Movin' in with the Jeffersons

That title is lacking. I really wanted to make a play on words with the theme song for The Jeffersons, but I didn't want to make it seem like going from Danville HS to Jefferson Middle School was a step up or something. In some ways, however, it is. As far as test scores go, JMS has about 80% of its students meeting or exceeding state standards. DHS has only 40% or so meeting or exceeding standards. Convenience is a plus, too. It takes about 10-15 minutes for me to get to my new placement, which is much better than the 40-50 minutes to get to Danville. On the other hand, it will take quite a bit for me to learn more than I did at Danville. I feel a lot more prepared to teach after having that experience... but now I'm at Jefferson, so let's reflect a bit on the first week there.

First of all, I love the teamwork that goes on at JMS. The math department meets on a weekly basis to work on curricula planning. This allows the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade teachers to know what each other will be teaching in a given year. I think it makes every teacher more effective to know what everyone else is doing. The 6th grade math teachers (my co-op and another woman) collaborate formally on a weekly basis and informally much more often than that. They exchange ideas and plan what they'll be doing in the coming weeks. It helps us have an idea of where we're trying to go when we have that far in advance planned. That was a struggle for me at Danville: trying to stay ahead. (Of course, sometimes things don't go as planned, and you need to make changes, but they're easier to make when you're ahead.)

In addition to departmental teamwork, there are almost daily team meetings among the 6th grade teachers who have the same students. This allows one teacher to say something like "It seems like Johnny has been slipping with his effort," and get feedback from other teachers to see if this is a trend across all classes or just that one. I love it when I get to meet up with my fellow pre-service math teachers at U of I, and it's this kind of exchange and discussion, the kind where you find out that you're not alone in something, that strengthens me. It also lets the teachers figure out the best way to help students. It worked especially well during Parent-Teacher conferences this past week because parents were able to hear from all their son or daughter's teachers at once to learn what they could do to help their child.

Lastly, the teamwork at Jefferson works well even on the school-wide level. Every week (I think), the entire JMS faculty get together for professional development and discussion of school-wide issues. There is a sense of community during these meetings. It feels like everyone is aware that they are working toward the same goals. There is good-natured joking amongst the staff. There is respect for those who take the lead during the meetings. Now with a smaller staff than of a high school, this is probably more feasible. Dunbar's number is 150, which would suggest that a high school faculty should be able to achieve this same sense of community and social stability, but with a faculty of around 55 it's probably easier to establish at a middle school like Jefferson. No matter if it's easier or not, there is definitely a healthy community at JMS that cannot help but aid in how students learn there.

My experiences in the classroom have been positive as well. I haven't run into too much disobedience, and what disobedience there is is nipped in the bud by asking students to "take one." This is code for "Put your hands in your lap and remain silent for a short period of time." It's a way to "reset" students, let them know that they were being disruptive, and correct their behavior with minimal embarrassment. It's simple and seems to work. There are times when students are slightly more disruptive and need to be taken into the hallway for a short conversation, but these incidences are much less common. Detentions and referrals are even more rare.

I haven't really begun teaching yet, and I'm likely to encounter some of the same difficulties I faced at DHS, but I hope to be able to handle them better than I did before. I don't want to have unrealistic expectations for this experience based upon the first week. I know, know, know that there will be crests and troughs. Being more mentally prepared for them is a good start. There's a long way to go, but I'm ready to keep movin' on up. (There it is! The reference I wanted all along.)

And So It Ends

My last week at Danville High School was by far the best of all of them. I felt like I planned my lessons with a much better understanding of how much the students can learn in 50 minutes. Except for one period where I was much too ambitious with the activity I planned for the students to complete, I think I prepared just the right amount. There weren't as many discipline problems as past weeks, but of course there still were some. In addition, the students performed fairly well on the assessments I gave on Thursday (quizzes for the Algebra 2/Trig students, tests for the Algebra repeaters). All in all, I'd say I developed a better sense of how to teach at DHS last week.

And then I left :(

Whereas I'm looking forward to starting a new experience at Jefferson Middle School, I'm disappointed that I couldn't stay at least one more week at DHS. There's this thought in the back of my mind that maybe last week was a fluke, that the stars aligned for me. I would have liked to have one more week to see if I truly had taken my teaching to a new level. Now, I'll have to introduce myself to a new group of students and go through some of the same adjustments I had to go through seven weeks ago. I suppose if I indeed have learned from my experiences that the first couple of weeks at JMS won't inflict quite so many growing pains. And, yikes, there were so many at DHS.

I really don't know where to start when it comes to what I'll take away from my experience. I've learned I need to be more consistent and assertive with my discipline. A plan of action would help me know what I want to do in certain situations if/when they arise. I've also learned that you can't make every lesson spectacularly brilliant as I am wont to do. There were lessons I spent upwards of 3 hours working on, and that just can't happen consistently. ("Should it happen at all?" is also a good question to ask.) Furthermore, I realize that having a procedure for grading homework is vitally important. Do students get time to work on it in class? Do they get graded on completion, correctness, both? If both, when does each happen? There are so many questions to ask.

