A little more joy, a little more learning

To bring in the J-factor...

some peeks

We don't wear these costumes every day...it was the Halloween parade!

My little geniuses.

The 2nd grade team, my team and family.

Our future graduates!

The classroom!

And now to our finished apartment! And yes, I painted these walls.

Kitchen!

Living room and our big window over Bedford.

I want to share more, but I am so exhausted and I am even too tired to write about how tired I am. I cried at school for the first time today. November, to say the least, is hard.

of course this would happen

The highlight of my day.

Another highlight of my day:

"Ms. Hahn, did you lose weight?"

-Christian

love hate relationship

I often consider myself lucky that I don't hate my job. I actually must love my job, apparent by the sheer fact that I go every day. I hear from many of my other Teach for America friends with immensely challenging jobs before them that they wake up each morning thinking, "Maybe today I just won't go." Thus because of the absence of these thoughts in my mind, I feel deep down within me that I truly love my job. Sometimes I find myself gazing around at the faces of my students and simply smiling at them. They are so vivacious, they have so much character, and they are so overwhelmingly adorable in the most challenging kind of ways. And other days, like today, when their voices refuse to turn off and I feel the frustration of "I have no idea how to do this right" builds inside of me I just want to go home and pretend that I am in college again, with the LA sun shining dow upon me. But still, I go back the next day.

The best days are those when I can see how far we have come and how far we can go in terms of learning and in terms of growing to love each other. Tomorrow we will finish taking our first cycle of assessments, and from peering over their shoulders during testing I am so pleased with the results that I am seeing...pleased and surprised. A friend said to me that first year teachers go through four stages: 1) Unconsciously unskilled, 2) Consciously unskilled, 3) Consciously skilled, and 4) Unconsciously unskilled. I am confident that I am now at stage 2: I know that at times I completely suck. Though I have grown immensely in my job in the past 8 weeks, sometimes I still here a direction come out of my mouth and think to myself, "This is going to be a disaster." I have one student who knows little structure in the home. He is moving in and out of shelters so frequently that structure is simply unknown to him. It is so challenging to inspire him to be a part of the structure in the classroom, however I know that he doesn't mean to be disobedient...he merely doesn't know that directions are to be followed and structures are to be adhered by. And thus, I have to be both immensely tough and very supportive, which is so mentally exhausting that sometimes it is easier to just relax. That is when things go downhill.

Last week was a fantastic week. The struggles that we had with management in our classroom have improved so immensely that we are now finally able to have some fun. Last week during writing, we staged a crime in which a thief crept into our classroom and stole our class pumpkin. We had to play detectives and make lists of "character details" in order to catch the thief! The students were so engrossed in the crime that I hadn't thought ahead of time of the fact that they would not rest until the thief was caught! Therefore I wrote a note to the class that read, " You win LMU! But I'll be back at Thanksgiving...I love turkeys too!" Immediately, they began drafting plans about how to catch the thief at Thanksgiving...now the pressure is on.

It is moments like those that bring the joy, and it is the other kinds of moments that bring the purpose. Moments like the day I found out last week that one of my students, at only 7 years old, is obsessed with visions of death and shootings because of the shots she hears out of her window at night. Truly, I do not know what to say when she approaches me to tell me what she is thinking about. I know that I cannot have her draw them for me with the other students present, so I am at a loss. Still, it is times like these that ground me back into the mission on days like today when one scholar put an open milk container in her backpack and proceeded to drag it all around the classroom. My room is going to smell tomorrow.

Quotes of the Day

"My brother said you wear too much makeup."

"You smell like goldfish crackers."

wake up calls

I have so many wake up calls sounding. There is the one that rings each morning just before the sun, there is the shuffle of feet telling me that my children are here, there is the one that alerts me when things are about to become pandemonium, and there is the one that reminds me each day to remember the lives of my students once they leave the classroom. I have found it easy to forget the realities of the lives of my students and their families, and I must wonder if it is because it is simply easier not to think about it. This week however, the wake up call was made of paper, resting in my hands, telling me exactly what had been so easy to overlook the past four weeks.

This week the parents of my students applied for the free and reduced lunch and breakfast program offered by the Department of Education. It was surprisingly personal information to be passed through my hands, as my eyes were the liaison between the application and the district office. As a result, I now know the income of many of the families in my classroom. It is shocking to discover that the parents of most of my students, with at least one child and in many cases more, make far less money than I do. And I have no one to support but myself, no children, no parents, no debt. Thus sets in the guilt. However this realization instilled within me the greatest levels of admiration for the parents of my students, dispelling so many myths of poverty. Particularly, the myth that parents struggling financially cannot or do not care for their children, as many of the parents of my students demonstrate on a daily basis that they care so deeply about the success of their child.

Still I must wonder, seeing these numbers in front of my eyes, numbers that often were less than half of my monthly salary with four children's names written on the application, how do they have anything? How will they have anything that they need to succeed? Could I have succeeded had I not had so many books in my bedroom or texts and resources in my classrooms? Would I be a great reader if I never had access to books? When I think of those people who blame low income students and communities for low graduation rates, college attendance rates, and test scores, stating that they are 'bad kids' or 'stupid kids' or 'their families don't care about education' I wish that for just a moment they could see what I see and take a moment to reflect upon their own lives and ask themselves the question, "If this were me, where would I be?"

locus of control

It is painfully difficult to admit the things you cannot control. My locus of control is so small and so limited, particularly at this point when there is so much to be done that I cannot think about it all at once. And it is so painfully difficult to come to the conclusion that you have little to no control over the home life of your students. What are you to do, for example, when you know that sending a student home with a negative mark on his behavior log will result in a dark bruise across his cheek? Your first response is most certainly to not send him home with a negative mark on his behavior log, even when he deserves it. But the reality is in fact that you would be lessening his chances for success in his future by holding him to lower expectations than the other children in class. It is a difficult but necessary conclusion that all teachers in my situation must come to: you must send him home with the check mark anyway. No excuses is the policy under which I must operate.

