Ms. Stewart

When I look at the word failure, I think of words like unaccomplished, unreached, out of touch, etc.  Negative connotations indeed.  When I think about the past year, I cannot readily think of one specific event that has deemed me a failure.  One thing that has hurt me most, though, is that I have had students to drop out of school.  I have yet to figure out how to reach these students.  All of them are males, black males, who have succumbed to the ways of their environment. I feel like a failure as a teacher, a future mother, a future wife and a black woman.  One thing that people must understand about black women is that we must build up our black men in order for them to be successful.  I find it very fascinating that we do the quite opposite in most cases.  We yell at them, scream at them and fight them, only for them to turn to the streets for the love that we, as black women, have denied them. 

Acknowledging this makes me nervous because I fear that one day I will not be able to reach my own children.  For me this is unacceptable.  I know that the drop-out rate is a continually becoming a problem in most school districts across the state and nation, but I hope that one day we can find a way to keep our young men in school.

In a way, I also feel like I have failed my students.  Coming in, I knew that there were a lot of new ideas I wanted to implement.  I felt somewhat restricted by the confines of my classroom because there seemed to be so little I could do.  I wanted to start a Big Sisters Big Brothers club but we failed to get the logistics down.  I also wanted to take some of the students to a play at the Orpheum Theater, but those plans never came under way either.  I have realized that we can have major impacts in these students' lives by introducing them to a variety of cultural experiences, but it is very difficult to do so at a district with so many negative attitudes towards taking the students right around the corner to Rust.  (And that's in walking distance.)  This year I am going to make it a personal goal to take at least 20 students out of the confines of this town to let them experience what the rest of the world has to offer. 

Reflections, reflections, reflections.  I am quite sure that Ben made this blog up.  I am also sure that we have done this topic before, but to please Mr. Guest, I am making an attempt to sit here are re-evaluate the previous school year.  Coming from the small town of Greenwood, MS, I knew that I could make a connection with my students.  However, when I got here to Holly Springs, I realized that I was exposed to far more opportunities than my students.  The two towns are actually similar, but very different.  As far as race relations are concerned, HS and GW are very alike.  In GW the whites live north of the river, while blacks live south of it.  In HS, I know where the black people live, Rankin Circle, the Meadows, etc...but I have no clue where the whites live.  I know its not where the blacks live though.  I expected this to be a the building block for developing a relationship with my students.  Boy was I wrong!! They didn't even know where the Delta was!!!! How could you live in Mississippi and not know where the Delta is??!???

Some of you may look at me and think, "Oh they like her because she is black", but I disagree.  At the beginning of the school year I was very stern and dictator-like.  Most of my students hated me, but they respected me.  I did not smile; I did not laugh. (This was hard for me.) I don't even think they knew I had teeth.  But when my students started to find out more about me, I think they fell in love with my personality.  They actually liked coming to class when I got to the point where I could smile.  I was able to make a connection with most of my guys because I was an athlete at a D-I school and they respected me for that.  They even came to me for advice about school.  They wanted to know how to manage between school and sports.  The girls eventually started liking me because I think they viewed me as a big sister.  Some of you may look at this and think that this was improper conduct, but you are a young lady who has no one in her like to care about you, then looking at your teacher as a role model is fine.  I regret that I was unable to bring students to my house this year, but next year I am going to make time for them.  Most people look at teaching as a way to impart knowledge on a student, but I look at teaching as a way to expose my students to the better things in life.  I look at it as a way to inspire them to choose a path in life that will allow them to be contributors to society, in a positive way of course.

I feel like building a relationship with my students is the one true success that makes me wake up every day to teach.  I cannot believe it: I AM A TEACHER!!

