They PAY me to do this?

Totally trying to be cool, but I think I look like this

I don't have time for a proper post, but it was the first day of school today, and it's the most fun I've ever had. My homeroom is seniors, and a chevra in the middle were all set to heckle but settled down pretty soon, especially when I impressed them by remembering all their names. When we finished the stuff they had to do early, I got bored and started teaching them my lesson plan for that day. They got really into it, and one stopped at the door to tell me the class was cool, I was a good teacher. They wished me luck with the ninth graders in a foreboding kind of way, but man were they wrong. My kids are fantastic! The first class was tentative, the second committed, the third bold and outspoken. My board is full of their post-its about how they're going to self-advocate in their own education, and what untold pieces of history they want to learn about this year (their answers: the president who was president before George Washington, synagogues, the Korean War, lots of civil rights history). Starting with the 68' Olympics Black Power Salute gave a rollicking start to the year. I am so excited right now! Tomorrow we tackle democracy in ancient Greece. Watch out, world!

Those Who Can't Teach, Give

Monday I peeked into my trailer for the first time. I’m sorry, did I say trailer? I meant “mobile classroom,” just one of CMS’ many euphemisms. It contains one corkboard, one whiteboard, 38 desks, two boxes of old student papers left by the previous teacher before she walked out in disgust, and the shells of myriad dead insects.

The "Moral Monday" rallies in NC that have been happening
all summer in hopes of raising the education budget. 

Tuesday I headed straight to the dollar store, and then, ashamedly, Walmart. But as I pulled stacks of 78 cent notebooks and 50 cent folders from the shelves, to be paid for by a salary that I have not yet received and that the North Carolina government has fought to keep tiny for the past five years, I breathed a sigh of relief—god bless Walmart! In the checkout aisle, that prayer turned around; nearly everyone said, “god bless you” as they watched me leverage what were clearly teacher-sized stacks of supplies out of my cart.

I don’t yet have a key to my mobile classroom, so I approached one of the janitors and asked him to let me in. As we walked down to the mobile neighborhood, he told me, “I don’t know what they’re teaching you in those meetings, but jump on them from day 1.” When he told me kids on “this side of town can be rough, and get on your nerves,” I sighed—not the staff, too! I assured him that I am tougher than I look (he was seeing my sweet, damsel-in-distress side because I wanted him to open my trailer), fist-bumped him (he initiated), and walked in pondering a black janitor who warns about behavior management for black students. Then I got to work. I spent several hours sweeping and cloroxing the heck off of every surface in the classroom. I strategically left several of the spider webs up, since I think we share a common goal, but swept the rest of the insects, dead or alive, into the bin. I probably killed more bugs in an hour than I usually do in a year.

After school I headed to Staples for some key things I couldn’t get at Walmart and counted up my receipts with a sigh. The rest of the evening was spent emailing back and forth with my PLC about our first unit. We’re squishing Rome, Greece, and World Religions into two weeks, so we’re all fretting about good ideas and bouncing them off each other. My OCD has everyone super-impressed as I condense our plans into tables and worksheets and plop it all onto google docs.

Today I laminated and hung posters. There are the trinity: MLK, Rosie the Riveter, and Gandhi, without which my classroom would be incomplete, and then a word wall, class rules (respect yourself, respect your peers, respect your instructor), paper headings, and suggestions on how to state your opinion during class. The room is colorful, but still rather blank in spaces. I left the back wall for student work, so I figure as soon as the kids start producing work I’ll slap it on the walls. Then I schlepped 30 textbooks from the A-building into my trailer. Three computers had magically shown up; when I told the janitors that they’re like elves dispensing goodies, they were tickled. We sat in professional development for awhile this afternoon, but I have yet to figure out my copy code, get my rosters, access the grading site, or have crisis training. Still, school starts Monday, whether I know who’s in my classes or not!

The Most Important Poster

A note: Like some other TFAers, I’ve started a GoFundMe page called, “Those Who Can’t Teach, Give” where you can donate to my quest for school supplies. 

