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.