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.