New Home

I just wanted everyone to know that I still write this blog. It moved to the:

http://thechildrenscrusade.vox.com

Most of my posts are for friends only so feel free to add me.

What is the impact that this experience has had on your life?

I like this question. It is sufficiently broad enough where I could say anything I wanted and it would still fall within the bounds of having answered it.

In one sense, the experience was the equivalent to an earthquake hitting my life. In a short period of time I found myself in a new city that I didn't understand. My only friends were teachers placed in the same area. I was teaching school before I figured out where my bank was and where to get some good Chinese food.

The were a few aspects of the year that were difficult to handle. One was the perpetual feeling of being alone. I never really saw my roommate since she had a life outside of teaching. My friends were all teachers so they were spending their free time doing teaching-related things. THere were a few reprieves, occasional weekends and Wednesday night margaritas at the Mexican restaurant, but they seemed few and far between.

The other aspect that got to me was the lack of of control I felt over my own life. I would be treated like a child by my administrators. I was held hostage my the demands of my job. I would come home each day exhausted and still have 50 things to do for the week. The needs of the parents, students, and administrators (who had to look out for the district) took precedence over my own. At stretches it felt like I didn't matter.

The toughest part of this experience was watching my friends leave the program. Over the course of the year, three of my best friends left. After each one left I had to question why I was still here. Most of them were having the same problems I was but I was still teaching. What was wrong with them? What was wrong with me?

I find that this program has changed how I few poverty. Working in close proximity with students with so little makes one realize how preventable their situation is. It also made me a little hardened. I became more aware of the stakes that each child faced and had to become unemotional or risk feeling sorry for my students instead of pushing them.

The good experiences were surprising in many ways. I honestly didn't expect them to happen at all. When I got my classroom under control, I felt better. When students who I thought had no hope started getting it together, I felt better. When I actually started to like my job despite its awful aspects, I felt better.

The impact teaching has had on my life is more appreciable in the summer. I found that I had changed as a person. I am calmer in public, more accepting of my own numerous flaws, and more willing to be honest to the point of being a little confrontational. I like myself more. I believe I can make it through anything because I survived the fire.

My Performance as a Teacher

As a teacher, summer school was a major point of reflection. It was a chance to redo all the things I wish I had done better last year. I got a new first day of school. I got a new chance to be consistent on the first day and every day thereafter. I got a new chance to interact with the students in a way that I felt more comfortable.

I was going to be humble but I am just going to say it: my class is reeking of success. The very small environment and the abundance of capable teachers makes it work surprisingly well. My partner and I got control of the class early and created a very strong work ethic. The kids are responding and working hard.

The main areas we honed in on instructionally were the parts of speech (with an emphasis on verb usage). We (particularly the other second year and myself) worked on it early and often. Additionally, the experience we as second-years was reflected in the instruction. We had a ton of resources available and knew what the students needed to know. We also had this seriousness about us that forced the kids to do their work. On the test we gave, the students seem to have picked up things they didn’t know. There is already progress since the pre-test. Whoo!

The area where they were weakest was sentence structure. It is kind of this ambiguous entity. I mainly worked with the rules of subject-verb agreement. It is necessary to give them the rules to frame so many other lessons (particularly simple and compound sentences) that illustrate them in effect. The weakness was the approach. I have yet to figure out the right way to teach all this stuff. All of the content I am teaching relies on other content I am teaching and it is hard to figure out what should go first. Talking about how subjects and verbs agree in statements with phrase is slightly confusing if we haven’t gone over phrases yet. At the same time it would be silly to go over phrases without having fully covered the more basic parts of the sentence, the subject and verb, I never really realized how complex English is until I attempted to teach it.

Procedurally, the instruction was strong. The students were listening and working hard. The assessments that have been given look pretty good. There are a few problems here and there, but nothing that indicates that they aren’t “getting it”. I was lucky enough to be in a classroom environment where I have the luxury of working with other teachers that have different perspectives about the problems that the class is experiencing and the gains that the class is making. With five kids, it is VERY EASY to differentiate instruction. I can simply hand out five different sheets that are suited to the student’s problems. I can pull a kid out while another teacher is providing instruction. It is amazing.