A Pair of Ragged Claws

 Well. I cannot, should not, be blogging right now—haven’t time, when I’m expected to be weltering in unit plans, diagnostic and summative assessments, syllabi, and lesson plans— and oh, I am— but life is overflowing with a pursuit of perfection and I simply have to effervesce somewhere.  

Sunday I had a few TFAers over for brunch. Is brunch not the most delicious of words and meals and perfect for friendly confidences or silly rigmarole? They were a crew of interesting people with fascinating stories, but more importantly, a deliciously laid-back, common-sensical, yet still delighted attitude towards life. It was a pleasant morning, filled with the smell of fresh rolls and blueberries, and I felt, in Anne-terms, as though “I’d put down a tiny soul-root” in Charlotte TFA. Of course, I don’t yet have table and chairs, but I draped a tablecloth over the box from my new sofa, turning it into a low table, and we sat around it comfortably on the carpet. Luckily, one of the guys is Turkish-American and thought it quite elegant, so I may never buy furniture now, just invest in some cushions and call it oriental. 

The past few weeks have been an exercise in recovering my personhood. Institute in Tulsa dealt quite a blow to my conception of my self, and since then I’ve been regrouping, paying attention to every tiny action and mood and monitoring my living as I try to direct it into fresher, more positive waters. This morning I got to use some of the Mesillat Yesharim I’ve been learning when a clerk at Home Depot offered me a faucet adapter for free. Perhaps I reminded him of a granddaughter, or he just found my grateful request for help enlivening, but I remembered in time that only a store owner can offer free gifts, and headed for the cashier with a rueful sense of integrity. Now I can’t fit the new adapter into the tubing—I haven’t the upper body strength necessary. No good deed goes unpunished.

I sent my revised “Vision and Goals” to my MTLD today with the Prufrockian email subject “A hundred Visions and Revisions” and a bit of doubt about my complete lack of knowledge in so many areas. She volleyed deliciously, reminding me that:

 

And indeed there will be time 
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, 
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 
There will be time, there will be time 
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 
There will be time to murder and create, 
And time for all the works and days of hands 
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 
Time for you and time for me, 
And time yet for a hundred indecisions 
And for a hundred visions and revisions 
Before the taking of a toast and tea. 

Are you not drooling in jealousy that I have such an awesome advisor?

Now I write, and run, and dare, and shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach, and hear the mermaids singing, each to each.

They sing to me.

Developing Professionally

I just found out I’m teaching World History, and the past week has been an orgy of planning. My sister thinks TFA brings out all my worst qualities and that my overboard OCD is dangerous, but at the moment it’s providing me with the strongest pleasure as I decide how to teach three thousand years of human history with accompanying social studies skills in one semester. It was while I was gleefully explaining to her how TFA has me mapping out objectives in several areas for my students and how I’m then plotting my actions and student actions to arrive at them, and then deciding how to measure them, that she hung up on me. So I’ll tell you (don’t worry, only a little) instead.

Students will be Socrates

My vision for my students ranges from academic goals (broken down specifically into reading, writing, research skills, social studies analysis skills, and social studies content) to the professional intangibles that will help them succeed in future (organization, self-advocacy skills, etc). I’m also planning long-term for the unit, and glorying in filling in slots on the calendar. Luckily the focus is overwhelmingly on skill-building instead of content, because then students can take their inspired passion, research, and analysis skills to study whatever they want outside of class.

I have so many ambitions! A semester-long research project that carefully builds up their skills one by one, Socratic Seminars and daily current event prompts and fictional narratives and personalized research into educational opportunities… there’s no way to squeeze it all in, so careful pruning will have to follow.

  

I am struggling to keep World History, world history. From what I’ve learned, I think the tests for the year will focus on Greece and Rome, medieval feudalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, absolutism and revolution, and nationalism. There’s no “world” in that history, except in the section “Exploration and Expansion,” which from another perspective could be called “Devastation and Decimation.” The problem is, there’s no way to cover all of world history in one semester, so picking and choosing has to happen, and it has to benefit our students in our society. I mean, how do you choose between the things that are going to be considered cultural competency requirements, and the things that get left out of curriculums time and time again? 