I have a student who used to be my angel. He responded so strongly to positive reinforcement that I would whisper in his ear that he was my personal star and he would be on point for the rest of the day. Suddenly I found bruises on his right arm like someone had grabbed him roughly and his behavior took a 180. He refused to participate or join the community of our classroom, he was disruptive, wrote that he hated himself in his journal, and covered his face with his hood all day. Of course my natural inclination was to reinforce his self-esteem and encourage him gently to rejoin our classroom, but soon the entire class was suffering and the behavior was unacceptable. He went home with another check mark that day. This morning he appeared with a dark purple bruise on his cheek that he told me he got when he hit his face on a slide and his behavior has now done a complete 360. I spent the morning unable to reconcile wanting to be gentle with his feelings when I know that he may need to feel loved with not tolerating his unacceptable behavior in class. Thus, I have no choice but to realize my limited locus of control. I must hold him to the same high behavioral expectations to which I hold all of the other students. Today, he went home with two check marks on his behavior log.

I wrote him a small note after class which I left for him on his desk, encouraging him to bring his positivity back. He crossed out all of my words, including his name, and wrote the name of another student on it. Still, I must remember why I am here and the things that I can change.

wishes

I wish that I had the time to write on this blog every single night because every day is so incredibly different, packed with different triumphs, different losses, different struggles, and different hopes for tomorrow. Unfortunately, I do not have that time and I wish that I could say I will soon become efficient enough but I know that I will not. The days and weeks fly by so quickly that I have come to bank upon that fact, when a day or a week is tough I know that it will be over so quickly and the only thing left for me to do is look back upon it and hope beyond hoping that I taught something that mattered. I have no idea what I am doing or how I am doing it. The only option is to merely accept that it is normal to suffer from the feeling of self-doubt in one's first year of teaching. No teacher anywhere has ever said that they felt completely in the know during their first year, let alone their first weeks. The benefit and simultaneous draw back of working in a charter school that operates very much as an interwoven team is that you are never allowed to make mistakes alone. I have made mistakes so far, many, and while it is beneficial that as soon as I made them there was someone there to tell me what I had done wrong, it is difficult to be so under the spotlight when it is inevitable that I am struggling at this point.

This week was difficult and wonderful. Our classroom was finally starting to function as a real class, with routines and true learning occurring, but our class management was little more than a mess. While firmness is not my natural strong suit, I am surprised at how tough I have become. I can now look a crying child in the face and tell them that they have 5 seconds to end the tears and return to their seat. But I am still not scary, and a little bit of fear never hurt anyone. Learning was not occurring like it should have been because so much time was wasted upon getting the attention of every student in the class, and it needed to change immediately. We have begun the process of toughening up and it is working and will continue to do so, however we are battling against unjust circumstances that prove to make classroom management much more difficult. Many of our students experience structure for the first time in school, and it is up to us to demonstrate for them the power of becoming invested in your own education. I have one student who is in and out of shelters, infrequently comes to school, and has led such an unstructured life that it is difficult for him to understand what it means. It is not his fault, but it indicates that there is work to be done. I have a student whose arm I found harsh purple bruises on this week, the same day when he transformed from my personal angel to a student who wrote "I hate myself" in his journal and rebelled against all of our activities. How am I qualified for this?

However, there is so MUCH to be done and so little space in my mind, so few hours in my day, and so few tasks that I can tackle at one time that attempting it all at once I have determined to simply be a bad idea. It would kill me and thus should not be the expectation. I do not think that the goal of Teach for America is to kill their corps members. Thus, I have found that it is healthier to approach this job with three mindsets:

1. I can learn and I will get better

2. I am not suppose to feel like I know what I am doing

3. Make great leaps by taking small steps

Attempting to utilize every strategy in the book in one day of class while establishing new systems for tracking mastery of student objectives, behavior charts, calls home, personal interventions, strategies for challenging kids, and all that there is to think about is simply impossible. Therefore, I have decided to set small goals, one a day, that I can tackle and know that I am heading in a positive direction. This is very TFA of me.

Last Friday I set the goal of being consistent with my consequences across students and offenses, which will assist me in gaining the trust of the students. Tomorrow, my goal is to increase the pace of my lessons. Tuesday, I must take notes during my guided reading sessions about each child. Each of these small steps are things that I feel confident that I can manage, and thus while alone they made little difference, together they will lead me to become a better teacher.

It is a very good thing that I love my students and my job, for it is taxing, and that alarm sounds frighteningly early. But I have found a place that eventually I hope I can feel confidently a part of. The reason I know that I can make it is that even after the longest day, when I have caused tears in the eyes of six children (Friday, for example) they never get me down. We move on together and hopefully towards an even better place.

Forgive yourself every night, and recommit yourself every morning.

look how cute my kids are

A tiny peek into my classroom to fulfill an assignment for my course in mathematics instruction for my masters. Enjoy the peek, though I still have absolutely no idea how to get them to stop wiggling. I am open to suggestions. Notice the boys in the lower left corner figure out there is a camera on them...

what's tough

This is exhausting! You think you know, but you have no idea. My class is lovely but tough. Extremely tough and the challenges are constant. I've been feeling so negative which does not suit my personality, the behavioral expectations at this school are so high that one scholar with their eyes not facing forwards while in line in the hallway warrants a snap and a redirect. Tomorrow I am trying a different approach, a chain that will hang from the ceiling to which I will add links, not take them away. This exhaustion is not sustainable. To add to the mix, my purse was stolen two nights ago right from my chair inside of a restaurant in union square, along with my wallet, my cell phone, my keys, and thus my alarm clock. I was seated facing someone who was apparently so taken by my incredible beauty and illustrious shine that he did not even notice the purse being taken! Who would have thought. More than anything, this is a hassle right in the midst of an I-really-don't-need-this-right-now-week. And without an alarm clock, I used my back up alarm last night which, alas, did not go off this morning at 5:30 AM. The leftover exhaustion from sitting in the police station until midnight on Tuesday evening left me with such a need for sleep that when my alarm didn't go off I slept until 8:15, woke up to see light outside and knew that I was in trouble. I was two hours late for school in my first week, humiliated, embarrassed, mortified and without coffee or makeup.

Though sometimes I just need to stamp my foot at 6 pm and say to myself, "I must go home right this instant," I do love my job. I have never worked so hard in my life and I never have any idea what I am doing, but I do love it. The conclusion that helps me sleep at night is realizing that no matter how hard I try, I probably am not going to know what I am doing for the next year of my life. It is my first year of teaching, and anyone I have ever asked told me that their first year of teaching was rough, not smooth, and often I have even heard the word, "disastrous," involved. Mine is not disastrous, thankfully. In a way, I am not terrible and I actually am pleased when things do not go well because at least I am confident that the next day things will go a teeny, tiny, little bit better.

