Success Story. Describe, in detail, a success story from your first year of teaching.
I feel like this is such a loaded prompt. If you downplay your success in the classroom you come off sounding like you had a horrible year. However, if you aggrandize your little accomplishments you sound like a total tool. Yeesh, I guess the reality of the situation is that I fall somewhere in between. I think that's the case with most people. The unfortunate thing about most of our successes, though, comes from the fact that these stories are so embedded in the teachers and not the students. I look back at the moments where kids praised what I was doing and I think, "There, that's success." Talk about selfishness. That moment had nothing to do with the students and everything to do with me. So I've been racking my brain to find some evidence of student growth that had nothing to do with kids complimenting me, giving me pictures, or simply telling me they were learning something. In all honesty, I came up with nothing. I guess I attached too much of my success to how I felt my kids felt, something I definitely want to change next year. So I had to settle on the two things for which I'm most proud:
1. Toward the end of the year, I had a bell ringer that asked my students to describe how they thought they'd changed over the year or how they felt they were different from last year. I'd asked them to complete this assignment shortly after I'd received news that I was going to be moving up to 8th grade with them because I realized I was going to have the privilege of seeing my kids develop through two of the most tumultuous years of their life. All of the sudden, I was so curious to know how they felt they'd changed already. Anyway, I thought I was going to get a lot of answers about getting taller, getting boyfriends and girlfriends, or becoming cooler. Social stuff. Topics of this nature tended to dominate their writing, and I expected this to be the same. I ended up being surprised by most of the answers because more times than not, the changes had something to do with academics. There were two answers that humbled me more than the others because they were from two of my favorite students, Nolean and Allison. Both of them claimed that they read more these days than they did before. Now, I do have to give some credit to Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series for being a big hit with my kiddos, but I feel that in some small way I had something to do with it too. Though I can't say I had the best lessons or the most structured room, I can say that I showed enthusiasm for books. I tried to fill my room with books, I read aloud to my kids constantly, and I really pushed my advanced classes by making them read The Giver, Walk Two Moons, and The Diary of Anne Frank. I think I might have gotten a few students to read a little more than they usually did, and the fact that two of my most beloved students seemed to agree gave me one of the few gratifying experiences during my year. As cheesy as it sounds, those bell ringers couldn't have come at a better time, as I almost ended the year feeling too down on myself for my performance.
2. My second success was simple: I did not quit. Towards March and April, I gave considerable thought to quitting the program because I was sad most of the time, lethargic/unhealthy, and felt I was making no contribution to education at all. My mom was really worried about me and begged me to just come home, so I looked at teacher vacancies nearly every night on the internet. She kept telling me that I had changed into a person that she didn't recognize. And I knew exactly what she meant. The only thing that kept me going was the promise that I might get to teach alongside Funt in the 8th grade the next year. I don't know what I would have done without Funt, Hayman, Brin, and Goldwasser around to be my cheerleaders. If not for them, I don't think I would have had any motivation to get out of bed in the morning. Most other people just seemed to assume that I was doing fine, but nothing could be farther from the truth. In the end, I stuck it out, and I'm glad I did. Looking back, things weren't really that bad. Nothing was more than I could handle at any given time. I think I was just exhausted and disappointed in myself. A daily dose of that can really stifle a person. When I think about this measly little success, I'm reminded of Parks' story about the little girl/boy saving starfish one by one on the beach, even though the task is monumental. I can hear him saying, "But I saved that one. But I saved that one." Well, I can't say that I really saved any. But I CAN say that I'm still on the beach. That counts for a lot in my book.
Failure story. Describe, in detail, an event, student, experience, etc. during the year where you failed.
If there's one thing I feel I've made abundantly clear, both through my blogs and through my conversations with other MTC teachers, it's that I have had a year chock full of failure. The idea of narrowing it down any further almost seems too impossible to me. But so many people have already said that. And in a way, I guess we feel like we're supposed to say it. It follows tradition.
I get the feeling, though, that our prompt, as shown above, wanted more than my usual whiny blog about how poorly I did this year. So I started thinking about all of my failures and what I feel caused them. While I've given this speech to lots of my peers already, it never hurts to share my insights on a grander scale (I guess).
The first thing you need to do is get a clear picture of my failure, and there's no clearer way to see it than through the face of Tasha B., one of my fourth period students. This is Tasha, in the arms of one of my goofiest students:
Now image her telling you both verbally and through a written evaluation that you were weak and needed to take control of your room. Yeah. That's how I know I failed. You can't argue with evidence like that. I knew she was right, and until very recently when I began reflecting over my past year, I didn't really know why she was right.
