For years, my school has made a huge production out of the 100th day of school. Instead of following our regular old TC reading-writing-math schedule, our classes were treated to a smorgasboard of fun 100th day activities. To really understand what an undertaking this was, you have to understand that my school builds in very little time for fun, by which I mean no time at all during which any fun activities are ever supposed to take place. Like, one year on St. Patrick's Day a fourth grade teacher gave her class some shamrock graphing activity to do during math, and her assistant principal happened to pop in and observe the shamrock graphing activity taking place, and she sternly ordered the teacher to stop said shamrock graphing activity and resume her regularly scheduled non-fun mathematics.
But I digress. Anyway, so our 100th day of school was a day of actual enjoyment. We licked lollipops 100 times, we did 100 jumping jacks in the gym, we made shirts for the kids to wear with 100 handprints on them (well, I did not do this, but some very ambitious first grade teachers did). We did not sit in our classrooms with our legs folded criss-cross on the carpet while our teachers droned on in mini lesson after mini lesson; rather, we roamed the school in packs, attempting various feats of mental strength involving the number 100!
Unfortunately, of course, all good things must come to an end, and the teacher who used to coordinate our 100th day of school extravaganza is no longer with us. So today I received this hilarious missive from my assistant principal:
On Friday, February 12 we will be celebrating the 100th day of school. On that day you will be paired up with another class on your grade for one period. During that time we are inviting you to participate in a math game/activity. We are asking that you collegially decide what game/activity you wish your students to play and what period of the day to facilitate this arrangement. Below is a list of teacher teams and your room assignments.
Hmmm, so, let me get this straight. In my itty-bitty classroom, which is already overcrowded as it is with 27 students, you would like to invite me to invite 27 more students? And you would like to invite me and these 54 students, who are now crammed into my teeny-tiny overheated classroom, to play some sort of "math game/activity"? (Thank you for bolding that, by the way, otherwise I might have missed it!) And you would like me and the other teacher, in our massive amounts of free time, to decide on a game or activity that will hold the attention of our 54 students on the Friday before vacation while they are all stuffed into my immensely warm and crowded classroom?
First of all, I'm not even with them on the 100th day of school thing. I have been counting very carefully (and not because I'm torturing myself, either -- every single morning we talk about what day of school it is and how many tens and ones go into that number), and I could swear that Friday, February 12 is actually the 99th day of school and that someone at my school is faking it so that we don't have to hold our "celebration" on the day we return from the break. Can any other NYC public school teachers corrorborate either side on this?
Second of all: bummer. The only glimmer of hope comes at the end of the memo, in which we are "further encouraged to plan other activities within your classroom to celebrate this day."
Sold!
Showing posts with label school politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Promotion, complaints and funny stories
Okay, kids! Here's what's on Miss Brave's agenda today:
1. shameless self-promotion;
2. complaining;
3. funny stories.
Yes, in that order. It wouldn't be a Miss Brave blog entry without the complaining and the funny stories, but the shameless self-promotion might be a new one for me! I was honored to be interviewed at findingEducation's Digital Teachers' Lounge; you can read the interview here! They asked me some really thoughtful questions and I enjoyed answering them. They're now looking for middle school teachers in order to survey middle school students, so if you're an NYC middle school teacher, click here to find out how you can help the project.
There, that wasn't too bad, was it? So let's move on to the juicy stuff: the complaining. At a time in the year when I feel as though I should feel relatively settled in, I'm actually continuing to feel more and more overwhelmed. Maybe it's because I'm striving to take things more seriously instead of merely trying to survive the day -- we've always been expected to do two strategy lessons during each major subject (reading, writing and math) in addition to a mini lesson, but in the beginning of the year I was lucky if I could even get to one. Now I'm truly making the effort to fit in two, and I'm sure it doesn't surprise you to learn that it's a lot of work. And it doesn't always happen. Just the other day we had writing first period, where time always gets shaved off for unpacking and announcements, and then as we were dispersing from the mini lesson (which itself was interrupted by a visit from my assistant principal) I happened to notice sneaky things going on with Frick and Frack, and while I was dealing with that, my AP came back to speak to another student about something that had happened the day before. Things like that happen every day -- they're the rule, not the exception -- and I wish my administration would just roll with it instead of honestly expecting two strategy lessons out of us.
Or maybe it's because we continue to make changes to our curriculum that are difficult to keep up with. At a meeting last week, we were informed that we'd be using this new program two days a week during word work, we were given one hour of professional development in the new program (half of which consisted of watching a pointless video that was obviously filmed in some sort of blissed-out Montessori classroom where the teacher had transformed the entire room into a jungle and the kids concluded their share time by saying to each other, "Are there any comments, compliments or connections?") and then ordered to begin the new program in two days. Last year, during reading, we were always expected to do one guided reading group and one strategy lesson. This year, they decided (who's "they"? who knows?) that we should do two guided reading groups. Now, they want us to go back to doing one guided reading group and a strategy lesson, but with the added twist that everything we teach has to be (a) goal-related and (b) taught over a three-day period. So if I want to teach "inferring characters' feelings," or "synthesizing information in text," I have to come up with three different ways to teach it. Which is fine, but it's just...never-ending. I still feel like I do an enormous amount of preparation for every single day...and when that day is over, I know I have to do it all again for the next day.
Or maybe it's because we're in that January rut where you start saying to the kids, "It's January! We've been in this classroom since September! And yet you're still calling out! Raise your HAND!!!!!"
All right, enough complaining. On to the funny stories!
If you ask any teacher whether they've ever found themselves in a situation that caused them to simultaneously think, "I can't believe I went to graduate school for this" and "No one taught me how to deal with this in graduate school," the answer you're going to get is "Abso-freaking-lutely." I had one of those moments recently when I was walking my class upstairs and one of my students got his whole arm stuck in the stair banister. There we are, all 28 of us, with me trying to coach him out of it while simultaneously wondering whether I'm actually going to have to send two students to the office to announce that we need help because someone is stuck.
I got him out.
Next: My extended day students have developed a fondness for the quiet game. (I know, I can hardly believe it either.) Every day as we're putting our coats on and I'm telling them to calm down for the 68th time, they ask me if we can play the quiet game on the way downstairs. Their favorite aspect of the quiet game is that I deviously attempt to make them talk: "Hmmmm, Felix, do you have any plans for the weekend?"
So today, as usual, they decided to play the quiet game, except that Julisa announced that she wasn't going to play. Julisa is one of those students who's not technically an ELL, except that she's totally an ELL. But she's really come a long way recently in how comfortable she is conversing and explaining herself.
A moment later, Julisa decided, "I'm going to try to make everyone talk!" She pranced around the room from student to student: "David...why are you wearing glasses? Dora...do you think I'm pretty?" The other kids just stared back at her, their lips pressed tightly together, shaking with silent giggles. I was watching her when it clicked: She's doing me!
1. shameless self-promotion;
2. complaining;
3. funny stories.
Yes, in that order. It wouldn't be a Miss Brave blog entry without the complaining and the funny stories, but the shameless self-promotion might be a new one for me! I was honored to be interviewed at findingEducation's Digital Teachers' Lounge; you can read the interview here! They asked me some really thoughtful questions and I enjoyed answering them. They're now looking for middle school teachers in order to survey middle school students, so if you're an NYC middle school teacher, click here to find out how you can help the project.
There, that wasn't too bad, was it? So let's move on to the juicy stuff: the complaining. At a time in the year when I feel as though I should feel relatively settled in, I'm actually continuing to feel more and more overwhelmed. Maybe it's because I'm striving to take things more seriously instead of merely trying to survive the day -- we've always been expected to do two strategy lessons during each major subject (reading, writing and math) in addition to a mini lesson, but in the beginning of the year I was lucky if I could even get to one. Now I'm truly making the effort to fit in two, and I'm sure it doesn't surprise you to learn that it's a lot of work. And it doesn't always happen. Just the other day we had writing first period, where time always gets shaved off for unpacking and announcements, and then as we were dispersing from the mini lesson (which itself was interrupted by a visit from my assistant principal) I happened to notice sneaky things going on with Frick and Frack, and while I was dealing with that, my AP came back to speak to another student about something that had happened the day before. Things like that happen every day -- they're the rule, not the exception -- and I wish my administration would just roll with it instead of honestly expecting two strategy lessons out of us.
Or maybe it's because we continue to make changes to our curriculum that are difficult to keep up with. At a meeting last week, we were informed that we'd be using this new program two days a week during word work, we were given one hour of professional development in the new program (half of which consisted of watching a pointless video that was obviously filmed in some sort of blissed-out Montessori classroom where the teacher had transformed the entire room into a jungle and the kids concluded their share time by saying to each other, "Are there any comments, compliments or connections?") and then ordered to begin the new program in two days. Last year, during reading, we were always expected to do one guided reading group and one strategy lesson. This year, they decided (who's "they"? who knows?) that we should do two guided reading groups. Now, they want us to go back to doing one guided reading group and a strategy lesson, but with the added twist that everything we teach has to be (a) goal-related and (b) taught over a three-day period. So if I want to teach "inferring characters' feelings," or "synthesizing information in text," I have to come up with three different ways to teach it. Which is fine, but it's just...never-ending. I still feel like I do an enormous amount of preparation for every single day...and when that day is over, I know I have to do it all again for the next day.
Or maybe it's because we're in that January rut where you start saying to the kids, "It's January! We've been in this classroom since September! And yet you're still calling out! Raise your HAND!!!!!"
All right, enough complaining. On to the funny stories!
If you ask any teacher whether they've ever found themselves in a situation that caused them to simultaneously think, "I can't believe I went to graduate school for this" and "No one taught me how to deal with this in graduate school," the answer you're going to get is "Abso-freaking-lutely." I had one of those moments recently when I was walking my class upstairs and one of my students got his whole arm stuck in the stair banister. There we are, all 28 of us, with me trying to coach him out of it while simultaneously wondering whether I'm actually going to have to send two students to the office to announce that we need help because someone is stuck.
I got him out.
Next: My extended day students have developed a fondness for the quiet game. (I know, I can hardly believe it either.) Every day as we're putting our coats on and I'm telling them to calm down for the 68th time, they ask me if we can play the quiet game on the way downstairs. Their favorite aspect of the quiet game is that I deviously attempt to make them talk: "Hmmmm, Felix, do you have any plans for the weekend?"
So today, as usual, they decided to play the quiet game, except that Julisa announced that she wasn't going to play. Julisa is one of those students who's not technically an ELL, except that she's totally an ELL. But she's really come a long way recently in how comfortable she is conversing and explaining herself.
A moment later, Julisa decided, "I'm going to try to make everyone talk!" She pranced around the room from student to student: "David...why are you wearing glasses? Dora...do you think I'm pretty?" The other kids just stared back at her, their lips pressed tightly together, shaking with silent giggles. I was watching her when it clicked: She's doing me!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Got a revolution behind my eyes, we got to get up and organize
The organization sheet is here.
But before I reveal its contents, let me just tell you about the grief it has caused me these past few weeks: I am exhausted. My head hurts. I itch. I couldn't eat at our potluck lunch this afternoon because my stomach was in knots.
So where did I end up? In a second grade classroom of my own (not a CTT class as previously rumored; I think those teachers felt so strongly about co-teaching together next year that they asked my principal to reconsider keeping them together).
People keep asking me, "Are you excited? Are you happy?" The truth is that I'm not, but it's not even completely because I have to give up my (relatively) cushy AIS position for a classroom, or because I'm totally switching gears again for the second year in a row. It's because my administration has been acting like they're the Wizards of Oz these past few weeks, refusing to divulge any information about their decision-making process -- or, come to think of it, any information at all. There are teachers at my school who got called into the principal's office a week ago only to be told that they were moving rooms, but meanwhile there are other teachers who are making huge program changes, to positions they didn't even ask for at all on their preference sheets, and no one in the administration had the courtesy to tell them in person. More than anything else, I feel disrespected, like I'm being slighted for something I don't even know about. You tell me how fabulous I am all year and then boot me for someone who didn't even apply for it? That, as Cynthia Lord's Catherine would say, stinks a big one.
And now, my head is spinning with everything I'll have to do next year. I'm completely overwhelmed...and so totally done with this year that I don't know how I'm going to stand the next few weeks. And don't get me wrong, it's not that I dread the idea of having my own classroom -- I'm already swimming with ideas and plans. I'm ready to see it as a challenge: You want me in a second grade classroom? I'm going to make it the best second grade classroom it can be.
