First Day, Take Two

I was completely delusional about how my first day this year would be. Here's why:

1. By the end of last year I was lucky enough to have built really good rapports with nearly all of my students. I was able to joke around and have fun while still maintaining discipline. I was genuinely happy to see my kids walk through the door every morning, and instead of meeting them with stone-faced, rigid management, I took on a happier, more laid back persona. They really responded well to it and at the end of the year, I had far fewer discipline problems than I had at the beginning of the year. Seeing those students in the hallways the first day was easily as exciting for me as it seemed to be for them. They gave me hugs, asked about my summer, said they missed me... What a feeling! What I forgot was that I had laid the ground work for all of that at the beginning of last year. I tried to be the best disciplinarian I could be (even if that wasn't very good). I was fresh out of summer school, fresh out of Dr. Monroe's class. I was just fresh.

2. Despite everything that Teacher Corps preaches about the first day, first week, first month, first semester... all of that stuff about "not smiling until Christmas" and "sending someone out on the first day" and "not letting anything slide".... it was like a totally forgot it... or OK, I'll admit it, I guess I was just a little cocky. I thought I could just walk back in and have that same rapport, that same laid-back demeanor, no management issues. WRONG!

Luckily for me I got a little mileage out of being around last year. The kids had either heard about me or seen me in the halls, but it was clear that by the end of the first week, things were far too laid back. It wasn't that kids were being disrespectful or talking out or slacking on work. In fact, I didn't have to give out anything worse than a warning, but that felt wrong. I was supposed to send a kid out of the room on day one! I was supposed to give warnings for sneezing!

I realized that what worried me wasn't poor behavior. The kids were fine. The problem was that I was being WAY too friendly. The kids liked me. At first they're supposed to be afraid of me, right?

So at the beginning of this week, our first full week, I laid down the hammer. I gave warnings for crumpling paper, coughing too loudly, standing up half way to grab a pencil. I gave my lunch class "silent lunch" because one student laughed in the hallway on the way to the cafeteria. The amazing thing is that the kids haven't seemed to stop liking me. They just seem more scared. I think that's good... but this is still only my second go around, so who knows.

Sage Wisdom

Dear First Years,
At this point in time, you are undoubtedly being inundated with anecdotal words of wisdom from the mouths of jaded and exhausted second year MTCers. While it’s true that we have one year under our belts and have gained knowledge and perspective on many things, I think you should keep two things in mind when listening.

1. We only just finished out first year of teaching, so while we mean well and would never misguide you or anyone else… we are still pretty new at this. Along with that freshness comes a relative inability to be objective. I am writing this blog while still sitting in my classroom at Byhalia Middle School, so don’t think that the short trip over to Holly Springs tomorrow will suddenly enlighten me. Not enough time has passed. I and the other second years (except maybe Matthew Gioia) will give you the best advice we can, but don’t take it as gospel.
2. Nothing is ever as bad as it seems. For me, the worst thing about last summer was being scared to death by the awful stories I heard from second years. They talked of terrible children, unbearable stress, and isolation from friends and family. I heard so much of it that I dreaded coming back to Mississippi at the end of July and thought for sure that I was in for the worst, most stressful two years of my life. I don’t want to say that none of what they said was true or applicable to my situation, but it definitely would have been better for me to come into this job completely unbiased. So… listen to the stories… enjoy the stories… but then forget them. No one MTCer has ever had the same experience, and you should truly look forward to discovering yours on your own.

I can’t wait to watch you all grow through this next year. I am such a different person compared to who I was a year ago, and I would not have it any other way. I can’t tell you how proud it makes me to tell people I am a teacher, and it makes me even prouder to tell them where I’m a teacher. Our job is a difficult one and when you make it to this time next year you will truly feel like you can do anything. Attack every day with every bit of yourself that you can muster (some days it’s not much) and I can promise you that by the end of next year you will have no regrets.

