Holding High Expectations From Day 1 - A Student Called "J"

            “J – posture check. Sit up. Stop drawing on your arm. That’s your first warning. J – stop writing on the desk. Are you really making me form these sentences? J – stop making faces at D.”

            I said these words daily in my classroom without fail. J never really acted out in any real way. He never talked back, never said mean things to classmates, never outright disobeyed my directions. Yet his crimes were the most heinous after I spent hours planning my daily lessons – he wanted nothing to do with my class. He disengaged in every lesson and clearly couldn’t care less about what we were doing, and his grade reflected that.

            It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I had a good relationship with his mother (we spoke on the phone at least once a week, and she helped make sure his homework got done in a timely matter). I spoke with him about his interests and tried to incorporate them into the readings I chose or the topics for writing. I spoke with him about his future, and he seemed serious about going to college and doing well. I knew that he lacked interest in the subject material, but I still couldn’t figure out if his reading and writing skills were below where they needed to be, or if he simply wasn’t trying.

            Then I got my answer. He scored higher on the midterm exam than almost every other student in class. I was floored. I decided to confront him about it.

            “J – you got one of the highest grades on this exam. Why do you think that is?”

            “I don’t know Miss. Maybe I tried harder than I usually do.”

            I thought so. J’s mother told me that he had a history of getting lazy in classes and that he didn’t always put his best foot forward in classes. It was after seeing this spike in his grade that I decided to really put my foot down. If he tried to turn in sub-par work at the end of class, I told him that he needed to sit with me at lunch to try again. If he didn’t turn in homework, I told him he needed to get it to me by the end of the day no matter what. I chased him down before school, during lunch, and after school. As far as I was concerned, J wasn’t going to fall between the cracks anymore.

            His homework grade improved dramatically after the midterm. And although he didn’t do quite as well on the final exam as I felt he should have, I think he saw the correlation between hard work and success in some small way in my classroom.

            But something doesn’t sit well with me. I didn’t push J from the beginning to turn in that homework or to re-do his classwork. Of course, I didn’t know his personality very well at first and it took time to establish that relationship. And I often struggled with whether or not I was babying my students too much. Now, I wish I had thrown that thought aside a bit more. The fact of the matter is that I had four weeks to help J, and I definitely could have done more.

            Hindsight always being 20/20, that fact is neither here nor there. J taught me that I need to expect more of my students from day one than I did this summer. For that, I am grateful. I can’t let my students do sub-par work, and come next week, I won’t. 

Reasons Not to Have Favorites - A Student Called "D"

            While some of my students this summer drove me up a wall in a fiery storm of frustration, D was one student who made coming in worth it every single day. With a smile on her face and a go-get-em attitude, D was undoubtedly one of my favorite students (yes, I’m aware that I’m not allowed to have favorites).  She immediately liked me and often stayed after to chat with me for a few minutes before lunch or after school.  But when it came to D’s work in my classroom, she wasn’t at the top of the pile.

            D tried very hard in my class. When I assigned an essay or short paragraph for students to write, she furiously worked on it to the point that she often needed additional time to finish. She wrote more than any student in the class on every assignment, and worked hard to correct her weak points. She was well behaved, always on task, and consistently improving.

            But she wasn’t improving enough – D needed her scores to really shoot up in a hurry in order to pass the class. But I didn’t push her the way I should have. I often praised D for her natural writing talent. But the fact of the matter was that D didn’t have the skills necessary to really reach the high benchmarks I had set for my class.

            Looking back, I wish I were more direct with D. But fear got in the way. I feared that she wouldn’t trust or like me anymore, at which point she might shut down and perform even worse. Don’t get me wrong – I never outright lied to D. I always gave her constructive criticism and never let her think that her writing was perfect. But I wasn’t as harsh as she needed me to be in order to really grow as a writer and student.

            At the end of our four weeks together, D had certainly improved her writing. She articulated to me on the last day that she now knew that writing could always get better and that reading your work over one time before turning it in was not sufficient for her to get to where she needed to be in life. I’m happy that D took those lessons from my class, but at the end of the day I know she deserved a better education than what I gave her this summer.

If there’s one thing that I learned from D it’s not to worry so much about whether the kids like me or not. I have the ability to forge strong relationships with my students, and I need to stay strong with myself in order to make sure that I push my students to the levels of success that they can achieve. If I had pushed D harder, she may have been mad at me initially.  But I know that we would have gotten back to our former relationship in time, particularly when she saw the fruits of all her hard work.