But please, let me have a little summer first. Please.
But before I reveal its contents, let me just tell you about the grief it has caused me these past few weeks: I am exhausted. My head hurts. I itch. I couldn't eat at our potluck lunch this afternoon because my stomach was in knots.
So where did I end up? In a second grade classroom of my own (not a CTT class as previously rumored; I think those teachers felt so strongly about co-teaching together next year that they asked my principal to reconsider keeping them together).
People keep asking me, "Are you excited? Are you happy?" The truth is that I'm not, but it's not even completely because I have to give up my (relatively) cushy AIS position for a classroom, or because I'm totally switching gears again for the second year in a row. It's because my administration has been acting like they're the Wizards of Oz these past few weeks, refusing to divulge any information about their decision-making process -- or, come to think of it, any information at all. There are teachers at my school who got called into the principal's office a week ago only to be told that they were moving rooms, but meanwhile there are other teachers who are making huge program changes, to positions they didn't even ask for at all on their preference sheets, and no one in the administration had the courtesy to tell them in person. More than anything else, I feel disrespected, like I'm being slighted for something I don't even know about. You tell me how fabulous I am all year and then boot me for someone who didn't even apply for it? That, as Cynthia Lord's Catherine would say, stinks a big one.
And now, my head is spinning with everything I'll have to do next year. I'm completely overwhelmed...and so totally done with this year that I don't know how I'm going to stand the next few weeks. And don't get me wrong, it's not that I dread the idea of having my own classroom -- I'm already swimming with ideas and plans. I'm ready to see it as a challenge: You want me in a second grade classroom? I'm going to make it the best second grade classroom it can be.
But please, let me have a little summer first. Please.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Rumor has it
I now know that I am not second grade or first grade AIS next year. The latest rumor (one of my colleagues said to me, "Miss Brave, have you heard any rumors about yourself? Because I heard a rumor about you!") is that I'll be doing a second grade CTT class (although I think CTT is now known as something else...see, I'm not even up on the lingo). CTT stands for "Collaborative Team Teaching," and CTT classes contain 40% special education and 60% general education students, with a special ed teacher and a general ed teacher team-teaching the class.
I did check CTT on my preference sheet, but the rumors say I'm with a special ed teacher who is currently in a third grade CTT. She and her co-teacher work really well together and want to stay together next year, so I have no idea why my crazy administration wants to split them up and I feel really weird and awkward about the whole situation even though I obviously have no control over it.
Meanwhile, Monday is like the absolute last day according to our contract that we can be notified about these things, but administration is still saying things like, "The reorganization sheet isn't final" and being extremely coy about everything. Monday is definitely going to be an interesting day.
I did check CTT on my preference sheet, but the rumors say I'm with a special ed teacher who is currently in a third grade CTT. She and her co-teacher work really well together and want to stay together next year, so I have no idea why my crazy administration wants to split them up and I feel really weird and awkward about the whole situation even though I obviously have no control over it.
Meanwhile, Monday is like the absolute last day according to our contract that we can be notified about these things, but administration is still saying things like, "The reorganization sheet isn't final" and being extremely coy about everything. Monday is definitely going to be an interesting day.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Not counting my chickens
So. It's not a secret that I don't always exactly love my job. But I do consider it a vast improvement over what I did last year. When preference sheet time rolled around, I dutifully dusted off my resume and worked up a letter of intent (because for some reason even AIS teachers have to re-apply for AIS) for an AIS position. In second grade. (There's no place for listing grade preferences for AIS, but I sneakily mentioned in my cover letter that I looked forward to being part of the second grade team again next year.)
On Friday, one of my second grade colleagues, a lovely and dynamic teacher whom I consider a friend, was called into the principal's office and told that she'd be taking the second grade AIS position next year.
I? Was told nothing.
Needless to say, I have spent the entire weekend freaking out. What does it mean? Am I going to first grade AIS? Am I going into a classroom? Why would administration make us apply for AIS positions when they just end up giving them to whoever they want anyway? (My colleague, who I am, don't get me wrong, happy for, and who I believe will do a great job in the position, nevertheless did not actually put in for AIS.) Why would they tell her that she was taking my job without telling me what I would be doing?
Then I started getting paranoid: Does my principal know I sent out a few resumes through the open market transfer system? Does she know I say unpleasant things about our school on my blog? Am I being punished?
At this point, best case scenario, I go down to first grade AIS (because the first grade AIS teacher would like to go into a classroom). But here's what I don't understand: Not to brag about my general fabulousness or anything, but this year, I have gotten pretty much nothing but compliments from administration. In my last post-observation conference, my AP told me I was "flawless." So if I'm good at my job, and they like the way I'm doing my job, and I ask for the same job again next year...why wouldn't I get that job? Why would they give it away to someone who didn't even request it?
Aaaaarrrghhhh. Rumor has it that our reorganization sheet is being released on Tuesday; I'm hoping I'll find out something before I get the paper in my mailbox and potentially start, like, crying in front of the entire office when I see my name next to a fifth grade class or something. But in the meantime, the waiting is exhausting.
On Friday, one of my second grade colleagues, a lovely and dynamic teacher whom I consider a friend, was called into the principal's office and told that she'd be taking the second grade AIS position next year.
I? Was told nothing.
Needless to say, I have spent the entire weekend freaking out. What does it mean? Am I going to first grade AIS? Am I going into a classroom? Why would administration make us apply for AIS positions when they just end up giving them to whoever they want anyway? (My colleague, who I am, don't get me wrong, happy for, and who I believe will do a great job in the position, nevertheless did not actually put in for AIS.) Why would they tell her that she was taking my job without telling me what I would be doing?
Then I started getting paranoid: Does my principal know I sent out a few resumes through the open market transfer system? Does she know I say unpleasant things about our school on my blog? Am I being punished?
At this point, best case scenario, I go down to first grade AIS (because the first grade AIS teacher would like to go into a classroom). But here's what I don't understand: Not to brag about my general fabulousness or anything, but this year, I have gotten pretty much nothing but compliments from administration. In my last post-observation conference, my AP told me I was "flawless." So if I'm good at my job, and they like the way I'm doing my job, and I ask for the same job again next year...why wouldn't I get that job? Why would they give it away to someone who didn't even request it?
Aaaaarrrghhhh. Rumor has it that our reorganization sheet is being released on Tuesday; I'm hoping I'll find out something before I get the paper in my mailbox and potentially start, like, crying in front of the entire office when I see my name next to a fifth grade class or something. But in the meantime, the waiting is exhausting.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
R-e-s-p-e-c-t
Yesterday a third grader at my school threw things at his classmates, gave his teacher the middle finger, made fun of her name by turning it into a vulgarity, and said, "F**k you" to her.
Yet he won't be suspended until at least next week, because our school suspension room is already full. So today, he was back in class.
That makes me extremely angry. To show that level of disrespect for other students and teachers and not receive any immediate consequences for it? That's the kind of situation where a principal should march into the classroom and drag the kid out by his ears. But at our school we have no one in a position of authority who demands that kind of respect from our students, and they're getting away with murder.
Yesterday I was asked to cover a class for the whole day for a teacher who was at a meeting. I happen to love that class, so I didn't mind and we had a good day together. Today another teacher was out sick, and her substitute unexpectedly had to leave to pick up her son, who apparently had a high fever (hmmm...). Wouldn't it be fair, since I was pulled from my program yesterday, to pull the second grade push-in math teacher instead today? Nope. Our push-in math teachers never get pulled to cover classes for the day -- it's like they think math teachers are incapable of following our literacy program or something.
Anyway, so I've got this class for the day, and then I realize that I'm the teacher who picks up all the early dismissal kids from the floor and brings them downstairs. (Side note: I seriously, seriously hope they come up with some way of revising our extended day program next year, because this year it is such a waste of time and such a chaotic disaster every day when some kids leave, other kids stay, some kids go to other classrooms, etc.) So, like the responsible, conscientious teacher that I am, I head into the office to tell the secretary that I have a conflict.
Now, I should have realized something was up when I saw my principal sitting next to the secretary's desk, but neither of them were talking and both looked deep in thought, so I approached and began to say quietly to the secretary, "I just want to let you know that I -- "
My principal interrupted me by holding up her hand and saying, "Not now, Miss Brave."
And so I slunk off, feeling oddly humiliated, as though I had just had an encouter with Simon Cowell. Not now? Let me tell you something: I am a second grade teacher, and I get interrupted all day long. Sometimes I say, "Sorry, you need to wait a minute," or "One second, please" or "I am working with another student, please don't interrupt." But I don't say a curt "Not now" and nothing else. I believe it's called you have to give respect to get respect.
(Addendum: After that I had to go back to class -- a class that was not my own, mind you -- and deal with tantrum-throwing children for the rest of the day, and that occupied my mind for the afternoon until the inevitable happened: The end of the day came, my students were packed to leave, and no one came to pick them up.)
Yet he won't be suspended until at least next week, because our school suspension room is already full. So today, he was back in class.
That makes me extremely angry. To show that level of disrespect for other students and teachers and not receive any immediate consequences for it? That's the kind of situation where a principal should march into the classroom and drag the kid out by his ears. But at our school we have no one in a position of authority who demands that kind of respect from our students, and they're getting away with murder.
Yesterday I was asked to cover a class for the whole day for a teacher who was at a meeting. I happen to love that class, so I didn't mind and we had a good day together. Today another teacher was out sick, and her substitute unexpectedly had to leave to pick up her son, who apparently had a high fever (hmmm...). Wouldn't it be fair, since I was pulled from my program yesterday, to pull the second grade push-in math teacher instead today? Nope. Our push-in math teachers never get pulled to cover classes for the day -- it's like they think math teachers are incapable of following our literacy program or something.
Anyway, so I've got this class for the day, and then I realize that I'm the teacher who picks up all the early dismissal kids from the floor and brings them downstairs. (Side note: I seriously, seriously hope they come up with some way of revising our extended day program next year, because this year it is such a waste of time and such a chaotic disaster every day when some kids leave, other kids stay, some kids go to other classrooms, etc.) So, like the responsible, conscientious teacher that I am, I head into the office to tell the secretary that I have a conflict.
Now, I should have realized something was up when I saw my principal sitting next to the secretary's desk, but neither of them were talking and both looked deep in thought, so I approached and began to say quietly to the secretary, "I just want to let you know that I -- "
My principal interrupted me by holding up her hand and saying, "Not now, Miss Brave."
And so I slunk off, feeling oddly humiliated, as though I had just had an encouter with Simon Cowell. Not now? Let me tell you something: I am a second grade teacher, and I get interrupted all day long. Sometimes I say, "Sorry, you need to wait a minute," or "One second, please" or "I am working with another student, please don't interrupt." But I don't say a curt "Not now" and nothing else. I believe it's called you have to give respect to get respect.
(Addendum: After that I had to go back to class -- a class that was not my own, mind you -- and deal with tantrum-throwing children for the rest of the day, and that occupied my mind for the afternoon until the inevitable happened: The end of the day came, my students were packed to leave, and no one came to pick them up.)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
A time and a place
Imagine you're a lawyer, and you wake up early one morning to finish preparing your arguments for a case -- say your client is on trial for robbing a grocery store. You arrive early at the courthouse, review your notes and feel ready to go. But then midway through your opening arguments, you get a call informing you to leave the courtroom and go to the one next door, where you'll be arguing an entirely different case on patent law.
You'd be a little caught off guard, right? Maybe a little irritated that you didn't find out about the change sooner? Maybe kind of annoyed that all your hard work will go to waste?
Yet this happens to me every day at my school. For the past week, at least once a day I've been pulled out of my regular schedule and sent to cover third grade teachers, the suspension room, you name it. Wherever I am -- my office, a classroom -- a secretary manages to track me down and send me someplace else. Occasionally I get sent to cover kindergarten classes in the annex and when I get there, I discover I'm actually supposed to be the science teacher or the art teacher. Sometimes these changes are announced beforehand, usually in obscenely archaic memos that are impossible to decipher without a hefty chunk of time and the help of several colleagues, but sometimes they are not. And since nobody at my school who makes these decisions actually consults with each other, I am routinely scheduled to cover two different classes at the same time, which means I have to go running all over the school tracking down the people in charge and informing them about the laws of physics.