Summer Wish List

Let me just begin by saying that these are the worst kind of blog assignments. It’s so difficult to articulate certain things like, “what I want to work on.” Many of the things I want to work on are intangible, and with only three weeks of summer school, it would be impossible to significantly change or improve upon anything on my wish list, which is as follows:

1. Become more stoic in my interactions with “the bad kids.” I am a very passionate and sometimes emotional person… I wear my feelings on my sleeve most of the time. That’s a BAD characteristic for a teacher in terms of discipline. On a positive note, it certainly helped me build some great relationships with students this year, but I had terrible rapports with the bad kids and they continued to slide over the year.
2. Make-up work. Summer school is definitely not a realistic way to work on this. I will be going from 140 students to 30 and there will be six other teachers in the classroom. To add to that, students are only allowed to have two absences before they fail. During the school year, I was pretty awful about keeping up with make-up work and tests. I usually didn’t address missing grades until the end of the 9 weeks or when a student came to me and asked.
3. Consistency with consequences.  I tend to cut the goods kids more slack than I should and by the end of this school year, they began to act a little more “grown” than I would have liked. I’m not saying they misbehaved or acted disrespectful, but I sensed that they began to think of themselves as my equal rather than my subordinate. Again… summer school is probably too short to really experience any of that.
4. Patience with kids who move slower. Towards the end of this school year I got pretty impatient with students who worked slowly or asked a lot of questions. I’m sure part of that was just being burned out, but it is in our job description to be understanding and helpful to those kids. It is worth the extra effort to make sure they grasp something, so I would like to do a better job of keeping that in mind.

Are Small Class Sizes Better?

We recently read an article for Dr. Mullins' class that I thought was especially applicable to our situation. The author mentioned the standards movement and how it revealed inequality in schools. She went on to profoundly reveal that students in schools with large populations of disadvantaged students perform the worst on standardized tests... duh. I find it very unfortunate that my honors students are constantly brought down by their peers... and it's no fault of their own. This is an issue that has been thoroughly discussed among my classmates. Reducing class size seems to be an obvious solution.

Before reading the article, I had been told by several people that research suggested that class size had no effect on student performance. Like most things related to education, I really had no opinion on the matter until this year. Because of this year, I have a very hard time believing that class size doesn’t affect student performance. My average class size is about 28 students, and on the random days when students are pulled out for testing I am left with a mere 12-15 students. I wish there was a way to adequately articulate how much more engaged the students are on those days. Their hands shoot up to answer questions... maybe it’s because they know they have a better chance of being called on... but once I get them started on the day’s activity, I have no problem getting to every one of them for some individual attention. Of course they retain more information. I'm not sure why research says that class size doesn't matter. But I simply have a hard time believing it.

Phonics vs Whole-language

I thought that The Reading Wars was a decent look at both sides of the debate over how children should learn to read. I have thought about this topic extensively, especially now as a teacher, but until a couple of years ago, I thought phonics was the only way to learn. My first real-world exposure to whole-language learning was this year. I tried not to let my students' inability to read affect the way I approached this article. After reading it though, I must say that I still came to the same conclusion: phonics is better.

What I took from the whole-language side of the argument:

1. It’s trendy. At one point in the article, Nicholas Lemann described the whole-language approach as “a natural, unconscious process best fostered by unstructured immersion... a rich atmosphere.” Later on he described it as “a joyful, humanistic, intellectually challenging alternative to deadening phoneme drills.” If these adjectives don’t scream 21st century, California-trendy, then I don’t know what does. Sure it all sounds pretty... but I need more substance than that.
2. Whole-language can work if it’s done right. If you have teachers that understand the big picture concept behind the method, then sure, it can work. But how often does that happen? What happens if it doesn’t? We’ll get to that later.

What I took from the phonics side of the argument:

1. It’s tried and true. Phonics worked for decades and the English language hasn’t evolved enough to give us much motivation to change our way of teaching it. The best thing about phonics is that it’s formulaic. There are very few variables so it’s easy for teachers across the country to teach the same thing and keep it effective.
2. Phonics sets children up for success as adults. With the whole-language method, a child is really never taught how to “sound out” a word, so later on in life, when they come across a word they don’t recognize, they have far less of a chance of figuring out how to pronounce it. Throughout this first year of teaching I have seen this first hand. My students were not exposed to adequate whole-language teaching, so the small amount of word recognition they retained hasn’t served them very well. A student once looked at the word, “carnation” and instead said, “celebrate.” When I told him to go back and sound it out, he couldn’t get past the “c” sound at the beginning. That is why he just pulled a random c-word out of his head. 

It seems that one of the main arguments from the whole-language side is that phonics is boring and deadening, thus children lose interest. To me, that's just the price of success... and I think (as Lemann mentioned) that the main motivation to teach whole-language is that it’s more fun for the teachers. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s practical to jump straight from illiteracy to reading whole words. That would be like handing a beginner a set of golf clubs and sending them to the first tee for 18 holes. They would fail. First they need to go to the driving range and learn how to swing. Next they need to spend time hitting golf balls... the boring, deadening, monotonous task of hitting golf balls. Before students can read a book (or play the metaphorical golf course), they need to learn how to break down the smaller parts - the words on the pages.