Today is Thursday, June 19, 2008. I keep thinking that it is Friday.  To be quite honest, I wish it were FRIDAY!! Of next week! Summer school is too structured for me.  I have grown quite accustomed to disruptions and misbehavior that I do not know how to respond to seeing everything so spick and span.  When my students try to disrupt class, oddly the best thing for me to do is to ignore it and keep teaching.  I am certain this is not the TEACHER CORP way of doing things, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do to survive. The regular school year is nothing like this so I am tired of pretending like it is.  In my world, the office does not exist (and if you read MG and AD blogs you will understand why I act like there is no office), so calling out warnings and assignments and detention are renewed tasks from last summer.  I tried those things at the beginning of the year, but I improvised greatly.  Do not misinterpret this, though!!! I handle my classes.  I did what was best for me, but I do not understand why we pretend so much doing summer school?? After making a classroom management plan during the summer school year, I was shocked to find out that our school doesn't even have detention.  I'm pretty sure some other schools don't either.  I know for a fact that most of the first years will be in for a big surprise when they go to their schools and they have to think of other ways to manage their classrooms.  I feel somewhat like a superhero at my school during the school year, but a failure doing summer school.  But is being a superhero during summer school and failing at my school really worth it? Hmm....three weeks vs. 9 months.....

That's enough gripping for one day. I hope you don't read this and take it the wrong way, but I also hope the first years understand that summer school is utopia compared to the regular school year.

Six Days....

I have come to realize that I am better at teaching certain objectives.  One that has worked well for me is TSW analyze the use of propaganda and bias and different media. I think that I was successful at teaching this objective because I taught it in a way that it related to history.  The entire back wall of the room had nothing but information about the war years: WWI, WWII, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the Persian Gulf War.  Students got a chance to see how literature and history are related.  I also think it worked well because the students saw me making an attempt to help them on the U.S. history test.  I think they appreciated this more than anything.

One of my worse lessons actually occurred during the first summer session of last year.  I was being observed by Dr. Monroe, and the lesson was on interpreting images and symbolism in The Road Less Taken by Robert Frost.  I can interpret literature, but it is very challenging to help students interpret literature.  I also think that it was difficult because I was not prepared for the varying possible responses that students came up with.  This year, I let the students hold the discussions about the literature and only intervened if they were stuck.  In the future I hope to be more competent in helping students to understand literature because it is a very essential skill to have.

When most people think of coaching, they think of the instruction needed or garnered to prepare someone for an athletic event.  However, coaching also pertains to the way people are prepared to complete a certain task. Being an athletic coach, I know that it takes inspiration and motivation to get students to perform in a certain way.  Instructional coaching is done in the same way. Even though we have only be teaching summer school for a short time, I already see that we are needed to get the first years through this program.  My goal has not only been to help Albanese, Beaty and Cooke, but to also help those outside of our room who may need some insight into teaching.  The one thing that has been difficult is refraining from giving too much of my personal experiences.  I do not want my personal experiences to be their personal experiences.  They really need to learn the ropes for themselves.  We are only here to keep pushing them through the door, not to tell them what's behind the door.  My instructional coaching techniques are derived from my athletic coaching techniques...I'm striding the line of hands on and off! You have to push them, but you want them to push themselves too.  You have to inspire them, but you want them to inspire themselves too.  I think this is helping me to become a better teacher because it is helping me to be a better teacher.  I am able to pick up on my own bad habits.  This is helping me to grow, too, which is essential in this teaching process.

For my lessons, it is my goal to assess student learning at the end of the period.  Assessing material at the end of the week is feasible, however, I think that students are more likely to retain information if it is consistently being formally assessed. The frequency of pop quizzes and planned quizzes will require that students study more.  This provides them with more exposure to the material, which is needed for the learning process to take place.  Just yesterday, the objective in class was to analyze the use of grammar in the progressive tense.  The following is an example of the quiz given at the end of class:
    1. Conjugate an action verb in the six verb tenses we talked about in class.  [The students did the same thing in         the Do Now for the day.]
   
    2. The progressive tense uses two types of verbs.  What are they? [The students copied this in the notes.]

    3. What verb form is used in the progressive tense? [The students copied this in their notes.]

These were are questions that we discussed in class.  Giving it to the students in quiz form shows that this information is important and that they need to learn it.