In the future I want to focus more on delivering a cohesive educational product to my students. I want them to engage more with the content. Way too many lessons were teacher-centered and required very little of the students other than to learn and practice proper grammar. The very nature of summer school required us to move from item to item whether or not the students understood the topic fully. If I were doing this again, I would find a way to work on those aspects and make the class a more polished product.

Summer School Goals

Discuss the learning goals and instructional decisions made during the planning of your lessons.

I am teaching 7th grade English in Mississippi. My work was cut out for me. My partner and I came the planning process assuming that students would be suffering from huge difficulties in the basics. As a result we laid out our lesson plans to emphasize the following areas: grammar, mechanics, and reading comprehension. The overall learning goal of the students was to rapidly get them to pick up those skills on the MCT and the state curriculum. Seeing as that goal was an impossible one to accomplish in two and a half weeks, my partner I am put an increased emphasis on exposure and mastery of a smaller set of skills within the realm of grammar and mechanics. We agreed that mastery of the parts speech is the most important.

The instructional methods we decided upon were going to be as basic as the classroom curriculum. The preferred method of instruction was direct, with a heavy emphasis on taking notes for the first few days (because you can’t do anything with grammar unless you know the rules) followed by the rollout of activities and inductive work that played upon the knowledge.

For the first week especially, we wanted to control the environment. The room had to be an environment where the teacher can easily exert control of everything and everybody. I think that a silent classroom is the most desirable one. I want a place where the students are going to be listening to me by default (no other distractions are available) and where I am the visual centerpiece of the room.

The danger of the approach is that our approach became incredibly centered on the second-years in our group. I think that we became the sheriffs very quickly and that students became dependednt on us to be worked incredibly hard and to have an incredbily tough structure, something that our first-years did not offer out of the gate. I am hoping that after the first week ends, the first-years adapt to our hard standards and our desire to pound the basics into these kids before they walk out of the door, something they both need and deserve.

Quitting

One of my three best friends in MTC is quitting the program. I feel this combination of sadness and anger aimed at about 10 different directions, including the program itself. Unlike the last two times my friends have left the program, I don't feel jealous. I think that is progress.

This has been an awful week. I am tired. Summer school sucks. The only thing that is going OK is the teaching, mainly because the kids are awesome. The adults are less so.

There is a chance that I will be known this week by my Indian name, "boy that can't stop crying".

A Note to the New Blood

I am no longer a first-year teacher. I knew that for a few days (the contract only ended on May 30) but it didn't become clear until the new first-years arrived on the scene. They reminded me how idealistic and open-minded I was before I entered my own classroom. Let's just say I have changed a bit since the time my video was recorded.

I could see them nervously shifting during the video. I notice that because I did the same thing one year ago. Now, I rarely seem to shift around when people are focused on me. My handshake has gotten stiffer and more prone to do any one of the 20 shakes my students have with me. I move around less and notice such movement in others. I know when people are giving me their full and undivided attention and only use it to my advantage during the rare moments I actually have something important to say.

In short, this year has turned my idealism into realism. It has turned nervous energy into focused, mechanical behavior the moment I step inside the school building.

It is disturbing that in conversations, I become the experienced one. I am sharing stories but at some level I still have no idea what I am doing at any given moment.

The biggest problem I am having is not coming off as too negative when I have casual conversations with first-years. When I describe my experience in the classroom, it comes out horribly. I talk about the problems I faced on a daily basis and the situation in the school that forced me to leave.

If any first-years are actually reading this (and know who I am), I need to assure you that this experience has a high for every low. It is just that the highs are harder to put into words. The feeling of a child that has not done a thing coming around is a high. The feeling you get when a student tells you that they "get it" is a high. The feeling when a class previously in chaos is now in order is a high. The feeling that you are clicking on all cylinders in the midst of chaos is a high. The feeling that you are part of changing a child's life, just one of out the maybe 130 or more you will teach, is an overwhelming high.

You don't get to feel those highs right away. You will, in all likelihood, slave away at least one semester before you start reaping the smallest of rewards. For me the reward was respect. It was one of my students getting their business together. It was kids picking my brain after school about life decisions. It was the moment where I could entertain the possibility that I was not wasting my life away trudging as an unappreciated idiot.

The biggest highs in some ways were bittersweet. I got some of the best compliments when I told students I was leaving. I almost cried during the last week of school because I was losing my children. That is something you might not see coming but in time it will.

