Stepping into the New Career

I survived the first day! Of course. I actually was not all that nervous. I say that, though honestly I hardly slept last night. Part of that was staying up late putting final touches on my materials. We are given some materials for our classroom, like scissors, poster paper, markers. But not what kids would need for a Language Arts class: paper, pen, a notebook... And we were told not to expect our students to provide their own materials. They aren't allowed to have backpacks and the expectation for summer school is: 1) the students just show up (materials are provided for them), and 2) homework is not given (this is not so much a policy as a practice). How we're supposed to make big gains with our students without giving homework is beyond me. Additionally, although we have been stressed to get the family on board with our big goals, we're not given any contact information and were told that if we need it, we can ask our advisor who can try to get that for us. Okay...

So I went out and bought a bunch of supplies for my class: pens, sharpened pencils (to save time), paper, folders to keep their paper in, a filing box to keep the folders in, etc. Ouch. School supplies are not cheap, even with a teacher discount. And because our school site, unlike all the others, did not give us our rosters, we had no idea how many students to plan for. I played it safe and planned for 30. And then, we only have one copy center for all 600 of us TFA members to use (they gave us a copy card with 1000 copies credit on it but we can only use it on campus) and last night, the wait was 2 hours. So I ventured out with my unit group to a FedEx Kinkos and dropped another $15 on copies of our diagnostic (an assessment that we were supposed to give our students today to see what their ability level is on completing objectives that we're planning to teach them). The diagnostic ended up only being 7 questions and a writing sample, which didn't seem sufficient to me, but we could only use questions that TFA provided because eventually we take the answers and plug them into some kind of database which then gives us our students' individual growth goals for the 4 weeks. Okay.

Today's agenda was supposed to be, since I'm teaching B Block: go to the school, my class in which I learn to teach, then teach at 9:30 (in which I was supposed to do introductions, explain class rules & goals, then give the diagnostic), then differentiated time (i.e. professional development time, i.e. free time), more class, advisory meeting, go home. However, the day did not go as planned. To start, a colleague asked if I wanted to drive with her to the school this morning instead of riding the bus because that would be faster. Except that we got lost on the way there and were 5 minutes late (which should've gotten us a warning). But when we got to school, we learned that our entire day was being restructured because a 6th grade student died last week of a seisure and they were having a memorial for her at school today. So all students went to their A Block class and stayed there the entire day. I didn't end up meeting my students. AND instead of them moving from Social Studies to Language Arts to Math, etc, and doing their diagnostics in each class, we kept them in the same room and just gave them one diagnostic after another. They didn't get their passing period and because the school policy is no bathroom breaks or water breaks during classtime, they just had to stay in the room from 8am til lunch (11:40am) with one scheduled bathroom break (10:45am for the class I proctored). I wouldn't blame them for hating us all. And, in between that, we were also pulling kids out into the hall individual to administer the DRA (a reading assessment).

The class I proctored was pretty rough. It was hot and stuffy in the room even though the AC was on. It was a class of 7th graders who I think are the kids in the room I'll share during the block before me (I'm only teaching one block and share the room with 3 other TFA members). One girl kept falling asleep. No joke I woke her up about 15 times. They looked exhausted. But once they finished one test, because they all finish at different times, they had to just be quiet, not disrupt others, and start another test (we had 4 to go through: ss, math, science, and language arts).

My favorite moment of the day though was a kid I'll call "Charlie." Charlie was sitting directly in front of me and reluctantly doing his math assessment, stopping for several minutes to just stare off until I directed him back to the assessment. At one point, he started fumbling with something in his pants pocket that was rustling. I made eye contact, gave my best "teacher look," and shook my head. He gave me the "what?" look but kept rustling. I gave him the "don't ya do it" look. He gave me the "what?" look and kept rustling. I gave him the "I'm warning you" look. He gave me the "what?" look. I said "leave it in there." He said "what?" I said "you heard me." He pulled out a tiny pencil, like the kind from golf courses, and gives me a "it's just a pencil that I was trying to get" look. Ahh 7th graders.

Anyhow, after that boring period in which I tried to look busy while watching them like a hawk while feeling awkward about watching them like a hawk and thinking how uncomfortable I'd be if I was being watched like a hawk (but honestly, if I looked away, they immediately started talking, or put their head down and tried to sleep), then I had to go try to administer the DRA. But the whole process was a bit disorganized so I had a hard time knowing how to jump in to assist and ended up not being very useful. Then class, then advisory time in which we were warned that the 6th/8th lunch is pretty rough and if we end up supervising it to keep our eyes peeled at all times because it's tense. The school apparently is pretty racial divided between the African American and Hispanic students. Also it sounds like there are a lot of gang issues at the school; there's a pretty strict dress code about what color undershirt they can wear under their school-issued polo, and how they can't roll up their pant legs. Also strange, apparently in the Houston Independent School District, because it's free/reduced lunch, anyone under 18 who lives in the district can come have lunch at the school, and it's not really regulated. So how can we keep the kids in summer school safe?

So my day ends with me re-working tomorrow's lesson plan to be able to fit in all the first day stuff I was going to say today, finishing the lesson plan, finishing drafts for Thurs & Fri lesson plan (already did draft of Wed which is totally rough and I'll have to spend a lot of time on tomorrow), making copies of handouts (and damn, I just got low on my printer's ink, it's how I was avoiding going to stand in line to make copies -- I have to learn to plan ahead -- wonder if that can realistically happen), feeling stressed about how rough my lesson plans are, how unprepared I still feel, and how late it is. And how much of my evening got taken up by a supplies-run gone bad with my roommate, but that's another story.

Anyhow, I'm in for a solid 5 hours of sleep before getting up for my first REAL day of teaching. At this point I feel that if the kids don't kill me, the exhaustion and overdosing of coffee will. But my resolution is to be positive, because there's really no other choice, except to be miserable and wish for more hours in every day and more help than I'm getting and more creativity and cleverness in my thinking.

Actually the worst part of this is just feeling really unprepared to lead these students. I feel like they are just guinea pigs as we struggle to figure out how to teach. And they are students who probably need great instruction the most. On the first step of the DRA (the San Diego Quick Assessment), in which kids read a column of 10 words at certain grades levels (pre primer to 12), from which we try to figure out what level to actually test them on reading, there were two girls in the class I proctored who were going to be tested at pre-primer, meaning that they got more than 3 words wrong (and the words on the list were "see," "here,"). One girl could read up to the 8th grade column. Most hit the 5th or 6th grade column. And these are supposed to be students who just finished 7th grade. Of course, that's not a completely accurate measure; it was just the first step in the assessment. But it gives you an idea. Anyhow, I just have never had some much work and pressure when it was other people's lives who were affected by my actions. It's a lot of responsibility. I just don't want to let them down.

First day power outfit: