our rhythm and dynamic, but it was just too short.
Of all my days in Institute, my high was being in room A220 and seeing all five of my students. I might have spent all morning complaining about a seemingly useless session and I might have felt sick all morning trying to keep myself awake in said session, but as soon as I shook their hands coming into the classroom, it felt worth it. Sixth graders, too, still have an innocence about them that really reminds you they are still children. And they deserve a top notch education, so much more than I could give them in our brief time together. So, as I prepare for the year to come, I remind myself, beyond thinking about behavioral issues and frustrations and mistakes on my part, I think about how excited I was to see them every single day. My goal is to maintain that excitement for my own students all year long.
D: passed his TAKS (Texas standardized tests) but slept through sixth grade the first time. He fell asleep and drooled over his diagnostic test the first day of class. I kept waking him up and he would write the first thing that came to his mind - like what he thought he was supposed to be writing about. He was still half-asleep the whole time, however, and so his essay at the end of the period read something like: "A topic of an essay tells the main idea...an author tells the plot of a story...characters do actions...beginning, middle and end." It was a start. But as soon as I was able to get him excited about brainstorming and writing, he had some exciting stories to tell (and quite an imagination!).
R: Adorable. I don't know why he was in summer school - he knew all the answers and was anxious to participate. He was always early to class, so we got to chat about how summer school was going. He had a bizarre obsession with weapons and things, however, and while I can imagine where this might come from, it was a startling contrast to his softer, more childish exterior. For example, when I asked them to choose which animal they would be and describe why, he chose a penguin because he had "fuzzy hair and kind of walked like one." But then, when he finished before everyone else and I asked him to draw the animal, his penguin had a giant, jagged sword in it's little wing. In any case, R moved back to Mexico at the end of summer school, and I'll miss him.
H: The only girl in the class. She was adorable also and, as it turns out, not as much a handful in my class as in other classes I observed. I think that I gave her a little more attention as the only girl in the class (an ally of sorts) and she really ate it up. She participated all the time and I could always count on her to give the answer I needed. She was a little shy about reading aloud, however, because she wasn't very confident in her English skills (she often asked whether she could just answer the written questions in Spanish), but I think we got to the level, about half way through, where she would hesitantly raise her hand to offer to read aloud. She was also a great writer and always wrote about her big family.
F: A sixth grade heartbreaker. He was charming and a jokester. He walked around with a confidence and strut that hid his struggles with basic academic material. It was extremely challenging to get him to sit still for long enough to actually try on his work. Partner work did not help, he would first distract his partner, then take their answers right before time was up. His best friend, M, was also in the class and that absolutely did not help. The could not go for 60 seconds without interacting in a distracting way – I never though boys could giggle as much as they did together (and at times, unfortunately, it was contagious – for me too!). No matter how far away I put them, they would make eye contact somehow and break down into laughter. They would make clicking noises with their mouths during silent, independent exercises. They would call out. At times, they were exasperating. But as I got to know them, some things changed. For F, he started to follow directions. In the last week, he would actually reprimand M and tell him to be quiet when M was misbehaving. He participated more in an academic way. And even though I highly doubted he improved much over the summer, his grade went up 45 points from the diagnostic test (the first day) to the final test (from a 28% to a 73%). Seeing his face when he was so proud of his achievement was really exciting. After the times I tried to sit down one-on-one to reason with him, I think he might have begun to see the correlation between better behavior and better grades. And when I showed up in their last period class on the last day, he ran over excitedly and explained their whole science experiment to me, even offering me some of his homemade ice cream. I had to decline the offer, unfortunately (he thought I was crazy for not eating ice cream), but it was a great ending to a sometimes frustrating summer with F.
M: Oh, what to say about M. I wish I had more time with him, and I think I learned the most working with him. He definitely struggled with the English language, and this was evident in his speaking, reading and writing (although he wrote the most endearing stories about his family and their fishing outings). He was in summer school because he didn’t pass either of his TAKS tests and there was a marked difference between his concentration before the tests (about half way through summer school) and after. The day before his reading TAKS, F wasn’t in class. I asked the four students whether they wanted to play a review game or practice more with the worksheets to prepare for the test. Three wanted to play the jeopardy game but M spent the whole class period reviewing his notes and re-doing the worksheets to make sure he knew the material. I had never seen him work so hard! It was awesome. But after he took his test, he kind of fell apart. I don’t think his test went very well and it discouraged him immensely. I think he was really nervous about being retained and from then on, whenever he got discouraged he said he was going to fail anyways and he put his head down and stopped trying. This is why I wish I had more time with him, because I knew that he was capable of working hard and getting the material, but he was so easily discouraged. I wish I could have figured out how to show him he was successful every single day. He was so awesome and I will miss him a lot.
All five of my students were great writers and, early on, I realized they enjoyed writing enough to sit in their own seats and silently work for an extended period of time. Therefore, we wrote a lot. They also really enjoyed idioms and drew fabulous pictures of pigs flying, cats and dogs falling from the sky, talking someone’s ear off and cats holding onto someone’s tongue. All my students passed onto the 7th grade, which is so exciting! But they all have a whole lot to work on, and I wish we had more than 4 weeks together. I felt like we were making some headway with some things, and by the end we had figured out our rhythm and dynamic, but it was just too short.
Of all my days in Institute, my high was being in room A220 and seeing all five of my students. I might have spent all morning complaining about a seemingly useless session and I might have felt sick all morning trying to keep myself awake in said session, but as soon as I shook their hands coming into the classroom, it felt worth it. Sixth graders, too, still have an innocence about them that really reminds you they are still children. And they deserve a top notch education, so much more than I could give them in our brief time together. So, as I prepare for the year to come, I remind myself, beyond thinking about behavioral issues and frustrations and mistakes on my part, I think about how excited I was to see them every single day. My goal is to maintain that excitement for my own students all year long.
The Institute Experience
I could probably talk for pages and pages about Institute. I’m going to try not to. Again, I’m going to be looking for the highs, too.
- Every morning began at 5:05am. My roommate and I would curse our existence, saying things no prospective teacher should ever say, then hit snooze. Inevitably, the alarm would go off again, and being on the late side, we would need to rush to get downstairs.
- Once downstairs I filled my bright blue lunchbox (provided by TFA – we all got them) under the watchful eyes of TFA staffers. Since we were the first people getting lunch, the plethora of food was exciting, but I think we took too much the first two days and others didn’t get any food. Oops. So we were closely monitored (fruit or carrots, not both). I got a tofu wrap every single day. I always appreciate the thought to include a vegetarian option, so that’s a high. The low was the amount of tofu – altogether, I think it probably amounted to a pair of dice. One die in each side of the wrap. But, when I put enough mustard and Italian dressing on it, I actually kind of miss it in a bizarre, nostalgic way.
- I think breakfast was my favorite time of day. We (a bunch of friends from my teaching group) would cram into a booth with our watery coffee and bagels and laugh uncontrollably in our delirious, probably legally insane, state.
- At 6:20, all 99 Sharpstown teachers boarded three big yellow school buses. (I'd like to take a minute here for readers to close their eyes and imagine 99 bleary eyed, 20-somethings emerging from Moody Towers in "professional dress," carrying heavy backpacks, bright blue lunch boxes slung over their shoulders, boarding big yellow school buses...I crossed my fingers every single day that none of my students would ever see my lunch box or the buses. I could just imagine my credibility vanishing in an instant.) The buses left at 6:25 sharp, and many of us promptly fell asleep. Again, we probably looked uber professional getting off the buses at school wiping drool off our faces and crusties out of our eyes.
- Our first Curriculum Specialist session started at 7:20, followed by another one at 9:00. These sessions covered all sorts of different topics ranging from how to interact with co-workers, how to employ the diversity competencies, how to internalize TFA's core values, how to lesson plan, execute material effectively, and align our assessments with our learning objectives each and every day.
- Twice a week we had Literacy Specialist training - how to teach literacy in every content area.
- Lunch at 10:30.
- Some weeks I had lunch duty at 11. I would walk around the cafeteria during this time, monitoring the subtle and intricate relationships that exist among pre-teens. It was overwhelming. Cafeterias are not my favorite places.
- 11:30 - 1:01 Ms. McGrath's 6th grade English Language Arts class took place in classroom A220. I’ll talk about my class in the next entry.
- 1:05 – 2:30 I had a free block. This is when I could grade things, think about my lesson for the next day, and actively reflect on how I was doing. These were the things I could do, but really the time flew by and I really only got to decompressing and breathing at a normal rate for a fleeting moment. During this time I could also observe other corps members teaching, which was pretty cool to do. Everyone has such a particular style and it’s fun to see people’s personalities come out while in “teacher mode.”
- 2:30 – 4:00. More sessions. These ones focused on lesson planning or debriefing with our CMA (corps member advisor – lots and lots of acronyms in TFA). Our CMA was the bomb and really helpful when we each had one on one meetings with her – we talked about our strong areas and our “deltas,” or areas of improvement. This part of the day was good, too, because our whole CMA group was together and we could reflect as a group on how we were doing. I was so lucky and got an amazing CMA group – they’re the bomb.
- We left at 4, and since I ate lunch at 10:30, I went straight to dinner. And basically, after dinner, I started working. Always, we would have to prepare for the next day – and if you were like me, revising my lesson plans took a while because I had to take into account the input my CMA had, then figure out my minute-to-minute plan (my favorite TFA quote is: “If you don’t have a plan for your students, they will have a plan for you.” I took that to heart and over-planned so that I wouldn’t get caught in a tight spot – it sometimes worked), and then gather all my materials. Monday nights we had to also hand in two rough drafts of upcoming lesson plans. Then Wednesday night we had to turn in three rough drafts. This is why I did not sleep.
- This was basically the schedule for 5 weeks. On the weekends, I did not do much of anything. Sometimes drove around to explore Houston, sometimes went to a movie or something, one or two times had a beer, but more or less I slept a whole lot!
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Bouch. And the Non-Magical Moody Towers.
Hahaha! Ahh...the bouch is finally funny. I really thought this day would never come.The bouch is the bed of choice in the University of Houston’s Moody Towers. I thought Moody Towers sounded like a mystical, magical place (a la Professor Moody in Harry Potter). I never anticipated just how wrong I could have been.
I lived on the 14th floor. Generally, we could count on maybe one of the two elevators working at any given time (I got stuck only once). But this meant long lines to get upstairs (sometimes a half an hour!) and sore buns after getting impatient and ambitiously trekking up the stairs with all our teacher gear.
So the room: I slept on a bouch, pictured above. It’s not quite a bed and not quite a couch. You pull the mattress out about 6 more inches when you want to sleep. This frees up about an inch and a half more mattress space, and opens a wide, frightening abyss into the unknown beneath the bouch. I never, ever, ever even looked down there, let alone touched anything down there. Some people had inexplicable stains in their rooms – I wasn’t taking any chances.
The mattress was made in a jail - "Texas Correctional Industries." It was not comfortable. My roommate and I wondered when they would feel comfortable – it took about two nights of three hours of sleep and I found myself dreaming of my bouch during the day. It did the job.
The windows in the room were about a foot wide and five feet tall - they were slivers of the outside world during Institute. However, it seemed like whenever I was in the room it was always dark.
But, for this blog, I am focusing on bringing out the “highs,” the positives of my experiences here in Houston. So, after much deliberation, I think that my high for Moody Towers was the camaraderie amid chaos. Just walking through the doors into the Commons, there would be (what seemed like) hundreds of people, just like me, stressed out, tired, frustrated, failing, and they were all right there alongside me. I don’t think I could have made it through Institute if I wasn’t constantly surrounded by the energy and determination of all the other corps members training in Houston. I met some really fantastic people, especially the 99 of us who had to catch the earliest school bus (6:20) every morning to trek to Sharpstown. I never thought I would say I missed anything about Institute or Moody Towers, but I really do miss the people. So that’s my high!
Away We Go!
Let's back-date this blog to June 4-7, pre-Houston and then Induction weekend:
I just had the very best graduation month that I could have possibly imagined. Yet there was very little time for reflection (something I will become very familiar with in the coming weeks) as I crammed my Institute Pre-Work into the week before my planned departure for Texas.
Pre-Work consumed all my time and energy for that week leading up to Houston (in addition to packing logistics and unforeseen travel hurdles, i.e. Spencer's extended stay at Manny's auto shop). I was supposed to read hundreds of pages a day of theories and strategies related to teaching and other TFA-er's personal accounts of their struggles teaching. I read and read, got up early and stayed up late (bizarre post-foreshadowing here); I really tried to do it all, but honestly, it made very little sense. It was still very abstract and distant from anything I had done. So, I plugged through the TFA jargon (it's really like a whole different language) and hauled the pages and pages with me to Induction.
As I briefly mentioned, my car (aka Spencer), was not fit to drive all 1,782 miles to Houston as soon as I needed him to. So Michael saved my life and offered to drive down when the car was ready and I took a flight instead.
I got to the Houston airport with an unfortunate text saying that my ride couldn't actually come pick me up. But, all my luggage showed up and everyone spoke English, so I figured, learning from my previous traveling experiences, I would be just fine. And I was! I eavesdropped all over the baggage claim area to see if I could spot any other anxious TFA-looking people. I found 'em. They were so generous and accommodating and offered to cram into the one car together with all of our luggage.This was the first example of the incredible problem-solving capacity of TFA corps members. The car was stuffed to the gills, but we were all in and on our way. The heat was unbearable, as all the AC vents were blocked and, at the same time, I couldn't get any water because I was limited to the use of just one of my hands in our sardine-like position. But a new friend recognized my predicament and graciously uncapped a bottle for me. With a suitcase directly in my face, I couldn't necessarily see any of the sights on the drive, but this little bit of camaraderie put a smile on my face as we navigated the hot, notoriously awful Houston traffic.
Induction was a real blur. I learned (and promptly forgot) hundreds of peoples' names. I woke up with the sun for the first time in a long, long, time (again, something I would get used to). I sat for hours on end listening to people talk about Houston, interview strategies, the TFA mission, our movement, personal reflections on teaching experience, etc. It might seem challenging, but actually, I was sleeping in an amazingly comfortable king-sized bed and enjoying three vegan meals a day. So, really, not so bad at all.