One of the most significant lessons I learned came on the last day of class. I had not the greatest end to my very good week. The Algebra 2/Trig classes were not very respectful, and the Geometry class was, well, how it usually was: some very on-task and others very clueless. The Algebra class, however, was thoroughly engaged with my oddball lesson on a game called NIM. I learned the game during my second semester here, and I've found it to be a very, very good way to introduce students to induction. I really enjoyed teaching the Algebra repeaters on Friday. It had to do partly with the lessons I prepared for Friday, but they were consistently the group I liked to teach the most. They really seemed to appreciate it when I did different styles of teaching with them. Though they had some major behavior issues, I feel like as a group they had more curiosity than the other classes. The Algebra 2/Trig classes seemed to want to just memorize the formula and get on with it; the Geometry class... I still don't understand that group; but the Algebra 1 class was fun to teach. They showed me more of their personalities. Even one student, whom I saw a total of three times throughout the seven weeks, seemed to reveal more of who he is to me than a majority of the students in the other classes. I think what I learned was that those are the kinds of students I should teach.

Now, mind you, this is just still a thought, but I've been strongly considering teaching with a foundation that would set me up with a yearlong learning experience in a school of need in Chicago. Then, I would probably find a job at one of the "turnaround" schools that they run in Chicago. I'm feeling more like this is the direction I should go, but I'm still very unsure. I don't know when I'll know for sure what I want to do. Maybe two weeks. Maybe two months. Hopefully not two years!

For now, I face another new beginning tomorrow.

It Was a Good Day

This past Wednesday was the first day that when asked the question "How did it go?" I could honestly say "It was good." Up until that point, I had been relegated to saying "All right," or "Okay," or sometimes "Not so good." What made the difference? I felt like I was more of myself in front of the class that day. I managed to walk the fine line between being a teacher persona and staying true to who I am. At some point, I know I'll get the hang of this, and it won't feel so much like acting in front of everyone. Another contributing factor to its being a good day was how prepared I felt. I had a good presentation ready to go, and it took just the right amount of time to go through. Having the next two days off for interviews helped, too, but that's not something I can control, so I'll stay away from giving credit to the circumstances.

My goal going into this last week at Danville H.S. is to have multiple good days. Part of that means getting more prepared ahead of time. I've got a solid idea of what I'm going to do over the next five days, and now I need to start making those ideas into realities. It's difficult for me to be in a situation where there's always more that I can do to be prepared. I like to be able to check things off of lists, and I can't really do that with teaching because nothing is ever really closed. For today, I can just use my time as wisely as possible to get ready for the next few days. There's no point stressing myself out before the week has even begun. A cool and calm me is going to be a better teacher for the students in my five classes.

In addition, I'll try to incorporate a little more of myself into the lessons. I snuck in a picture of my looking like a Weasley twin, which the students enjoyed. It also broke up the lesson into two distinct parts. It acted as a quick time to loosen everyone up and take a quick break from thinking about trigonometry.

One more thing I learned from this past week is that being absent is sometimes more work than being present. It's a lot of work to write sub plans, even if your "sub" is your cooperating teacher who does this thing every year. Now, having been gone for two days, I need to look at what I had planned to happen, what actually did happen, and what I want to happen and try to align them all. It'll take a while, but I'm not nervous or worried. I'm just looking forward to my next good day.

Another Late Night

I really meant to write this earlier. I must have meant to write this earlier about a dozen times, but it just never rose above the important of finishing my lesson plans, and so here I am writing about last week at least one day too late.

This is my 6th of 7 weeks at Danville High School, and I feel like I'm almost at the finish line. I prepared for this marathon of an experience for years, and thank goodness I did. The administrative duties alone are enough to overwhelm me at times. Then, of course, there's the actual teaching.

This past week was my first five-day week where I taught all five classes: 3 algebra 2/trig, 1 geometry, and 1 repeater algebra. That's 15 distinct lesson plans, 25 lessons taught, a total of at least twenty hours of being in the spotlight. I don't know how I manage to stay up until 11pm, wake up at 5:20am, get ready, teach until 2:40pm, stay to answer questions until sometimes 4pm, come home, eat, prepare, and do it all over again. I guess all the prayers of my friends and family, in addition to my own, are working. I'm finding some sort of strength to keep going.

There have certainly been rewards. I've seen some students improve their grades... of course, I've also seen some do the opposite. Overall, I think I've made a positive impact on the students, but I don't think I'll ever know for sure. I never really went up to my teachers to thank them. I never really gave a lot of positive feedback. I'm sure some of them knew they did a good job, but I rarely told them to their faces. I heard one student at one point say "This is the most fun I've had in math this year," and those comments stick with me. Even still, I feel like the next day approaches too quickly to dwell very long on a single positive comment. Certainly, the next day approaches too quickly to dwell on a negative comment, and there are plenty of those.

As far as having an impact on individual students, there's one girl with whom I've worked after school a few times. She has a 'D' in Algebra 2/Trig right now, but she recently received an 'A' on both her quadratic formula quiz and quiz on distance/midpoint/circles. Her father passed away within the past two weeks, and I realize the effect that that has on her. Math isn't as important as family, and it can be difficult for her to focus in class. I think the extra time I've spent with her has helped, but most of the credit should, of course go to her. There's another student who I continue to try to teach lessons not related to math. He is defiant and challenges my authority daily. It's hard for me not to hold previous experiences against him, but I try my best. I wish he would realize that the sort of stubbornness he demonstrates in class by refusing to take notes, do practice problems, work in general won't fly when he has a job. Maybe he'll soften in the coming week, but I can only teach him the relationship between his choices and their consequences. He needs to receive the lesson for it to stick.

All in all, I'm ready for bed. It's late, and I need to run to the store to buy candy that I promised to the winners of our Angle Bingo game today. Ah, the joys of student teaching.