Who I Is

I guess this will be on Corndancer.com eventually, but I sort of had fun doing this, so I thought I would post it here, too. Usually I see these assignments as more of crosses to bear than entertaining, but maybe I'm turning into a softy...yeah, right...

The assignment was to create an A,B,C poem that describes my beliefs and values with special respect to the main cultural identifiers. Here's what happened:

Advocacy

What I hope to do for my students who have no voice

Beatles songs

I echo the lyrics’ cry for love, peace, and tolerance; they speak my language

Community

A belief that individuals function best in the context of loving, supportive people

Daughter

As much as I try to not be like my dad, I value his love and opinions

Education

I believe it’s the path to a better, happier, and healthier life for every person

Fun

The times that I lay structure aside and pursue laughter are most critica

Growth

Stretching outside of comfortable in pursuit of better

Hog Fan

I proudly donned a 1994 Championship shirt that was two sizes too big for years after it was acceptable.

ISTJ

Meyers-Briggs describes me to a "T"

Justice

I want it for my students - the victims of a harsh and unjust societal culture

Keeping up

How I have always known finances – head above water and a little for a rainy day

Literacy

My belief in its power is why I’m a teacher

Musicals

Seeing Rent on Broadway is one of my most treasured experiences

Naptime

Where I recharge my batteries whenever I can

Opportunity

Something I’ve never lacked and always taken for granted

Personality types

Knowing them helps me understand people so much better

Quality

I look for it in friends, work, and time

Reader

An hour before bed is always my goal

South of the Mason-Dixon Line

Where I was born, raised, and my only real stipulation for re-locating

Traveler

The places I’ve been are part of who I am

Underdog

I’m always drawn to them

Vertically challenged

When I say I’m short, I mean really short

Western

Not just my pigment; these ideals permeate all of my life – as my ABC’s are showing me

eXamination (of self)

On a regular basis – through a good book, quiet meditation, or intimate conversation

Yahweh

My rock and redeemer, whose voice I want to follow

Zest

When I lose the youthful fire – for teaching, especially – I’m out!

Weekly Update

1) The kids picked some commercials and paper advertisements apart to see advertising techniques and then made their own ads for a product of their choice.

2) 2/3 of the team went on a field trip yesterday, so the 20 or so we were left with got to turn their advertisements into commercials. It was FANTASTIC! One of them is in the process of being uploaded to some school youtube-ripoff website, so hopefully I can post a link soon!
http://www.schooltube.com/video/22977/Commercials

3) Common assessment. The kids did a practice reading Benchmark test, I got to grade them, and it was a fascinating experience. I spent a good twenty minutes with the Literacy Specialist just trying to figure out how to grade the things, because the two of us together couldn't even figure out exactly what the prompt wanted them to do. Sheesh. And they expect 6th graders to ace these things????

4) The benefits of having two teachers in a classroom - today I got to spend most of each class period pulling kids in the hallway for individual meetings about their reading responses (from #3) where we discussed one specific thing they could work on the next time to get scores up or else talked together about how they struggled with understanding what the question was asking of them. It was painless - for everyone involved, I think. I had a lot of fun. These are the times and as much as we hate them, we have to find some way to help them succeed on the tests. I won't ever spend an entire year doing prep for these things, but I am willing to take some meaningful time every now and then and work individually with kids - it's one of my favorite things!

5) Writer's notebook quotation of the week: "Today I learned Ms. Griner is very nice and she is going to be a great teacher, becuase she will help me whenever I need it." -LH

Love, Love, Love...Love is All You Need

Too bad this isn't the typical mushy, gushy Valentine's Day post, because that would be fantastically cliche. Or the typical anti-Valentine's Day, I'm-wearing-black-all-day post, because that would be equally predictable. Or any Valentine's Day post at all. It just so happened that the events of my week lent themselves well to the theme of the weekend.

I both had the first student in a current class get expelled and learned of the first student from a former class having been expelled this week. It is devastating in a way - more so for the second than the first, who I have only been with for a little over a week and hadn't built much of a relationship with, yet. Although, I also must admit that everyone saw it coming with the second student. He was on a crash-course in that direction, heading fast.