I did get my first real love letter. It read, "Ms. Hahn, I love when you teach. When you are happy I am."

The first three days

I wonder why it is that the intention of this blog was to share my experiences in the classroom and yet I have been in the classroom for three days now and I have not shared one experience. I am guessing it is because there is so much and at the same time so little to say that it is easier to say nothing at all. It is that, mixed with the sheer exhaustion of managing 28 seven year olds from 7:15 to 4, with their wiggling, nose picking, sometimes crying, and often chit-chatting little bodies. But oh are they cute.

To those people who have read my blog since the beginning, you have seen how difficult it was at times. Those first two weeks of my experience as a first year corps member in a brand new city gave life to some blog posts that inspired friends to call me just to ask, "Are you okay?!" They would say, "I've been reading your blog!" Those readers could see through my words that I was scared and lonely, unsure if I would be able to live up to the huge pressure that was about to be placed upon my shoulders. At the time, I felt like I had to prove to others and myself that I was not the type of person who ever got scared or lonely, but that I was the type of person who hopped on planes to Guatemala fearlessly and moved across the country, leaving friends and family behind. Yet now that I have built a life for myself here I am not at all ashamed to reflect upon those first two weeks and share them for what they were...a rough time, but a rough time that is now over. I am certainly happy here. I feel as though my life has great purpose and I am taking charge over the kind of life that I want to have, I love my neighborhood and my apartment, I have my own Netflix account and my own health insurance, a TFA family and entirely new set of friends. Even in the shade of those first two weeks, lonely and missing my comforts, I knew that the hard times would pass. I knew that I would end up in this place soon, with friends and roots. I knew that by Labor Day weekend I would be ready to show off my new fabulous Carrie Bradshaw-esque lifestyle to visitors, but strangely the only common variable between my old life in LA and this new life here is me. In the end, I was the one who stuck with me long enough to see it through, so now I will show off my life to me and see it for what it is. With the beginning of school I have now really begun my journey, a time which will be the most challenging of my life and will most certainly fly by. Who knows what my life will look like when it is over, but at least I know who the common variable will be. The journey leading up to the first day of school has now ended, and here I am as a real teacher.

Teaching is hard. Teaching second graders is even harder. I love them so much already it is hard to imagine how much more I could love them by the end of the year but I know that I will as my journey has only just begun. I have so much to learn it is completely and all-consumingly overwhelming, as every moment in the classroom I am hovering in this unsettling balance between "I have no idea what the hell I am doing, " and "I desperately want to find out." I can tell that the learning curve this year will be amazingly steep and incredibly necessary. First and foremost I need to identify the extra needs of my students, 100% minorities and 77% on free lunch and breakfast, while simultaneously accepting no excuses. I must not accept excuses from myself either, as I am officially on this journey and failure is not an option.

sooner than later

Less than 48 hours until school begins.

debut

My mind feels like one of those sound-o-meters with the red lights that bounce up and drop down with each beat of the music. So much is coming so fast and I am both completely ready and completely not ready. My students come in exactly one week, and I have no idea who they are. I know nothing about their lives save for their reading levels A-Z and what I see as I step through their streets. The community of Bushwick is a proud one, and rightfully so. The population hails from all over the world and has suffered the climbs and the falls of an urban community, including a fall into crime so deep that The New York Times once rated it the most dangerous community in New York City. Though the community has made great leaps and is proud to share them, the extra challenges that my students from this community will face are all but removed. Today, three fellow teachers and I left school to find a car window smashed in and robbed just outside the front door of our facility. Safety is just one contributor to the achievement gap that, while no excuse, must not be forgotten. My school has a fantastic full time social worker to ensure that this is the case, for while improvements have been made since the year 2000, educational statistics remain the reason why high performing charter schools with missions aimed to close the achievement gap feel the urgency of entering the community. In Bushwick, 40.3% of students read at grade level and 58.7% can do math at grade level. Compare these statistics with the end of year scores of the students at the school at which I will soon teach, where 100% of students passed the state math exam performing at or above grade level. How many times must statistics such as these be presented until the people of our nation can see that ALL children can learn when provided access to a great education?

I am proud to become a part of a movement so great in exactly one week. My excitement and my nerves are now going head to head, red lights and green lights dancing up and down on the meter in my mind.

big, dirty classroom

I have a big, dirty classroom on my hands. I stepped inside of it for the first time today, in all of its big, box-filled dirtiness. My school moved to a new location only two weeks ago and the students arrive in ten days. Ten days. Ten days until I am made or broken, until the classroom must be cleaned and set-up to look like somewhere that I would enjoy learning. And it is hotter than a tar road in an Arizona July, for the school has no air conditioning. How can the students learn in a classroom in which I can barely stand in in the worst heat wave of the summer? These days, I am always sweating. Sweating inside, sweating outside, sweating in my room, sweating in the kitchen, sweating on the train, sweating off the train, sweating on the street, sweating in my sleep. I met my school staff while sweaty. I will probably meet my students for the first time while sweaty, as it is surely inescapable. But on the day, I will most certainly be sweating for more than one reason. In ten days I will become a 2nd grade teacher undoubtedly and though I am undoubtedly ecstatic about all of the ketchup bottle claps, the "Read, baby, Read," chants, the "Good Job" songs and of course, the learning, I am also undoubtedly terrified. I waver daily, no surely by the minute, between pure confidence and assuredness and pure, "I don't know what the hell I am doing." Needless to say, there is pressure involved. One minute I think, "I absolutely cannot do this," and the next I will be envisioning my classroom down to the teacher outfit I will be wearing. So my only solution to this fear was to go and buy many, many teacher outfits.

Right now, I actually have nothing on my to-do list. Nothing pressing that needs to get done tonight, and to be honest, I have no idea what to do with myself. I have been told that I should, "relax and take care of myself" before the school year starts. Relax? Take care of myself? What is this strange language that I have not heard in two months? I feel strange...I think it would be best if I went and made up something errands that absolutely need to get finished tonight.

my apartment life

In answer to your requests, here finally are some photos of the place I now call home, strange as it sounds.

My lovely neighborhood of Williamsburg!

The view out of our huge living room window!