Teaching is both the most painful, wretched jobs in the world and one of the greatest.

What you will find is that nobody in your school building will say "thank you for doing a good job" for a really long time.

I would like to take a moment to thank you.

Thank you for coming to Mississippi. It was a huge gamble to move across the country to do something you have never done before and then be expected to do it well.

Thank you for working in some of the nation's worst schools.

Thank you for helping us teach summer school.

Thank you for helping to change the world.

Five Pieces of Advice

After a year of teaching, I have many lessons to offer. I summed up what I know into five points. These are very broad lessons that are more useful to expectation setting than anything else. At a later point this summer I will be offering more useful day-to-day advice for the new teacher.

That having been said, this is what I know and what I found out.

1) You can lead a horse to water...

I was going to put this last since it is the most important but I don't want anyone to miss out on this piece of wisdom that becomes your life as a teacher.

You can razzle and dazzle them all-day with your lessons but little Johnny still has to be woken up five times during class. It is sometimes hard to concede that some kids don't care about your class. Most of them have particularly daunting issues at home and could not care less about the rules of subject-verb agreement.

There are just going to be kids you can't reach. There are going to be parents who can't grasp that their child is anything other than perfect. There are going to be administrators that won't listen. There are going to be situations that make you want to beat your head into the wall.

I might get attacked for this one, but I honestly believe that sometimes the best thing a teacher can do is teach the students that want to be taught and hope that you can spark interest in others as the year goes on. I won't let students who don't care disrupt my lesson, but at the same time I have to prioritize my time and resources.

You need to decide very early in the year how much of a coach/motivator teacher you can be without burning out. If operating at that level doesn't reach all your students by the time May rolls around, know that you did all you could and move on.

2) Communication is key to everything that happens in that classroom

Make sure students know what they should be doing at every moment of your class. That means you should know what classroom environment you want, make rules and procedures to create that classroom, and then TELL THE KIDS. If a kid is talking because he had no idea that he needed to be doing a "do now", that is partially your fault as a teacher. Saying it once is not enough, make sure that it is clear. I suggest giving students a test on rules and procedures during the first two weeks of school.

My failure this year was not communicating well enough about procedures. It led to needless confusion and many problems. I eventually had to stop teaching and go over them again in the middle of the year. Magically, many management problems disappeared. You should avoid my mistake and do it right the first time.

3) Protect Yourself

This one is short because it is so straightforward.

Document everything that comes your way. Build a system for keeping track of behavioral problems and consequences. Keep track of who needs rewards. have a system for making sure all parents get called during the first two weeks of school and then having their numbers in one place in case future contact is needed.

You don't actually need to completely organized as long you appear to be. You just need to know where everything is and be able to find it in about 30 seconds. I functioned using six clipboards and about five massive stacks of papers. I knew what I was doing and where everything was and nobody knew how chaotic things actually were.

4) Never allow your integrity to be questioned

You are the moral leader of the classroom. Always use that power for good. If you are consistently implementing fair rules and procedures, you are over halfway there.

As an extension of that idea, ALWAYS DO THE RIGHT THING!!!

I would like to add the following observations about passing classes. Most of the schools with MTC teaches are those where students get used to be passed on to the next grade regardless of their performance. I beg you not to be one of those teachers that moves on warm bodies to the next course. Teachers with integrity make it clear that passing is based on academic performance only.

Don't pass students for the following reasons:
- You like them
- You feel bad for them
- You don't want to see them next year

Students learn that hard work doesn't matter and that they can do whatever they want and get away with it. Make a stand against this. If you expect more, you will get some more. If you stand up, maybe other teachers will take notice.

It isn't easy to do the right thing. I have been forced into meetings with my administrators because too many students were failing my class. Stand up to up to them. It won't be hard if you are right. As long as you are respectful and conscious of your situation, you will know how to pick your battles. In m heart, grades are the battle I will fight. They were the ditch I picked to die. Anyway, fight for what is right.If you don't, you will be seen as weak. I'll go more into that with lesson five.

If you do the wrong thing, it will usually catch up to you. It will almost always catch up to your students. If nothing else you will feel guilty about it for a long time.

5) It is your classroom. You are always right.

If you are properly implementing lesson four, stand by it. Be adamant about everything you are doing, will do, and have done. Parents might complain but tell them your decisions are final.