Free Write

Essential thoughts: 
I’ve never really had guiding principles in terms of grammar. I don’t even remember the last class in which I was taught grammar. I suppose it was somewhere around seventh grade, but if asked specifics about what I learned, I would probably stare blankly. I suppose my desire to make my own class memorable and beneficial for my students stems from that realization - grammar education is excruciatingly forgettable.

Newly found principles on grammar: 
While grammar and the ability to speak properly have always come easily for me, I realize those two things are not innate. Until recently, I never realized how much my upbringing influenced my speech, and consequently my writing. I, like most people, write the way I speak, so my writing has always been at least passable. My mother has a fantastic vocabulary and is exceptionally articulate, so as a child, I had constant exposure to proper English. As a toddler phrases like, “Consider your actions!” were not uncommon. It was easy for me to learn how to write higher level essays because I didn’t have to think about word choice and mechanics, I just had to learn how to organize an essay and develop my thoughts. The area in which I teach is not one that is known for its residents’ ability to speak formal English. As a writing teacher, I am slapped in the face daily by the reality that what I teach is cancelled out several times over as soon as my kids go home. Fifty five minutes a day (or 20 of my talking) is not enough to impact them.

So... my guiding principles? Teach them the fundamentals. The fact that I didn’t have to learn the fundamentals does not mean that they don’t. I treat it as though I am giving a golf lesson to a player who has practiced bad habits for years. They may know how to play golf. They probably do it every day. But the more they ingrain the wrong practices, the harder it becomes to reverse them. So I have to break it down. I have to pretend the player is not an athlete, that they have never played a good round of golf, that they have only seen one played. This amateur hacker is analogous to my average student. They have heard people use proper English, but they have practiced bad habits for years. They may know how to communicate using English because they do it every day, but unless I take them back to the basics, they will continue to build on the wrong practices. They will forever make it to the 18th hole but be disappointed with the score on their card.

Sure, We Can Learn From Finland... Maybe.

I recently read a Boston Globe op-ed piece that suggested the United States look to Finland as an example for education reform. The author talks about the absence of standardized tests, idolization of teachers, and equal performance out of students regardless of social class. Wow. I would be lying if I said that didn't sound fantastic. Standardized tests are the bane of our existence in rural Mississippi. Of course I want to be idolized... and if my students performed as well as the rich kids of Dublin, OH, my job would be a whole lot easier.

But it's not fun to agree. Let's play devil's advocate.

Three reasons why I don't think Finland's methods would work for US

1. Finland is largely homogeneous - Finns do not face the same racial barriers as Americans.
Now, before I moved down to Mississippi, I would have rolled my eyes at that statement. "We don't have problems with race," I would've said as a proud Yankee. "It's the 21st century." Sorry, 2006-version of Andrea. You're wrong. Race is as much of an issue down here as it was 30 years ago. It is amazing how much of an inhibitor poor race relations can be. There are still parents who won't admit that a teacher of another color may do a good job. There are still parents who would rather have segregated schools. One of the main components of Finland's system is parental involvement and feedback. That can't work until parents and teachers of opposite races can sit in a classroom and respectfully collaborate.

2. Teachers won't be idolized here.
In Finland, teachers are required to hold higher-level degrees, so they have impeccable pedagogical skills and subject knowledge. When teachers are that highly-qualified, they automatically gain respect. Finns regard teachers with the same confidence as doctors. The problem for the United States is that teachers don't get paid enough to justify spending large amounts of money on advanced degrees. School districts would rather employ a recent education school graduate with no Master's degree than an experienced teacher with a PhD. It costs the district less. Even some of the better public schools allow teachers 5-10 years to acquire their Master's. So my shocking solution? Pay us more.

3. Getting rid of standardized tests is easier said than done.
Sure, I would love nothing more than to say goodbye to the Mississippi Curriculum Test, but phasing out standardized tests in the United States could take years. As it is set up now, a large amount of school funding comes from test performance. With the current system in place, if we pull the tests, we lose the money. Of course schools get some money from other sources, but until the government has figured out a new way to support and motivate struggling schools, I guess we have to stick with the way things are.

Finland, I tip my hat to you... we're just not there yet.