“In the wake of the oil disaster, the country is looking for clean energy. One company wants to use algae as fuel.”
CNN Clip:
Wow. What incredible experiences we have had over the past year. I remember last year at this time, having finally decided that I’d be staying in Rochester, I had no idea what to expect, the wonderful people I’d meet, the personal growth I’d see in my teaching, and the way that being an educator and learning more about education could so easily increase my excitement for what is to come in the next years. There have been those periods of times where I have been so stressed out and haven’t slept, proving to myself how much I cared and wanted to always do the best I could for the students. I recently got to see some friends who I had not seen in quite a while, and they were asking me how classes/student teaching were going. After telling them about my student teaching experiences they couldn’t stop smiling, excited over my stories, mentioning how they noticed I lit up when I talked about it. I know that many of us still have a few months ahead of us in this program, but the fact that we will be walking in just three short weeks, amazes me at how fast one year can fly by. I have no idea where I will be in the fall. I’m looking for a job all over the country and even in other countries. The uncertainty is kind of making me crazy, but it’s exciting at the same time. I know that no matter where I am I have all these visions of what I want my classroom to be like, and the kind of teacher I want to be. Now I’m just extremely anxious for that time to come! I also want to formally thank all of you, ALL OF YOU for making my year here at Warner an incredible one. Our cohort has grown really close, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know each of you.
On another note, this morning I visited the Mocha Center in Rochester for our UTL service day. For those of us who may be in Rochester next year, I highly recommend visiting it, getting to know what it is and the people there. Hearing each of their stories was very inspiring, and they all gave great advice to us aspiring teachers, and stories of teachers that acted as role models to them and other ways that teachers can support LGBT in their classes. There are too many times when teachers simply ignore hurtful comments that students make to each other in classes regarding their sexuality. It is crucial that teachers know how to respond to things like that, as well as constantly be open-minded. Especially in high school when more students are discovering their identities, coming to school one day dressed as a boy, one day as a girl, they just want teachers to be open-minded! To support them, to be someone they can feel comfortable talking to, who can know how to provide a safe environment in their classrooms. It’s also important to just be straight forward and show you accept them for who they are just by simply acknowledging changes and giving them a sense of their own identity and choice by asking them the pronoun they would like to be referred to. These were just some of the recommendations given by the youth we met today. I respect each and every one of them so much for offering their stories about coming out to their families and friends, their experiences in schools, and the advice they were able to give to us to make the experiences for LGBT better in urban schools.
Friday Morning:
Friday morning, the last day of school before spring break for students in the RCSD, Kaitlin and I decided to go back to our first placement to visit our students who we had not seen since January. We arrived, unannounced, to find that it was Day of Silence and therefore most students we not talking and instead were carrying around whiteboards in order to communicate. We joked that we came on the perfect day! J Walking into the school was such a strange feeling! It felt like I had never left! Seeing the students made my day. It was incredible how much they had grown and matured in just three short months. When we arrived we went to the cafeteria where the ninth graders were having an awards ceremony for people who passed all of their classes each marking period. It really felt like we belonged there, and I noticed how much of a community really existed within that school between all of the students, the teachers and students, and all of the teachers. I made myself at home in the art room as we were going around from class to class seeing the kids, answering the phone and taking a message at one point when no one else was around to do it. The art teacher was like, “Thanks, you practically work here anyway!” The kids were begging Kait and I not to leave, saying how much they missed us, asking us to take over the class, guilting us into staying at school for them, and asking us to visit more and come chaperone their dance that night. We were overwhelmed with hugs as we walked down the hallway in between periods and also accused of not spending an equal amount of visiting time in each classroom. Having been there so so long I felt like we really got to know and understand each of the students individually. So. Very. Very. Well. Watching the student teachers who had only been there four weeks at that point try and handle different situations was very interesting. We discussed how they could not control the classroom, not understanding how certain students react to certain situations, not understanding that IF student X sits down quietly in the front row waiting for the bell to ring, do not try and force him to relocate to a seat in the back when it is unnecessary. Any time this student sits voluntarily, accept it, embrace it! Don’t yell at those students who naturally have a hard time sitting if they are walking in the back of the classroom, not disturbing a single other student. I wanted to dive right back into teaching those kids, knowing what they needed and how they worked best to succeed. All of the “I miss you guys” and “don’t leave us” messages on the whiteboards were nice to see and it really pained me to leave. I think I can speak for Kait as well when I say, we really can’t wait to go back and see these kids again. And I really cannot believe how much they have grown since we’ve been gone!