Weeks ago, I got an e-mail about a schedule change due to third grade math coaching (which it's lucky I even opened in the first place, as I am not a third grade teacher nor a math teacher) during which we should all be following Week 4 of our coverage schedule. Then the date was changed. Twice. Then "Week 4" was renamed "Cycle D" as to avoid confusion (nice try). Because I am extremely conscientious about these things, I was pretty sure the schedule change was still on today, but there were so many date changes that I didn't know (a) if it was even happening or (b) which coverage week (excuse me, "cycle") to follow. So one of my colleagues called down to the main office and, with my own ears, I heard her ask this question: "Are we following the coverage schedule today for third grade?"
"No."
NO! So off I went to my class. Twenty minutes in, I am paged over the loudspeaker, along with six other teachers, to report to a third grade classroom I am apparently supposed to be covering, which happens to be a different classroom than the one I thought I was supposed to be covering (because for some mysterious reason we were following Cycle B instead of Cycle D).
The following period, a phone call dispatched me to cover another class for the rest of the day. So there went my day -- mini lessons down the drain, strategy lessons scrapped, guided reading groups put off. When will I learn not to get to school an hour early to plan lessons I don't get to teach?
You'd be a little caught off guard, right? Maybe a little irritated that you didn't find out about the change sooner? Maybe kind of annoyed that all your hard work will go to waste?
Yet this happens to me every day at my school. For the past week, at least once a day I've been pulled out of my regular schedule and sent to cover third grade teachers, the suspension room, you name it. Wherever I am -- my office, a classroom -- a secretary manages to track me down and send me someplace else. Occasionally I get sent to cover kindergarten classes in the annex and when I get there, I discover I'm actually supposed to be the science teacher or the art teacher. Sometimes these changes are announced beforehand, usually in obscenely archaic memos that are impossible to decipher without a hefty chunk of time and the help of several colleagues, but sometimes they are not. And since nobody at my school who makes these decisions actually consults with each other, I am routinely scheduled to cover two different classes at the same time, which means I have to go running all over the school tracking down the people in charge and informing them about the laws of physics.
Weeks ago, I got an e-mail about a schedule change due to third grade math coaching (which it's lucky I even opened in the first place, as I am not a third grade teacher nor a math teacher) during which we should all be following Week 4 of our coverage schedule. Then the date was changed. Twice. Then "Week 4" was renamed "Cycle D" as to avoid confusion (nice try). Because I am extremely conscientious about these things, I was pretty sure the schedule change was still on today, but there were so many date changes that I didn't know (a) if it was even happening or (b) which coverage week (excuse me, "cycle") to follow. So one of my colleagues called down to the main office and, with my own ears, I heard her ask this question: "Are we following the coverage schedule today for third grade?"
"No."
NO! So off I went to my class. Twenty minutes in, I am paged over the loudspeaker, along with six other teachers, to report to a third grade classroom I am apparently supposed to be covering, which happens to be a different classroom than the one I thought I was supposed to be covering (because for some mysterious reason we were following Cycle B instead of Cycle D).
The following period, a phone call dispatched me to cover another class for the rest of the day. So there went my day -- mini lessons down the drain, strategy lessons scrapped, guided reading groups put off. When will I learn not to get to school an hour early to plan lessons I don't get to teach?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Of interest
This evening I was, as always, watching NY1, when the host mentioned a website: See Through NY. If you visit it and click on "Payrolls" in the lower left corner, you can find out the exact salary of every single city employee. Which, of course, includes Department of Education employees.
On the one hand, this makes me deeply uncomfortable. I do not want anyone visiting it, putting in my name, and finding out how much I earn. (In fact, if you read this blog and you happen to know me personally: please don't!) But on the other hand...I totally spent the evening finding out that my principal earns a substantial 6-figure salary that is more than twice what I earn.
Of course, the Department of Education salary schedule is already public knowledge, so if you know how many years someone's been in the system, you can take a reasonable ballpark guess as to what they earn. But to have it all warehoused in a database? Dangerous, very dangerous!
On the one hand, this makes me deeply uncomfortable. I do not want anyone visiting it, putting in my name, and finding out how much I earn. (In fact, if you read this blog and you happen to know me personally: please don't!) But on the other hand...I totally spent the evening finding out that my principal earns a substantial 6-figure salary that is more than twice what I earn.
Of course, the Department of Education salary schedule is already public knowledge, so if you know how many years someone's been in the system, you can take a reasonable ballpark guess as to what they earn. But to have it all warehoused in a database? Dangerous, very dangerous!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Right now my only goal is remaining sane
GAAAAH.
It's the last day of school before winter vacation, and I don't even know how to begin to describe the utter madness that went down at school today.
We just found out that, starting the second week we return from vacation, we are going to need to keep track of individual "goals" for each student in every subject. Initially, because I can be a reasonable person, I thought this sounded like a good idea. I mean, I think it's good for my students to have goals. I think it's good for my students to know what those goals are. I think it's good to attempt to plan strategy lessons that address those goals. I even think it's good to keep track of those goals on paper so that students know what they're working toward. Goals + instruction = progress, so what's not to like?
But, like everything else in my freaking school, the goal project is going to be monstrous. First we need to choose one long-term goal for each student ("By June, Amy will move from level C to level I in reading"). Then, for each month, we need to choose three specific goals, based on this list of standards we were given. From now on, instead of pulling our strategy groups together based on our checklist of Teachers College teaching points from the month, we'll be doing strategy lessons from this set of goals.
Here are the problems with this.
* As we draw up our goals, we're going to be asked for proof in the data we've already collected that this student is lacking in a certain area. But for the first four months of the year, we weren't working on meeting those standards, we were working on meeting entirely different standards. So there isn't necessarily something in my notes that says that a student was deficient in a certain standard because I wasn't trying to get them to meet that standard, I was trying to get them to meet a different standard!
* I have 50 students. I need to write three goals for each of them. That's 150 goals, just for the month of January. There is absolutely no conceivable way I can address each of those goals in January; even if we weren't doing running records and the TC assessment and the ELA exam, there wouldn't be enough time. So those goals will probably get pushed over to February, which just means a lot of extra paperwork writing the same thing over and over again.
* Each student is supposed to have three goals in every subject and be able to articulate those goals. That's five major subjects (reading, writing, math, science and social studies), which is fifteen goals for each student. To me, that sounds like a lot of goals. I mean, hello, I have students who don't even know their own last name, let alone the goal they're working towards in reading. I don't understand why we have to start with three goals. Can't we pilot it with one and see how it goes?
* We also need to come up with a way to assess each goal at the end of each month. Most of our goals can be assessed most easily using running records and our TC assessments, so does that mean we need to do that for every student every month? How on earth are we going to have enough time to (1) meet with our students one-on-one to address their goals and (2) assess three goals per student per month?
Why are we doing all this? Not because we think it will benefit our students, but because the Quality Review says so. Seriously, my principal never once told us that she thought this would be a good idea -- it was all, "This is what the Quality Review wants, we need to make sure we have this in place for Quality Review." It's like the system-wide equivalent of teaching to the test -- like we're seriously going to drill our students on remembering their goals so they can articulate them if a Quality Reviewer happens to interrogate them.
I have such mixed feelings about this because I really do think that it can be a good idea, but I resent the way it was presented to us and the way we're putting it in place. First of all, I now have to spend my winter break writing 150 goals for my students. Today it took me two hours to finish one class. And I was surprised, and worried, to discover that there really isn't much overlap among the goals. My students really do need to work on different things. And I have always tried to give them that message, informally, when I meet with them in conferences: "What you really need to work on is being able to tell me what happened in your story, in order," I might say. But what we're expected to do now is take that goal and (1) write it in kid-friendly language so our students have a written record of what they should be working on, (2) phrase it in terms of our standards on that student's individual goal sheet, (3) plan individual conferences to address each student's specific goals and (4) assess each student's specific goals -- and all of this happens every month!
Just to put the paperwork in perspective: I already have a checklist that goes with my mini lesson, so that every day when I teach the mini lesson I check off whether or not the student mastered the teaching point. Then I meet with a group for guided reading, during which I fill out another guided reading checklist and also take notes on what I observe. Then I meet with another group for a strategy lesson based on a previous month's checklist, during which I fill out a label for each student writing what I observe and whether or not they mastered the teaching point, after which I go back to the checklist for that month and check off whether they've mastered the teaching point since the first time I taught it. And then, every two months or so, I do a running record on every student, plus write a label to go along with the running record, in addition to the TC assessment, plus a written label to go along with that.
Oh my Lord, I think I might be breaking out in hives. There was definitely a little bit of pandemonium in the air at school -- we all asked a million questions of our administrators, and they had no answers for us other than, "That's a good question, write that down." The thing is, we're putting this in place for Quality Review next year, so what is the rush to get it all started the second week after winter break? They didn't give us any uniform system or concrete answers on how to go about doing this (which, by the way, is totally and completely different from the system we've been using up until now), and yet they're expecting to see us doing this the week after we get back. At which point I guarantee you that we'll be told that we're all doing it wrong and changes need to be made, because the administration in my school would rather jump blindfolded into the deep end rather than dip their toes in the shallow end of the pool first. It's really too bad that our principal sucks, our UFT rep really sucks and our literacy coach really, really sucks.
I was so overwhelmed I didn't even walk out of school excited about winter break; I walked out freaking out about everything I have to do over vacation that will probably need to be totally revamped once we get back.
Other highlights from the last day of school before winter break:
* I sneakily conducted a battery of running records in order to push some of my students to the next level before the vacation in the hopes that when they come back in January, they'll be ready to move up again!
* Santa Claus came to visit my students and gave them candy canes. Then we all had to pose for a picture in which we said, "Merry Christmas!" No one mentioned the fact that actually, it was Hanukkah.
* Administration conducted surprise observations. For full periods. On the last day of school before vacation. That settles it: They are officially evil.
* In the middle of a running record, another student came up to me and announced that his reading partner had written him a post-it. He presented the offending post-it; there was a picture of a tiny box below the words, "This is the siz [size] of your d--k" (except as you can imagine, on the actual post-it that last word was spelled out). The accused student insisted that his accuser was the culprit. Then the accuser's story changed and all of a sudden the post-it had mysteriously been found in the center of the desk and nobody knew who had written it. So while Santa Claus was handing out candy canes, I sidled up to the classroom teacher and hissed, "Would you recognize handwriting?" So we pulled out their writing folders and rifled through them, literally saying things like, "Look at that K! The Ks match!"
* Someone in my office requested a whole bunch of copies of reading texts for her next unit. She got her copy folder back with a note posted on it that informed her that teachers would need to supply their own paper. Jigga-whaaaat?! I guess this shouldn't be surprising, as there isn't enough money in the budget for chart paper, either.
You know, I thought I could squeeze one more year out of this teaching career, but now? I'm not so sure.
It's the last day of school before winter vacation, and I don't even know how to begin to describe the utter madness that went down at school today.
We just found out that, starting the second week we return from vacation, we are going to need to keep track of individual "goals" for each student in every subject. Initially, because I can be a reasonable person, I thought this sounded like a good idea. I mean, I think it's good for my students to have goals. I think it's good for my students to know what those goals are. I think it's good to attempt to plan strategy lessons that address those goals. I even think it's good to keep track of those goals on paper so that students know what they're working toward. Goals + instruction = progress, so what's not to like?
But, like everything else in my freaking school, the goal project is going to be monstrous. First we need to choose one long-term goal for each student ("By June, Amy will move from level C to level I in reading"). Then, for each month, we need to choose three specific goals, based on this list of standards we were given. From now on, instead of pulling our strategy groups together based on our checklist of Teachers College teaching points from the month, we'll be doing strategy lessons from this set of goals.
Here are the problems with this.
* As we draw up our goals, we're going to be asked for proof in the data we've already collected that this student is lacking in a certain area. But for the first four months of the year, we weren't working on meeting those standards, we were working on meeting entirely different standards. So there isn't necessarily something in my notes that says that a student was deficient in a certain standard because I wasn't trying to get them to meet that standard, I was trying to get them to meet a different standard!
* I have 50 students. I need to write three goals for each of them. That's 150 goals, just for the month of January. There is absolutely no conceivable way I can address each of those goals in January; even if we weren't doing running records and the TC assessment and the ELA exam, there wouldn't be enough time. So those goals will probably get pushed over to February, which just means a lot of extra paperwork writing the same thing over and over again.