I’m not worried about her, because I know she can take what she learned in my class and push herself to be better. I see now, more clearly than before, the danger of having favorite students. It’s not so much that I’ll treat my favorite students any better than the others, it’s that I may allow them to believe that the small gains they make are larger than they really are. That’s far more dangerous than the first scenario. No matter what my students’ personalities are like, and no matter how much I like or dislike them, I need to stay strong and push them to the degree that they deserve to be pushed. 

No Lost Causes - A Student Called 'S'

            Teaching in the Bronx made me see the achievement gap and my reason for joining Teach For America in a tangible way for the first time. When on a walking tour of the Bronx with a student from the school I taught at, I saw more poverty and hardship than I had ever seen firsthand. I saw how many students lived in project housing where nothing but a tiny air conditioner in the window offered them reprieve from the summer heat. My student tour guide told me that most of the time the families in those apartments couldn’t even afford to turn the tiny air conditioning unit on, and thus it would be better for them to spend their time outside than in their apartment, because the scorching heat outside proved far more bearable than the hot box that was their home.

            Seeing this made me wonder what types of external forces plagued my summer school students. How far did they need to commute (without a school bus) to get to school? What type of environment did they return home to? What type of after school job did they need to hold to help out their families? All of these questions forced me to consider all of the things that I as a teacher cannot control or affect. These factors were a mystery to me. And while I wanted to find out what the answers were for all of my students, it was S in particular who was the greatest enigma.

            S was a girl who rarely came to school. When she did, she showed up late (by half an hour or more). For a girl who rarely came to school, however, her writing samples far surpassed those of her classmates. I found her work harder to critique than anyone else’s. She possessed an ability to break down complicated metaphors and infuse college-level analysis into a rigid Regents paragraph. She frustrated me more than any student I worked with all summer, because I knew I could push her to ACE the Regents and end up in an AP level class – if she would just come to class.

            I tried lots of approaches to get S to my class. My first effort was to try and contact home. When I called the number she provided me with five times to both no answering machine and no answer, I went to my summer mentor teacher to see if she could help me find an alternate phone number. She gave me five phone numbers associated with S. I tried all of them multiple times and left several messages with extensive call back information. I never received a call back.

            Once I realized how nearly impossible contacting her parents seemed, I tried having a talk with S herself. After one class where she came an hour late, I took her into the hall to ask her what the problem was. “S – why don’t you come to school on time? What keeps you from getting here?” She responded that it was tough for her to get out of bed in the morning and that she wasn’t entirely sure what she didn’t make more of an effort to get to class. I showed her a piece of writing that she turned in the week before.

            “Do you see this?” I asked her. “This essay would have scored a six out of six on the Regents, no question. You have a real talent for writing, and you don’t seem to understand what that means. You told me on the first day of class that you want to be a crime scene investigator and that you want to go to college. I’m telling you that with the ability you have in writing and the write instruction, you have the ability to get into a great college that has a fantastic criminal justice program. I can help you pass this Regents exam and I can help you get into an AP class that will push you to get into a college like that. But I can’t want it for you – you need to want it for yourself.”

            S hugged me and thanked me for believing in her. She told me that if I called her in the morning to wake her up, she would get to school. She promised to stay after to make up the work that she missed from being absent three times that week. She promised to come in ready to work the next day. And I believed her.

            So the next morning, I called her house. No answer. I called again. No answer. I called a third time and her older brother picked up the phone and gave it to S. She told me she was getting up and that she would come in early to give me the late work that she owed me. But the half hour before school came and went with no S. So did the first English block. And then the second. No show.

            I was beyond frustrated. My summer mentor teacher saw this in me and urged me to stop caring so much. She told me that S was pretty much a lost cause and that I couldn’t spend too much time obsessing over why she didn’t come to school. She told me that many more experienced teachers had tried every tactic in the book, and none of it worked with her. I thanked her for trying to make me feel better, and then went to a session with my curriculum specialist. The theme of that session – “There are no lost causes. We must do whatever we can to get through to ever single child.”

            I took that message to heart. I couldn’t give up on her. So each day for the rest of summer school, I called S in the morning to wake her up. Some days she came, some days she didn’t. Some days she came with late work, some days she didn’t. I continued to try and call home. I continued to tell her, “If you’re waiting for me to give up on you, it isn’t going to happen.”