My room, finally finished.

(I built that dresser)

(I hung these curtains, ahem)

I hope you love it as much as I do.

the breach

I forgot to tell you about the breach in my classroom. 'Breach' is a Teach for America term for an occurrence that breaks down the culture you have built in your classroom. The culture that I built in my classroom was warm, kind, and as Andrew so eloquently described it, 'more positive than a proton.' I sought to make the students feel loved and safe, like they were learning in a place where they could be built up, even when they made mistakes. This was easy to do since they saw me make so many mistakes over the course of our four weeks (remember the time that I couldn't solve my own math problem in front of Wendy Kopp?). Rarely did I have serious behavioral issues, and never until the fourth week. It was during this time that my very first breach occurred, and though it was so minor compared with some stories that I have heard, I never will forget it.

The night before, I had planned an elaborate game of Jeopardy to review the material for the end of academy exam. This was all part of my continued attempt to bribe them into good behavior with fun and prizes during the last week of summer school. While explaining the rules, I had reserved the right to take away 200 points for behavior not in line with the expectations of the game. I have learned the hard way that when one makes such a statement, one should follow through with it or the entire management system begins to fall apart. So when a student pounded her hands on the desk and shouted, "That's not fair!" I wiped 200 points off of her team's score. As I turned my head back towards her, I very clearly heard and saw her mouth forming the word, "Bitch!" For a moment, my heart was broken. It was my first true moment of breakdown to the positivity and acceptance that I had been proud to create. But the thing about these types of situations is that my heart was not broken because I was breaking, it broke because I knew she didn't mean it. This student happened to be one that I was closest to. I had tried to fight for her against herself over the previous three weeks and I knew that she was proud of the progress she had made. She was a KWLTM: a kid we love the most. She and I spent a great deal of time in the hallway after that and our relationship grew stronger because of it. From then on she knew that I may not always love her behavior, but I did always care for her. It was both a breach and an opportunity.

My growth as a teacher continues and at the same time is at a standstill. I am still in Connecticut at new staff training and professional development and suddenly my nest has disappeared. The corps members here have banded together like a troupe. Where we once existed in the same boat, clueless, determined, exhausted, inexperienced, and filled with anxiety with 500 others, we are now small in numbers and attempting to collaborate with some impressive veterans. Though, by veterans, I mean teachers with an average of three years of teaching. One of the things that I love the most is the young and passionate staff of this progressive school, energy not yet burned out bounces out from everyone (although those of us who haven't slept in past 630 AM in the past eight weeks exude a tad less). We are no longer just corps members finding comfort in the idea that so many others fear the same fears, we are real teachers, with real teacher email addresses, real signatures, real classrooms, and soon to be real students. I am getting extremely nervous. 2nd graders become mine in two and a half weeks and there is so much that I still don't know. I have not met my collaborative team teacher who I will spend the next year of my life with, I do not have my curriculum or know what I am to be teaching come the first day, and I seem to have forgotten everything that I learned during institute. What is a lesson plan again? And I am suppose to teach 7 year olds? What happened to my 12 year olds? We had a good thing going on! I have such a clear vision of what I want my classroom to look like, with song and joy and chanting and learning, but I have to get there first. I am a teacher now, too.

my first conference

I am in New Haven, Connecticut this week learning how to (hopefully) be an amazing teacher from amazing teachers. The charter school that was the inspiration for the school where I will be teaching was born here, so here we have come to study its roots and see how the tree grew forth. Here is one thing I have taken away so far:

sing it

"And baby there ain't no classroom bad enough,

Ain't no students tough enough,

Ain't no levels low enough,

To keep us from teaching our kids, baby..."

as promised

to my fans

I am sorry. I wish I could have shared with you sooner updates on my life in limbo, but in the past week I have completed my last day of school, survived TFA institute, moved into my first real (I'm paying for it) apartment, and begun my first graduate school course. I have built a dresser, hung curtains, slept little, paid a driver to carry an 85 pound box to my fourth floor walk up, and been to Bed Bath and Beyond four times in three days, all while missing my children immensely and wishing I could sit down for five minutes. Finally, my clothes are out of the suitcase and I have internet, but my walls are as bare as my nonexistent classroom. I miss them, and I finally have a moment to share my last day of school.

They say if you don't have a plan for them, they will have a plan for you. Mr. Hasty, or as I can now refer to him as the year is over, Andrew, and I wanted to have fun with our students all day, but fun in the classroom must be highly structured fun or it quickly becomes not fun at all. We were so proud of them, and even slightly for ourselves. Our final assessment showed us that our math students progressed an average of 70% of mastery of the standards we had taught them. We reached, and in many cases, surpassed our summer achievement goal. The students had worked so hard and had proven themselves much more worthy of being called a true scholar that I was at the age of 12, as many of them had come to the optional fourth week of summer school to learn math because they knew that it would help them someday in college. This in itself was achievement. Many of our students surpassed their personal summer growth goals so far that I could not have been more proud of their commitment to learning. I had seen the desire in their eyes on so many occasions and I knew that I could not take responsibility for such a focus. But as I recently heard a veteran teacher say, "The successes are theirs, and the failures are ours." So while these students had successes, I had a failure. I say that I had the failure because it was my shortcoming and not hers. While many improved by miles, one student progressed from a 15% on the diagnostic assessment to a 20% on the final assessment. She progressed 5% in mastery of the math standards, when her personal goal was to progress 34%. Upon seeing these results, Andrew and I realized that we had let four weeks pass without realizing that we had truly taught this student nothing. While we knew that she was struggling, I in particular guided her so strongly in order to build her self-esteem and convey to her that I knew she could produce correct answers that she never truly understood why an answer was correct, but only could tell from my direction what answer I wanted to hear. This failure was mine. For this student, I did not do whatever it takes as I said I would, because, truth be told, I did not know what to do. This comes the most difficult part of teaching: differentiation. How is it that I can ensure that I am still challenging the top students while not leaving behind the ones who are struggling? The fact that I am asking this question now is the problem, for four weeks I allowed this student to fall behind. And she is now moving to 7th grade without the tools she needs, and that is on me. It is sad that I will likely barely remember all of the students who surpassed their math goals, while I will dwell on the one student who did not. On the last day of school, our school director told us, "Forgive yourself every night and recommit yourself every morning." What perfect timing.