* Each student is supposed to have three goals in every subject and be able to articulate those goals. That's five major subjects (reading, writing, math, science and social studies), which is fifteen goals for each student. To me, that sounds like a lot of goals. I mean, hello, I have students who don't even know their own last name, let alone the goal they're working towards in reading. I don't understand why we have to start with three goals. Can't we pilot it with one and see how it goes?
* We also need to come up with a way to assess each goal at the end of each month. Most of our goals can be assessed most easily using running records and our TC assessments, so does that mean we need to do that for every student every month? How on earth are we going to have enough time to (1) meet with our students one-on-one to address their goals and (2) assess three goals per student per month?
Why are we doing all this? Not because we think it will benefit our students, but because the Quality Review says so. Seriously, my principal never once told us that she thought this would be a good idea -- it was all, "This is what the Quality Review wants, we need to make sure we have this in place for Quality Review." It's like the system-wide equivalent of teaching to the test -- like we're seriously going to drill our students on remembering their goals so they can articulate them if a Quality Reviewer happens to interrogate them.
I have such mixed feelings about this because I really do think that it can be a good idea, but I resent the way it was presented to us and the way we're putting it in place. First of all, I now have to spend my winter break writing 150 goals for my students. Today it took me two hours to finish one class. And I was surprised, and worried, to discover that there really isn't much overlap among the goals. My students really do need to work on different things. And I have always tried to give them that message, informally, when I meet with them in conferences: "What you really need to work on is being able to tell me what happened in your story, in order," I might say. But what we're expected to do now is take that goal and (1) write it in kid-friendly language so our students have a written record of what they should be working on, (2) phrase it in terms of our standards on that student's individual goal sheet, (3) plan individual conferences to address each student's specific goals and (4) assess each student's specific goals -- and all of this happens every month!
Just to put the paperwork in perspective: I already have a checklist that goes with my mini lesson, so that every day when I teach the mini lesson I check off whether or not the student mastered the teaching point. Then I meet with a group for guided reading, during which I fill out another guided reading checklist and also take notes on what I observe. Then I meet with another group for a strategy lesson based on a previous month's checklist, during which I fill out a label for each student writing what I observe and whether or not they mastered the teaching point, after which I go back to the checklist for that month and check off whether they've mastered the teaching point since the first time I taught it. And then, every two months or so, I do a running record on every student, plus write a label to go along with the running record, in addition to the TC assessment, plus a written label to go along with that.
Oh my Lord, I think I might be breaking out in hives. There was definitely a little bit of pandemonium in the air at school -- we all asked a million questions of our administrators, and they had no answers for us other than, "That's a good question, write that down." The thing is, we're putting this in place for Quality Review next year, so what is the rush to get it all started the second week after winter break? They didn't give us any uniform system or concrete answers on how to go about doing this (which, by the way, is totally and completely different from the system we've been using up until now), and yet they're expecting to see us doing this the week after we get back. At which point I guarantee you that we'll be told that we're all doing it wrong and changes need to be made, because the administration in my school would rather jump blindfolded into the deep end rather than dip their toes in the shallow end of the pool first. It's really too bad that our principal sucks, our UFT rep really sucks and our literacy coach really, really sucks.
I was so overwhelmed I didn't even walk out of school excited about winter break; I walked out freaking out about everything I have to do over vacation that will probably need to be totally revamped once we get back.
Other highlights from the last day of school before winter break:
* I sneakily conducted a battery of running records in order to push some of my students to the next level before the vacation in the hopes that when they come back in January, they'll be ready to move up again!
* Santa Claus came to visit my students and gave them candy canes. Then we all had to pose for a picture in which we said, "Merry Christmas!" No one mentioned the fact that actually, it was Hanukkah.
* Administration conducted surprise observations. For full periods. On the last day of school before vacation. That settles it: They are officially evil.
* In the middle of a running record, another student came up to me and announced that his reading partner had written him a post-it. He presented the offending post-it; there was a picture of a tiny box below the words, "This is the siz [size] of your d--k" (except as you can imagine, on the actual post-it that last word was spelled out). The accused student insisted that his accuser was the culprit. Then the accuser's story changed and all of a sudden the post-it had mysteriously been found in the center of the desk and nobody knew who had written it. So while Santa Claus was handing out candy canes, I sidled up to the classroom teacher and hissed, "Would you recognize handwriting?" So we pulled out their writing folders and rifled through them, literally saying things like, "Look at that K! The Ks match!"
* Someone in my office requested a whole bunch of copies of reading texts for her next unit. She got her copy folder back with a note posted on it that informed her that teachers would need to supply their own paper. Jigga-whaaaat?! I guess this shouldn't be surprising, as there isn't enough money in the budget for chart paper, either.
You know, I thought I could squeeze one more year out of this teaching career, but now? I'm not so sure.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The saga continues!
I wish I were talking about some great movie sequel, but I am referring, of course, to our assessments. As you know, loyal readers, I spent the majority of November working like a dog to administer and grade these assessments, despite the fact that we had neither entered nor analyzed nor utilized the data from the last round of assessments. And, against all odds, I prevailed!
Or, so I thought. This morning we had a meeting at which we were told we would have to re-enter each student's individual results onto a class summary sheet. Had we, in fact, already done this? Yes! But when we asked what happened to the last summary sheet, we were dismissed with a curt, "I don't know."
Um. So okay, let's review. As part of my job, I did the following:
1. Administered the assessment to each individual student.
2. Graded the assessment of each individual student.
3. Entered the assessment of each individual student onto a class composite summary sheet.
4. Handed off the data to people who are supposed to be in charge of entering it into the computer.
And those people, as part of their jobs, did the following:
1. Lost my data.
Now, I would say that I learned An Important Lesson from this, the lesson being Always Make a Copy of Important Things Before You Hand Them In, but my school has an even more important lesson for me, this lesson being The Copy Machine Is Always Broken.
Immediately after this meeting, as if the universe knew I was already having such a fabulous day, the wheel fell off my easel. Now, you may remember that I already experienced this problem earlier in the year, and you are right -- but that was a different easel. At this point, all the easels are broken. They are lined up in the hallway, all sad and crooked and tipped to one side. I do not know what I am going to do without my easel. I don't even want to turn to DonorsChoose.org for a new one, because the truth is that I hate that stupid easel. It just barely fits through doorways, so when it goes awry, as it frequently does, I usually end up smashing my hand against the doorway. Today, when the wheel fell off, the whole easel tipped to the side and came down on my foot. Did it hurt? Yes. Did I manage to keep from exclaiming an unsavory word in front of my students? Yes! Thank goodness for small victories.
Or, so I thought. This morning we had a meeting at which we were told we would have to re-enter each student's individual results onto a class summary sheet. Had we, in fact, already done this? Yes! But when we asked what happened to the last summary sheet, we were dismissed with a curt, "I don't know."
Um. So okay, let's review. As part of my job, I did the following:
1. Administered the assessment to each individual student.
2. Graded the assessment of each individual student.
3. Entered the assessment of each individual student onto a class composite summary sheet.
4. Handed off the data to people who are supposed to be in charge of entering it into the computer.
And those people, as part of their jobs, did the following:
1. Lost my data.
Now, I would say that I learned An Important Lesson from this, the lesson being Always Make a Copy of Important Things Before You Hand Them In, but my school has an even more important lesson for me, this lesson being The Copy Machine Is Always Broken.
Immediately after this meeting, as if the universe knew I was already having such a fabulous day, the wheel fell off my easel. Now, you may remember that I already experienced this problem earlier in the year, and you are right -- but that was a different easel. At this point, all the easels are broken. They are lined up in the hallway, all sad and crooked and tipped to one side. I do not know what I am going to do without my easel. I don't even want to turn to DonorsChoose.org for a new one, because the truth is that I hate that stupid easel. It just barely fits through doorways, so when it goes awry, as it frequently does, I usually end up smashing my hand against the doorway. Today, when the wheel fell off, the whole easel tipped to the side and came down on my foot. Did it hurt? Yes. Did I manage to keep from exclaiming an unsavory word in front of my students? Yes! Thank goodness for small victories.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
C is not for cookie
Yesterday my AP came to see me. I was wary, because I thought she was coming to switch around my reading groups, but it wasn't that. Instead, it was worse: She came to ask me why some of my kids' reading levels didn't go up.
She was especially interested in my students who are still reading at level B, who are primarily non-English speakers. She kept asking if I was sure they weren't ready for C, as if I wasn't keeping track of their abilities and they had magically developed a robust sight word vocabulary and decoding skills overnight. She also made it seem like since they do have one-to-one correspondence, they should be ready for C books. But in my opinion, the leap from B to C requires the biggest jump in reading ability. At level B, all they have to be able to do is match the number of words. For example, if the book reads, "We play music," and the child says, "I love reading," the child is correct! Simply because they know that there are three distinct words on the page. (Believe it or not, this is a huge and difficult skill for kids to master.) But in order to read level C books independently, we expect them to read the words accurately. My English language learners have one-to-one correspondence and they can even memorize the patterns in their books, but they still cannot decode, they don't possess any sight word vocabulary, and they can't answer comprehension questions because they don't understand English.
Then she started in on my students who have been stuck at the same reading level since last year. Before I tell you what she said, let me first make it clear that this has been a crusade of mine since our last round of running records. I made a list of all of my students whose levels didn't change and I posted it up next to my desk. I went through each individual running record, took notes on the exact skills that seem to be holding them back from reaching the next level, and started doing strategy lessons based on those skills. At the time it seemed really daring -- checklists be damned!
So then yesterday my AP was like, "I think you need to look into what's holding them back from reaching the next level. You might need to teach them explicitly those skills. Maybe look at their running records and plan some strategy lessons."
I don't know if I should have been...but I felt a little insulted. First of all, I have yet to be observed this year by my AP, and it's not like we have regular meetings where we plan and discuss these things. So to have her tell me I should be doing something that in actuality I have been working my butt off on, which she would know if we communicated more, was disheartening. In addition to the fact that I felt a little like I was being interrogated in the first place as to why my kids aren't moving up in a way that made it seem like I didn't know them and their abilities well enough to be able to explain myself. As if I would sit there and say, "Hey, what the heck! Sure, let's bump her to C!"
Meanwhile, my colleagues tell me that Teachers College is adamantly against rushing kids through the reading levels, but that my administration has been doing this kind of "Why aren't your kids moving?" interrogation for years.
She was especially interested in my students who are still reading at level B, who are primarily non-English speakers. She kept asking if I was sure they weren't ready for C, as if I wasn't keeping track of their abilities and they had magically developed a robust sight word vocabulary and decoding skills overnight. She also made it seem like since they do have one-to-one correspondence, they should be ready for C books. But in my opinion, the leap from B to C requires the biggest jump in reading ability. At level B, all they have to be able to do is match the number of words. For example, if the book reads, "We play music," and the child says, "I love reading," the child is correct! Simply because they know that there are three distinct words on the page. (Believe it or not, this is a huge and difficult skill for kids to master.) But in order to read level C books independently, we expect them to read the words accurately. My English language learners have one-to-one correspondence and they can even memorize the patterns in their books, but they still cannot decode, they don't possess any sight word vocabulary, and they can't answer comprehension questions because they don't understand English.
Then she started in on my students who have been stuck at the same reading level since last year. Before I tell you what she said, let me first make it clear that this has been a crusade of mine since our last round of running records. I made a list of all of my students whose levels didn't change and I posted it up next to my desk. I went through each individual running record, took notes on the exact skills that seem to be holding them back from reaching the next level, and started doing strategy lessons based on those skills. At the time it seemed really daring -- checklists be damned!
So then yesterday my AP was like, "I think you need to look into what's holding them back from reaching the next level. You might need to teach them explicitly those skills. Maybe look at their running records and plan some strategy lessons."
I don't know if I should have been...but I felt a little insulted. First of all, I have yet to be observed this year by my AP, and it's not like we have regular meetings where we plan and discuss these things. So to have her tell me I should be doing something that in actuality I have been working my butt off on, which she would know if we communicated more, was disheartening. In addition to the fact that I felt a little like I was being interrogated in the first place as to why my kids aren't moving up in a way that made it seem like I didn't know them and their abilities well enough to be able to explain myself. As if I would sit there and say, "Hey, what the heck! Sure, let's bump her to C!"
Meanwhile, my colleagues tell me that Teachers College is adamantly against rushing kids through the reading levels, but that my administration has been doing this kind of "Why aren't your kids moving?" interrogation for years.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Losing it
Yesterday, for only the second time this school year, I cried in school. Wait, it gets better! I cried over a big ol' pile of data. Wait, it gets better! I cried over a big ol' pile of data in front of a science teacher!