Friday night:
My friend is president of the Rotaract community service club who tutors refugee students of Turkish background who came from Russia. I was in the library and she invited me to the event she was having for these students who ranged from fifth graders to seniors in high schools in the surrounding districts. We all watched the Princess and the Frog (a wonderful Disney movie might I add—you should all see it!) and I got to meet some of the students. It was a wonderful experience hearing about their tutoring experiences and how much they appreciated having students from U of R helping them with their work with the intent to graduate high school one day. The one little fifth grader goes to the Harley school and knew all about our summer camp so it was fun to be able to talk to her about that as well!
Saturday morning:
This morning a few of us had our inclusion class and a couple interesting conversations came up that I wanted to share with everyone else. First of all, we learned about different literacy practices that can be used within the classroom to get students learning and practicing vocabulary words. This was something that I know my CT was interested in hearing about and something we could have benefitted from. Different activities such as “which word does not fit?” out of four different words, helps students build their own connections between words and then come up with an answer as to why it is correct. It is an unstructured activity that can allow for more than one right answer, but also encourages them to make those relationships between words that will help them understand the terms during the unit. Another strategy is to give students a target word or idea and have them work together to brainstorm words that relate to that concept, or have a list of words which they have to categorize into different groups, and therefore recognize the similarities and differences between all of the words. As we practiced these activities as a class, we realized they were actually fun, and therefore are different practices that students would probably enjoy as well!
Next we talked about the idea of giving students second chances to make up work. Does this cause them to hand in bad work the first time because they understand they will get a second chance? Is it lowering our expectations for them? Is it preparing them for the real world where they only get one chance to do something sometimes? And here is what we decided—GIVE STUDENTS THE OPPORTUNITY TO REDO THEIR WORK! We aren’t out to get them! We are there for the students to learn! All I care about is that the students leave with an understanding of the material! Does it matter how many chances they are given to reach that point? Telling the students that you will not accept something or that they must redo it, RAISES the expectations we have for them, showing them that we will not settle for work that is not complete or thorough. In the real world, it is unlikely that they will get only ONE chance to do something right, unless it is in very intense working situations. It is important to be clear to students that there are going to be times where they will not have the chance to do something over again, but it does encourage looking over feedback and constantly trying to improve! And isn’t that what we want? We have to hold students to high standards and not accept them handing in just any work, or else they will never be reaching those expectations that we should be having for them. One teacher expressed concern, saying that because she lets them do test corrections, many times students come in not having studied for a test, don’t do well, and then just plan on doing test corrections. We cannot be saying that’s fine, you do not have to do well or study the first time, but rather we realized that this is a problem because students do not know HOW to study. For the students moving onto college where they may not be able to retake a test, this can be an issue! It is therefore important that we TEACH students HOW to study so that they CAN do well the first time, like we know they can. But it is important to remember to keep giving the students chances to redo their work, learn from their mistakes and keep improving! One shot is not always enough.
It was a month or two ago when I got in touch with my former 8th grade science teacher to inform him of the current program I am in, and how he had inspired me to become a science teacher. I had not really talked to him, since well, about 8th grade, except for seeing him a few times during high school when he started teaching there. But I felt he should know. He was so happy to hear from me, (I was excited he remembered me!) and was saying how that is one of the greatest joys of teaching—hearing from old students. He hoped that one day I would know that feeling, and understand how truly touched he was. Ten years later, he is now the Science and Technology Specialist of the RI Dept of Education, and is encouraging me to teach back down in RI. I had the pleasure of speaking with him last Monday, getting to hear about the urban schools in RI, the teaching vacancies, and opportunities for me to visit the schools and network some more. We reminisced about my suburban high school where students were almost all white, expressing our love for urban education and the amazing personalities you get to know and the students you look up to because of what they have been through.