There were joyous moments to our last day of school, however. Andrew and I asked the students to write us letters telling us how they felt about the class or write a letter to our students in the fall telling them how to be successful in our class. Here are some of my favorite selected quotes:

Dear Students,

You will have a great time with Ms. Hahn as your teacher. She is fun loving, caring, and funny. She likes to make class as funny as possible, but at the same time you are learning.

I hope you don't forget me because I know that I couldn't forget you. P.S. You're the best.

Thank you Ms. Hahn and Mr. Hasty for having me in your class and teaching me. Ms. Hahn in your class I felt like a king. I felt like a king because what you was teaching us I was getting it...

Dear Ms. Hahn,

You are one of my amazing teachers so far in summer academy. Every day when you come to school you wear a unique outfit.

And now it is over. I miss them and I can see after all of the strain and adjustments and sleeplessness and burned out feelings how I will be able to survive this. The key is building relationships with students so that your influence will go to far places. As it turns out, Andrew's and my class won first place in the Math Olympics for the highest math mastery, highest homework completion, and best attendance. I missed the award ceremony because I was cleaning out our classroom and as I rushed back downstairs and saw my students with gold medals around their necks I felt so terribly sad for a moment to think that I had missed it until I realized that it was not my award ceremony, it was theirs. I am only sad that I missed their faces.

Check soon for class photos of Ms. Hahn's and Mr. Hasty's Gold Medalists.

personal life

I finally have my life here. Today I signed a lease, my first lease, and the biggest check I've ever written, on an amazing three bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, just one stop outside of Manhattan. My street is crowded with coffee shops, outdoor cafes, and hipster boutiques. I move in Saturday to a fourth floor walk-up with a fellow TFA corps member and an investment banker, who ironically, will be the one to keep us sane. He will have subjects besides Morning Math Meetings and disciplinary practices to speak of as the outlet much needed from the children who talked back to you that morning.

Yesterday I did my first disciplining. I sent two students to Reflection Corner to write me a paragraph about why they behaved inappropriately and how they will change their behavior in the future. The paragraphs were unflattering, to say the least. One student, as I was explaining to the class my expectations for group work and said, "If our behavior isn't up to our classroom expectations I have boring worksheets that we will do instead," responded, "This is already boring." I was flabbergasted and all I could muster to say was, "That was extremely rude. Reflection Corner." I need a little practice.

At first, I was outraged and left the classroom filled with negativity. But soon I realized that if I let myself feel that negative after one bad lesson, how would I survive two + years during which time I will encounter bad days so frequently? I heard a saying once that I now see the truth of...Teachers will have bad days, and students will have bad days, and unfortunately sometimes they are the same day. Yesterday celebrated my students 200th day in school this year. I have never gone to school for 200 days in a year, and suddenly I realized that the only person to be negative towards was myself. I was the teacher, it is up to me to keep them engaged and at their behavioral best. If I were 12, I would rather be at camp too! So today, I revamped my style. As my grandmother always says, kill em with kindness. And do you know, certificates of achievement, a scavenger hunt, minimized teacher talk time, baseball shaped erasers, and a ridiculous outfit including a headband that said "Coach" on it that I wore all class worked like a teacher's charm. The Coach headband will make a return appearance tomorrow, and how I do wish that by Coach I meant the designer...but let's not forget the largest check I ever wrote today.

fourth week

Today was the end of the week that saw my most growth as a teacher yet. It was intense and tested my willpower at new limits. But I feel for the first time that I am a real teacher; not a fake teacher, a student teacher, or an unimportant teacher. There have been times this week when I was so tired I was honestly not sure if I would survive the next two years without finding a more effective way to cope. But then I have days like today and I remember why I am doing this and how I know I will love it.

This morning we finished reading a book titled Slam during our reading intervention hour. It is a book that seems mature for a twelve year old audience, but the issues it includes are nothing that they haven't heard of or seen before. The main character deals drugs, struggles with an alcoholic father, and is forced to quit basketball because of bad grades. When we closed our books, we began a discussion on the character of Slam and I encouraged the students to ask themselves why he seemed so angry. The students provided such deep reflections and I found it incredible to hear their intelligence come out in a new way, beyond math scores. One student revealed something so personal that I was caught off guard and in the moment I knew that I did not respond effectively. After she had gone, I spoke with the school director about what action was appropriate, I felt in over my head, unprepared to deal with situations that I knew I would likely face on a daily basis. When I was a fake teacher just a few short weeks ago, I would have said something comforting and moved on. But now that I am a real teacher, for I feel it is so in my bones, I have realized that I have much, much more responsibility than teaching basic algebra. I am responsible for their development as a person, their success inside of the classroom but also outside of it, in life and in their pursuit of happiness. I realized that there is not only more that I can do, but more that I should be doing. I decided to pull the student out of class and we went for a walk around the abandoned part of the school. I asked her about her life, I told her a little bit about me when I was her age and that I wanted to know that she was okay. She felt she could trust me and she can, her story will stay with me. It was more a moment for me than it was for her, I think. I realized that I had not gone beyond what was expected of me, but for the first time I had fully fulfilled exactly what was expected of me in my role as a real teacher. And it felt so good.

But there are still areas in which I desperately need to grow. I have one week left of student teaching, and each day I try to choose something to focus on. I have been noticing a large amount of bullying in the classroom, some right in front of my face, snide comments towards targeted students, and I know I have not reacted strongly enough. I am always caught off guard and it is something that does not come naturally to me. Yesterday, two students were expelled for assaulting a student at the metro station. It is an issue that I must attack head on because by not doing so I am implicitly sending the message that I am okay with such behavior, and I am not. But next week is a new week.

Today was the last day of school for three students in the class who will not make it to the fourth week of summer school, and I am so sad to see them go. One student in particular has been a struggle for me for the past three weeks but over the course of the past two days I have attempted the strategy of increasing the attention that I give her with the hopes that she will then be more willing to sacrifice it when I must give my full attention to the class as a whole. Today, she wrote me a letter at the end of class which I would like to share with whoever is reading, not only as a personal story but as a demonstration of how much depth and intelligence all students have to share despite the fact that many of them have not received the education that they should have received in order to express their amazing thoughts in a way that is considered "on grade-level."