OK, let's back this train up. For reasons unknown to everyone outside administration, our school assigned a science teacher and a technology teacher to input all our...literacy data. As you might recall, we administered the first round of assessments (which consisted of a spelling test, which we gave to the whole class at one time, and a list of sight words, which we gave individually) at the beginning of October. Then we sat on the data for a month (in my case, I literally sat on the data, because I had nowhere to keep it but in a pile under my desk, where I hoped the roaches wouldn't get it), when we were told it needed to be graded and turned in by the end of the week. Which I dutifully did, even though it meant grading 100 spelling tests round-the-clock for days.
I handed in all my data, and it was given back to me with a post-it stuck to it that read, "Keep these results." Then one day, in the middle of first period, we heard an announcement on the loudspeaker: "Please send all your assessment results down to the main office immediately." So I scurried back to my office to get all the data, quietly steaming about it because my big pile of papers still had that "Keep these results" post-it stuck on it!
So now someone else had my data. And apparently they sat on it for a while, because last week we found out that we would need to administer the second round of assessments...even though we had never (a) entered the data from the first round, (b) looked at the data from the first round, (c) analyzed the data from the first round or (d) used the data from the first round to plan our instruction in preparation for the second round.
The problem with this (well, besides the four major problems outlined above) is that I needed my data from the first round to give the second round! So I asked for it back, and shocker of shockers, I actually received it! Except then the science teacher and the technology teacher kept coming after me and asking for it again, which was puzzling to me because (a) what was being done with it all the time I didn't have it? and (b) what kind of genius minds would expect three different teachers to be able to do different things with the same data booklets at the same time? (Hmm, let's not even attempt to answer that question.) One enchanted afternoon during my prep, the technology teacher and I actually almost came to a physical tussle over the stupid sight word booklets:
(Scene: My office. Seventh period. Players: Miss Brave and Mrs. Impatient, the technology teacher.)
Mrs. Impatient: "Hi. I need your word lists."
Miss Brave: "I know, it's just that I'm using them this week, because we're using the same booklet for this round, so I can't test them if I don't have the booklets."
Mrs. Impatient: "Okay, are you using them now?"
Miss Brave: "Yeah, we're doing it this week."
Mrs. Impatient, giving me a 'duh' look and indicating the room around us: "No, I mean...are you using them right now?"
I let her have them, but I practically made her swear an oath in blood that she would return them to me by the next morning, and as I did so I thought: Dear God, what have I become?!
Anyway, I'm getting to the part with the crying! So all week long, Mrs. Impatient and the science teacher (let's call her Mrs. Condescending) have been coming after me (usually at wildly inopportune times like while I'm pushing my easel of doom down the hallway or while I'm -- no lie -- in the middle of teaching a class) to ask me for, say, Edmund's spelling assessment or Dara's word list. I have more than 50 students, so of course I have no idea off the top of my head, so I have to go searching through my giant pile of data, which is wildly disorganized (as you may guess, as a teacher, I hate feeling wildly disorganized), and sometimes I can't find what they're looking for. To be honest, we gave those assessments almost two months ago, and it's been through so many hands since then, that I'm not sure whether it was never administered in the first place, whether I had it and then lost it, whether they had it and lost it, whether the classroom teacher has it instead...you get the picture. And to be further honest, it has yet to be explained to me how this data is going to be used to help us drive our instruction, because our school is like a crazy funhouse where we're constantly being asked to do things without anyone bothering to explain to us why they're necessary, as if administration has some secret master plan that can only be revealed to us a little at a time, so I don't think anyone is exactly feeling doubly motivated to get it done.
Anyway, yesterday Mrs. Condescending launched into one of her helpful suggestions about how this time around I should make sure that all my students are given each section of the assessment and how I should consider making copies of the assessments before I hand them in and...I lost it. I just broke down and teared up in front of my giant pile of paper: "I understand that, but it's just that I have so many students, I cannot make copies of all of this paper, and then it amounts to doing the same work four times, because first I have to grade it on these individual sheets, and then I have to add all the same information to the classroom composite sheet, and now you're telling me to keep another separate grading sheet, and then you and Mrs. Impatient enter all the data, and we're all doing the same work, and some of my students were absent during the spelling test, but it takes a whole period to do the re-test, plus I have to test all my kids again on the word assessment because none of them mastered it the first time, but it's impossible to do that and the spelling assessment when the information is due on Monday and I haven't filled out the composite sheets yet!"
And then, to my surprise, Mrs. Condescending vented right back at me: "Look, I'm a science teacher, I don't even know why I'm doing this, Mrs. Impatient and I are going crazy upstairs trying to enter all the data and track down every piece of missing information, and all the work I have to do has to be done outside of school, and you're not the only one missing information, so don't feel bad, every class has missing information, and I'm just the messenger, I'm just saying that when the data gets entered and the administrators see that there are students missing information..."
You get the picture. Basically, it boils down to everyone at school losing their minds. Where is our literacy coach while this is going on? No one knows! Where are our administrators? They're walking around the school launching surprise observations on a Friday the day after everyone was at school until after 8 pm for parent-teacher conferences! (Which, side note, comes on the heels of the world's most depressing faculty meeting this week; there were three items on the agenda, and it boiled down to (1) The school neighborhood is getting more dangerous, so don't park too far away after dark, (2) We have no more money in the budget for anything, so don't expect any paper and don't get sick because we can't afford subs and (3) Remember how we thought our school would be well-developed on the Quality Review? Well, they changed the Quality Review standards and surprise! We're actually underdeveloped.) I was so fed up that at lunch I went out and spent $22 of my own money to buy color-coded file folders for each class and then stayed late at school creating meticulous checklists to ensure that my data is well-organized and my behind is well-covered in case of mix-ups.
I have already sworn up and down that I am not taking that data out of its folder for anyone. If Joel Klein himself wants to see Alejandro's latest sight word assessment, he can come to my office and comb through the whole beautifully arranged folder. He would probably have to go through Mrs. Impatient and Mrs. Condescending first, though.
OK, let's back this train up. For reasons unknown to everyone outside administration, our school assigned a science teacher and a technology teacher to input all our...literacy data. As you might recall, we administered the first round of assessments (which consisted of a spelling test, which we gave to the whole class at one time, and a list of sight words, which we gave individually) at the beginning of October. Then we sat on the data for a month (in my case, I literally sat on the data, because I had nowhere to keep it but in a pile under my desk, where I hoped the roaches wouldn't get it), when we were told it needed to be graded and turned in by the end of the week. Which I dutifully did, even though it meant grading 100 spelling tests round-the-clock for days.
I handed in all my data, and it was given back to me with a post-it stuck to it that read, "Keep these results." Then one day, in the middle of first period, we heard an announcement on the loudspeaker: "Please send all your assessment results down to the main office immediately." So I scurried back to my office to get all the data, quietly steaming about it because my big pile of papers still had that "Keep these results" post-it stuck on it!
So now someone else had my data. And apparently they sat on it for a while, because last week we found out that we would need to administer the second round of assessments...even though we had never (a) entered the data from the first round, (b) looked at the data from the first round, (c) analyzed the data from the first round or (d) used the data from the first round to plan our instruction in preparation for the second round.
The problem with this (well, besides the four major problems outlined above) is that I needed my data from the first round to give the second round! So I asked for it back, and shocker of shockers, I actually received it! Except then the science teacher and the technology teacher kept coming after me and asking for it again, which was puzzling to me because (a) what was being done with it all the time I didn't have it? and (b) what kind of genius minds would expect three different teachers to be able to do different things with the same data booklets at the same time? (Hmm, let's not even attempt to answer that question.) One enchanted afternoon during my prep, the technology teacher and I actually almost came to a physical tussle over the stupid sight word booklets:
(Scene: My office. Seventh period. Players: Miss Brave and Mrs. Impatient, the technology teacher.)
Mrs. Impatient: "Hi. I need your word lists."
Miss Brave: "I know, it's just that I'm using them this week, because we're using the same booklet for this round, so I can't test them if I don't have the booklets."
Mrs. Impatient: "Okay, are you using them now?"
Miss Brave: "Yeah, we're doing it this week."
Mrs. Impatient, giving me a 'duh' look and indicating the room around us: "No, I mean...are you using them right now?"
I let her have them, but I practically made her swear an oath in blood that she would return them to me by the next morning, and as I did so I thought: Dear God, what have I become?!
Anyway, I'm getting to the part with the crying! So all week long, Mrs. Impatient and the science teacher (let's call her Mrs. Condescending) have been coming after me (usually at wildly inopportune times like while I'm pushing my easel of doom down the hallway or while I'm -- no lie -- in the middle of teaching a class) to ask me for, say, Edmund's spelling assessment or Dara's word list. I have more than 50 students, so of course I have no idea off the top of my head, so I have to go searching through my giant pile of data, which is wildly disorganized (as you may guess, as a teacher, I hate feeling wildly disorganized), and sometimes I can't find what they're looking for. To be honest, we gave those assessments almost two months ago, and it's been through so many hands since then, that I'm not sure whether it was never administered in the first place, whether I had it and then lost it, whether they had it and lost it, whether the classroom teacher has it instead...you get the picture. And to be further honest, it has yet to be explained to me how this data is going to be used to help us drive our instruction, because our school is like a crazy funhouse where we're constantly being asked to do things without anyone bothering to explain to us why they're necessary, as if administration has some secret master plan that can only be revealed to us a little at a time, so I don't think anyone is exactly feeling doubly motivated to get it done.
Anyway, yesterday Mrs. Condescending launched into one of her helpful suggestions about how this time around I should make sure that all my students are given each section of the assessment and how I should consider making copies of the assessments before I hand them in and...I lost it. I just broke down and teared up in front of my giant pile of paper: "I understand that, but it's just that I have so many students, I cannot make copies of all of this paper, and then it amounts to doing the same work four times, because first I have to grade it on these individual sheets, and then I have to add all the same information to the classroom composite sheet, and now you're telling me to keep another separate grading sheet, and then you and Mrs. Impatient enter all the data, and we're all doing the same work, and some of my students were absent during the spelling test, but it takes a whole period to do the re-test, plus I have to test all my kids again on the word assessment because none of them mastered it the first time, but it's impossible to do that and the spelling assessment when the information is due on Monday and I haven't filled out the composite sheets yet!"
And then, to my surprise, Mrs. Condescending vented right back at me: "Look, I'm a science teacher, I don't even know why I'm doing this, Mrs. Impatient and I are going crazy upstairs trying to enter all the data and track down every piece of missing information, and all the work I have to do has to be done outside of school, and you're not the only one missing information, so don't feel bad, every class has missing information, and I'm just the messenger, I'm just saying that when the data gets entered and the administrators see that there are students missing information..."
You get the picture. Basically, it boils down to everyone at school losing their minds. Where is our literacy coach while this is going on? No one knows! Where are our administrators? They're walking around the school launching surprise observations on a Friday the day after everyone was at school until after 8 pm for parent-teacher conferences! (Which, side note, comes on the heels of the world's most depressing faculty meeting this week; there were three items on the agenda, and it boiled down to (1) The school neighborhood is getting more dangerous, so don't park too far away after dark, (2) We have no more money in the budget for anything, so don't expect any paper and don't get sick because we can't afford subs and (3) Remember how we thought our school would be well-developed on the Quality Review? Well, they changed the Quality Review standards and surprise! We're actually underdeveloped.) I was so fed up that at lunch I went out and spent $22 of my own money to buy color-coded file folders for each class and then stayed late at school creating meticulous checklists to ensure that my data is well-organized and my behind is well-covered in case of mix-ups.
I have already sworn up and down that I am not taking that data out of its folder for anyone. If Joel Klein himself wants to see Alejandro's latest sight word assessment, he can come to my office and comb through the whole beautifully arranged folder. He would probably have to go through Mrs. Impatient and Mrs. Condescending first, though.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Please, may I have some more?
I just spent the past half-hour composing a meticulously worded e-mail to my assistant principal, asking a question about something that came up at one of our (largely useless) professional development sessions today. Our literacy coach introduced something that sounded, to me, like a great idea that might really benefit my beginner ELLs. Unfortunately, this idea is to be implemented during Word Work (which I do not teach), and the reality is that no one really does it during Word Work because no one has time. But no one wants to admit that they don't have time to do it, because no one wants to get in trouble for not doing it, so no one said anything.