I am writing this blog because of the reflecting I did on my six hour drive back to Rochester the next day. My teacher, and now my colleague, was telling me all about the urban parts of Providence, Newport, and other cities I lived around throughout my entire youth. I was blind. I was blind to the poverty, to everything around me that was not my private elementary school in the city, or the different centers where I went to play sports. I was young when I went to school in Providence and therefore only saw the places my parents brought me to see. My dad has worked with many homeless people in Providence for a couple decades, but I never saw it. After researching Providence, I came to find that Providence has just about the exact same rate of poverty as Rochester, which as we know is the highest in New York state. Newport, the city 20 minutes south of me where my friends and I go to the beach, where couples go to spend $200 on a fancy dinner and where people pay tons of money to go see the famous Newport mansions, has another one of the highest rates of poverty in my little state. I was stunned I did not know this, and disappointed with my ignorance. To go back and teach in Rhode Island would be like going back to a whole new world. It is strange to find what exists when you are looking for it, and to realize you did not know anything about the city where you went to school for eight years. My teacher says the progress that the Providence city school district has made is incredible, and he has worked on it and seen its progression the past three years and is so proud of it. Children are children, whether they are in Rochester or Providence, so I would love to teach in either of those places. I am still just stunned to not have made the effort to see the problems in Providence, although I guess I was younger and did not even realize. How naiive.
I posted another blog a couple of weeks back that talked about the book Fires in the Bathroom. Well, the other day as I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, I picked up the book that was on my passenger seat. I opened it again and read the beginning, realizing the first time I read that page I had missed something. The students’ voices that were in that book were not only those from NYC…but from students in where else but Providence. How ironic, I thought. To think these are the voices of the students (apparently I’m big on the whole idea of student voices as you can see from my last post, too) that could have graduated the same year as me, 20 minutes away. That these are the students that grew up within the same few cities. That these might be the same students I teach one day. How I had been blind to the struggles in education anywhere and everywhere until I was immersed in it in Rochester. I guess it’s hard for me to articulate how I am feeling as I write this and how I felt after the phone conversation with my teacher and as I drove back to Rochester. And it’s not typical for me not to be able to express how I feel in a clear way. But I guess I’ve learned my lesson and I want to bring it back home with me. To all of those sheltered students at my elementary school, my high school; and I’m sure it’s similar for many children in the suburbs. You know the poverty’s there, you hear about it, but you stay away from it, stay ignorant and I regret it. But the realization that I have something I can do about it NOW, is incredible. That I can go back home where I was once blind and take what I’ve experienced in Rochester with me and attempt to help students change their lives. It’s such a feeling of accomplishment. A feeling of growth, a feeling of giving back to my city and my community. But like I said before, children are children, students all want the same thing regardless of the city they are in, so wherever I end up, I will be excited. I already am. And thanks to my former eighth grade teacher, for opening my heart up to science and look where I am now. I hope to inspire a student one day, the way he inspired me.
I am a male. I am a female. I was impregnated by a 54 year old man. I am 14 years old. I have ADHD. I work at Walgreens. My favorite subject is English. I am Latino. I am a refugee from Nepal. I speak Swahili. I love to sing. I cried myself to sleep last night. I have a 4.0 gpa. I am one of five children. I am on the baseball team. I am in a gang. I am a lesbian. I play the trumpet. I am a father. I am African American. I am White. I am a twin. I am a lesbian. I am abused. I visit my mother in the hospital. I do the announcements each morning. I do not know my father. I am pregnant with my second child. My favorite food is pizza. I am a cheerleader. I love my friends. I am bullied everyday. I want to be a chef. I have been in jail. I used to carry a gun. I have been paralyzed by a bullet to the spine. I wake up at 6 am. I stayed up all night taking care of my 2 year old brother. My father had my boyfriend arrested. I do drugs. I applied to four colleges. I want to be famous. I love to dance. My mother calls me a whore. I am the captain of the soccer team. I do not understand what the teachers tell me. My mother tells me I will be a bum just like my father.
What you have read are true stories that I have heard. I am a teacher in the Rochester City School District, and these are my students. Each of them wonderful and intelligent people. My goal is to make sure they know that.
Feel free to share the voices of your students. In fact, please do.