He must have been a kid doomed to end up in an alternative school. I mean, all the teachers he's ever had say things like, "He's worthless. He might be an okay person, but he's a terrible student." and "He belonged in the principal's office; not in my class." About the sixth grader, the comments were milder; after all, he really is still a kid. "It happens sometimes" and "We can't help them all."

I just don't think I can agree. Maybe I'm still fresh, green, and starry-eyed, not yet disappointed and jaded by the world of teaching. The fact remains, I hold myself to a higher standard when it comes to relating to my students. When they mess up, I have a role to play and it's not to kick my feet up, throw up the defenses, and say, "I did what I could; he was on his way there." While those facts might be entirely true, I am still his teacher.

In dealing with these two students this week, I discovered that I still love kids who mess up. I have to. I can't save them, but I can still love them, smile, and tell them goodbye with kind words as they walk in to pick up their personal belongings, to be escorted out by a resource officer. I can strike up a conversation, try to offer some advice, and call my teacher-friend who works at the alternative school to have her watch out for him.

I don't have to be defensive, because it was their choice to break the rules. I don't have to write them off, because it was not my responsibility to save them. It is my job to love them - when they're good, bad, right, wrong, behavioral dreams, troublemakers, enrolled, or expelled.

Now talk to me in five years and it will probably be a different story and I'll have a much harder time saying these things...

Bragging on Kids

My sophomores that read Antigone with me and participated in my research, making song connections to the text, had to (got to?) do a project (or, if you must, a 'performance assessment') for the end of the unit. I gave them several choices of what they could do - each with some level of a creative element as well as a written element. One of the choices was to take a song connection that they made and explore the connection between the two texts on paper and either a poster or a Power Point. I just have to say that the kids who picked this option (only 4, but worth it) totally ROCKED IT! I honestly have never been so impressed and proud of my students for the work they created.

One student connected to Fabolous, one to old-school Tim McGraw, one to Alicia Keyes, and another to Evanescence. Each of them either alluded to the idea or straight up said that they didn't expect to be able to connect ancient Greek drama to anything from their own modern, cultural experience. Yet each of them did just that. They made substantial text-to-text connections, pointing out places where they matched up and places where the connections broke down, but also added some awesome creativity, art, and graphic design skills to make a rockin' awesome project.

That's all - just had to say the 10th graders gave me a fantastic going away present!

Readjustment and Sixth Grade

The first week at each new rotation has been hard - between learning new kids, a new schedule/routine, a new wake up time, a new bedtime, and coping strategies for a new age group, it's difficult to think straight, let alone get enough sleep to process it all. This one was especially difficult, as I am still living in the second rotation - trying to finish grading papers, going back to meet guest speakers, and say goodbye to the kids (with 150 homemade chocolate chip cookies in tow, I might add).

I have loved getting to know the sixth graders, though. I think they're way more up my alley than anything I have had so far. I have had to seriously start to readjust my ideas about classroom management and environment, though. Partially because of the types of classrooms I have been in and partially because of the older kids I have taught thus far, the general climate of the rooms I have taught in has been pretty orderly, noise kept to a minimum unless we're specifically doing group work, and energy level fairly calm.

HA! Not so for sixth graders - EVER! I think this is really fine with me, though. When I think back to the summer and how I envisioned my classroom, it was much closer to where I am now than where I have been in rotations 1 or 2. I loved them, don't get me wrong - but like I said, these kids and this style is much more what I like. These kids are loud, they need to make jokes, they need to talk to friends, they need to make jokes and call me "Tina" (yes, as in the llama from Napoleon), they need to be prodded sometimes (scratch that, constantly) to get back on task, and difficult as it is for me to admit, they need to put the stuffed animals in the library in compromising positions from time to time. True story.

I just have to figure out where the lines are between letting them be who they are and do what they need to do and putting down the hammer when it's time to get things done and be 'the teacher'. I do know that if I tried to maintain the level of control I have experienced in junior high and high school with these kids, it would be disastrous and would end in constant nagging, kids who would never be on my side, and a massive headache.

They're still so fun in the sixth grade and so not-yet-jaded. The world is coming at them fast and hard and they'll start to see the injustices soon enough without me making their last few months or weeks of 'kid-dom' and free-spirit disappear any faster than it must. If they've gotten by thus far in a loud, mean, and disinterested world and can still laugh and joke with me, I better soak that up and love it, not steal it away. So I think it's better to just let things go and ride it out - let kids be kids.