            On the last day of summer school, S didn’t show up. Amid feeling so relieved that the experience was coming to an end and that I could finally get some rest, and feeling excited about what I accomplished with my students, was the emptiness of knowing that S failed the class in every way possible. She slipped through the cracks and would need to take 10^th grade English over again instead of moving into an Honors or AP course that better reflected her ability. I couldn’t help thinking that I had done no good with her at all.

            Then my advisor gave me a note congratulating me on all that I achieved that summer. Particularly, she thanked me for not giving up on S. She told me that although I didn’t know how I affected S, she was certain that S wouldn’t forget that I believed in her and thought of her as a talented writer and a good student.

            I’m not sure if S really took that away from my class or not, but I know that I won’t soon forget her. She pushed me to think outside the box for ways to get through to her. She pushed me not to give up on her despite what she put me through. She taught me there are no lost causes, even when the odds seem stacked that way. 

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

            When I started this bog, I envisioned posting at the end of each week so that I wouldn’t forget the experiences that I encountered. At Institute, I found myself unwilling to spend any of the precious free time that I had writing. I really wish I made time for it then, because I think it could have alleviated some stress and forced me to reflect on the experience. But alas, I must move on.

            I could ramble on for pages and pages about the early mornings, late nights, long bus rides, bad cafeteria food, and insane amount of work that I put in that comprised my five-week experience in the Teach For America summer institute. But, that’s not really what I want to talk about.

            This post is about my support system I had at Institute – namely the people who helped me through the hard times and helped me celebrate the victories.  My next four posts will be about specific students who I worked with this summer. Five posts will represent the five weeks that I spent in Queens this summer, and they will be about the people who made the experience what it was to me.

When I talk about people who supported me in this experience, it’s crucial that I talk about the people who shared the load with me – fellow corps members who I lived with. They fought the same battles in their own classrooms each day. I was lucky enough to live with people who really kept me grounded. They were the type of girls who would work their tails off for their students, but would also admit when they needed a break and drag me off to get ice cream to chill out. We vented to one another, pulled our hair out together, practiced lessons together (even though we all taught different subjects), and watched mindless TV when we needed a break. It was so essential to have people like that in my life during this all-too-stressful time.

            Beyond my lovely suitemates was my Corps Member Advisor (CMA), who was my coach, my mentor, and my teacher through the entire process. My CMA was a vital reason why I didn’t break down DAILY. During the first week of Institute, I was frustrated with her. I felt like she wasn’t providing me with the answers that I sought so badly. She made my lesson planning harder than it needed to be because she didn’t give me enough guidance during the learning process. What I soon realized, however, was that while I felt totally shafted by my CMA, I learned to find the answers that I needed all on my own. I learned to exhaust every resource at my disposal before going to her with a problem. Thus, after just a week at Institute, I was more prepared than many of my fellow corps members to be an independent learner and teacher. She continued to support me throughout Institute, but she never simply gave me the answers. She taught me that while it’s fine to ask for help when you need it, relying on yourself first and foremost puts your in control of your own experiences.

            Another crucial member of my own personal safety net was the curriculum specialist at my school. His job was to present different sessions to us about diversity, classroom management, investing students, and a whole host of other topics. But he went so far above those duties every day that I often told him that I had no idea how I would survive my first year of teaching without him. In the middle of my first week of Institute, I realized that my first lesson plans (which I spent a combined 7-8 hours working on) were not up to par; I needed to re-write them. But time wouldn’t stop for this to happen – I still needed to work on other time-consuming projects which were coming due sooner than later. With the weight of this crashing down on me (in the middle of a public session), I stood up to leave the room. I was so stressed out about how I could be this far behind so early in the game that I felt I needed to cry. So, I stepped out of the lecture hall only to be faced with my curriculum specialist. He saw the look on my face and pulled me into a room close by to find out what was wrong. Through hiccups and a flood of tears, I told him my concerns. And, as I would find was typical of him in the coming weeks, he had the answers that I needed. He sat down with me to come up with a plan that would allow me to get it all done in an appropriate amount of time. He made it seem doable (something he would do for me many times throughout Institute). Without him there to make everything seem reachable, who knows how many more times I would have broken down publicly.

            My experience this summer was a rollercoaster to say the least. Within one single day I could experience an array of emotions unlike anything I ever went through before. But that’s the nature of the work that I chose. One of the most valuable lessons that I took away from Institute was to find those people who make the ride less jolting – the ones who will listen to you and be your support, the ones who will shake you when you’re being too much of baby to see that it’s NOT the end of the world, and the ones who have the ability to shed light on a situation in a way that you hadn’t considered.  Those are the people that will make this two year experience transformational for me and my students.