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.
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