One thing that I like about the Holly Springs School District is that we have software that allows us to see what skills students have and have not mastered on tests.  This is very beneficial to me because pretests can be given to see what needs to be covered during the school year.  These same tests can be given to show the progress that students have made throughout the year.  Summer school is  a little different, but we still have the opportunity to assess what our students need remediation on.  We also have the opportunity to assess daily what our students need more help on.  With the use of this information, we can ensure that the lessons fit the needs of the students.  We gave students a pretest that covers all four competencies.  At the end of the summer school session, students will be given the same test to see if any progress was made.  This will not only show if we were effective teachers, but it will also show any progression the students have made.

Throughout the first year, my classroom management plan evolved from strict and corporal to lenient and lax.  At the beginning of the school year, I honestly look back and think that I was more of a dictator than a teacher.  There were even instances during the year when I had to revert back to my dictatorship because the students were a little out of hand.  Overall though, I think being lenient and understanding helped me to develop a relationship with my students that I am thankful to have.  The students saw that I actually cared and in their words, this kept them from trying to run me off.  I have learned that I cannot apply the same rules to my classroom that others have because mine are based solely on my personality as are theirs.  So for me being a dictator is difficult at times even though it is necessary to regain control. 

Before coming to our schools, we were instructed to complete classroom management plans.  When I got here, though, I found out that detention was not a step that could be implemented because the school does not allow it.  I had to rethink this.  In the end, I really just played it by ear.  I handled a lot of classroom disturbances myself to show the students that I was in control of my class.  When they did get out of hand, I wrote them up and it was handled accordingly.  Next year, I am going to try to smile after Christmas, though.  I do not want to be burned out by the third nine weeks again.

My advice to the first years would be to research the policies of the school before you make a plan so that you are certain that it meets their guidelines for discipline and rewards.

One of the main challenges of developing a curriculum map is trying to fit everything into a six week time period.  The English III curriculum is devised of four distinct competencies: vocabulary, reading, writing and grammar.  Under each heading are at least four breakdowns of what is to be taught under that competency.  Those breakdowns are known as objectives.  Another challenge in developing the map is deciding which objective needs more time to be focused on.  It is difficult to plan when you do not know the material that the students will need the most help on.  This was my second time developing a curriculum map because I had to do one at the end of the school year for my school district. It was actually harder to complete it this time because it is harder to collaborate on making a map than it is to just do one on your own.

Blog Topic:  Reflect back on your first-year teaching.  What went well, what didn't.  What do you want to do differently next year?

At the close of this year, I reflect on the lives of students I did touch, the ones I almost touched, and the ones I couldn't touch. As a teacher, it is a great disappointment to even admit to being incompetent, so I will talk about this first.  One of the things I was horrible at was getting to work on time. This was not for the entire year, though. Somehow, during the third nine weeks I just got too damn tired, excuse my French. I barely missed work, and when I did it was for a workshop.  I managed to even save days for use in the next school term.  I am going to work on making more time for myself because in the long run my students deserve fifty minutes of instruction time a day, not 45 because I'm finishing my breakfast as I am rushing to start the morning's class.  Also the fourth nine weeks proved to be the biggest challenge for me.  My students were a little too relaxed by the fourth nine weeks.  The relationship I had with them the third nine weeks should have taken place during the fourth nine weeks because they thought I was crazy the fourth nine weeks.  It is very difficult to balance coaching with classroom instruction when you coach a sport that occasionally leaves during the day.  Next year, I plan to use podcasts for my ninth graders since they will have MACS!! THANKS E2T2!!  That pretty much sums up the things that did not go well.

I think one thing worth mentioning that worked well with me was the relationship that I built with my students. I students hated me the first nine weeks because I was the biggest witch I could be (really want to put the word with the b!!) They claimed that they had run all of these teachers off but I had to get them straight.  I remembered telling them that I refused to be disrespected by a bunch of ignorant teenagers!! This occurred after I returned from a track meet absence.  My students knew that I was not playing with them!! With this being said, I do realize this comes from the established respect that we have as teacher and students. 

Next year I will be a lot sterner because I am teaching a E-3. I have am going to make the class as engaging as possible, but it is my goal to work them for the entire 50 minutes each day.  We do not have time to be casual, we can do that after school!! Our test scores must improve, and they will only improve if I bring my A-game!! Wish me luck!!!