I am currently sitting in Gleason Library…coincidentally the same Studio B study room that we brought our kids to this past summer on the third day of camp. It is strange how vividly I remember that day as I look around this room. The trouble we had with technology, the blog post we created as a group, looking through their data, signing their names on the whiteboards with “Charlotte Crusaders” on top, and how they were interviewed individually in the purple booths outside this room. I cannot believe it is already March. Basically the end of March for that fact. Even though many of us still have five months to go, it is incredible to think how far we have come these past ten months. It has been an insane journey with its ups and downs, but always rewarding. As I reflect back on my experiences, the tough times were always overcome by the encouragement and inspiration I got from the students I taught. The planning, the writing, the struggles, the late nights cutting things out, organizing papers, creating activities, disagreeing with teachers or Warner faculty– those are all challenges, but that’s nothing. Teaching is so much more, and for those reasons it has been one of the most difficult, enjoyable challenges I have taken on. Teaching is trying to reach every single student in the classroom. It is showing you believe in them and getting them to believe in themselves when they might not have ever felt that in their lives. It is trying to find a way for them to motivate themselves. It is all up to the student. We really have no direct control over their ultimate decision on what they do or learn. That is what makes our job so hard. We can teach, but they can’t learn unless they want to. We can be there every day helping them, but they won’t be motivated and won’t let us help them unless they believe that’s what they want. Being a teenager is hard enough. The toughest thing is trying to figure out what it is that can motivate each child so that they come to class, willing to learn, and excited to experience the opportunities we are providing for them. Even what I think are some of the best lessons I have planned, students will show up to class already upset about something else: a relative, a failing grade from another class, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a fight that day, having not slept the night before, not feeling well, etc, and lay their heads on the desk, not wanting to participate from the get-go.
I spoke with one parent who tells me her son believes he is a failure and he thinks he will end up being just like his dad and amount to nothing. Another parent said his son has no example to follow and does not understand how smart he is and all he can become. One of the issues that I have been talking with my CT and another teacher at my school about it that often times students do not understand what and education is and why having one is important. They’ve experienced the life they have, and only that, not realizing what else is out there for them and what is needed to get there. We tell them an education is important, but they do not understand the impact it can have on them. I have met some teachers that argue that students should be getting paid like some do in Texas so that they have some sort of motivation to learn. I wholeheartedly disagree with that form of motivation, and it just makes me realize even more how important it is that we work our butts off to help these students. I am sure most of us came from backgrounds where is was expected that we do well in school. There was no other option, at least not for me. It was expected I go straight to college too, no other options were ever even thought of. Some of my friends were even told that they would not get a car unless they kept their grades up. So for children who do not have relatives that have gone to college, who have parents that do not have high expectations of them, for those who have no sort of internal or even external motivation, and for those who do not even believe in themselves or see them going places– what can we do? I know that showing we care is key, but is that enough? I remember my second day in my student teaching placement, one student sat in class not doing a single thing. It was the end of class and they were supposed to be reflecting about some awesome lab they just did. This was the first day I had met the student because he had not been in school my first day. He was not writing so I tried to go over and encourage him just to jot down a few ideas. Still didn’t want to do anything. I asked him if he would possibly just verbally share some of his ideas and I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and told him I would write it for him. He refused and replied only with, “Miss, thanks but you really don’t have to waste your time trying to help me,” and the student next to him said, “Yeah, you’ll never get him to do any work.” I said, “Waste my time? This is why I’m here, I want you to do well.” He told me he didn’t believe there was any point. I got two sentences out of him that I wrote down and he handed in. That was the last day I saw him because he dropped out. It was so frustrating.
There are some other students who come to class who are so incredibly bright and are so motivated to learn when they are there and immediately get all the material, but they are only in class once or twice a week, if that. Also very frustrating to see them not take advantage of their intelligence, but then again I have no idea what is going on in their lives. Another student comes to class always trying to cause trouble and I came to find out he was having a difficult time outside of school because his girlfriend’s parents had gotten him arrested and that his girlfriend might be pregnant. So how can we motivate these children? I need some ideas! I really just want them to realize how important an education is and I want them to just believe in themselves. It did happen last week. One student comes to class never willing to stand up for activities or pick up a pen to write anything. He sits in the back and attempts to joke with his friend or sleep. The other day he did not attempt to even take the quiz I was giving. He sat through class drawing on his paper. I told him to at least please try and attempt some problems, but he told me, miss I don’t get it. He wanted to make it up after school and I agreed to that. After school he and his friend both came in to make up the quiz. They were all pumped and motivated, “Alright Miss Saunders lets do this, let’s get this over with, covalent bonding here I come.” I asked them if they wanted a little review since the rest of the class had gotten a little review before they took it. I have never seen these two students so engaged and asking so many questions. They were sitting right up front as we worked through problems on the SmartBoard. Distractions were gone, and suddenly they started thinking the problems were so easy. I told them, it was because they were paying attention, and that I knew they could do it all along. The student who had been getting 30’s and 40’s or just not choosing to do work in his first period chemistry class waited for me to grade his quiz. He got a 95. I have never seen him so excited. I wish you all could have seen how big his smile was for the next five minutes that we talked. We talked about the Ds and Cs he was getting in his other classes. The fact he sleeps through his first four periods everyday. How he was taking chemistry this year because it was hard and he just wanted to get it out of the way. “Exactly!” I told him. “Chemistry is one of the hardest subjects you might ever take—and YOU just got an A on a quiz! Look at the potential you have, look at how well you are able to do when you focus. You say you didn’t understand the material this morning, and with just a little review you aced the quiz. You are capable of anything, I hope you realize that.” He asked me two things after that. 1. If I could hang his quiz up on the student work wall and 2. if he could sit up front in class the next day.