To: Ms. Hahn

Sometimes a certain person can make you feel not wanted but a certain person may make me want to cry but certain people can never change you. Why is the question because is the fact cause being who are really are should never make you feel like that. But you always drift away your past rely on the present but inbrace the future because you never know what may come your way because tomorrow brings another day.

-6th grade student

Below are some photos from our 6th grade rally to launch our Olympic themed final week of summer school in which we will most certainly be gold medalists.

stories

Every day I am learning more about why the achievement gap exists. This story isn't even mine, but it requires sharing. My roommate is teaching 8th grade English at a NYC public school in the Bronx. Over the past three weeks she has faced immense challenges in classroom management; students fighting, swearing at each other, not participating. But she has been strong, stronger than I have needed to be. She has waited a full eight minutes without speaking while a student sat in silence in stubborn refusal to participate. Today I enforced the law for the very first time, interrupting a fun, whole-class activity because my students were on the brink of mayhem and demanding that they sit in their seats and complete an independent assignment instead. It was my toughest moment thus far, and still it was nothing. I came home proudly with my story, but by comparison it isn't even worth sharing. My roommate today had a lengthy talk with a particular student who was not doing well in her class. She was patient and understanding but tough, working out a deal with the student through which she could increase her participation scores through helping the teacher with tasks in class. While this student was distributing materials in class, my roommate saw her showing a tiny bottle to another girl in class and laughing. After class, she demanded to see the bottle and the girl told her it was nothing, just lotion.

"If it is lotion than you can show it to me," she responded. When the student finally turned over the bottle she found that it was a small bottle of liquor. My roommate told the student she had no choice but to turn it in to the principal and the girl was truly upset. For the first time, my roommate said, she wasn't grinning.

Later, the principal said that she needed to be expelled from summer school, so they might as well just pass her to the 9th grade. The reason this student was in summer school in the first place was because she needed remediation before she could be promoted. Now that she brought a bottle of alcohol to school, she was told to discontinue her summer school and just go to 9th grade. For her punishment, the school gave up on her and sent her to high school unprepared. Thus the achievement gap continues.

excitement

Today I heard from my principal that I will be teaching the 2nd grade! I feel like this will be wonderful, it is better than I even hoped for. Yay!

another window

something worth working towards

As the days get longer and the weight of learning gets heavier I am finding that all else slips my mind. This painful tiredness however is not from misery or unhappiness with my work, I love what I am learning and I love standing in the front of the classroom knowing that what I am teaching my students is actually helping them move to high school and then college. But it takes a lot of work to get to that moment. By Thursday of this week my mind and body was so exhausted that I think my students could tell I had no energy for them. Usually they are quiet as church mice, so pleased to simply hear me praise them, but this day I barely had it in me to form the words. Children can sense this and the chit chat rose and I heard mysterious humming permeating the room. I had no choice but to whip out my teacher stare, which is meek at best. The effects were minor and I ended up with four other teachers and a student in the principal's office. I was very impressed with her strength among such a large crowd and it turned out to be just as much of a learning experience for me as (hopefully) for the student. To watch such an experienced principal lead the student to owning up to her unacceptable attitude in the classroom was like watching a magician pull an elephant out of a top hat, and Friday she was a different student. Mr. Hasty and I knew that the students were losing energy, they had taken three mid-term exams and we needed a plan to bring them back up to the level where we knew they could be before they had a chance to sink lower. We needed a plan because as we have learned...if you don't have a plan for your students, they will have a plan for you. So five minutes before the end of math on Friday afternoon, as Mr. Hasty was reviewing the problems from the daily quiz with the students, I quietly opened iTunes in the back of the room. When Mr. Hasty heard the slightest bit of chit chat, he tossed his wet-erase marker harshly on top of the overhead projector and said, "Really? I am trying to help you learn something right now and you can't even listen to me. If this is seriously how you are going to treat me then I am going to have to go and find someone who you will listen to! Ms. Hahn, please watch the class while I am gone." And he stormed out. The children looked mortified. I tried not to fall over with laughter as I walked to the front of the room. The students were even more shocked to see me with a disappointed grimace as they have never seen me upset before. Positive reinforcement is my personal code of conduct.

"I am so disappointed in you, " I began. "Mr. Hasty is trying to teach you something so valuable and you won't even show him the respect he deserves. Honestly, we only have two weeks left. We are half way there!" And then I hit the play button.

Bon Jovi came blasting through the laptop speakers as Mr. Hasty kicked his way through the doorway singing "Ooohh we're half way there, oohh oh livin' on a prayer! Take my hand---we'll make it I swear, oohh oh! We're half way there!'

We sang and danced around the room as the students' faces slowly changed from horror to confused to mildly amused and then to a few laughs.

"Wait so you were kidding?" We heard a student ask.

"Yes!" Mr. Hasty began another round of 'Take my hand---we'll make it I swear," and reached out for the hands of students in the front row, and this time I couldn't contain my laughter as they all coiled away from his touch and looked disgusted by the thought of touching the hand of their teacher.

"Ugghhhh, Mr. Hasty your voice is so bad!" They started shouting and covering their ears, but I could see the failed attempts at hiding the smiles on their faces. Though I got to be a part of this action, I can take credit for none of it. The entire routine was scripted and choreographed by Mr. Hasty who, though we all have no idea what we are doing, manages to let his personality shine through so that his students know he is a real person who is simply there to help them. It is an important skill that we all must learn from him. Classroom management is one of the most difficult and taxing aspects of learning to teach, and it is tempting to become someone you are not, but they say to not try to contradict your own personality or the students will see right through you. The students felt a connection with Mr. Hasty after he made a fool (to put it lightly) out of himself for their own enjoyment. He left me with no choice but to give them Red Vines so they would return to liking me more.