However, there was a lot of talk about the huge challenges ahead - every single person who stood in front of us reiterated what we had heard moments before: "this is going to be so hard" "when I was in your shoes I couldn't imagine how hard this was going to be" "I wanted to quit every day" "you will fail over and over again"... So yeah, really inspirational. By the end of the three days of Induction weekend, I was numb to the speakers and just wanted to get on with it.
On to Moody Towers...
I just had the very best graduation month that I could have possibly imagined. Yet there was very little time for reflection (something I will become very familiar with in the coming weeks) as I crammed my Institute Pre-Work into the week before my planned departure for Texas.
Pre-Work consumed all my time and energy for that week leading up to Houston (in addition to packing logistics and unforeseen travel hurdles, i.e. Spencer's extended stay at Manny's auto shop). I was supposed to read hundreds of pages a day of theories and strategies related to teaching and other TFA-er's personal accounts of their struggles teaching. I read and read, got up early and stayed up late (bizarre post-foreshadowing here); I really tried to do it all, but honestly, it made very little sense. It was still very abstract and distant from anything I had done. So, I plugged through the TFA jargon (it's really like a whole different language) and hauled the pages and pages with me to Induction.
As I briefly mentioned, my car (aka Spencer), was not fit to drive all 1,782 miles to Houston as soon as I needed him to. So Michael saved my life and offered to drive down when the car was ready and I took a flight instead.
I got to the Houston airport with an unfortunate text saying that my ride couldn't actually come pick me up. But, all my luggage showed up and everyone spoke English, so I figured, learning from my previous traveling experiences, I would be just fine. And I was! I eavesdropped all over the baggage claim area to see if I could spot any other anxious TFA-looking people. I found 'em. They were so generous and accommodating and offered to cram into the one car together with all of our luggage.This was the first example of the incredible problem-solving capacity of TFA corps members. The car was stuffed to the gills, but we were all in and on our way. The heat was unbearable, as all the AC vents were blocked and, at the same time, I couldn't get any water because I was limited to the use of just one of my hands in our sardine-like position. But a new friend recognized my predicament and graciously uncapped a bottle for me. With a suitcase directly in my face, I couldn't necessarily see any of the sights on the drive, but this little bit of camaraderie put a smile on my face as we navigated the hot, notoriously awful Houston traffic.
Induction was a real blur. I learned (and promptly forgot) hundreds of peoples' names. I woke up with the sun for the first time in a long, long, time (again, something I would get used to). I sat for hours on end listening to people talk about Houston, interview strategies, the TFA mission, our movement, personal reflections on teaching experience, etc. It might seem challenging, but actually, I was sleeping in an amazingly comfortable king-sized bed and enjoying three vegan meals a day. So, really, not so bad at all.
However, there was a lot of talk about the huge challenges ahead - every single person who stood in front of us reiterated what we had heard moments before: "this is going to be so hard" "when I was in your shoes I couldn't imagine how hard this was going to be" "I wanted to quit every day" "you will fail over and over again"... So yeah, really inspirational. By the end of the three days of Induction weekend, I was numb to the speakers and just wanted to get on with it.
On to Moody Towers...
Blogophobia: Fear of Beginning Your Own Blog
Ever since I committed to spending the next two years with Teach for America in Houston, I've been contemplating my blog. I want to be able to share thoughts and experiences with my friends and family, but I've been so intimidated by those very people I want to share with: so many of my friends and family have such compelling, interesting, hilarious, and frequently updated blogs, that I have been frozen in fear at the idea that I should dare to compete for internet traffic! But now, sitting here in my fabulous new apartment, sheltered from the sweltering heat outside, I've finally decided to give it a go. Also, I am one of about 16% of TFA "corps members" as we are called, that have not yet gotten placed in a school. So as my fellow teachers-to-be plan their "big goals" and classroom management systems, I will sit here and try to briefly recount my experience thus far.
I have been in Houston for about 7 1/2 weeks now. This alternately feels like a really long and time on some days, and on others, like no time at all. However, a LOT has happened since I arrived at Houston Hobby Airport. I want to get this all down, but I don't want any readers to become burdened with the length - reading this shouldn't be a serious commitment. SO, I'm going to try to re-live the experience in internet time, or something...
I have been in Houston for about 7 1/2 weeks now. This alternately feels like a really long and time on some days, and on others, like no time at all. However, a LOT has happened since I arrived at Houston Hobby Airport. I want to get this all down, but I don't want any readers to become burdened with the length - reading this shouldn't be a serious commitment. SO, I'm going to try to re-live the experience in internet time, or something...
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