"Can I do this during Readers' Workshop?" I asked. "With my beginner ELLs who are A/B readers? Because it sounds a lot like our modified guided reading cycle for beginner ELLs, and I think this would really help them." (Plus -- I did not say this out loud -- but my A/B readers are not exactly reading during reading time, because they cannot read, so it's really not like pulling them for a small group a few extra times during the week is going to take away from their independent reading time.)
Several other teachers agreed with me. But our literacy coach told me that she could not answer my question, because it concerned questions of procedure, which had to be directed to my supervisor. So she told me to write it down and direct it to my AP so that it could be brought up and discussed at a cabinet meeting.
It was at that point that my nerves slowly began to fray, because -- grrr! -- how many people do I need to get permission from before I attempt to use a new strategy to teach my students? Why is it that every single teacher at my school has to teach in the exact same way? Why does every single teaching decision I make need to be brought before a committee, discussed, debated and agreed upon before I can go ahead and try it?
I met with my principal recently, and I was shocked -- shocked! -- when she asked me a question about which of two strategies I felt like was more effective, and when I answered her, she gave me permission to go ahead and do that more often in place of the other -- I was so tickled I practically went skipping off down the hall. And then I thought about it, and it kind of made me sad -- it was the first time since I've started teaching that an administrator asked my professional opinion and then took it into account. Normally, I either (a) do exactly as I'm told because I'm afraid I'll get into trouble or (b) do certain things sort of in secret so I won't get in trouble. Because nobody says, "Miss Brave, what do you think most benefits your kids?"; instead, they say, "We have decided that you will all be teaching this way. Hopefully it will benefit your kids!"
As a teacher at my school recently noted, our administrators may say they want to see differentiated instruction, but if they really did, we wouldn't all have to teach everything in exactly the same way. Like, I'm supposed to be provided academic intervention to struggling readers -- why group all the struggling readers together if I'm not making any modifications for them?
Lastly: There was a teeny debate in the comments of my post on paperwork about how teachers in time come to figure out which paperwork is actually looked at and which can be shafted aside. To clarify: I am sorry to say that at my school, each and every checklist, label and outline is actually scrutinized by administration. And I am even more sorry to say that it sometimes seems they're looking for quantity over quality -- because if you do a really quality lesson that happens to take a little longer so that you don't meet with a second group that day, you're not seeing enough kids during one period and it's curtains for you!
Sigh. On a happier note: I did not win the New York City marathon, but my students think I did :)
"Can I do this during Readers' Workshop?" I asked. "With my beginner ELLs who are A/B readers? Because it sounds a lot like our modified guided reading cycle for beginner ELLs, and I think this would really help them." (Plus -- I did not say this out loud -- but my A/B readers are not exactly reading during reading time, because they cannot read, so it's really not like pulling them for a small group a few extra times during the week is going to take away from their independent reading time.)
Several other teachers agreed with me. But our literacy coach told me that she could not answer my question, because it concerned questions of procedure, which had to be directed to my supervisor. So she told me to write it down and direct it to my AP so that it could be brought up and discussed at a cabinet meeting.
It was at that point that my nerves slowly began to fray, because -- grrr! -- how many people do I need to get permission from before I attempt to use a new strategy to teach my students? Why is it that every single teacher at my school has to teach in the exact same way? Why does every single teaching decision I make need to be brought before a committee, discussed, debated and agreed upon before I can go ahead and try it?
I met with my principal recently, and I was shocked -- shocked! -- when she asked me a question about which of two strategies I felt like was more effective, and when I answered her, she gave me permission to go ahead and do that more often in place of the other -- I was so tickled I practically went skipping off down the hall. And then I thought about it, and it kind of made me sad -- it was the first time since I've started teaching that an administrator asked my professional opinion and then took it into account. Normally, I either (a) do exactly as I'm told because I'm afraid I'll get into trouble or (b) do certain things sort of in secret so I won't get in trouble. Because nobody says, "Miss Brave, what do you think most benefits your kids?"; instead, they say, "We have decided that you will all be teaching this way. Hopefully it will benefit your kids!"
As a teacher at my school recently noted, our administrators may say they want to see differentiated instruction, but if they really did, we wouldn't all have to teach everything in exactly the same way. Like, I'm supposed to be provided academic intervention to struggling readers -- why group all the struggling readers together if I'm not making any modifications for them?
Lastly: There was a teeny debate in the comments of my post on paperwork about how teachers in time come to figure out which paperwork is actually looked at and which can be shafted aside. To clarify: I am sorry to say that at my school, each and every checklist, label and outline is actually scrutinized by administration. And I am even more sorry to say that it sometimes seems they're looking for quantity over quality -- because if you do a really quality lesson that happens to take a little longer so that you don't meet with a second group that day, you're not seeing enough kids during one period and it's curtains for you!
Sigh. On a happier note: I did not win the New York City marathon, but my students think I did :)
Friday, September 19, 2008
The crying game
Confession time! For the past few weeks, I've been reading online about other teachers who are already feeling over-worked and over-stressed. Several of them have mentioned experiencing their "first cry" of the school year, and when I've read about that first cry -- something with which I am all too unfortunately familiar -- I have, I admit, congratulated myself on avoiding it. Ha ha, I may have even thought. I am no longer a first-year teacher! I know exactly what I am doing now! I am immune to the first cry!
OK, you know what comes next, right? And the worst part is that my first cry came over the stupidest little issue. I mean, last year I had first graders threatening to stab me with scissors and fifth graders who wrote on the walls -- those were incidents worth crying over.
This particular incident probably isn't even worth the time and energy it'll take trying to explain it, but here goes: This year, during 50 minutes, I was assigned to the art room, where my students will be working on a computer program. I was psyched about it because (1) I have experience working with the program and think it's really helpful for our students and (2) they are totally independent while working, and I wouldn't have to do the ridiculous backflips I did last year trying to come up with a plan for 50 minutes. (See, technically teachers are not supposed to "plan" for 50 minutes, but you can't exactly show up for 50 minutes totally empty-handed, but it's at the end of the day and you're likely to be completely fried by that point, and so are the kids, so 50 minutes is pretty excrutiating. In my opinion.)
Anyway, of course there have been tons of problems so far, starting with the fact that because we're not in the computer room, we have to set up 16 laptops every afternoon, and they're Macs, which we're not so familiar with, so picture two teachers racing around from laptop to laptop, barking at the kids to stop touching buttons, while other kids whine about how they haven't gotten to play with the computers yet. Half of the laptops won't turn on, the other half won't connect to the Internet, all of them require us to enter two separate passwords before the kids can actually get started...I'm so glad the Quality Review wants us to focus on our use of educational technology!
Meanwhile, all along the art teacher has been semi-reprimanding me every day because she feels that our students are too loud in the hallway while they're waiting to be let inside. Our 16 students are coming from 3 separate classrooms on 2 different floors, and sometimes they get there before I do (my co-teacher is coming from our annex down the block, so she's always 10 minutes late anyway). The art teacher has been bugging me to start picking the kids up at their classroom instead of letting them walk in a group by themselves, so I finally acquiesced, even though it means traveling around the building and making us even later for the Great Laptop Setup Debacle.
One classroom sends us only two kids, so I decided those two kids couldn't possibly make such a ruckus in the hallway as to cause the art teacher to object. But yesterday when I arrived with my merry band of 14 students (making zero noise in the hallway, I might add), one of those two students was waiting for me alone in the hall. Well, not alone, because the art teacher was with her, informing me that I would need to pick up that student as well (from a third classroom on a different floor), because she "can't be up here alone." Even though I explained that normally she would be traveling with a partner (who happened to be absent), the art teacher claimed that the two of them couldn't wait in the hallway alone...even though this is what all students do when they, for example, go to the bathroom together. She suggested I tell those two students to wait for me in one of the other classrooms from which I'd be picking up students...which I think basically translates to "It's OK to inconvenience another teacher to send two students to their room to wait, but not OK to inconvenience me by having these two students wait in the hallway outside my classroom."
So, OK, fine, I tell her I'll take care of it. Wait, the crying part is still to come! So at the back of the art room is a small workroom. The art teacher has been bringing her 50 minutes group into that room, even though her assignment is in a classroom, because I guess she feels that it's all part of her work space and she can bring her kids in there because it's quieter than the classroom. But, that workroom is slowly but surely being transformed into a room that will be used during the regular school day exclusively for the same computer program that my kids are working on during 50 minutes. Yesterday I noticed that the laptop cart had been moved into that room and tables had been set up. I know that room is designated to be the computer program room. So I tentatively mention to the art teacher that maybe I will bring my 50 minutes kids in there, because, well, clearly that's the room that's meant to be used for this program, and (this part I didn't say out loud), her 50 minutes assignment isn't even in the vicinity and she's just having her kids read silently anyway, which they can do virtually anywhere in the building.
And in the same imperious tone she used to inform me of my pickup duties, she completely dismissed my suggestion, all "I'm bringing my kids in there."
"Well," I said carefully, "it just seems silly to move the laptop cart in and out of that room when it looks like it's set up to be in there during the day."
"That's not my thing, I don't know what to tell you," she said with a wave of her hand. (That's right, it's not your thing. Because it's not your room anymore! It's the computer program room! I'm sorry you lost your space, because goodness knows that no teacher in this whole school has enough of it, but you have an entire huge art room here and we only need your teeny tiny workroom space and you're not even supposed to be in here during 50 minutes anyway!) And then she walked away.
Ahem. That's when the tears, ridiculously enough, started. I was just so frustrated and fed up with trying to get this program off the ground day after day for our kids, when it hasn't been working, when I think it could really help them, and all I was asking for was one tiny thing that would make my job easier, like can't you find another place in this whole school to take your five students to do silent reading that they can do anywhere? I literally stood in the hallway (because I still hadn't let my kids into the room yet since I didn't know where to put them) in front of these 15 kids while my eyes welled up. I think the majority of teachers at my school are great, but there are some who are so embittered and possessive of their own stuff and space and materials and interests that it's really frustrating. I mean, it's not like I wanted to send 16 kids to the art room to cause a ruckus; I'm just trying to do my job here.
So I took a deep, shaky breath, put my hand on the door handle, and said to the kids, "You just have to give me a minute to think." I went inside to pull the laptop cart out of the workroom, and surprise! With the addition of the tables in there, it's really not meant to be moved in and out; the cart was crashing into tables as I tried to maneuver. I pointed this out to the art teacher, who was already parading in with her group, and she gave me the same "I don't know what to tell you, it's not my thing" line (that's right, it's not your "thing," so why are you in here?).
Fast forward 50 minutes to after my co-teacher has arrived (I had to explain, "I'm having a moment" when she showed up and I was still near tears) and we've spent 50 minutes racing around the library like mad trying to make sure everyone's laptop will turn on (no) and log onto the Internet (no), everyone's Macromedia Flash player is compatible with the program (no), everyone is logged in under the correct name (no), everyone can maneuver the touchpad because the laptops don't come with mice (no) and Julianne goes downstairs before her bus arrives (also no). Finally, when we are both exhausted and sweaty, it's time to put the laptops away. That's when the paraprofessional who's going to work with the program during the day arrives to tell us that our AP says we should just leave the laptop cart in the workroom and let the kids work in there.
Seriously, you should have seen the glare of death I got from the art teacher. It was the first and only time I've ever felt like there was a genuine beef between me and another teacher at my school, and it was all because of this stupid 50 minutes program assignment that I didn't choose. I magnanimously tried to patch things up by suggesting that we switch places (i.e., take your kids out into that giant room behind us! Look around and marvel at all the room you'll have out there while no one has to maneuver a giant heavy cart in and out of a tiny room for no good reason other than you for some reason want to be in there with your tiny group!), but there was totally an awkward vibe in the air that I'm still puzzling over.
And that, my friends, is how Miss Brave cried her first cry of the school year (in front of her students, mind you, although none of them noticed). Let me tell you, there is nothing like an inagural cry to remind you who you're working for! (The correct answer: Not the art teacher!)
OK, you know what comes next, right? And the worst part is that my first cry came over the stupidest little issue. I mean, last year I had first graders threatening to stab me with scissors and fifth graders who wrote on the walls -- those were incidents worth crying over.
