Failure

I pinned down today one of the most draining things about this: I'm not used to failure. I don't say this to sound cocky or boastful. I've certainly failed before. But the truth is, I was privileged enough to be set up for success for most things in my life so far. Unfortunately, I am not yet a very good teacher. In fact, I think it would be fair to say I'm a pretty bad teacher. It's not unexpected in this situation, I suppose. Five weeks of training isn't much. It's still not something I'm used to though. And it is definitely draining.

Aside from the small comfort of being able to say "hey, maybe that's why I feel like crap. ok, at least the beast has a face" it's given me a whole new appreciation for some of my students. I can't imagine the kind of strength it takes for some of them to come to school every day when all their lives they've been told they're not smart, they've scored low on tests, they've been afforded fewer opportunities just because of who they are. If you've been set up for failure, and therefore have had less success, think of the strength it takes to continue on with no reason to believe anything is going to change. So, I feel as though I might have some notion now of what it feels like to know you're not doing well but to keep trying, and perhaps this will lead me to some strategies for encouraging those students once I figure out what keeps me going.

Culture lessons

I've decided to teach my culture lessons on Wednesdays because of my school's crazy schedule. I have all 5 of my classes for half an hour each on wednesdays. This week we defined culture and identified parts of American culture. The homework assignment was to choose one element that they thought represented all of American culture. I got some good answers- the flag, fast food, etc. This one was my favorite:
The American culture has to deal with jeans and shirts. We all deal with jeans and shirts because we all where clothes like crazy. I love clothes I hope they never leave me. God Bless America.

They crack me up sometimes.

Transition and beginning

The last month has been one long transition and I'm ready for things to be routine. After Institute, I had a day at home before taking the train down to Urbana to begin packing up everything in my apartment. I was able to sleep, pack, and visit with friends one last time. On August 3, I took the train home so that I could go to the first in a series of Teach for America orientations for charter school teachers on August 4. It went from 8-4:30. While I know a lot of what they gave us was valuable, I couldn't help but reschedule all the day's events to figure out that we could have done in 2 hours what we instead took 8.5 to work through. On Sunday, Mom and I got up early and she drove the rented van down to Urbana to get my stuff. We were back in Hyde Park by 2:30, where my dad, Uncle Gerry, Brian, and David met us to unload and carry everything up to the third floor. I was not to stay in my apartment that night though, since my bed delivery was mis-scheduled. I spent the week at home before another entire Saturday of Teach for America planning time. The following Tuesday I started professional development at the other high school operated by the EMO (Educational Management Organization) that runs the school where I work. Our building wasn't ready yet. Sidenote, my "chain" of charter schools is known as Chicago International Charter School (CICS). It is actually one large school with a charter to open different campuses. There are twelve, I believe. Those are then divied up among different EMOs. Mine is called Civitas. You can read more about them at http://www.civitasschools.org/home/. My school's official name is Chicago International Charter School, Ralph Ellison Campus.

PD was roughly 8:30-3:30 everyday for two weeks. Last Thursday, we finally got to go down to our building, which meant I moved in permanently to my apartment Wednesday night. This helped with the feeling that I have just been spinning my wheels for a month since Institute, trying to start something huge but not really doing anything new. But what I'm really looking forward to is getting into a routine at my school. I met my freshmen Friday for their orientation. I have an advisory of 21 freshmen girls who are just fantastic. I see them half an hour a day. I have three sections of freshman Spanish I and two section of sophomore Spanish II. I also moderate a study hall. I'll see each of those classes 4 times a week- three one hour blocks and one half hour class each on Wednesdays when they are dismissed early. The school operates with a sort of hybrid traditional/rotating block schedule, so I won't actually have the same routine every day since the classes switch times each day. But start, lunch, and end times will be consistent and as I get to learn all 138 names I'm sure it will feel more like home.

I asked all my kids to fill out a notecard with parent contact information as well as reasons why they are at a charter school (students have to apply, though we are non-selective- if too many apply there is a lottery) and one great thing about themselves. Some of my favorites:
"I know a little Japanese."
"I can dance really good and I do hair. (I know you said 1)"
"I love to learn new things."
"I'm ambitious."
"I am ready to learn and to make it in college and in life."
"I am fully successful."
"I love to read."
"I love to participate."

The makings of a great year...

Causes

We had a session today about getting parents involved in students' school lives. It opened with a Gallup poll that said that most of the general public blames school failure on parents; they aren't doing enough, aren't encouraging enough, don't care. I never really believed that, probably as a result of my own experiences with many kinds of families. Simply put, with a few rare exceptions, parents care about their children. But I can say confidently that by the end of the first week I was absolutely convinced that it is not the parents who are to blame for student failure- it is the schools. This is not to say that schools aren't up against innumerable challenges. They have budget constraints, endless rules and regulations to follow, and other obstacles. But what I have seen so far in the school where I work this summer, and what I have heard from people working in other schools, confirms that the schools are not at all focused on how well students are doing and what they are learning, but on how well they function as bureaucracies.