My MTLD (sorry, I appear to have deep-dived straight into TFA’s acronymorrhea; MTLD stands for my Manager of Teacher Leadership & Development—you can call her my advisor) suggested making that the central question around which I teach. I LOVE that idea, and my syllabus now has a dominant and suppressed section for each unit. The students’ research projects will each have some form of that question about stories that are suppressed. I am so excited to get this going! I’m now deep inside NC’s Essential Standards, thrashing around with CORE and the textbook and previous AP test questions as I try to form a coherent plan out of the mess of resources. But still finding it difficult to do “ancient civilizations” and figure out either how to leave out or encompass all of Rome, Inca, Aztec, Han, Qin, Mauryan, Gupta, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Mali in my empire section. 

Thursday a previous TFAer at my school who is going to mentor myself and the other history TFAer took us on a tour. As first-year teachers, we’re incredibly lucky and promised classrooms of our own (to share with the unlucky rovers, of course). Both of us will be out in the trailers, a couple doors away from each other, for which we’re very thankful—our management plans involve sending students to each other to cool off for ten minutes. We got to meet some of the guidance staff and administration as well, in a welter of names that I’m afraid I’ve forgotten already. I did wish, as I shook the principal’s hand, that it hadn’t been raining as we walked around outside—somehow meeting her while damp seemed a bad impression, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. Is it terrible that I’m excited that the principal is female? I suppose school administrations have become more gender-diverse over the years since I was in high school and it’s not exciting at all, but I can’t help enjoying having that role model for the female students, and it reminds me of my reaction in Denmark to a student who casually said “yeah, our prime minister, she—“ –electrified approval.

The past week has been spent in professional development with TFA. We’re back at Johnson C Smith University, all super-excited to see each other again and relieved to be out of Institute and back on our home ground with our own staff. The Charlotte corps has a good vibe; it’s full of down-to-earth, cheerful people with a solid sense of responsibility to their work and a nicely flippant attitude towards the more jargon-y educational gobbledygook.

At the start of the week we did a poverty simulation, in which a crisis ministry came in, organized us into faux families with characters and family situations for each, and ran 15-minute weeks in which we had to live. My fake wife got incredibly flustered the first “week” when, due to the bank saying we had extra money owing and not taking my check, we couldn’t feed the family. I was surprised she took it so seriously, when our fake kids looked pretty equable about it. Partially it was that I knew this was meant to be hard, partially that I felt we just needed more practice at what felt like a game. Of course, in real life we’d probably be close to dead—there was no way this simulation was going to really give us a clue. Sure enough, the next few “weeks” we fed the family, but didn’t manage to get the youngest kid glasses or fix a broken window, and were momentarily evicted before I managed to pay rent (to the applause of the line behind me, also waiting to pay rent or argue evictions).

During the debriefing afterwards everyone spoke about how rushed they’d felt, how completely desperate and like giving up the “game” of life. Interestingly, the “kids” in the simulation spoke of how ignored and helpless they’d felt. It’s true: as a “father,” I hadn’t had a chance to ask my kids what they did in school or spend a minute with them beyond snatching the requests they gave me for glasses or valentine’s day money out of their hands. Another friend made the point that we’d all been so stressed, but been using competency that we’d been taken for granted such as demanding receipts, counting change, and speaking English. The only way I can really make sense of it is to use it to inform my classroom, to create a safe caring space focused entirely on students. Getting a glimpse of the obstacles some of my students may face won’t mean lowering the standards, but it may mean getting creative about how they rise to them.

As I do whenever I move into a new city, I’ve established routines here in Charlotte that make me feel at home. Every morning I sit on my mirpeset to breakfast and read while the sun rises. Every evening once my work is done, I jog in a different direction wearing my Norwegian light reflectors, learning the neighborhoods around me through the twilight. Then I loaf in the pool for a quarter hour, reading under the stars.