Let's get this straight. You won't actually be right 100 percent of the time. For the first few weeks you might be wrong more than your are right. It doesn't actually matter. Stand by your wrongness while simultaneously learning from it.

For example, if you thought you heard profanity in the back of the room and give a student a consequence accordingly, stand by it. If the kid protests that he said something else, ignore it. Even if other student(s) claim credit, leave the initial consequence alone. If you desire, give consequences to the other student(s). If parents makes it an issue, tell them what you heard and the consequence. End it there. If the administration brings it into questions, do the same thing. Don't start doubting yourself. Don't change your mind. If you do, it will lead to bigger and more dramatic failures.

If you concede mistakes others, they will sense weakness. It's like blood in the water. The sharks will close in. If you work at a bad school, administrators will prey on you. If there are problem students, they will become emboldened. Depending on the circumstances, parents will jump in and attack, often with administrative backing. I can't say this enough. DON'T LOOK WEAK!!! DON'T EVER PUT YOURSELF IN A SITUATION WHERE YOU ALLOW YOURSELF TO SCRUTINIZED!!!

Last Day of School

I thought the last day of school would be happier. I have been looking forward to it for a really long time. It represented the end of planning, grading, managing "challenging" students, and having to deal with the rampant idiocy surrounding me. Instead it came as a bit of a letdown and was for more introspective than celebratory.

During our "staff celebration" today, my principal publicly handed out pens to the teachers who were leaving my school this year. This group of teachers includes the vast majority of the bright and innovative ones under age 30. When she got to me, she announced that I had made it through a difficult year.

I don't like that description as the be all and end all.

My year had many difficulties (the majority being the fault of my administration) but it was not difficult in its entirely. There are many good things that happened this past year. I made meaningful personal connections with most of my students. I continually learned how to be a better teacher. I made the transition from bad teacher to decent teacher. I learned things about myself that I could never get anywhere else. I learned from my students. I learned from my failures. I sometimes even learned from grad school.

This year was difficult. But it was not only difficult. That's all I am saying.

The thing that got me was how my students responded to my announcement that I was leaving and moving to another district. I expected them to be happy. I expected a few students to think they drove me out of the school, which is so not the case. That did happen to some extent but it was rare.

The reactions were far different than expected.

Many of my students were saddened and/or angered by my decision to leave. That was surprising. I didn't they cared what happened to me.

The reaction that got me most was the resigned acceptance shown by the majority. They were saddened but not enough to get themselves worked up over it. These were the kids who on the last day wrote down all the names of the teachers who were leaving and didn't seem fazed when the number was solidly in the double-digits. They knew the massive teacher turnover in their school was normal. They know their school is a crappy place to work, especially for those with other, often more lucrative or academically stimulating, options in front of them. They know that their teachers are fleeing to other districts. They see the stream of their most talented teachers walking out the door, alienated and angry, and just suck it up.

I know that I made the right decision. I had to leave to save my mind. I can't handle another year here if things continue as they are and under the constant, condescending pressure I was under. I wish my school could be run better. I wish I could stay. It's not my choice.

It breaks my heart.

I need to relax. Summer school starts in a little over two weeks and I need to be rested up. I need some more kids to get attached to.

Changes

Teaching has changed me.

I don't just mean in this socially conscious way. Going in front of a room full of students from some of the worst backgrounds in America makes you think and act differently.

Teaching has such a huge impact on you as person because the job is seemingly never-ending. It is in many ways a social position. I am a teacher at school. I am a teacher at home grading. I am a teacher at the grocery store where students work. I am a teacher when running and I get stopped by students. I am a teacher when parents call me when I am trying to cook dinner. I am a teacher every moment. I am thinking about teaching, planning to teach, reflecting on what I taught, or being reminded that I teach all the time. It sometimes gets to the point where I have to restrain myself from disciplining random teenagers I see at the store or the mall for having cell phones or talking too loudly.

Because of this intermingling of the job and your personhood, the issues of students become those of your own. Poverty goes from being this distant thing to close event as you witness it through the lives of students. After a while I got a little hardened to the little tragedies of everyday life. If I didn't get the slightest bit callous to their condition, I would have allowed them to use poverty as an excuse to fail. Everything they do, from the food they eat to the clothes on their back to the decisions that they make, is informed by that cycle of poverty.