An example: The principal wants every student to pass summer school. An admirable goal. Rather than running her school in such a manner as to facilitate students learning the material to earn passing grades, she "unofficially" declares that no student can fail and any student determined to be "in danger of failing" is to be given remediation work until his/her grade has been sufficiently boosted. In the rare event that a student is allowed to be marked as "fail" the grade must be at least a 60% so as not to weight down the schools average.

I was trying to play devil's advocate in this and say that maybe she does this because she doesn't want the school that allows Teach for America (read: rookie) teachers to control its classrooms to look bad. That might endanger the program. And I suppose there could be some element of that. But the truth is, our kids, the ones we teach, failed under the guidance of experienced teachers. If we can guide even a marginal percentage of them towards success, that should be evidence that we're doing something right. I'm not the only one to have heard in my classroom "man, if my regular teacher taught like this I wouldn't be in summer school."

sleep

Last week I got 13.5 hours of sleep over 5 nights. On Friday, I ate dinner with my friend Rachel, giggled through most of it because I was so loopy, came back to my room, showered, bought an episode of Law & Order SVU from iTunes, got in my bed with my laptop and was asleep before the opening credits. I slept from a little before 7 until 10 the next morning. Glorious.

William Penn

The school where I'm teaching this summer is called William Penn. There has been much talk amongst those of us working there about how poorly it is designed. There are huge open spaces, classrooms that are oddly shaped, with useless corners, dividers that don't block noise but do keep air-conditioning out, and hallways where the classrooms on one side are half a floor below the classrooms on the other side. We were speculating that since it as built in the early seventies, perhaps the designers had been under the influence of something. Last night, I found out there is a real reason.

On the bus on the way back from a night out, I pointed out my school to the corps member I was sitting with. "hey, that's my school! William Penn!" to which he responded, "Oh, you mean William Penn-etentiary?" "shhhh!" I hushed him, looking around to see if anyone else on the crowded bus might have heard him. "I can't believe you just said that!"
"Oh, wasn't that in a song you guys sang last week?"

Walking the block from the bus stop, we talked a little more, this time joined by someone else from my school. Turns out her advisor had told their group that when the school was designed, one strand of thinking (and of extra public funding) was that schools in low-income urban areas should be built as models for potential prisons. The idea was to test designs on populations that would likely be using the facilities. It floored me, but probably not as much as it would have if I hadn't already known this little tidbit: states look at 4th-8th grade literacy rates to decide how much new prison space they need to build before the kids reach 18. That one actually made me cry. The state gives up on kids when they're ten. Ten. Years. Old. Working against that kind of expectation is an absolutely monumental task, especially since that's not the only place that is making clear those expectations.

Last week someone told me that one of his students said she hated coming to school because it felt like being in prison. I don't blame her.

Staying positive

I was feeling very stressed and sad and overwhelmed today, even with my extra hour and a half of sleep and only a half day of sessions. The reality is sinking in that at this point, I'm just not a good teacher. At all. And really, I don't think it would be fair to expect that of myself. I've had ONE week of training. It was intense, but it's just not possible to be great in a week, or even average. The conflict is that I am actually in front of students. My lack of skills and knowledge is going to have a direct impact on how well they do and how much they're able to learn. That is an incredible amount of pressure and it's definitely a struggle to positively channel that pressure into working harder to improve when I am constantly feeling discouraged about how very unskilled I am.

So I took some time to be alone, bought a non-cafeteria lunch, and sat in a little park on campus. It's a few steps below street level, sheltered from the busy intersection by a subway station on one side and a brick wall on the other. I was alone for a few minutes before a couple of teenage boys, looking similar to the ones I am teaching, biked down the ramp into the park, whizzed past, and demonstrated why the tree grate had been jimmied up at an angle and propped with bricks. They sailed off the makeshift ramp on their bikes and headed back for another lap. This time, they noticed me watching them and smiling. And from then on, I could tell that each time one of them went by, he would check to make sure I was watching, concentrate very hard, and speed up. Their heads would turn just enough to see if I had seen another successful jump. After a few trips around, they started popping wheelies, always glancing to make sure their audience was still interested. They reminded me of five year olds, and made me think that maybe teaching high school isn't so different from teaching elementary. I think kids of all ages (and adults, too) want approval. They want to know that what they're doing is being recognized. Teenagers are just too cool to show it as often.