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.