One of the most striking aspects of teaching is the impact it has had on my personality. The big change is the decline of the "nice guy" persona. I am not afraid to say "no to anyone if I am confident in my decision. That has led to a more productively (for the most part) confrontational attitude.

I don't take nearly as much crap from people as I did in August. The aspect that fueled this change is the fact that students and administrators perceive niceness as weakness. Don't even get me started on how foreign and idiotic that is to me. Niceness was the key difficulty I had in dealing with people. I had to kill that perception by being consistently vigilant in my views (and smiling while doing it). Late work is late work. Bad work is bad work. Dumb policy is dumb policy. If it served a productive purpose to say the truth (often not the case with my administration), I started saying it.

I find myself becoming far more confident of myself as a person. I don't care if my belt is out of a loop or if I speak oddly. I have been tested as a person for so long by so many people that I no longer cared what they thought about me. I know who I am.

Teaching is the hardest job I could imagine having. It has cost me time, energy, and mental stability. It probably has taken a little time off my life. It also offers a few moments of immense rewards. If it doesn't change you, there is a problem. Hopefully you change for the better.

The State Test

A big, big bunch of you future MTC teachers out there should get used to the following four words: Subject Area Testing Program. If you are doomed to have those words associated with your preps, they will make you a life a little more challenging. It seems that for some reason that new teachers, especially the MTC variety of new teachers, have a high likelihood of being placed in one of the state tested subjects: Algebra I, Biology I, English II, and US History from 1877 to Present. It is likely some combination of the following factors:

1) Nobody wants to teach them
2) It is easier to blame an outsider if things don't work out
3) You will be one of the most competent teachers at your school

The results of the test are used to rank the school. Most of the schools that you will be at suck on some level (or else they wouldn't need you). For that reason you will be under immense pressure to raise scores quickly.

Let me repeat.

THERE IS A LOT OF PRESSURE.

The pressure won't kill you. You just need to be prepared for it.

You will find your administration doing things that might seem to be unethical to people with a shred of integrity. For example, my school purged the rosters of SATP classes. Any students they thought would fail were moved to other classes until the next year. That is one of the many things that may or may not happen next year. In my view, it is best not to fight it.

I teach English II. I get leaned on all the time to achieve the "bold targets" (that would require us to triple our proficiency levels in one year) and to meet the "adequate yearly progress" goals of No Child Left Behind. For some reason I have to make up for over a decade of inadequate education in one year.

The biggest problem for me was the spotlight my administration put on me. I had a lot of developing to do as a teacher and it sucked to have people leaning on me all the time to generate results. The spotlight continually grows as the testing date draws near (only one week away). I increasingly lose my autonomy to teach as I desire as random people tell me what I should be doing at any given moment. My principal pulled me into a meeting two weeks ago and told my class to stop reading a novel because it wouldn't be on the test.

There is also some upside. I found that the SATP teachers get almost anything they need if it helps them raise scores. I have also found that with all the constant assessments and data mining that it is easier to see measurable improvement in your students (at least the ones who will do the work).

You can improve test scores if you do nothing other than getting the kids to answer all the questions and to actually try. If you teach them some grammar and what good writing looks like, you might be looking at some measurable gains. Just don't expect miracles to happen left and right. Progress is all that matters

As much as the testing regime bothers me, I guess I really haven't learned my lesson (or I might just like the challenge). I am changing from one SATP subject (English II) to another (US History from 1877 to Present) next year. I am excited.

If any of you all need some English II materials/strategies/prayers, I should have a ton.

What should I know about MTC before I arrive in June?

What should I know about MTC before I arrive in June?

That's a good question for the future first-years who read this thing.

Mississippi is a pretty interesting place.

I have to start off with the food. It is pretty amazing, especially for people like me who tend to ignore nutrition. You can have all the fried foods you want. Macaroni & cheese is a vegatable here. There is also the terribly disgusting foods. For some reason Kool-Aid pickles are prominent in my head. You will also have to get used to the presence of perhaps the most disgusting food in the world, "Flamin' Hot Cheetos". I swear that my students are in love with them despite my lectures and obvious dismay.

Mississippi is actually quite a beautiful place. There is a strange charm to the Delta that makes you want to stay for a while (since I don't live there). I have found that Jackson is surprisingly cosmopolitan if you look in the right corners. It's not quite New York (or even a New Orleans) but it is something.