This particular incident probably isn't even worth the time and energy it'll take trying to explain it, but here goes: This year, during 50 minutes, I was assigned to the art room, where my students will be working on a computer program. I was psyched about it because (1) I have experience working with the program and think it's really helpful for our students and (2) they are totally independent while working, and I wouldn't have to do the ridiculous backflips I did last year trying to come up with a plan for 50 minutes. (See, technically teachers are not supposed to "plan" for 50 minutes, but you can't exactly show up for 50 minutes totally empty-handed, but it's at the end of the day and you're likely to be completely fried by that point, and so are the kids, so 50 minutes is pretty excrutiating. In my opinion.)
Anyway, of course there have been tons of problems so far, starting with the fact that because we're not in the computer room, we have to set up 16 laptops every afternoon, and they're Macs, which we're not so familiar with, so picture two teachers racing around from laptop to laptop, barking at the kids to stop touching buttons, while other kids whine about how they haven't gotten to play with the computers yet. Half of the laptops won't turn on, the other half won't connect to the Internet, all of them require us to enter two separate passwords before the kids can actually get started...I'm so glad the Quality Review wants us to focus on our use of educational technology!
Meanwhile, all along the art teacher has been semi-reprimanding me every day because she feels that our students are too loud in the hallway while they're waiting to be let inside. Our 16 students are coming from 3 separate classrooms on 2 different floors, and sometimes they get there before I do (my co-teacher is coming from our annex down the block, so she's always 10 minutes late anyway). The art teacher has been bugging me to start picking the kids up at their classroom instead of letting them walk in a group by themselves, so I finally acquiesced, even though it means traveling around the building and making us even later for the Great Laptop Setup Debacle.
One classroom sends us only two kids, so I decided those two kids couldn't possibly make such a ruckus in the hallway as to cause the art teacher to object. But yesterday when I arrived with my merry band of 14 students (making zero noise in the hallway, I might add), one of those two students was waiting for me alone in the hall. Well, not alone, because the art teacher was with her, informing me that I would need to pick up that student as well (from a third classroom on a different floor), because she "can't be up here alone." Even though I explained that normally she would be traveling with a partner (who happened to be absent), the art teacher claimed that the two of them couldn't wait in the hallway alone...even though this is what all students do when they, for example, go to the bathroom together. She suggested I tell those two students to wait for me in one of the other classrooms from which I'd be picking up students...which I think basically translates to "It's OK to inconvenience another teacher to send two students to their room to wait, but not OK to inconvenience me by having these two students wait in the hallway outside my classroom."
So, OK, fine, I tell her I'll take care of it. Wait, the crying part is still to come! So at the back of the art room is a small workroom. The art teacher has been bringing her 50 minutes group into that room, even though her assignment is in a classroom, because I guess she feels that it's all part of her work space and she can bring her kids in there because it's quieter than the classroom. But, that workroom is slowly but surely being transformed into a room that will be used during the regular school day exclusively for the same computer program that my kids are working on during 50 minutes. Yesterday I noticed that the laptop cart had been moved into that room and tables had been set up. I know that room is designated to be the computer program room. So I tentatively mention to the art teacher that maybe I will bring my 50 minutes kids in there, because, well, clearly that's the room that's meant to be used for this program, and (this part I didn't say out loud), her 50 minutes assignment isn't even in the vicinity and she's just having her kids read silently anyway, which they can do virtually anywhere in the building.
And in the same imperious tone she used to inform me of my pickup duties, she completely dismissed my suggestion, all "I'm bringing my kids in there."
"Well," I said carefully, "it just seems silly to move the laptop cart in and out of that room when it looks like it's set up to be in there during the day."
"That's not my thing, I don't know what to tell you," she said with a wave of her hand. (That's right, it's not your thing. Because it's not your room anymore! It's the computer program room! I'm sorry you lost your space, because goodness knows that no teacher in this whole school has enough of it, but you have an entire huge art room here and we only need your teeny tiny workroom space and you're not even supposed to be in here during 50 minutes anyway!) And then she walked away.
Ahem. That's when the tears, ridiculously enough, started. I was just so frustrated and fed up with trying to get this program off the ground day after day for our kids, when it hasn't been working, when I think it could really help them, and all I was asking for was one tiny thing that would make my job easier, like can't you find another place in this whole school to take your five students to do silent reading that they can do anywhere? I literally stood in the hallway (because I still hadn't let my kids into the room yet since I didn't know where to put them) in front of these 15 kids while my eyes welled up. I think the majority of teachers at my school are great, but there are some who are so embittered and possessive of their own stuff and space and materials and interests that it's really frustrating. I mean, it's not like I wanted to send 16 kids to the art room to cause a ruckus; I'm just trying to do my job here.
So I took a deep, shaky breath, put my hand on the door handle, and said to the kids, "You just have to give me a minute to think." I went inside to pull the laptop cart out of the workroom, and surprise! With the addition of the tables in there, it's really not meant to be moved in and out; the cart was crashing into tables as I tried to maneuver. I pointed this out to the art teacher, who was already parading in with her group, and she gave me the same "I don't know what to tell you, it's not my thing" line (that's right, it's not your "thing," so why are you in here?).
Fast forward 50 minutes to after my co-teacher has arrived (I had to explain, "I'm having a moment" when she showed up and I was still near tears) and we've spent 50 minutes racing around the library like mad trying to make sure everyone's laptop will turn on (no) and log onto the Internet (no), everyone's Macromedia Flash player is compatible with the program (no), everyone is logged in under the correct name (no), everyone can maneuver the touchpad because the laptops don't come with mice (no) and Julianne goes downstairs before her bus arrives (also no). Finally, when we are both exhausted and sweaty, it's time to put the laptops away. That's when the paraprofessional who's going to work with the program during the day arrives to tell us that our AP says we should just leave the laptop cart in the workroom and let the kids work in there.
Seriously, you should have seen the glare of death I got from the art teacher. It was the first and only time I've ever felt like there was a genuine beef between me and another teacher at my school, and it was all because of this stupid 50 minutes program assignment that I didn't choose. I magnanimously tried to patch things up by suggesting that we switch places (i.e., take your kids out into that giant room behind us! Look around and marvel at all the room you'll have out there while no one has to maneuver a giant heavy cart in and out of a tiny room for no good reason other than you for some reason want to be in there with your tiny group!), but there was totally an awkward vibe in the air that I'm still puzzling over.
And that, my friends, is how Miss Brave cried her first cry of the school year (in front of her students, mind you, although none of them noticed). Let me tell you, there is nothing like an inagural cry to remind you who you're working for! (The correct answer: Not the art teacher!)
Small group instruction (or not)
The other evening at Meet the Teacher night, I introduced myself to parents by explaining that I would be providing Academic Intervention Services in literacy to their children, who would benefit from small-group instruction. Except that the part about the small-group instruction was kind of a lie.
AIS providers are supposed to service at-risk students who are reading below grade level. In our school, unfortunately, that's a lot of students. At our AIS meeting, I learned that our groups can be as large as 15 students (above the 10 I had previously thought). In other grades, where the classes have as many as 30 students, this means that the AIS teacher and the classroom teacher have an even split. But in second grade, with class sizes mercifully hovering around 22 students, it can mean that if I take everyone who's reading below grade level, my group is larger than the classroom teacher's.
Most of my teachers have agreed that this is ridiculous. In one of my ELL (English Language Learner) classes, we capped my group at 10 students even though it means that there are F readers in the classroom teacher's group (remember: at this point in the year our kids should be reading at level I). But in two of my classes, my group is larger than the teacher's. In one class, I have 13 students and the teacher has 8. Of my 13 students, four of them are non-English speakers. I'm talking no English at all. Five of them, though, are on level H, and they are the kind of attention-sucking students that will steal all the focus from the ELLs who could really, really benefit from focused, small-group instruction. This is the class that burns me the most, because with the inclusion of those five H students I have five different levels and thus five different guided reading groups.
Rather than the rule being "AIS providers can take up to 15 students," I think the rule should be "AIS providers can take up to half the number of students in the class." But what do I know? I just work here.
AIS providers are supposed to service at-risk students who are reading below grade level. In our school, unfortunately, that's a lot of students. At our AIS meeting, I learned that our groups can be as large as 15 students (above the 10 I had previously thought). In other grades, where the classes have as many as 30 students, this means that the AIS teacher and the classroom teacher have an even split. But in second grade, with class sizes mercifully hovering around 22 students, it can mean that if I take everyone who's reading below grade level, my group is larger than the classroom teacher's.
Most of my teachers have agreed that this is ridiculous. In one of my ELL (English Language Learner) classes, we capped my group at 10 students even though it means that there are F readers in the classroom teacher's group (remember: at this point in the year our kids should be reading at level I). But in two of my classes, my group is larger than the teacher's. In one class, I have 13 students and the teacher has 8. Of my 13 students, four of them are non-English speakers. I'm talking no English at all. Five of them, though, are on level H, and they are the kind of attention-sucking students that will steal all the focus from the ELLs who could really, really benefit from focused, small-group instruction. This is the class that burns me the most, because with the inclusion of those five H students I have five different levels and thus five different guided reading groups.
Rather than the rule being "AIS providers can take up to 15 students," I think the rule should be "AIS providers can take up to half the number of students in the class." But what do I know? I just work here.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
I can ride my bike with no handlebars
In the midst of the chaos that is the first day of school, an announcement on the loudspeaker called all the AIS teachers down to the office. Dutifully down to the office I went, where I was met by the principal, who looked at me and said, "You're still AIS? Not classroom?"
Readers, I almost had a heart attack -- I was sure my job was about to be changed -- but fortunately it was just a mix-up.
All in all, I had a good first day! Except for the debacle that was 50 minutes, which of course is what I'm going to write about first because debacles are such juicy fun to read. Here's how it went down:
Our regular school day ends at 2:20 pm. But, we have a program that we call "50 minutes" (some schools have "37.5 minutes," but they do theirs four days a week and ours is only three days a week) until 3:10 pm for kids who need extra academic help. As a result, some students leave for the day at 2:20, and others stay until 3:10. Some stay in their own classrooms, some go to other classrooms, and some go to places like the library and the computer lab where out-of-classroom teachers like me work with them.
I got a roster of my 50 minutes kids in my mailbox this morning. I knew who they were and I had even told some of them they'd be coming to my group at the end of the day. (One of them responded with "Cool!") Then a classroom teacher happened to say to me, "I got a list of the kids who stay in my room for 50 minutes, but what about my kids who go to other classrooms? How do I know who is supposed to go where?"
That, my friends, is an excellent question!
At 2:20 today, I was waiting for my group of 50 minutes kids. At 2:35, I was still waiting. That's odd, I thought. I know it's the first day, but they're all coming from different rooms, so some of them should have been here by now. I figured their teachers probably hadn't gotten a list of which kids went where and just kept them in their own rooms, so I decided to take a little walk around to the classrooms and see if I could pick them up.
But alas, it was just as I suspected (and feared): My classroom teachers called the administrator in charge of 50 minutes and posed her the same question that teacher asked me: How do I know where to send my students who leave the room for 50 minutes? And the administrator answered by telling them: You don't have any students who go to other rooms for 50 minutes. They either stay with you, or they go home.
She sent my 50 minutes kids home! Only they couldn't go home, because I'm sure nobody was there to pick them up, because they all received letters informing them that they would stay for 50 minutes. They probably sat in the auditorium from 2:20 to 3:10, and then their parents tried to pick them up in their regular dismissal spots at 3:10, only they weren't there because they were in the auditorium.
Angry parents + missing children + screwy attendance forms = stressed-out school.
Other than that, my first day was fine. I practiced putting my teacher voice back on ("I don't know why I hear talking," "I really like the way Iris is following directions," you know the drill) and I am ready to go (famous last words)!
Readers, I almost had a heart attack -- I was sure my job was about to be changed -- but fortunately it was just a mix-up.
All in all, I had a good first day! Except for the debacle that was 50 minutes, which of course is what I'm going to write about first because debacles are such juicy fun to read. Here's how it went down:
Our regular school day ends at 2:20 pm. But, we have a program that we call "50 minutes" (some schools have "37.5 minutes," but they do theirs four days a week and ours is only three days a week) until 3:10 pm for kids who need extra academic help. As a result, some students leave for the day at 2:20, and others stay until 3:10. Some stay in their own classrooms, some go to other classrooms, and some go to places like the library and the computer lab where out-of-classroom teachers like me work with them.
I got a roster of my 50 minutes kids in my mailbox this morning. I knew who they were and I had even told some of them they'd be coming to my group at the end of the day. (One of them responded with "Cool!") Then a classroom teacher happened to say to me, "I got a list of the kids who stay in my room for 50 minutes, but what about my kids who go to other classrooms? How do I know who is supposed to go where?"