Its funny to think of how hard we work, the struggles we go through, the lack of sleep, the ups the downs, the obstacles, the good lessons, the lessons we spend hours planning that just don’t go as planned–and regardless of the emotional struggles I go through, I keep trying to focus back on the fact that I’m not doing any of this for me. It’s all for the students. I just want to be able to find a way to motivate all of them and get them to simply believe in themselves. Some are harder than others and it pains me to see them give up on themselves. But I hope for new ideas and ways to do so, because that smile on my student’s face and that sudden realization he got maybe for the first time ever that he was capable and smart, was all worth it. Just like I vividly remember everything from that day of camp as I sit here in Studio B, I will always remember that huge grin on my student’s face on that Thursday afternoon and his excitement as he as he danced out of the classroom.
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.
-Dr. Seuss, Oh! The Places You’ll Go!
I really need to find a way to procrastinate less with planning and school work so I can find time to sleep. Calendars and lists sure make me feel organized and are pretty to look at…but don’t help with the actual “getting stuff done” part. I only work best under pressure, and unfortunately setting false, early deadlines for myself doesn’t work. Any ideas of what I can do? It is starting to get frustrating and I’m not sure if I will be able to change the way I’ve done things for years. Wow, fourth blog post of the day. See, I catch myself doing work that I enjoy but that is not necessary. Maybe that’s my problem too. I probably could have finished my Disciplinary Knowledge paper by now, had I spent my time on that instead, but I enjoyed this more and do find meaning in it. And now…I’m tired so I’m going to watch TV and relax, therefore once again putting more important work off until tomorrow. Hmph, complicated.
At our department meeting this week, some things were stressed about what the state is going to be looking for and what things our department supervisor will therefore also be looking for as he comes around to randomly observe our classrooms. One of the things on the checklist is that we have student work posted in the classroom. So, having none displayed in our classroom, I made this my little project. In the copy room of the school I found scroll paper in school colors and spent a few free periods and a couple of hours after school making the “Chemistry Scholars” wall, which my CT and I decided to call it. He said in ten years of teaching he had never really posted student work, and the wall I used for it has always just been left blank. He had always thought high school students would never really care about seeing work hanging up. Well, I collected a lot of the outstanding work from my students, as well as some of the assessments I gave that we were incredibly impressed with.
The next day at school, the students all loved it. Every student walked in and walked right over to it to see if they were up there somewhere on it. We assured them that we will constantly be updating the work up there so that they will have a chance to be showcased on the wall as well. We never could have guessed the reaction we would get from some students. They were so excited when they realized they had done a good job on something and were getting acknowledged for it by having it displayed to everyone who walks in the classroom. One girl was like, “Wow, my quiz is up there, that’s awesome! I want to keep doin well so I always have something up there! I know I can.” Other students were like “I’m gonna do really good on my lab now.” Ok, so something that was just supposed to be a decorative addition to the class ended up being a bit of an external motivation factor as well. But it was great to see the students being so proud of themselves, as they should have been. One student walked in and pointed to one of the chromatography labs, shouting, “That kid is soo smart!” referring to his own work. Starting out the class with all these positive comments and with the students feeling proud of their work, (and the others knowing that their work would be up their eventually too), classes were very enthusiastic and pumped up today. It was wonderful! I remember in Lisa’s class we were talking about memorable feedback we had received at any point in our academic career and why it was memorable—it made me think of this. The students really love seeing their work on that wall, and to have teacher approval that they did well, in addition to just comments and grades that they receive all the time. To put it on display really makes them feel proud of their work, and now they are motivated to have that feeling repeated. Who knew the power of scissors, paper, tape and hanging wrinkled pages on a blank wall.