There are going to be a lot of annoying people here. Ole Miss has a lot of those people. The kind of girls that put makeup on to go jogging and guys in polo shirts with awful hair. If I see one more "Southern Boy" haircut I am going to grab some scissors and cut off those bangs. Grown men should not have bangs.

More seriously, you can't talk about Mississippi without talking about race and by direct extension, poverty. It is surreal to what level race is the unspoken backdrop to conversations here. You will be working in some of the most segregated areas of the state. You will find that Jackson is surprisingly segregated. You will find that the Delta is more often than not, disgustingly segregated. The school districts become showcases for what happens when half of the community (the white half) doesn't support the schools and the other half (the black half) doesn't seem to know what to do.

On a more practical level here is some advice.

Enjoy your senior year of college (or whatever you are doing right now). It's fun on its own and you need to get rested up for the year. There is a good chance that once you step foot in Mississippi that you are not getting any significant amount of time off. Sorry. I graduated from college on Sunday afternoon and ended up in Oxford on Tuesday morning. After June and summer school came July and TEAM. After that last week, I had a week of district induction. Then school begins. Then somehow your body makes it to Thanksgiving Break. It is painful but that is life.

Don't stress out.

Repeat.

Don't stress out.

We (the future second-years and the MTC staff) will take care of you. We are going through the experience right now. We will give you any wisdom you need that happens to fall our way. We will give you any hugs and support you need. Things will be OK. Trust me. Now take your PRAXIS II and get away from the computer.

Why You Should Come to Mississippi

Mr. Guest has asked us to write about the pros and cons of joining the Mississippi Teacher Corps so the next generation of teachers has something to consider. This has prompted me to really think about why I became a teacher and whether others should follow down this path I am almost halfway down. Before I comment on that question, I should share my mental state so that you all will know where I am coming from.

I can say with certainty that February was less than optimal. It sucked. It was better than October (the month I was ready to quit and go home) only because I had enough perspective and rationality to slug it out. I am slightly at odds with my administration and feel strongly that I will leave my school at the end of the year. So I'm not in a great mood right now. That having been said, I am going to attempt to step back and talk about the MTC.

A little over a year ago (February 15, 2006 to be exact) I aggreed to join the MTC after thinking about it for about three months. I did it for a lot of reasons. I was looking for something to do before I went to law school. I was looking to make a difference. I was looking to go back to the South. I was looking to interact with people that I woudl never otherwise get to meet. I was looking to understand how public schools worked in America and how we can fix them. To be honest, the master's degree was of little interest to me. For the most part they were good reasons and my heart was in the right place.

There are only a few possible bad reasons to join. Don't join because you need a job--being unemployed or moving back home is far less stressful than teaching. Don't join if you don't like kids. Don't join because others want you to. You need to want this.

Other than that, I don't think there are that many bad reasons to join MTC. Even if you are killing time before grad school or something along those lines, you can find yourself enjoying teaching and making a positive impact. There is nothing wrong with teaching for two years and then deciding whether you want to continue in the field or continue on some other path. You will be a far better person for having done it and should you enter public policy will be able to be a knowledgeable voice for the children without one.

If you have a good heart, a good work ethic, and a good sense of humor, then you will find a way to become a good teacher. If you are not afraid of failing, so much the better. Being a first-year teacher, you will fail all the time in big and little ways. The question is what you will do after failure. If you are going to get up and try it again, then this is for you. If you are one to give up easily, there is probably a consulting job waiting for you.

For every amazing lesson (my lesson on irony is still talked about months later) there are a few flops. For every child that you get through to, there is another that breaks your heart. For example, one of my best students just got off probation on Monday and then got into fight in the hallway on Tuesday on the way to my class. For every child that wants to learn, there are several that came to school for the lunch. This past week I have been cussed out during class by four different students. It stings. I have also developed great relationships with students that I feared were lost causes in September and October. That is pretty sweet. You come to work each day to endure the bitter in pursuit of that sweetness.

So even though I am having a bit of hard time right now, I know that it will pass when I finally get a bit of rest and get everything together. I know that I can't imagine myself being anywhere else right now. I know that I will finish the program because I would hate myself if I didn't.

Should I stay or should I go?