Tomorrow is the start of a brand new week, only two weeks left in my institute experience. I can say with complete honesty that I have never learned so much in such a short period of time about such a wide variety of topics. I have learned about the lives of my students, about my own life and what it will entail, I have learned about the lives of my fellow teachers. I have learned how to teach, though I still have so much more knowledge and skill to gain. I have learned how to manage a classroom, though it still is not perfect. I have learned how to channel every feeling I have into my work, which I am not sure is a good thing. And I am just beginning to learn how to see this place as my home, even though much of it still feels like the hardest vacation of my life. It has helped to see learning in action, to see significant gains in two weeks, to have made new friends, found a new roommate, perhaps an apartment, relaxed in Central Park, gone on a date. Much of it is still so difficult. Many people see teaching as a fall back career for people who can't do anything else. To them, I would say that they should try it out for just one day. For many of the corps members, this is the first time in their lives that they have not been good at something. The people here are intimidatingly amazing and it can be overwhelming at times, particularly when all I want to do is talk about Gossip Girl. Though it is of course not the first time I have not been automatically good at something (I remember my devastation at 12 when I wanted to be a gymnast and got placed in the 8 year old class), I still feel the effects. I wanted to be so good, the best, and I thought I would have a leg up because of my studies in elementary education, but I have discovered that there is so far to go that my two steps ahead have made no difference. My minor in education is like accidentally starting a nanosecond before the gunshot in the New York Marathon when I am up against the greatest athletes in the world. Without meaning to sound haughty, it has been difficult for all of us to suddenly realize how much we have to learn to be good after growing accustomed to feeling special and honored because we were accepted to Teach for America. Friday afternoon we were handed a piece of paper, a teaching report card, that displayed a series of letters and plus signs telling us how we were doing as a teacher. It discouraged many people, revealing for them in black and white exactly where they were falling short of success after four weeks of long, difficult work. My problems with this method aside, it took strength from all of us to view it not as a message of failure but as an indicator for areas of growth. They told us that humility was a category on the acceptance rubric and I now understand why. Basically, we still suck. But we cannot focus on the "I suck," and must force ourselves to focus on the "I suck, but how can I get better?"

I feel guilty often because I worry that I am failing my students in some ways. This is their education, it cannot be taken back, and they are my guinea pigs. I practice my skills on them each day, using them as my testing audience. But I try to remind myself that I may not be perfect, but I am in some small way still improving their future prospects by teaching them scientific notation. And we have seen the concrete results. TFA, an organization that relies heavily on data and self reflection to continuously improve its effectiveness, administered a diagnostic math assessment to our students on the first day of school. The average score was a 39%. Mr. Hasty and I administered a test based upon the same math standards this Thursday as a mid-term assessment and our average was a 66%. It is certainly a step in the right direction, but there is always room to improve.

On occasion, the failure of our educational system upon these students is shocking. They are so smart, they are the same students as those living just down the street who have gotten the opportunity to go to a better school, and yet some of them have never even been taught to add. We have moved into a unit on subtracting negative and positive integers. This concept can be confusing, particularly when subtracting large negative numbers from large negative numbers like -67 - (-36), so I began simple. I began with a question 14 - (-4). After following the 'add its opposite' method, I sat down with a student and said, "So we converted our subtraction sign to addition and our negative 4 to a positive 4. Now we can rewrite it as what?"

"14 + 4," she replied.

"Excellent, which equals what?"

"17," she answered repeatedly. How is it that our system as allowed this? And why?

I understand that this job is challenging on so many levels, particularly when your classroom is filled with students struggling with things you cannot possibly understand and people everywhere are passing judgements about them and their ability to learn. I have seen and heard these assumptions being made by people that I know, and I myself have made them. It is important to realize that an assumption is an assumption so that one has the opportunity to consciously make the decision to reject it. I experienced this feeling of self-realization after I attempted to call the parents of my students during the first week of school. I was to call half of our students' parents, and out of 7 numbers I got 4 disconnected phone lines. After the voice of the operator told me that the line was no longer in service, I felt myself immediately feeling sorry for the student, assuming that they couldn't pay the phone bill. Although this may be the case, it is remains an assumption, and that is dangerous. I pushed it out of my mind.

The answer to all of these challenges is to remain focused on student achievement and student achievement. Got a bad teacher report card? Get better because you are focused on student achievement. Trouble reaching parents? Try harder because it will aid in student achievement. Tired? Find a way to be more efficient because you need energy to ensure student achievement. Personal selflessness can also be a challenge, but still the answer is student achievement. Friday my roommate called me and told me that she had gotten lice from one of her students. Got lice from one of your students? Buy pesticide shampoo because the students need you to in order to achieve. But now my head feels itchy, though I am sure it is all in my tired mind.

relentless pursuit

I am so tired. My body has now become so accustomed to living off four hours of sleep each night that when I tried to get in a full six hours hours last night, my body rejected the idea of 'before midnight' and I am even more tired today than usual. I am starting to understand teacher burn out; it is inevitable if your entire life revolves around your students because then your entire life is a struggle. Today I had a meeting with a student in the principal's office after she rolled her eyes at me several times and claimed to be attitude free, but it turned out to be just as much of a learning experience for me as for her. Tomorrow I'll be more apt to handle it myself. But for now, I need to have some fun. And once again I had a full audience during my lesson: Teach for America donors on the scene to see just exactly where their dollars were going, my advisor, and (the most critical of all) a video camera. There are so many stories but so little time or energy, my life now boiled down daily to the idea that the need is great and the time is short. The need is great for sleep, the time for work is short. So for tonight I have for you no words, but only a glimpse into the great need in the short time of 9 minutes.

Educational Celebrities

Friday was by far my worst day in the classroom. Worse than even my first day in the classroom. Perhaps I thought that after a week I was so experienced that I was ready to take risks that in reality, as I soon discovered, I was not. But my worst day yet makes for my best story yet:

My 6th grade math class is currently studying a unit on scientific notation. We have learned powers of ten with positive, negative, and zero exponents. We have learned to represent values in scientific notation and numbers written in scientific notation as their values. However for some of the students, this information is review, and I could feel that they were bored. If my students, students who are accustomed to being held to low circumstances because of their race and socioeconomic status, feel as though they are not being challenged and held to high expectations, then I am not doing my job. So, for those students who were bored stiff I attempted to increase the rigor of the lesson by incorporating two-step word problems that involved scientific notation. For example, "In the United States, there are approximately 91,000 species of insects. Ms. Hahn has been bitten by about 25,000 of them! How many species of insects has Ms. Hahn NOT been bitten by? Write your answer in scientific notation." and "Mr. Hasty owns 105,000 ties. If 18,000 of his ties are pink, how many of his ties are NOT pink? Write your answer in scientific notation." Well, it was a disaster.