That, my friends, is an excellent question!
At 2:20 today, I was waiting for my group of 50 minutes kids. At 2:35, I was still waiting. That's odd, I thought. I know it's the first day, but they're all coming from different rooms, so some of them should have been here by now. I figured their teachers probably hadn't gotten a list of which kids went where and just kept them in their own rooms, so I decided to take a little walk around to the classrooms and see if I could pick them up.
But alas, it was just as I suspected (and feared): My classroom teachers called the administrator in charge of 50 minutes and posed her the same question that teacher asked me: How do I know where to send my students who leave the room for 50 minutes? And the administrator answered by telling them: You don't have any students who go to other rooms for 50 minutes. They either stay with you, or they go home.
She sent my 50 minutes kids home! Only they couldn't go home, because I'm sure nobody was there to pick them up, because they all received letters informing them that they would stay for 50 minutes. They probably sat in the auditorium from 2:20 to 3:10, and then their parents tried to pick them up in their regular dismissal spots at 3:10, only they weren't there because they were in the auditorium.
Angry parents + missing children + screwy attendance forms = stressed-out school.
Other than that, my first day was fine. I practiced putting my teacher voice back on ("I don't know why I hear talking," "I really like the way Iris is following directions," you know the drill) and I am ready to go (famous last words)!
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Ooops, I did it again
Remember when I was going to be a kindergarten teacher?
Forget everything I posted yesterday! This morning my principal changed her mind. I'm now going to be a second grade reading teacher -- or, as we like to call it at my school, "Academic Intervention Services" (AIS). In AIS, I push into each of the second grade classrooms during reading and work with a group of no more than ten struggling readers.
AIS is what I originally applied for, and I am excited about the possibility -- I already know and teach all of next year's second graders (and they're a lot nicer than this year's second graders), I like teaching reading, I like small groups and I kind of like the idea that I don't have to be with one group of kids all day. But I am a little bummed that I got myself all jazzed up for kindergarten, and I think I would have had a lot of fun teaching over in the annex.
But will my principal change her mind again tomorrow? Who knows!
Forget everything I posted yesterday! This morning my principal changed her mind. I'm now going to be a second grade reading teacher -- or, as we like to call it at my school, "Academic Intervention Services" (AIS). In AIS, I push into each of the second grade classrooms during reading and work with a group of no more than ten struggling readers.
AIS is what I originally applied for, and I am excited about the possibility -- I already know and teach all of next year's second graders (and they're a lot nicer than this year's second graders), I like teaching reading, I like small groups and I kind of like the idea that I don't have to be with one group of kids all day. But I am a little bummed that I got myself all jazzed up for kindergarten, and I think I would have had a lot of fun teaching over in the annex.
But will my principal change her mind again tomorrow? Who knows!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The verdict
Yesterday, no less than five people stopped me in the hall to ask me that fateful question: "Miss Brave, do you know what you're doing next year?"
It was a loaded question, and not just because I've been thinking about leaving the school system altogether (something I haven't shared with anyone at my school). My school isn't keeping my writing program next year, and so besides the possibility that I might get excessed, I was headed for a change no matter what. I applied for a literacy AIS position and listed my top three grade preferences: first grade, kindergarten, second grade.
This morning the principal called me into her office and gave me the news: In the fall of 2008, if I decide to stay at my school, I will be a kindergarten teacher.
On the one hand, this is good news; I did not want to teach an upper grade. On the other hand, I had privately decided that if I was given an upper grade, I would definitely be leaving, and so now I'm just more confused than ever about whether to stay or go. Out of all the grades I teach -- and I teach K-5, so that's six different grade levels -- kindergarten is my favorite. In fact, I almost got my Early Childhood teaching license rather than an Elementary one but I didn't want to limit myself in terms of job marketability.
News travels fast at my school; everyone was buzzing with gossip today about who's moving where, and all of a sudden I was more popular than I've ever been. And slowly my head started filling with visions of Miss Brave's classroom and Miss Brave's kindergarteners, with their clean slates and their moldable little minds.
I wouldn't be starting over entirely. I certainly have a better grasp on behavior management than I did at the beginning of the year, my writing curriculum would be totally kick-ass, and I have the TC model down pat. But in another sense, having my own classroom would be like going through my first year of teaching all over again. Am I ready for that?
It was a loaded question, and not just because I've been thinking about leaving the school system altogether (something I haven't shared with anyone at my school). My school isn't keeping my writing program next year, and so besides the possibility that I might get excessed, I was headed for a change no matter what. I applied for a literacy AIS position and listed my top three grade preferences: first grade, kindergarten, second grade.
This morning the principal called me into her office and gave me the news: In the fall of 2008, if I decide to stay at my school, I will be a kindergarten teacher.
On the one hand, this is good news; I did not want to teach an upper grade. On the other hand, I had privately decided that if I was given an upper grade, I would definitely be leaving, and so now I'm just more confused than ever about whether to stay or go. Out of all the grades I teach -- and I teach K-5, so that's six different grade levels -- kindergarten is my favorite. In fact, I almost got my Early Childhood teaching license rather than an Elementary one but I didn't want to limit myself in terms of job marketability.
News travels fast at my school; everyone was buzzing with gossip today about who's moving where, and all of a sudden I was more popular than I've ever been. And slowly my head started filling with visions of Miss Brave's classroom and Miss Brave's kindergarteners, with their clean slates and their moldable little minds.
I wouldn't be starting over entirely. I certainly have a better grasp on behavior management than I did at the beginning of the year, my writing curriculum would be totally kick-ass, and I have the TC model down pat. But in another sense, having my own classroom would be like going through my first year of teaching all over again. Am I ready for that?
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Using our words
Alas, I did not get observed today. What I did get, however, was a homework assignment. At 1:30 in the afternoon -- just as we were switching over to the last period of the day, mind you, so that cluster teachers would naturally be in the hallway walking to their next class -- there was an announcement on the loudspeaker: "Would the following teachers please bring two lesson plans to professional development on Monday."
What irritates me more than actually doing this assignment is the manner in which I was notified -- what if I had been over in the annex, or in the bathroom? You know that if I showed up Monday without a lesson plan, I'd be castigated for being unprepared. It's like my schoolwide periods in which I'm assigned to cover the in-school suspension room; lately they've been making announcements on the loudspeaker that the "suspension room is in effect today," but I never hear these announcements because I'm in the kindergarten annex, and then they have to come looking for me.
Meanwhile, all my lessons went beautifully today, which of course means that when I actually do get observed, they'll bomb. And, I was in a bad mood all day because I was expecting to get observed at any moment. It's like water torture: a slow, excrutiating descent into madness.
Happy long weekend, everyone!
What irritates me more than actually doing this assignment is the manner in which I was notified -- what if I had been over in the annex, or in the bathroom? You know that if I showed up Monday without a lesson plan, I'd be castigated for being unprepared. It's like my schoolwide periods in which I'm assigned to cover the in-school suspension room; lately they've been making announcements on the loudspeaker that the "suspension room is in effect today," but I never hear these announcements because I'm in the kindergarten annex, and then they have to come looking for me.
Meanwhile, all my lessons went beautifully today, which of course means that when I actually do get observed, they'll bomb. And, I was in a bad mood all day because I was expecting to get observed at any moment. It's like water torture: a slow, excrutiating descent into madness.
Happy long weekend, everyone!
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Miss Brave and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day...2
This morning I arrived at school to find a memo informing me that I was being assigned to cover the in-school suspension room today. Problematically, an earlier memo had already assigned me to cover the kindergarten (yes, that'd be the entire kindergarten) over in the annex at the same time.
Miss Brave can do a lot of things, but she cannot be in two buildings at once, so the APs said they would find someone else to cover the in-school suspension room.
Then, the professional development session for which I was being assigned the mass prep coverage in the annex was canceled -- which is probably a good thing for me because the memo instructed me to "set up an educational video for the students" and I don't particularly know how to use all the projection equipment at the annex, and I didn't really have time to learn yesterday because I needed my lunch to prep for my first grade and my prep to prep for my new fifth grade and I am not an A/V expert and this is not my job.
So I walked back over to the main building and up four flights of stairs to discover a TESTING -- DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door to the room in which my office is located. This happens to me all the time.
So I did what I usually do: I sat in the hallway. With my coat and all the other junk I had dragged over to the annex. Then the APs came and found me in the hallway. The suspended kid had finished his testing, so off we went to the in-school suspension room. Unfortunately for me, when the period ended, no one came to relieve me until fifteen minutes into the next period. At which point I went back upstairs, retrieved my things from the hallway, and entered my office.
Did you notice how all of this went on before ten o'clock in the morning and I haven't said one word about teaching anything yet? Increasingly my days are filled with this kind of frustrating minituae that puts me in the kind of mood where I am already primed to snap at the kids from the second I enter the room. No one ever says, "Hey, Miss Brave, how about those periods those kids are putting at the end of their sentences?"; they only say, "Miss Brave, please perform some arbitrary function that is only tangentially related to the job for which you were actually hired." Especially because the first five minutes of every period are filled with the piercing agony of wondering whether or not I'm about to be observed. My kids have been working on the same stories for so long. Next week, because it's the week before vacation, I want to do a fun writing project with them for once; we'll read I Took My Frog to the Library ("I took my frog to the library, but he jumped on the checkout desk and scared the librarian") and then they'll write and illustrate their own "I took my _____ to the ______. Here is what happened next!" stories. But I'm afraid if I do this during an observation, somehow it won't jive with our school's official "No fun allowed!" policy.
The good news? My new fifth grade class went pretty well. We talked about the meaning of the words "grammar" and "punctuation" according to the dictionary and how different languages (they're all ESL) can have different rules of grammar and punctuation. Then I gave each of them a card with their name on it and the meaning of their name on the back. They thought it was neat to hear where their names came from, and they clapped after every definition as I read the names aloud. Then they wrote about whether the meaning of their name fit them. And the very best part is, no one asked me to go to the bathroom once!
Miss Brave can do a lot of things, but she cannot be in two buildings at once, so the APs said they would find someone else to cover the in-school suspension room.
Then, the professional development session for which I was being assigned the mass prep coverage in the annex was canceled -- which is probably a good thing for me because the memo instructed me to "set up an educational video for the students" and I don't particularly know how to use all the projection equipment at the annex, and I didn't really have time to learn yesterday because I needed my lunch to prep for my first grade and my prep to prep for my new fifth grade and I am not an A/V expert and this is not my job.
So I walked back over to the main building and up four flights of stairs to discover a TESTING -- DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door to the room in which my office is located. This happens to me all the time.
So I did what I usually do: I sat in the hallway. With my coat and all the other junk I had dragged over to the annex. Then the APs came and found me in the hallway. The suspended kid had finished his testing, so off we went to the in-school suspension room. Unfortunately for me, when the period ended, no one came to relieve me until fifteen minutes into the next period. At which point I went back upstairs, retrieved my things from the hallway, and entered my office.
Did you notice how all of this went on before ten o'clock in the morning and I haven't said one word about teaching anything yet? Increasingly my days are filled with this kind of frustrating minituae that puts me in the kind of mood where I am already primed to snap at the kids from the second I enter the room. No one ever says, "Hey, Miss Brave, how about those periods those kids are putting at the end of their sentences?"; they only say, "Miss Brave, please perform some arbitrary function that is only tangentially related to the job for which you were actually hired." Especially because the first five minutes of every period are filled with the piercing agony of wondering whether or not I'm about to be observed. My kids have been working on the same stories for so long. Next week, because it's the week before vacation, I want to do a fun writing project with them for once; we'll read I Took My Frog to the Library ("I took my frog to the library, but he jumped on the checkout desk and scared the librarian") and then they'll write and illustrate their own "I took my _____ to the ______. Here is what happened next!" stories. But I'm afraid if I do this during an observation, somehow it won't jive with our school's official "No fun allowed!" policy.
The good news? My new fifth grade class went pretty well. We talked about the meaning of the words "grammar" and "punctuation" according to the dictionary and how different languages (they're all ESL) can have different rules of grammar and punctuation. Then I gave each of them a card with their name on it and the meaning of their name on the back. They thought it was neat to hear where their names came from, and they clapped after every definition as I read the names aloud. Then they wrote about whether the meaning of their name fit them. And the very best part is, no one asked me to go to the bathroom once!
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