Now that I am almost through the third term I find myself wondering what I am going to do next year. I am going to stay in MTC. I am 95% sure of that. I am an acceptable to good teacher and I am getting better at it as I learn new things. I like the environment, the children, and the ability to connect with people that I otherwise would have never encountered. Yet I find myself weighed down with a lot concern about my next course of action.

The question I constantly ask myself is whether I am going to stay at my school or take a stab getting a teaching position elsewhere. I am getting tired of not being treated like a professional by my administration. I am tired of being criticized in front of other teachers for doing things I was told to do. I am tired of having my planning periods taken away by dumb meetings and professional development that now takes even some of my Saturdays away from me. I am tired of being talked to like I am a child. I am tired of being told that I am a bad classroom manager for sending loud and disruptive children out of my room so that I can teach the others. I am tired of being suffocated in bureaucracy and witnessing the massive misallocation of resources that happens in my district.

Most importantly I am tired of being treated like I am not important. I get the impression that I am replaceable and perhaps will be replaced. That feeling sucks.

The only thing that keeps me where I am are the children. I love them to death, even the ones that play with my last nerve. At least they have an excuse for being messed up. I know that my students need me more than those kids in the suburbs. They have never met a teacher like me and I don't think some of them ever will.

I don't want them to think I walked away from them because the going got hard. That is not the lesson I want to teach them.

The point is that I am seriously thinking about going to a place where even one of those aforementioned factors are improved. I just want to be respected.

I can't decide what to do.

January

I decided to turn this monthly post into sort of a status update on my teaching career (for those who are following).

I think I am starting to enjoy teaching. Last semester, I worked really, really hard and didn't get much out of it. For the bulk of the time I was always behind on grading, I rarely made parental calls, I didn't sleep well at night because I was either working or thinking about the next thing that had to be done.

The biggest change is that I've chilled out a lot. I've accepted that some things will never happen. For example, I will never make some people in my building happy. I'm OK with that. I realized that I was not responsible for making my kids be responsible--for brining their books, homework, and supplies to class. I could only offer rewards and consequences. Carrying the whole world on my back is not my responsibility.

The big leap for me was finally controlling things I could control. For example, I try to plan lessons out two weeks in advance (one prep is already planned until Spring Break) and I grade papers as soon as I get them. It is so easy to get behind and I am working hard not to fall into trap. In my classroom, I make an effort to make every second of time count--building on my efficiency from last semester.

My class management is not the best but it is getting better. I have more rewards (tickets are the greatest things ever) and I am making a conscious effort to be more consistent.

The glaring weak spot seems to be my personal life (or lack thereof). At some point I will make my life be about something more than teaching and talking to my friends (almost all of whom are teachers) about teaching. I'm kind of hoping that this situation resolves itself.

Here's hoping that I can build on January's progress in February.

Martin Luther King Day

"I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the last 50 years, Mississippi has made huge strides towards achieving racial equality. I live in a state without segregation, lynchings, and political violence. Civil and voting rights are preserved to the letter of the law. The bulk of Mississippi's African-American population is represented by an African-American U.S. Representative. About a third of the seats in the state House of Representatives are held by African-Americans.

Yet the states still swelters with injustice. Widespread poverty, especially on the Delta and to a lesser extent in Jackson, disproportionately has a darker face. African-Americans still face limited educational opportunities and as a result limited life opportunities. If one walks the hallways of my school, you would find a 97% African-American student body that is receiving an inferior education compared to a mostly white high school minutes away and on other side of the city limits. Our building is worse, our teachers tend to be less qualified, and there seems to be a pervasive sense of failure among significant chunks of the student body. It's like they've given up before they walked through the door.

It's my job to give my students the same opportunity as their white counterparts. It is something that I'm not sure if I can actually do. I have failed consistently to be the amazing teacher they need me to be. I find myself making huge mistakes and learning important things on the job. But I have to try. You can't change the world by sitting on your butt. More importantly, I can't help them to change their world by sitting on my butt.

So I'm going to quote another prominent African-American, Jesse Jackson, to finish off this posting:

"Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith, and in the end faith will not disappoint. Our time has come. Our faith, hope and dreams have prevailed. Our time has come. Weeping has endured for nights but that joy cometh in the morning."

I believe that Mississippi can be a better place. So let's suffer for it together. Maybe the bright morning will come sooner than we think and that oasis is not too far away.