The morning began with whisperings that Wendy Kopp, CEO and Founder of Teach for America, an organization that she drafted at my age in her senior thesis, was going to be visiting our school for the day. When she arrived, I saw her standing in the hallway with a dark haired man and it was like I was seeing Oprah and Gayle all over again. She observed a few of our curriculum sessions and then disappeared. I breathed a sigh of relief because I had heard that she was going to be observing a few lessons and I was teaching next. I assumed she had left the building. Yet just as I was setting up my materials for the day, in marches Wendy Kopp and her dark-haired companion. I later found out that this man is the Executive Vice President for TFA Institutes all over the country. This man has power, yet lucky for me I had no idea who he was until he had already left. Trailing behind them was my advisor, my collaborative teacher Mr. Hasty, and my mentor teacher. It was quite the audience.

My lesson began smoothly, the students completing the Do Now that begins each day's lesson. Yet because the previous day's lesson had been so simple for so many of them, I attempted to make every aspect of this lesson more rigorous, but without much experience I was unable to find the balance between rigor and feasibility and I overshot. I got so many raised hands about the third question on my Do Now that I finally stopped the class and said, "I have been getting a lot of questions about number 3, so let's go ahead and do that one together on the overhead." I proceeded to begin the problem, and about two steps in I realized that I couldn't even solve it without a calculator. It also involved rounding off the last digit to make it a zero so that it could be converted into scientific notation, a skill which I have not yet taught them. My wet erase marker paused. I tried to keep my cool but in my head I was panicking. I couldn't solve my own math problem, my work was projected hugely on the whiteboard, and Wendy Kopp and company were in the room watching me! I paused and said, "You know what, this one is tricky and I think we should come back to it after we have completed today's lesson! I think even Ms. Hahn needs to practice her scientific notation!" Then I was so flustered that my thinking cap, yes a real thing (see photo below) fell to the ground. I snatched it up and had no time to waste before moving on to our partner work activity. All I could think was Wendy "Oprah" Kopp was in the room, watching me make fun of myself. Luckily my students are lovely and didn't seem to care that I was making such a fool of myself.

We began our whiteboard activity, in which the students work with their partners to solve a problem, write the final answer on their whiteboard, and hold it up into the sky. This was not as smooth as I had hoped with the stream of raised hands causing me to bounce around the room answering questions like, "I can't get the marker off," or "mine is dry." Thankfully during this time, Wendy Kopp and the Dark-Haired-Director left the room. Wendy Kopp even gave me a little nod! I can't ever take a shower again or I might lose her scent!

With only fifteen minutes left of class, I called out, "Ladies and gentleman it is time to move on to our independent work. Please pass your whiteboards to the left while I distribute the assign..." Where was my assignment? I rifled through my papers and found no stack of the assessment that I had spent so long perfecting the night before. I had no time to think or waste. I turned to the students and said, "Please take our your homework, you have five minutes to work on your homework silently while I look for your assessment." Where was my assessment?!?!?!?!?! I had made so many photocopies the night before I know I must have copied it. How could I have been so absent minded? Oh wait I remember how, I haven't slept in two weeks. But I am responsible for administering a daily assessment to track my students' progress. All hope was lost. Wendy was gone, but my advisor and my summer mentor teacher were still watching and typing away. My only friend in the room was Mr. Hasty, helping me search and typing no notes about my wild screw-up.

Sadly, the assessment was no where to be found. I told the confused faces of the students to put away their homework again and I gave them another blank sheet of paper. I threw back up extra practice word problems onto the over head and asked them to complete the problems on their papers. Hands shot into the air.

"Yes?" I asked, knowing this could not be anything good.

"I can't see!" replied one student. No students could even see the problems.

"I will read them aloud," I answered, knowing that this was beyond saving. I called a few students to the overhead to complete the problems, but they were as lost as my hope. There is no nice way to say it, this lesson had sucked. And Wendy Kopp was there. Watching. Me.

After the lesson, I walked over to my summer mentor teacher. "That was a disaster," I said. She told me not to worry, that it was my first week as a teacher and if the head of the organization had come to watch her she would have done the same thing. I realized I had two choices: I could cry or I could laugh. So I laughed, and now the whole experience seems quite amusing. I must remember that the thing about teaching is there will always be good days and bad days but there will also always be a tomorrow and a new chance to learn.

the fourth day

It is my fourth day in the classroom. My assertive tone is growing stronger but each moment of each lesson I am learning more. I love being in the classroom but after a week of four hours of sleep a night my brain is like an empty box that shuts down at 5 pm and I am constantly redirecting it towards the task at hand: learning how to be a better teacher. I need every day to be better than the day before because the need is great and time is short. I have three more weeks after tomorrow to teach 22 7th grade standards and I still have many short comings. My biggest priority currently is to learn how to test exactly what I am teaching without teaching to the test. Or should I teach to the test, knowing the reality is that the only way that my students will be able to create better lives for themselves is if they can pass state exams to graduate from high school? Numbers are the reality, so how can authentic teaching and the necessity to pass the New York Regents exam be reconciled? Especially if a student is grade levels behind and there is no time?

And there are still things I have not yet grown accustomed to, realities of the lives of my students. Mr. Hasty and I sent a personal interest survey home with each of our students and some of the answers had me roaring in laughter, though perhaps from delirium, and others were scary. Interests, hobbies, and activities were typical of a 6th grader, including, "texting a lot," and "rasing people when I no I can win," and it was incredibly fun to remember what my priorities consisted of when I was at that age. In response to the question, "What are three things you are considering doing after you graduate from high school?" the smallest boy in the classroom wrote simply, "Go to college, party, get a girl." Those certainly are three of the most important things in life. But some of the favorite activities still seemed unexpected, even after all I have learned over the past three weeks. My brightest math student, a student who responded enthusiastically today when I quietly asked her after class if she would like me to start assigning her more difficult homework, answered the prompt of 'What are your interests?' with "I like to kick my stepfather." How often will I hear statements like this? When will it become the norm? What is outside of my locus of control? Will I feel pity for this student and hold her to lower standards? I hope that when I learn this type of information, which I know that I often will, that it will lead me to hold even higher standards so that this student and many others are able to build better lives for themselves someday.

Here is another peek into the classroom of Mr. Hasty and Ms. Hahn:

My love of being in the classroom said, I am counting the hours until tomorrow evening, when I am allowed to sleep and breathe and wear jeans. But now I must work, tomorrow we continue our festival of scientific notation.