Here's what I decided, and I think I'm right. Maybe. Looking back at my journey through a first year of teaching, the one thing I lacked more than anything else in the world was the realization that I am an adult. My first few months of teaching made this obvious. Every day that I showed up to work, I felt like I was dressed in a Halloween costume, a child parading around as a teacher. This caused me to shy away from calling parents, as I felt I had no legitimacy to tell these parents anything negative about their kids, and it kept me from thinking about what I wanted to see my kids do. That might seem minor, but if you don't know what you expect your kids to do, then you don't have expectations. If you don't have expectations, then no expectations are communicated to the kids. If this doesn't happen, then the students get the idea that nothing is expected of them. In turn, nothing happens. Except chaos. That's my point of failure. The real cherry on top is that if you don't realize that you're an adult, you also don't feel the need to enforce any of the consequences when the students fail to meet your non-existent expectations.
This has been my big revelation from the past year. I AM an adult. I pay my bills. I cook my meals. I clean up after myself. I make decisions. I have a degree. I have a job. And on and on and on. I am the adult in the room. I didn't realize that coming out of college because for 100% of my life my problems were taken care of for me by my parents and most everything in my life was paid for with minimal work on my part. And now that I've been forced to realize that, by both my failure and the very adult experiences I had to deal with this year, I feel like I know why things went awry this year. I was a pansy ass.
That's not to say my generally soft personality must be masked in the classroom. Only a real adult can be both themselves and an authority figure. The adult Ms. Hill doesn't have to change who she is; as a matter of fact, the adult Ms. Hill is so confident about herself that authority comes naturally instead of forced. The adult Ms. Hill doesn't seek approval from middle schoolers because she knows that these kids don't even know what they need. The adult Ms. Hill doesn't shy away from correcting students because she knows that really caring for a students means knowing when to provide boundaries.
My failure stemmed from the fact that I needed to grow up. And I think this year has taken care of a lot of that. That's not to say that I don't still have a lot of growing up to do. One year of teaching is just a drop in the bucket, and I have lots more life experience to gain before I have everything perfect. I just feel like when I return to Tasha in the fall I will have more confidence in being who I am and being the adult in the classroom. Hopefully, I won't let her down as tremendously as I did this year. That's my goal.
After a year of struggling, there are numerous things I want to work on/change about the way I teach. The three things that I feel will help me most next year, however, are not necessarily things I can implement fully during summer school. I'm hoping to try out some new stuff during summer school and spend my free time thinking through some of my classroom snafus.
The Three things I need to work on:
1. Classroom Management
Managing a classroom was one of my biggest challenges this year because I think I had an entirely wrong idea of how to do it well. I thought managing a classroom meant being the biggest witch on the planet. When that didn't work, I became a bunny rabbit. What I'm finding is that classroom management starts first with being yourself and yet being confident and assertive. You have to know you're the adult in the classroom. But that doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your own personality. This balance has been difficult for me to figure out, and even though summer school kids are angels (usually) compared to kids during the actual school year, I feel like this is something I can work on a little as I teach my lessons this summer. I'm looking forward to this second chance to set up a classroom so I can do a better job of being a confident version of myself.
2. Organization
One thing that will make my teaching life a lot easier is streamlining my organization. I went into the school year with an organization plan that just didn't fit my energy level or school/classroom. Now that I know how my school works and since I'll be teaching the same set of kiddos, I feel better about my ability to create classroom organization and documentation systems that actually work.
3. Reading Instruction
A huge challenge this year was trying to teach literary skills to a bunch of kids who can hardly read. Since I'm the reading teacher, I feel like it is my responsibility to at least try and help those students who need basic reading instruction or phonetic help. I've been doing a lot of research on how to teach reading and how to handle differentiated instruction, but I'm not sure what will work best for my kids. Plus, I want to give my students more time in class to read books on their reading level, but I'm still trying to decide what incentives/grading system will make that work best. We're reading The Giver with our summer school class, so I'm planning to do some experimentation with literature circles and the like.
ONE thing I do well:
I'm flexible. I don't mind changing what's not working, and I don't mind researching things to make my instruction better. I guess that's worth something.
Many of the ideas for my school district came from the things I both like and dislike about the school in which I now teach and the school I attended as a child. One thing I dislike about both is how disharmonious they are with the surrounding communities and how separate school life seems from everyday life. I love that my childhood school gave students many opportunities for freedom, and I get sick to my stomach when I consider how limited my own students' choices are. I feel like my students never had the chance to develop decision-making skills, self-motivation, or mutual respect because of the way they have been treated at school. Therefore, I tried to create an environment that promotes student freedom, both inside and outside the classroom. I wanted a school that values child and adult literacy (the reading teacher in me, I guess). I made the school a resource for the community, and I tried to give students a feeling of responsibility for that community. Finally, I tried to make school life more cyclical. I envisioned a calendar and daily schedule that gives learning a natural feel, so that instead of counting down the days to summer vacation, students could view school as a life-long, very personal process. While my school district has obvious flaws, I am proud that it does not shy away from giving students accountability. I sometimes wonder how much students could achieve if they felt any sort of ownership over what they learned. This design stems from that basic question.
Here's my school district:
http://hayley-sr3zo.posterous.com/
Hope you like it!
